"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

In article ,
"BAC" writes:
|
| Perhaps so, but in the example you quoted, unless the onus of proof
were
| reversed, it seems unlikely that any malicious jack-in-office would
have
| sufficient evidence to have a realistic chance of a conviction.

Grrk. Maybe. But a lot of people HAVE been convicted on less evidence
recently, because they fell foul of the letter of a catch-all law. If
he ****es off the Men From The Ministry, he is likely to **** off the
police and magistrates, and get convicted.

The sort of cases you have in mind, I think, are ones where either it cannot
(successfully) be denied that an illegal action was taken (e.g. when one is
observed dropping 'litter' by a council nark), or, worse in my opinion, when
any action becomes an offence if it is an offence in the opinion of a
policeman (e.g. taking a bite out of an apple whilst driving one's car
becomes driving without due care if a policeman sees you doing it and thinks
it is). In those cases, I agree, you are almost certainly stuffed, and the
more you complain, the more the control freaks who have victimised you will
like it.


That is what happened to the person who had his career destroyed because
he did a quick check to see if he had been trapped into using a Web-
based card number collector.

| In the extremely unlikely event he would be prosecuted/convicted in the
| first place. If/when challenged over his actions, he responds, my
actions
| were authorised by the 'authorised person'. The 'authorised person'
confirms
| that was the case. No prosecution ensues, and if it does, the accused
is
| surely aquitted.

Fine. IF he realises is what is going on. What if they say to him:
Were you told to remove the nest after we killed the bird.
And he says:
No, but I am tidying up the mess you have made.

That would mean nothing unless he had been cautioned, and, if he had been
cautioned, one would hope he had the commonsense to take advice before
saying anything at all.


| It's also embarassing and dangerous to reputation of jacks in office to
be
| seen to bring malicious prosecutions.

Only if their superiors get annoyed with them. A hell of a lot of the
artificial cases have been backed by their superiors - did you hear of
the woman fined 70 (?) quid for throwing a Cheerio onto a grass verge?

Yes, and people who have put out food for birds have also been prosecuted.
At least they weren't shot ...


| It may well happen, but I doubt it would in the circumstances you
described,
| because AFAIK, there is no requirement for the 'authorised person' to
| authorise people to act on his behalf in writing or in public. Hence a
| copper bottomed defence (prior verbal authorisation) is almost
certainly
| available, and prosecution would therefore seem very unlikely.

Oh, yes, unless he had already annoyed them by not being sufficiently
obsequious, and they trapped him by a conversation like the above.

I'll concede it is possible for a person to abuse power out of personal
spite - which of us has not experienced something similar? But this
'offence' requires proof, which, unless the intended victim is very unlucky,
or naive, or both, would be very difficult to obtain.


| Jack in office would probably find a different charge with which to
torment
| his opponenet, e.g. cruelty in not disposing of chicks in nest in an
| appropriately humane manner, or taking eggs with the intention to trade
in
| them.

True. But my point never was that this particular law was going to
lead to a stream of malicious convictions, so much as correcting
Malcolm Ogilvie's false claims.


I forgot that you and Malcolm had 'history' - I apologise to you both for
trespassing.

I thought you were implying it was likely that people assisting 'authorised
persons' might be prosecuted, a scenario which, although possible in
exceptional circumstances, strikes me as highly unlikely.