To wonder if this can really be classed as stealing

[bittersweetvictory]

I live at about 2 minutes away from the sea shore and wanted some stones to make a border in my garden, i needed about 20 so went down this afternoon with my son to collect some, i was in the middle of doing just that when an old man came tearing out his house screaming at me that what i was doing was stealing and that if i didnt stop then he was calling the police, i thought he was joking but he kept ranting and raving at me, i took them anyway and told him to go ahead and told him my address, the shore stretches for about 3 mile and there must be about 64848465757 million stones on the shore, is this really classed as stealing ? can the police actually do anything ?

It's madness - ignore it.

I hope those so concerned about this are not 'stealing' water or oxygen from our common supply

wow ... pebbles -the new contentious thread topic.

Makes a change from "I am the other woman" or "breast-feeding a 6 year old" or even "I do the school run in my pjs"

Coming back to this thread.... I love how it has changed from

It's not illegal, surely?

to

Well, it might be illegal, but it doesn't do much damage, right?

to

Well, it might be illegal and damaging, but not everyone is doing it, so this is OTT

You know what, I might stop recycling and start buying clothes made in sweat shops again - after all, it's only me, I'm only one person, lots of other people don't, so who gives a fuck.....

Oh bullshit! I can't even remember when I last to Burnham on Sea!

now I am wondering about taking (dead) sand dollars off the beach - which we did in Florida under the close instruction of locals who also helped us find good samples.

Is that actually illegal?

these things:
photos

went to Burnham on Sea

Ah jaysus Serenitysutton, I meant THE END of my post, as in I can't see the point of my debating it further.

And I didn't mean she'd been told before she did it, because clearly she didn't know, I meant she was told in this thread. It's hardly something to get so upset about. Good day to you.

just an inflammatory topic

zzenagain OMG you may be extradited for that!

They are lovely, wished I had got one for my bathroom!

yeah there goes my chance of ever getting a green card

and I always fancied one

really it never crossed my mind that might be illegal...

What did you do with them?

is anyone going to tell us about the dog with the twig further down the thread? How someone got prosecuted because the dog carried a twig out of the park... My dog does this. My child also does this

well to be honest I did nothing with them but I have them in a box

so I suppose we could have left them on the beach

I know what they are saying about shore erosion, but for the once yearly trip I take to the coast, a pebbly beach isn't going to miss a few shells. It's like being a child collecting things, but not all get taken home. What about people fishing ,collecting winkles, clams, leaving rubbish on the beach. Surely that is worse.

I am thinking about it a bit now . I remember talking to my sister about paua shells on NZ beaches and how when we lived in New Zealand a million years ago for a couple of years, we would roam the beaches and there would be fragments or even big paua shells largely undamaged and now she told me when she was there recently, she never saw any. It is often used for jewellery. Beautiful colours.

see nice colours

Listen melikalikimaka....we have said this time and time again on this thread...how hard is it to nderstand? .EVERYONE says what you are saying..."What's a few?"

The trouble with that is that he next person says "He took a handful so I'm having a bucketful."....then the next want's a barrowfull....and so on.

It has to have a line somewhere...there are too many greedy people who will take loads...so it is illegal. And that is a good thing.

The law is obviously there to prevent chancers turning up with sacks and flatbeds and selling them on to garden centres etc. Apart from maybe SSSI like Chesil Beach for example.
Regarding the environmentally friendly thing, I encourage my son to take pebbles and small shells (not big ones, they might be needed as a home for a hermit crab) as a holiday memento, rather than buying useless plastic tat.
My husband also collects sand from beaches, he has little samples from all over the world that people have brought him. Before anyone kicks off we easily bring home more in our shoes than he collects.
If we've got to the point where we can't even let our children have the pleasure of picking pebbles off a beach it really is sad.
An no it is not the same as picking flowers. Even if the entire country went to the coast and took a handful of pebbles it probably woulnd make much difference.

Saying 'oh, but people have been doing things to beaches for thousands of years' is very naive.

It's only very recently (last 150 years or so) that people have had the transport to visit beaches in droves - not just people who live nearby, but thousands or millions of visitors. Obviously, that's why it matters more now than it has in the past.

A while ago, Bournemouth Council spent £164,000 removing 2 million tonnes of pebbles from a beach. On one hand the MN mobs may want to storm their offices for stony genocide, on the other hand I sense an wonderful opportunity for serendipity in these cases.

www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/737597/Bournemouth-Council-spends-164000-on-removing-pebbles-from-beach.html

If you must know my latest crime was to pick 3 pretty shells off the beach in Benal madena in Spain, report me if you like!

On the subject of Chesil beach, I remember reading in a holiday brochure about 'if you were lucky you may find a fossil', that is the attraction for people to go there. FYI I never found one and probably didn't take anything that day at all.

Ok, ok I plead guilty to owning upto 20 shells off various beaches, 2 rocks and a tiny piece of driftwood.