So you decide to do the community-spirited thing and help to clear ice and snow from your public street. Then someone slips over and hurts themselves. Can you be sued?

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Article title preserved for posterity but it’s clear now that Ian Tomlinson was not a protester and was just walking home from work. Please see the updates in the comments at the bottom of this post.

Unnamed: The protester who died. Photo: public domain via Guardian

Photo by Alex Watts.

I’m shocked and saddened that a man died during the G20 protests in London yesterday.

Every death potentially related to police activity is automatically investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. But while their inquiry is in progress, the truth about this incident needs to surface, and soon.

Mainstream media reporting has spun this story away from its most obvious potential substance — policing tactics — to the alleged behaviour of the protesters themselves who the police say attacked police medics trying to give assistance to the dying (or perhaps, dead) man.

The Telegraph dutifully repeats the police allegations as fact without troubling themselves with any corroboration:

[A]s officers went to the man’s aid, they were pelted with bottles and other missiles, forcing them to retreat.

The Times at least paraphrases its source:

The Met said that as the officers tried to revive the man they came under attack from protesters who threw bottles at them

The Guardian is also happy to repeat the story without corroboration:

A man died last night during the G20 protests in central London as a day that began peacefully ended with police saying bottles were thrown at police medics trying to help him.

Meanwhile over on Twitter, @jdodds writes:

Talking to eye witnesses from yesterday.protester who died had symtoms related to a head wound.was seen to be hit by truncheon

If true, this puts a wholly different light on events. There isn’t any dispute that the man died within the police cordon near the junction of Birchin Lane and Cornhill between 7 and 8pm yesterday. Did he die from natural causes? Were these aggravated by effectively being detained on the street, possibly without food or drink? Did he suffer a head wound and was it caused by the police? Did the cordon itself prevent him receiving timely treatment? How did the other protesters react? Violently? Helpfully?

We don’t know, but given that the police have been very quick to tell the tale about the “attack” on them by protesters but were wholly unable to give any indication as to why the man may have died, it’s about time we found out.

As I write there is a protest against the man’s death taking place near the Bank of England, where tributes have been left.

R.I.P.

Carshalton and Wallington MP Tom Brake has been leading a tenacious and spirited campaign against Your High, a “head shop” in Wallington which sells pipes, bongs, rolling papers and all the various paraphernalia used to consume cannabis. Mr Brake is unhappy that there are currently no legal restrictions on selling such materials and has been working hard to encourage the relevant authorities to make some. His campaign has the support of many local residents. According to Mr Brake’s own account, over 100 people signed a petition to put a stop this sort of thing on just one Saturday morning while others were encouraged by local nominal liberals to gather to protest outside this entirely legal private business.

Cannabis is pretty unpleasant stuff. Some people it makes sad, others dull, and we are told that still others are made quite mad by it. I can’t recommend it. The law against cannabis itself, while probably unnecessary and ineffective, is at least no more ridiculous than many of the other arbitrary limitations on personal freedom which we endure.

Yet to seek a ban on the sale of “cannabis paraphernalia” is a whole different kettle of fish. I employ quotation marks here because the devices and supplies to which I refer are neither necessary for consuming cannabis nor exclusively useful for doing so. The most common adjuncts to cannabis consumption (so I’m told) are tobacco and rolling papers, both of which are freely and mostly uncontroversially sold by every respectable newsagent and supermarket in the country. Tesco supply more dope fiends in an hour than Your High’s proprietor could ever hope to in a year in his most brain-addled and resinous pipe dream. Yet never do we hear of campaigns against Tesco’s lucrative dope-enabling business or enjoy the opportunity to sign righteous petitions against it.

Petitions are curious things. While they are a useful tool for campaigners (and having organised a few of my own) I’m certain that the things themselves have absolutely no meaning. It would be a straightforward matter to gain a substantial number of signatures in Wallington High Street of a morning demanding Mr Brake’s immediate removal from office, or conversely pledges of support for his continuation. A petition to call for people to be allowed to smoke cannabis in the privacy of their own homes and be left entirely alone could easily attract significant support in a short period of time, there being roughly as many Brits who believe other people’s business is their own as those that don’t. The numbers count for little either way.

So it’s pretty clear that the real problem with Your High isn’t that it helps people to smoke cannabis. In as much as it may do, it’s a mere amateur against the real pros in the big retailers and tobacco companies.

