I love moments that become a beautiful snap-shot of a memory you’ll cherish for a long time – an amazing orange sunset, a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, a child laughing. On crisp Autumn days like these, I love walking my dogs in Mayow park. Today a slight shower broke and a mist of rain sprinkled over the park. A young father takes his toddler under the awning of the cottage to seek shelter. He calls his dog over to him, only after it has left the large pile of poo at the entrance of the park. Finishing his box of chicken, the young father artfully throws it onto the ground leaving a trail of chicken bones in its wake. With his hand now free, he lifts his child up, putting him back down only momentarily - in order to light up some cannabis and have a good old drag from it – placing the splif in his lips and lifting his child back up – the fragrant smoke surrounding the child.
Hopefully if street drinking is addressed then the amount of urinating in public should reduce from a torrent to a mere trickle, but isn't this something that the safer neighbourhood team can address even if they don't get any extra powers to tackle street drinking?
Hopefully if street drinking is addressed then the amount of urinating in public should reduce from a torrent to a mere trickle, but isn't this something that the safer neighbourhood team can address even if they don't get any extra powers to tackle street drinking?
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funnily enough urinating in the street is not, in itself, an offence...
arguably it could satisfy s.5 (or D&D) but only really if it is witnessed and you have a complainant... (hence I said "in itself") If its down a back alley/quiet street and only the police officer/PCSO witnesses it then more than likely you'd be laughed out of court... Best thing to do is interupt them mid-flow so they spoil their shoes and then move them on
I thought it was an offence. I was watching something on tv the other night and the cops were arresting guys pissing outside of a night club. One guy was being dragged away and he continued to pee all the way to the police car!!
The worst thing about your story Coll is that the father probably doesn't see that he is doing anything wrong.
He thinks it's ok to smoke weed because it relaxes him (perhaps it doesn't make him desponent or cloud his judgement when he is caring for a minor); he thinks it's ok in front of the child because they are young and don't know (he doesn't realise that the passive smoking could affect his child's development, doesn't think that he could be reprimanded for it or risk having his child taken into care. He would think that desperately unfair); he thinks it's ok for his his dog to poo in the park because it's natural (he doesn't know that it can cause blindness in young children that play in the park, like his own); he thinks it's ok to drop his litter because someone picks it up for him ( he doesn't appreciate the cost or impact to society of his anti-social behaviour or how dangerous chicken bones can ne to animals).
The worst thing is he is probably a nice guy. A whole generation has grown up thoughtless and ignorant and and now they themselves are parenting. How do you help adults rebuild their moral code without causing offence to their pride? It's so desperately wasteful & sad.
Despite the weed, dog pooh and litterbugging, im focusing on the fact that he was spending time with his child at the park..only good part about it.....
Wow, Mayow Park in all it's glory eh?? I avoid that place like the plague now - by day it's hostile on a good day... by night you have groups of youths scaling the railings to get in and do... God alone knows what!
And just to add to your lovely Cannabis-smoking-father... saw exactly the same thing on the weekend in Crystal Palace Park. Just walking back to the car, when a guy in his 30s walks by with partner and a couple of children, he was smoking... and when the smell hit us we realised WHAT he was smoking, in the middle of a park with children around him... what a lovely daddy!!
I don't think it helps Nickerbockers that many people mistakenly believe that Cannabis has been legalised.
I did once (quite stupidly with hindsight) ask someone to move away from me when smoking a spliff standing next to me as it was so pungent (it was at the Radiohead concert in Victoria Park but could have been anywhere). He said to me (in his finest white-trash 'Wigger' brogue) "it's aaaaaaal gooood with the weed maaaaan, nooooo prahblem here maaaaan".
I looked at him and said to him "don't confuse the the term decriminalised with legalised"...he genuninely loooked shocked to learn it wasn't legal. And I don't think it was the longish words going around his drug-addled brain, I genuinely think people believe that Cannabis is acceptable...
Last edited by Greg Whitehead on 14 Oct 2008 10:25, edited 1 time in total.
