Martin wrote:
On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 23:00:41 -0000, "Mike Lyle"
wrote:

Martin wrote:
On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 22:32:55 -0000, "Mike Lyle"
wrote:

Martin wrote:
On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 22:19:59 -0000, "Mike Lyle"
wrote:

Martin wrote:
[...]
It really makes you wonder what the police are for.

Well, OK then: what do you want them to do? I haven't heard that
anybody's committed a crime.

All those who took stuff from the wreck without completing a form
committed a crime.

No, as I understand it, you get 28 days to submit the form. I don't
think the Receiver of Wreck stands there on the beach holding his
hand out. The only thing that makes this incident different from
daily occurrences up and down our coast seems to me to be the
scale.

So with zero police action who is going to know who didn't fill in a
form when the 28 days are up?

Luckily, even in this country it isn't a police responsibility to
ensure we fill in civil service forms. This really is more
complicated than it may look. No breaking and entering, no breach of
the peace, nothing like that: just an awful lot of lost property
with no immediately identifiable owners. Lost property, come to
that, which will probably be valueless after the next tide if
somebody doesn't "kindly rescue" it.


How about being in the possession of an unimported untaxed vehicle
with no proof of ownership?

That sounds quite promising; but I suppose the salvage rules apply to
motor vehicles as to anything else.

Normal laws apply to vehicles, even if they have been taken from a
wreck.

Even wheeling it down a public road
with no tax wouldn't actually be arrestable;

No VAT has been paid on the vehicles, that is an offence.

Arrestable? Doesn't there have to be a court order? I'd have thought it
would have had to go through normal VAT recovery procedures before it
became a police matter. We are seeing that it just isn't unlawful to
possess ordinary stuff you've salvaged: that's what the 28 days thing is
about.

and I'm sure the bikes were
all safely on other vehicles. I really don't envy the police in
situations like this: it doesn't make them look particularly good
from one point of view, but they'd look worse if they started getting
officious.

If they had acted quick and closed the beach, it would have looked
better to any honest person.

Well, I don't think that's the kind of thing they can do in Britain
without a lot of deliberation. They've done it now, I believe; but it's
a big step to stop you walking your dog on the beach just because
somebody else may perhaps have committed a crime on that beach. Our
politicians may like the idea, but it isn't British. Yet.

--
Mike.



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