Our support for Vanessa Kelly

As we discussed yesterday, and as has been widely reported, a brave young woman named Vanessa Kelly has refused to pay a £75 fixed penalty notice (FPN) she was given for throwing bread to the ducks in her local park.

Vanessa and I have spoken at some length and she has made it clear that she has no intention of paying this ridiculous fine.

We are proud to support Vanessa and, if the Council does not back down and apologise as it should, then we will pay for the lawyers and the rest of it.

Some of our readers have told us that this action is typical of Sandwell Council. But even if one does not know this particular Council's track record, the story is in a way unsurprising, being typical as it is of the latest creeping incursion into our liberties, being but the latest example of excessive control by authority which we soon come to expect. And that expectation can change our behaviour – change our lives.

We all know that feeling, all too well.  It has a chilling effect on all human relations in this country, as we constantly feel that little fear – what if the Big Brother bureaucrat, the health and safety fool, comes knocking?

With this case, Big Brother Watch hopes to begin the fight back. 

A fight which is of course not only against the petty bureaucrats at Sandwell, but against the whole culture of highhanded, unaccountable, overbearing authority they represent.

My dream, my highest hope for this organisation, is to turn that fear around – so that in a few years' time, when about to wake the grandfather from his bed and take him to the police station for supposedly swearing, or on the verge of filling out that illiberal FPN, the jobsworths feel the chilling effect themselves – what if Big Brother Watch is watching?

By Alex Deane