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GET nabbed for anti-social or disorderly conduct and they’ll have you crawling around on your hands and knees picking up dog poo. And they’ll make you wear a distinctive vest to tell the world you’ve been a naughty boy, or girl. Talk about rubbing your nose in it.
The idea, being rolled out in Southport, stinks. I am all for offenders doing something to repay society for their ill-deeds, but this is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Next they’ll be lining Lord Street with deck chairs so the mainly elderly inhabitants can sit there knitting and tut-tutting while they watch the pooper-scooper chain gang in action.
It smacks of a vengeful, “ha-ha-ha look at you” society, rather than one willing and capable of pointing out to offenders the errors of their ways, in a civilised way. Offenders will resent this task, and many of them will be physically sick at the thought of the job.
And yes I know, some will suggest it's not enough, that offenders should scoop up the muck with their bare hands, and perhaps even eat it.
Punishment of this kind doesn’t work, in the same way hanging never deterred murderers. It’s OK for people like me to talk, some may say. I’ve probably never been the victim of crime.
Well since moving to Liverpool I’ve been mugged and stabbed, I’ve had four cars stolen and vehicles broken into countless times, I’ve been pick-pocketed and threatened by road-rage idiots. Yet I still feel the best example society can set is one in which we do not stoop to the same low-life level of offenders. I don’t feel sorry or sympathetic towards offenders, but showing them there is an alternative to bad behaviour and crime is preferable than the chain-gang mentality.
People doing community service work, and that could include keeping places clean and tidy, should be doing it alongside people who do it full-time, they should be properly mentored and encouraged, so when they have done their tasks they may take some pride.
I don’t want these guys to wear tell-tale vests, or hair-shirts as a penance for their behaviour. I want them to learn, from the experience, that decency should always be the victor.
The problem is society is heading more towards eavesdropping on people who stray from the straight and narrow. The television is crammed with police programmes, camera crews following. It makes me wonder whether there are more coppers in Equity than the Police Federation.
Not that many generations ago towns and cities had stocks and pillories, with offenders bombarded with tomatoes and rotten eggs. The deeds of the spectators were often far worse than the ‘crime’ of the offender. If we re-introduced public floggings I have no doubt we’d cram the ACC Arena. Don’t tell the council though, they’d see it as an income stream.
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"A nasty whiff" indeed. You will hear from my solicitor!
The juvenile Errol Flynn did a similar trick with a length of string, a piece of pork fat and half-a-dozen geese on his dad's farm in Tasmania. He was thrashed for it.
Brilliant!
"The deeds of the spectators was often far worse than the ‘crime’ of the offender"Shouldn't that be: "The deeds of the spectators WERE often far worse than the ‘crime’ of the offender"?
Oh so funny. The best laugh I have had in 40 years. I thought I was used to seeing dog****e smeared everywhere in Liverpool streets but now I will look again and laugh all the more.
I've never fed string to a dog but I used to have a moonwalking cat. The trick was putting sellotape on it's nose.
The poop shouldn't be there in the 1st place. The dog walkers leaving the poop behind should be the ones picking it up. I think if a dog walker is caught leaving their dogs dirty business behind they should be banned from keeping pets and the offending pet flushed down a big toilet. As for people with asbo's etc I say bring back the stocks.
Fallen human beings can indeed be civilised back into society, but Laz is wrong to think this will work with the willfully subhuman baboons who perpetrate repeated offences. Current attempts to deal with them (asbos, prison etc) merely reinforce their bone-headed machismo and become badges of honour. So, yes, let them pick up the sh*t in public, and let them wear pink tutus while they do it, and let pictures of their humiliation circulate the internet. These kind of yobs will only be deterred by threats to their macho status.
You really do sense the world is getting back to normal when Laz has one of his little rants. Its so comforting.
Isn't that what Michael Jackson does so he can moonwalk without anything falling off?
If the dog is off its lead it is fair game. Employ wardens. catch the dirty animal and destroy it. If the dog is fouling and owners dont wipe it off the floor fine them 500 pounds. no appeal.problem solved overnight.;
As vegetinarian with my own practice, I simply cannot condone feeding string to dogs. A length of elastic is far better and much more fun.
yep, probably
Has Larry got a part time job with the local tourist industry? "Well since moving to Liverpool I’ve been mugged and stabbed, I’ve had four cars stolen and vehicles broken into countless times, I’ve been pick-pocketed and threatened by road-rage idiots." He says. Just the slogan to go under the exciting new Liverpool Blue Brand. That's nothing mate, since moving to Liverpool i found that I couldn't get some basic foods in the shops, I had three houses in our street bombed in a week. mind you that was in 1941.
I cannot stop laughing! I mean I really can't.