Perhaps the problem is that it encourages people to smoke cannabis that might otherwise not have contemplated the matter. Is this small shop with its jaunty green leaf insignia a siren call to the suburban stoner lifestyle? Might the doughty and otherwise blameless citizens of Wallington on passing its portals one time too many be tipped into packing in their sober habits for something a little more turned on, tuned in and dropped out? Are children particularly susceptible to its dubious countercultural charms?

Sadly, neither you nor I nor Mr Brake have any idea. Perhaps a survey would illuminate matters.

Q. Does this shop which we’re standing outside, “Your High”, make you:

1. Much more likely to use cannabis?
2. Somewhat more likely to use cannabis?
3. Neither more nor less likely to use cannabis?
4. Somewhat less likely to use cannabis?
5. Much less likely to use cannabis?

If the full weight of the law is to be brought upon people running “head shops”, it seems only proper to attempt to define and where possible quantify the harm they supposedly cause. Where children are suspected to be potential or actual victims, suitable similar research could be conducted in nearby schools, where apparently 95% of parents are in favour of action against Your High. If there is a case that these shops lure the vulnerable and unwary into the clutches of the pungent leaf, it has yet to be made.

The real problem with Your High isn’t that it helps people to smoke cannabis or encourages them to do so. The problem is that it’s tacky, tawdry, provocative and calculatedly effective in pricking suburban sensibilities. It’s out of place and in highly bad taste, like farting loudly and proudly in church. Similar shops in more urban areas operate without a hint of fuss, their neighbours being far too busy earning themselves a living while often dodging the more crazed and deadly effects of the sharper end of the illicit drugs trade. Your High raises hackles not because it has made Wallington a magnet for drug-fuelled anarchy (it hasn’t). Despite the worst fears and predictions, there hasn’t been an outbreak of reefer madness among the local youth. I doubt many local people are even particularly bothered that some of their neighbours smoke cannabis in a private and entirely innocuous way. They just don’t want it in their faces and would rather use the law to punish those who revolt them than endure such an unpleasant sight. The longer this shop remains, the weaker the case for outlawing it appears.

As all we hold dear looks increasingly precarious in the face of seemingly impending economic and environmental collapse, it’s a great pity that our political representatives have chosen to spend so much of their time railing against minor offences to the spirit rather than the major threats to our lives, limbs and property. If there’s one thing I find in particularly bad taste it’s laws against bad taste.

What a great day for liberalism and local democracy. The good burghers of Beddington and Wallington have enacted a “voluntary smoking ban” in the area’s public playgrounds. £3200 of honest, hard-working local taxpayers’ money has been allocated to the scheme which local councillors now hope to roll out across the rest of the borough.

This radical and presumably unique project has just one minor flaw: it has no legal basis whatsoever. Sutton’s LibDem councillors see no legal or linguistic impediment to the idea of a “voluntary ban” which in plain English would probably look more like a request. Deviant playground smokers flouting the voluntary ban run the risk of muted social disapproval. Serious and repeat offenders may find themselves being tutted at by council wardens.

Fortunately, the council has science on its side. The new “voluntary ban” is the permanent establishment of a pilot scheme that was enacted after Councillor Bruce Glithero complained that passive smoking left his daughter spluttering. His research findings can be read in more detail in the latest edition of the Journal of Anecdotal Evidence.

Sutton is to be congratulated for this bold experiment in local democracy. The beauty of a “voluntary ban” is that you can “ban” anything, just as long as you don’t ban anything. Everyone can have a go. It’s democratic, accessible and incredibly liberal.

I’ll be writing to my local committee to address the following issues with voluntary “bans”:

• Men not wearing shirts in public. “Ban” them.
• The word “whatever” used as a sentence substitute. “Ban” it instantly.
• People wearing hoods when the weather is fine. A “ban” is the only solution.
• Groups that cross the road in a haphazard and slovenly fashion. If a “ban” won’t make them cross brisky, simultaneously and perpendicularly to the carriageway, nothing will.
• Rainy weekends followed by fine Monday mornings. Surely a “ban” would be a step forward?
• Children sitting on steps and talking. “Ban” it immediately! Oh, they already did, for real.

What would you “ban” today?

–

Updated on 19 October with a photo by Cllr Terry Faulds of a sign in Beddington Park.

Growing up in Sutton just got a little more confusing.

You may remember that this is the place where the council spent £15,000 to remove a set of steps on which young people liked to sit. It’s also the place where a housing association sees fit to impose a 9pm curfew on its tenants’ children.

Now the borough’s police and town centre retailers have teamed up to hand out “Positive Citizen” discount cards for local shops and businesses to the area’s youths — which they’ll lose if they misbehave.

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