Wednesday 15 July 2015

It Shouldn’t Happen To An Artist!

He was arrested on the platform after getting off at Camden Road.
"She said I'm abstracting electricity," he said.
"She kept saying it's a crime.
"We were just coming into the station, and there happened to be about four police officers on the platform.
"She called to them and said 'This guy's been abstracting electricity, he needs to be arrested'."
Understandable shock at the effrontery of these officers, totally understandable. As an artist of no renown whatsoever, helping yourself to anything you can get (provided by other people) must be second nature…
Mr Lee says he tried to push past the officers but was handcuffed on the platform, taken down the stairs and put into a van.
Funny, isn’t it, the things that happen when you resist arrest?
"I was just incredulous," he said.
"It was an overzealous community support officer.
"They should never have arrested me, they knew it was ridiculous. The whole thing was just ridiculous."
Yup, it’s ridiculous to think you can get away with it and claim you're the injured party, you freeloader.

11 comments:

Tigerrr said...

An artist, well that's a student loan us taxpayers are never going to see back

John M said...

The arrest was ludicrous. A simple bollocking would have easily been enough.
When you consider the tiny voltages "abstracted" by a phone charger it makes even less sense.

Bucko said...

You have to admit, getting nicked for charging your phone in someone else's socket (No euphemism intended) is a little harsh. A quiet word would have been enough.

The Jannie said...

"A quiet word would have been enough"

Ah, but it wouldn't have produced a nice juicy result in the crime figures, would it?

Lynne at Counting Cats said...

An artist, eh?

Would that be con or piss?

ivan said...

A couple of points.

First is a real health and safety problem. Why was there a live power socket on a train in such a position that it could be accessed by passengers on the train? H&S would dictate that such power circuits would be dead while there were passengers on board.

Second. Why was the plastic plod so ignorant as to take a mouthy passengers word? If said plastic plod was one of the railway police they should have known that H&S rules precluded live power sockets on passenger carrying trains therefore the mouthy woman was stupid to create a fuss.

Now, if H&S is ignored and there are in fact live power sockets available to passengers it is strange to assume that the passengers won't use them despite mouthy woman and her fake outrage (was it because the bloke got to the socket before her? one has to wonder).

wiggiatlarge said...

There is also (as has been pointed out elswhere) the fact that charging points for phones are provided free on certain train lines, and if this one was not free or for public usage did it have a notice next to it to that effect, apparently not ?

John M said...

At least I now know there's somewhere to recharge my taser :)

Anonymous said...

I've just been trying to read my email and have had to tolerate all kinds of irrelevant adverts. And not just irrelevant, but large (full width and ~25% of screen height), moving (animated), and moving (expanding / collapsing, which moves the thing I'm trying to click).

Can we sue these buggers for "abstracting" electricity & bandwidth?

- Justin

ivan said...

Justin, Adblock Plus and NoScripy addons for firefox are your friends - assuming you are using webmail (reading your e-mail in a browser).

JuliaM said...

"An artist, well that's a student loan us taxpayers are never going to see back"

Quite!

"The arrest was ludicrous. A simple bollocking would have easily been enough."

Maybe so, but arrest usually follows when the subject decides that bollocking isn't justified and starts acting up...

"H&S would dictate that such power circuits would be dead while there were passengers on board."

That's probably a good modification. Surely an isolating switch in the driver's cab would suffice?