Are Sweetshop Automotive Bullies Or Bullied?

My mum, rest her soul, was Claire Rayner OBE – I feature on her Wiki page thanks to Carl Hynes adding a bit And she was a household name, ‘Like Harpic, Dahling!’ and they called her The Queen Mother of Agony Aunts. She has even gone into the Cockney Rhyming Slang as ‘Claires’ for your trainers. I once met a promo lass whose boyfriend called his trainers ‘Claires’ and she never knew why.
She hated the destruction that alcoholism and gambling can wreak and she hated bullies with a passion. As she saw me grow up past her head height and watched my shoulders get larger and squarer, (the upholstery came later, I’m afraid) she would drum into me that bullying people weaker than me was NOT ON. And to this day, that conditioning is so strong that seeing bullying makes it the ONLY time I will really wade in.
Like the time I saw security guards at the local Harlequin shopping mall in Watford goading a lippy youth until he swore so they could rough house him. I got right in the guy’s face and let him know the bully was about to be bullied – by ME. Thankfully he called me fatty names (oh no!) and gave me all the ammo I needed to get him sacked.
It’s shopping, you need security, not Gestapo.
Mama used to tell recipients of threatening chain letters to send them all to her and she would shoulder the bad luck consequences. Funnily enough, there never were any and god alone knows what she would make of the new Internet troll problems and how the social media allow massive bullying to take place.
For in the last few years of learning about the new online medium versus paper, with the communities aspects, the whole thing about cliques and status and bullies became a major fact of life. And while sad sack prostitutes for attention will write any piffle, schmaltz and damn lies to get a heart-string twang and see if they can make their rubbish resonate around the ‘net like something that mattered there is also the element of cliques fighting and being snotty to each other and none more so than car clubs.
Like footy, you and yours are kings and everyone else is rubbish. It’s simple, these are the rules.
And while a car park at an out of town shopping patch is not publicly owned, anyone can park there and car clubs use them for shoots and so forth. I have reports from more than one direction of a shoot set up by one club and disrupted by the sudden arrival and parking-on-top-of-them-on-the-diagonal of another club’s car. This stopped their shoot of course and likewise, actually lying on the Tarmac in front of a car so they can’t shoot snaps or even leave without reversing halfway around the car park, was an act of ‘passive’ aggression that could easily have spilled over into the real thing.
All it would take is the folks who witnessed someone jump to get out of the way of this car as it got slap-parked in their shoot, to report it and he will be Strike One of the law covering the following:
What road offences result in vehicle seizure?
‘The police have the power to seize a vehicle if it’s being used in an antisocial manner (causing alarm, harassment or distress). This includes inconsiderate driving and unauthorised off-road driving of cars, motorbikes etc. Police can seize vehicles if drivers don’t have an appropriate licence or insurance.’
the above is from here: link
It refers to a law called section 59. Humberside Police’s website says it best:
Section 59 of the Police Reform Act – Anti Social Driving Offences
New laws in respect of certain anti social driving offences can now be dealt with by Section 59 of the Police Reform Act.
Basically what that means is if you are seen:
Driving in a careless or inconsiderate manner
Driving on common land, a footpath or bridle way or any land which is not part of a road
Driving in a manner which is causing/has been causing, or is likely to cause alarm, distress or annoyance to members of the public.
Then a Section 59 warning can be issued to you. This warning is placed against both the driver and the vehicle and lasts for 12 months.
If the driver of the vehicle or the vehicle with the warning issued to it is then seen driving in any of those conditions again in the next 12 months the vehicle can be seized and, if not collected after paying for recovery and storage costs, it will be crushed. Please note that this relates to either the driver with the Section 59 or the vehicle.
That sadly, was one offence with witnesses there. Do it again and you could lose your car. At this point of writing I am not aware any Police complaint has been made but for the sake of everyone and the scene itself, just don’t rise to it, or sink to it, whatever, just stop fighting and trolling each other on the ‘Net.
EDIT: Did you ever hear, when appealing to grown-up authority, i.e. having snitched or told on a school mate or sibling for a sin, that it wasn’t the snitched-upon who got told off, but both of you? ‘Six of one and half a dozen of the other.’ Is another maternal expression and one I have heard from a good few other sources about the above. Stuff involving rants in front of young children which is not nice as angry grown ups are scary. That they swear while this is going on is almost a moot point. It’s not nice.
But the difference in getting nasty seems to be a male/female thing here and maybe why it got so ugly, as the protagonists never were an item in the first place! But while shouting and screaming in rage may be more girly and action-parking or lying down in the tarmac with bravery may be more blokey, one upsets children, while the other can lead to your car being crushed.
When first published, this article created a brief firestorm in which it became clear I may have only had part of the tale. So, rather than pour petrol, I felt I had made the point and wiped the lot. Which in some ways is a shame, as I had more and finer quality of comments – people chipping in – than I had ever had on any article or review in the past!
But I think I only had half the talehence the above being gently edited.
As for the exhortation from one lad I befriended briefly on Facebook to talk about it, regarding the legality of using pictures taken of him in public, well, while the Facebook image remains the copyright of the person who took it, (hence its removal) the shot of the car above was sent to me by the person who took it, with their permission to use it. It was actually that the screen-grab from a phone had a Facebook mobile skin design showing that was more scary in copyright terms.
But I do hope that the bickering has subsided and that they all had a good show at the weekend. Fighting does no-one any good at all.
Apologies to those who did add serious input to this the first time out. I did wipe it but think that a more balanced view was worthy of re-publication. The comments system remains open for you to repost if you wish, below.
I apologise to those who felt I had been used as a weapon but my basic view remains the same. An exhortation to Play Nice and not bully each other.