The Barnet Alliance's banner is missing - the one in citrus shades pictured here outside the HQ of outsourcing company Capita earlier this summer.
We have another one that can do service at the lobby of Barnet council on Tuesday 13 September. However, we would like our main banner back!
It went missing at the Friern Barnet summer show, taken and left somewhere either by Father Adrian Benjamin or Councillor Brian Coleman or Councillor Rowan Turner or one of their goons.
Can you imagine the Barnet Conservative Party shrugging it off if someone had misappropriated their banner? I can't either. And neither will we give up so easily!
I am offering a reward for the banner's safe return. Please email me via the trades council info@barnettuc.org.uk if you have any information. Any information. Thank you.
P.S. If you like your local politics pretty surreal our missing banner has a Twitter identity - no, I had no part in it. You can follow Mr. Banner @TheLostBanner.
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6 comments:
As you know, I think either this is merely 'a good story' (with one or two critical factual details awry) or a case for the police, since it seems to be prima facie theft.
I understand that there is reluctance to get the police involved and I think this is misguided. As in the Murdoch case, their duty is to enforce the law.
The banner is hardly a small or an inexpensive item and someone has taken it.
The issues which the banner proclaims are of great importance to many people. Richard Sanderson, 44, husband and father of a 9 year old boy, committed suicide yesterday because he thought he was going to be made homeless following a council cut to his housing benefit http://bit.ly/nVPa1d.
The theft of the banner should be treated with equal seriousness and not merely as a fun story.
Hello, Jeffrey,
I certainly don't just regard it as a 'fun story'. We want our banner back! And I take the campaigns that we organise extremely seriously.
The fact is that the police haven't wanted to touch this. We have tried to talk to them. It doesn't mean that they will never touch it; just that they haven't wanted to up till now.
We are seeking legal advice.
There is a broader worry with getting the police involved in political disputes. I'm basically very reluctant to do it, because the law is not neutral with regard to social movements.
If we appeal to them to get involved in our affairs, they are far more likely to weigh in on the side of might than right, I'm afraid.
I think the recent ban on an EDL march in Tower Hamlets is a case in point. A lot of the anti-fascist movement wanted a ban on the EDL march; they got it. They also got a ban on ALL marches in five boroughs for a whole month.
A gay pride march and an anti-NHS cuts demonstration can't go ahead either.
One has to think hard about these things. I know you do, and you are coming at it from a different angle than I am. All views are important.
However, I still think that we are going to have to resolve this without police involvement.
Of course, I can be wrong...
Vicki
I think that actually this is a very serious story too: although it has elements of farce,and indeed in some ways reminds me of some sort of Ealign Comedy type scenario of the 1950s, that is because it symbolises something quite profound that traditionally in this country we hold very dear, or did: the right to freedomn of speech, and a healthy contempt for bullying. We must keep up the focus on this story.
I have it on very good authority (no, not Teh Grauniad) that is was seen being taken away by a blind man who, according to people who know him, also lacks a sense of smell!
Could be something in it, I mean, who else would take it?
Yet again, David Duff proves that he is not nearly as funny as his absurd name might suggest
Perhaps we should introduce you to Brian Coleman, Duff: you'd get on awfully well, and he could do with a friend.
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