Only the lawyers are cleaning up

There are an estimated £ 2 billion in unpaid fines in the UK. No doubt these fines are for dog fouling, drunkenness, speeding, driving without insurance, driving while disqualified, assault, GBH in fact anything and everything else you might imagine but hardly anyone in authority cares.

Some Councils used CCTV footage and surveillance to catch offending dog owners but were attacked by Liberty and their legal fellow travellers who claimed this was an overreaction to a simple problem. Never mind what you and I might think about the matter, what about their human rights not to be watched or observed allowing their dogs to mess up your street, you are only required to pay for the cleanup.

Of course there used to be ways of collecting fines – send in the bailiffs but they now have no power to do anything. If you don’t open the door they cannot force a way in and in the end they go away. If an offender is fined £ 60 how many times do you want the bailiffs to call at a cost per visit to collect the money?

The recent case of the council tenant who owed £3,500 in rent arrears to Hounslow Council and took her case through the courts ended up costing £200,000 in legal fees and it still failed to evict her. Needless to say this ended up as a human rights case so loved by lawyers as this legislation allows them all to rip off the legal aid budget for millions and so many of our MPs, including our own, are lawyers that they are never going to do anything about it.

As long as the authority lacks any authority (as it now does by statute) the loudest voice and the most obnoxious will win every time, so I would recommend taking a trowel with you when you go out so you can bag up all the dog mess and send it to Liberty, the Law Society and/or to our MP. Then and only then, might something change, but, apart from being illegal, who wants to punish the postman in this way?

TIM CONOLLY

Primrose Lane

MIRFIELD