UK NEWS

ARMY OF SNOOPS RECRUITED TO SPY ON NEIGHBOURS

Residents would spy on neighbours and report antisocial behaviour / picture posed by model

Tuesday November 10,2009

By Cyril Dixon

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OUTRAGE was sparked yesterday by a council’s plans to recruit 2,000 residents to spy on neighbours suspected of antisocial behaviour.

The “snoopers army” will report back on vandalism, rowdiness, fly-tipping and even serious offences like child abuse and domestic violence.

Harrow Council claims its £100,000-a-year scheme to appoint “neighbourhood champions” is supported by police and will restore order to communities.

But the Tory borough in north-west London was accused of spawning an “Orwellian” culture of state-controlled spies.

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Susie Squires, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Community spirit and looking out for your neighbours is one thing, but snooping is another.

The Neighbourhood Champions network will help us to deliver cleaner and safer streets.

Community Safety spokeswoman

“Residents are already able to report nuisances as part of normal procedure.

“Taxpayers are sick and tired of being spied on. This creates distrust.”

Sabina Frediani, campaigns co-ordinator at human-rights group Liberty, added: “Everyone should feel able to report suspicions of crime without a special badge of approval from the local authority.

“But as the recent abuses of surveillance powers demonstrate, giving some citizens extra responsibilities is difficult and potentially dangerous. Policing is best left to the professionals.”

Alex Deane, director of pressure group Big Brother Watch, warned: “An Orwellian big-brother culture depends on everyone spying on everyone else – just as Harrow has planned.”

Harrow councillors will vote on the proposals this week.

Initially, the amateur sleuths will be taught to spot minor offences like litter-dropping but later will be trained to look out for more serious crimes, including child and racial abuse.

Volunteers will log on to a website to report suspicions, details will be passed to the relevant council department and enforcement action taken if needed.

Councillor Susan Hall, Harrow’s spokeswoman for community safety, said: “The Neighbourhood Champions network will help us to deliver cleaner and safer streets.

“We often talk about the loss of community spirit in our neighbourhoods.

“I think this is a great way of reclaiming some of that.”

Chief Superintendent Dal Babu, Harrow borough commander, said: “Harrow’s Neighbourhood Watch scheme is one of the largest in London and plays an important role working alongside police to fight crime.

“I am sure that the Neighbourhood Champion scheme will be equally successful in helping to make Harrow a better place.”

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SUSAN HALL, YOU HAVE A LOT TO LEARN IF YOU THINK THAT SPYING WILL ENGENDER NEIGHBOURHOOD TOGETHERNESS

10.11.09, 5:40pm

Neighbour snooping on neighbour is hardly the way to create a community spirit. Snooping has no spirit. It is motivated by lack of self-worth, rather like gossip.

Unfortunately people given carte blanche to harass their neighbours often do so with gleeful eagerness. There are a lot of little hitlers around who seize even the suggestion of "power" and run with it. That was proven in Hitler's Germany, were family member turned on family member - for the cause, the Fuehrer.

A sad day has dawned in England, the UK, when neighbours start their day positioning the chair at the lookout window, readying the binoculars. I serously doubt that any of these "recruits" will venture beyond their homes to do their dirt. Defnitely not look even slightly interested in something going on in the street. Why? Because recent news has shown just how vitriolic neighbour confrontations can be.

Of course, it is obvious that these recruited residents of self-righteousness will remain anonymous.

Don't count of anonymity any of you considering take the job. And since this plan for all out snooping will engender hostility and suspicion of everyone, don't be surprised if you get a brick through your window or your car "keyed) (scratched to smithereens.

Since when and for how long as Britain had these "Councils"? Someone clue me in. We did not need all that nonsense when I was growing up in the north of England and in Manchester particularly. Too busy dodging the bombs.

Have we learned nothing. Was World War II waged for nothing? Did our brave soldiers die for nothing?

Nothing is what the UK is becoming under the onslaught of these councils, their hitlers, and their masters at Westminster.

• Posted by: Shenandoah • Report Comment

WHY DO WE NEVER LEARN?

10.11.09, 4:23pm

Back in the early 1960s I had a German friend who was some years older than me. One day a group of us went swimming and somebody asked how she received the scars that covered her back.

She told us her father had been a school teacher and one day, early in WW2 when she was fourteen, he said something to his class which was thought by a pupil to be critical of the Nazi party. The pupil told his parents and some days later her father and mother were arrested and she never saw them again. She, her brother and sister were sent to work on a labour farm. When her brother turned sixteen he was put in the army and that was the last she ever saw of him. The scars were a reminder of the brutality of the women who guarded them. After the war she left Germany vowing never to return.

Britain has been turned into a nasty devisive nation by the most detestable, treacherous government in its history.

Why can the human race not learn from history and the wisdom and experience of its elders?

• Posted by: NG • Report Comment