to be seriously concerned about the illegal surveillance cameras and flags on lamp posts?

[Kije]

That's it, really. I live in a semi-rural area. No racial tensions locally, that I'm aware of, at all. The local small market town and surrounding roads are covered, and I do mean covered, in illegally posted flags, all over lamp posts - sometimes three deep. They come down (the local council sometimes stirs themselves to take them down) and are replaced within a few hours. It's been like this since late last summer.

And now the same charming people who are trying to intimidate what they like to call 'pathetic lefties' have put up dozens of surveillance cameras on the same lamp posts, aimed in all directions in a clear attempt to intimidate local people who'd like to take the flags down. The mob who do the flags have said on their own FB site, it's to 'protect their property' (eg the flags they've illegally stuck up lamp posts, it's essentially littering). The obvious take-home is, they think this is their town and they aim to create a chilling effect for anyone who dares to discuss this on local social media, or take the flags down again.

The flags are illegal: the cameras doubly so, I'd have thought, given privacy laws?? Or at least, I'm assuming surveillance cameras mounted on public property and aimed at pedestrians and drivers have to be done by a legitimate authority.

I look at what was happening in Belfast (and elsewhere) last night and honestly, I'm terrified for our country. We seem to be sliding into lawlessness and vigilantism, and blatant intimidation of anyone who speaks out against it.

Attempts to raise the issue of VWAG in many spheres? 😂The vaguest sentence ever, but I'll bite – can you name one of those attempts focused on home-grown abuse by the men who are out there plastering the country in flags and inciting violence?

I manage a DV refuge, so I'm a bit busy making a hands-on difference to 'organise my own attempt to raise the issue', unfortunately. What's your excuse?

Can you clarify what TR said in his speech that was racist?

You seem to have forgotten the cameras that are being mounted illegally.

Which law has been broken?

We went through this yesterday with you. Please refer back to page one of this thread.

No one is allowed to attach anything to a streetlight, see the Highways Act. The idiots that do so are behaving illegally.
Someone could put up Taylor Swift flags and it still wouldn't be ok.

So you work in a women’s refuge but you haven’t been alerted to any of the many campaigns on the topic over the years?

I don’t know why you are trying

I manage a DV refuge, so I'm a bit busy making a hands-on difference to 'organise my own attempt to raise the issue', unfortunately. What's your excuse?

Good for you. I don’t know why you are trying to turn this on me or imply that the protests are racist because they are not focusing on a specific source of dv that you deem most important.

Are you dismissing the experiences of women and men that have been victims of horrendously violent stranger attacks by immigrants and of communities that find unwanted changes imposed on them by the effects of mass immigration of people from very different cultures?

Are you suggesting their concerns are not valid?

No, not going to bite, sorry. I hate that public discourse on this topic has sunk so low that you have significant numbers of posts on a mainstream site seeking to defend this shit. I've said my piece.

Contacting the ICO would be helpful only to put a rocket up the council. If there’s an ICO complaint about private cameras on publicly owned street furniture would get their attention.

That's a complete straw man argument.

Whether intentionally or not, you're missing the point. The venn diagram of people involved in genuine DV activism, and people plastering these towns in flags, has no overlap. In fact, huge swathes of participants in this so-called 'movement' are perpetrators themselves. And yet the argument that keeps getting made is that this is happening in the name of protecting women and girls.

I am simply pointing out that it seems very convenient that this level of feeling about 'protecting women and girls' only emerges from this particular population when it's perpetrated by people who don't look like them.

If this was actually about the behaviour that's supposedly so unacceptable, and not the ethnicity of the perpetrators, where were all these people and their big feelings until now?

Following yet?

"...communities that find unwanted changes imposed on them by the effects of mass immigration of people from very different cultures"

NOW you're starting to tell the truth about what this is about. Keep going and we might just get there.

If there's an argument for more CCTV it's surely better for that CCTV to be owned by someone accountable to democracy and oversight by the ico. Not random cameras put up by vigilantes.

The laws around mounting your own cameras/other stuff on publicly owned lamp posts.

Which laws? I need the name of the Acts.

We really don't want or need vigilante cameras.

Try Google, I've heard it is useful for finding information.

Your need for basic information about UK law is no one else's problem.

If it’s that basic why can’t you provide it? There are no laws prohibiting the mounting of cameras in public areas as far as I’m aware.

I don't know if walk is a flag shagger or a bot but the legislation is on the .gov website and easily found in under 30 seconds.

Then you’ll have zero issues posting a quick link, it’ll take the same time as replying to me.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-the-use-of-domestic-cctv/domestic-cctv-using-cctv-systems-on-your-property. This might be a useful starting place. It mentions several relevant acts.

Section 132 of the Highways Act 1980

Its a criminal offence.

Are you this lazy in real life?!?

Ok I have some experience of this Act.

1)A person who, without either the consent of the highway authority for the highway in question or an authorisation given by or under an enactment or a reasonable excuse, paints or otherwise inscribes or affixes any picture, letter, sign or other mark upon the surface of a highway or upon any tree, structure or works on or in a highway is guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding…

It does not refer to cameras, and you cannot imply the word ‘camera’ into it under the principle of ‘ejusdem generis’ (legal rule of interpretation stating that when a list of specific items is followed by general "catch-all" words, those general words are restricted to things of the same class or nature as the specific items).

This legislation is used for flyposting, banners. That kind of thing. Not mechanical equipment.

HTH.

Fact resistant.

Good luck Op. I think it must feel so intimidating for perfectly legally entitled people of foreign nationalities. Where I live the flags run around most of the ringroad and almost down to where roads join the motorway. The council is doing naff-all about it.

I tried to add a signature to a petition this morning for the council to take them down but after signing it wanted a £2 fee, so I tried my PayPal account but if course forgotten the password and couldn't go and get my bank card so I gave up. have to try again later. Given whats happened elsewhere recently I don't think it helps, to obviously be stoking division..

We have been having shifty weather here! We didn’t have flags though. Except the one on that church that has always been there, quietly reminding everyone that St George wasn’t a radical nationalist.

Surely if it was illegal to tie anything to a lamppost that wasnt a flag or banner you could abuse that by just tying large household waste/anything you didn't want anymore to a lampost and it wouldn't be illegal because it isnt a poster. As I said earlier, if nothing else abandoning/leaving something for a long time in a public place could count as flytipping. I can't see that the lampost would stop it being so.