Questions, but good on you lads
Friday 7th August 2009, 8:24PM BST.
swift and well-coordinated action by a team calling themselves the Guernsey Boys was responsible for ridding Guernsey of one of its biggest eyesores, the wrecked cars at Cobo.
The reaction has been predictable and spontaneous: hurrah for that.
And it’s not surprising. Life at Cobo has been made difficult by someone with a questionable claim to the land and whose actions would brand him, in the mind of many, as an opportunistic gold-digger. Local folk do not take kindly to chancers and watching them get their comeuppance is particularly pleasurable. If the man who claims title to the area is indeed acting in such a way, then he would have only himself to blame for triggering concerted community action against him.
But while the cheers are fading away, there are some serious questions about what happened that are largely unanswered.
Much as we would all like to take action against those who abandon vehicles where they should not, smashing their windows and then chaining them to the back of a skip truck is not recommended.
It is one reason why landowners like the National Trust and even the States of Guernsey take steps through La Gazette Officielle to try to trace owners and to warn them that seemingly dumped cars will be moved.
So was this organised criminal damage on a grand scale? Thomas Holroyd, who claims ownership of the area, certainly believes so, but the police are remaining coy on the matter.
And if, as on the face of things it was, what does that say of the involvement of officers on the day? Were they complicit in condoning crime by not stopping it? And what conversations and decisions were there that led to them being present with video cameras at just the time the Guernsey Boys started their clean-up patrol?
Much as islanders applaud the clearance operation, there are some implications that cannot be ignored. Removing the cars was the right thing but was it done in the right way and would it be acceptable in any other set of circumstances?
Meanwhile, the legal niceties can wait.
What needs to be said to the Guernsey Boys is, good on you, lads.
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How much effort was put in to get hold of the owners, and how much notice were they given? Guernsey isn’t that big, surely it wouldn’t have been difficult to find them.
This appears to be mob rules. If the cars didn’t belong to the so-called owner of the property, then this wasn’t actually affecting him – they targetted the wrong people.
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A considered and sensible comment.
Whilst it is good that the car park has been cleared the method adopted does give cause for concern.
The conviction of Deputy Paint suggests that the action of the clean up squad seems itself to be a breach of the criminal law. Some posters to You Shout seem convinced the police had told those removing the vehicles that they were doing no wrong.
I always believed it was the Law Officers who decided whether or not prosecute. Are we now to see another police officer before the courts for aiding and abetting a criminal act and another police disciplinary hearing, Perhaps it is time for George Le Page to make a definitive statement as to the advice given by his officer(s).
Whilst it is not clear whether Mr Holroyd owns the land, it is clear the successors in title to Mrs Bean and another seemed to have been accepted as the people who could decide what to do with the land. We know from the documents on the Internet that the Parish has previously asked for permission to remove dumped vehicles from the property. Equally we know that legal advice is that the land has not been in public ownership.
All of this suggests that those who control the use of the land do so with legal approval, whether it be a car park, or a car dump.
In a recent post on this matter a poster named Crabby made the sensible suggestion that the law should be changed so as to allow the easy, and legal, removal of vehicles at the expense of the owner or the property owner. This seems sensible and a priority.
I have to admit to an uneasy feeling on reading of the total support of those who seem to have made a deliberate choice to break the law, and comparing this with the unfortunate police officer who was the subject to outrage because he made a technical mistake, and was honest enough to say so, when it could have been so easy for him to have covered his tracks.
Can Guernsey allow people to take matters in their own hands and seemingly break the law to the accompaniment of yelps of support and police video cameras?
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I’ve heard it suggested that Data Protection laws rendered it “impossible” for the Motor Tax office (or whatever they are called these days) to disclose ownership of the vehicles in question to third parties, even though by their very actions the car owners clearly didn’t want them any more.
If true, then its yet another example of the mad world we live in as far as Data Protection is concerned.
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David
Its not the Data Protection Law that is at fault, but those who find it easier to claim that they cannot disclose the information because of data protection.
Data Protection law provides that data can be released when in the public interest. Clearing up dumped vehicles surely is in the public interest.
I cannot see the Data Protection department offering much sympathy to someone who has dumped a car on someone else’s property, who then complain that their data protection rights have been breached.
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David – I see it as an example of the authorities not thinking things through properly. It would be easy to require vehicle owners to give their consent to have their basic contact details disclosable in certain circumstances.
The same happens with planning applications. If you want to lodge a complaint against a planning proposal you have to go to Charles Frossard House and look at the plans, but you cannot take copies for “copyright” reasons. In the UK most councils make applications available online so that you can print out the proposal, review it and prepare your objection at your leisure. It is simple to make waiver of copyright for these purposes a condition of making the application (but without extending to allowing people to then copy the architect’s drawings as their own).
As with Health&Safety, it is not always the laws that are at fault but the way that they are applied and the way in which people hide behind them as an easy excuse for not doing something.
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Stephen John and TL – I totally agree with you both. Its time that common sense prevailed.
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