GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

19-06-2003, 06:32 PM

(Nick Maclaren) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Mike Lyle wrote:

NO, IT IS NOT.

There's no need to shout, unless of course it makes you feel better.

Unfortunately, there is :-( It at least gets attention. In my
life, I have seen catastrophic erosion of civil rights due to people
not standing up for them. And this has often or usually started by
a large amount of propaganda saying that they aren't rights, or that
they shouldn't be rights.

OK, nothing to disagree with there.

There's some logic there; but it's not uncommon for an action to be
unlawful under more than one law. I wouldn't consider helping myself
to the produce of your land -- especially if I thought you might catch
me.

So you regard people picking wild blackberries as morally no better
than thieves? Because that is the logical consequence of your
position.

In some circumstances, yes. I know there are plenty of dirty jokes
about *de minimis non curat lex*, though, so let's forget blackberries
for now. Let's also forget things you or I have actually planted. I've
got some oak trees here, self-sown, and therefore wild. Somebody comes
in and cuts them down, and takes them away: does this mean he hasn't
committed a criminal act of theft? Even if it doesn't, surely I would
have grounds to seek a civil remedy: and wouldn't that be based on my
owning the trees in some sense? (These are genuine questions seeking
information, not rhetorical challenges.)

Would it be different if I'd cut the trees down myself, and he'd just
dropped in and taken the trunks?

If I'd gone the whole way and made the wood into a table, is he
allowed to take the table with impunity? Have I, in fact, committed
some form of criminal damage by messing around with wood that didn't
belong to me? (Let's also forget tree-preservation orders, of course.)

Where I live, it *is* explicitly regarded as theft if you pick up
branches a farmer has cut off and left lying on the roadside verge: a
fortunately short-term neighbour got into bad odour with the community
for doing just that a while back.

In this area, you always ask if you can pick berries or mushrooms:
nobody would dream of saying "No", but you do ask.

Mike.