Wednesday 8 August 2012

Some People Think The Rules Don’t Apply To Them…

Miss Workman, whose daughter Nancy, seven, lives with her, was in February served with an enforcement notice by the council that required her to remove the building and find alternative accommodation within 12 months.
It also said keeping horses did not justify a residential presence on the site.
This didn’t please her much:
"I don't know what is going to happen. Our life is here. We go to school down the road," said Miss Workman.
"The beauty of living here is that I can take the dogs out and do the horses all before breakfast while Nancy is still asleep."
Well, you won’t be ‘taking the dogs out’ any longer:
The resident of Chalford, in Stroud, was told to hand her Jack Russell, Labrador and collie to the authorities as she was an unfit owner.
The 42-year-old appeared at Cheltenham Magistrates yesterday and was found guilty of six counts of being in charge of a dangerously out-of-control dog in a public place and two counts of failing to comply with a dog control order.
It seems ‘failing to comply’ is her default setting.

Her excuse was, well, novel, at least:
Workman had to represent herself at court after her legal aid application failed to go through in time, forcing her solicitor to withdraw.
She said the Labrador did not like dogs on leads and the Jack Russell was just "naughty".
Judge Martin Brown dismissed her claims and sentencing her said: "You had been warned but seem determined to ignore what you have been advised to do."
She thought there were no consequences. She’s learning that’s not the case.

5 comments:

Jim said...

She's going about it all wrong. What she should do is bring a few mates in with caravans, claim its all their 'human rights' to be able to have a base to live at when not off 'travelling', and the planners will be eating out of her hand, falling over themselves to give her a full planning permission.

She should also allow all her horses to run wild along the highways and byways, because councils don't seem to mind about that either.

David Gillies said...

"She thought there were no consequences."

That would be a fairly reasonable assumption to make in modern Britain.

Anonymous said...

Where's Vanessa Redgrave this time? If this woman had been pikey scum there would have been any number of idiots turn up to defend her and it would have taken the council years to evict her.

JuliaM said...

"She's going about it all wrong. What she should do is bring a few mates in with caravans..."

Ah, I see where you're going with that... ;)

"That would be a fairly reasonable assumption to make in modern Britain."

Occasionally, the judiciary slaps people down. Not often enough, mind.

"Where's Vanessa Redgrave this time?"

Heh!

hegbert said...

"the Jack Russell was just being 'naughty' "

Every Jack Russell I've ever come across seems to be 'naughty', i.e. a yapping, snarling, ankle-biting little nuisance.