A friend of mine from the village has an 80 year old mother.
A grand old lady from a good family.
Last week she received a letter from 'the authorities'.
This letter warned her against feeding birds in her garden due to the threat of vermin.
The next step, apparently, an ASBO.
The particular small village has oodles of open space, space to have wildlife and all the things that we don't see in town.
That this lady of previous good character should in her 80s be threatened with a potential jail term, on the basis of an anonymous letter, beggars belief.
Last week her son was refused entry onto a local bus.
Last week her grandchildren were left standing in the rain when a local driver refused to pick them up.
What has happened to this family to drive them into the land of the Jukes and the Kallikaks?.
Could it be that one of the family members is foremost in the fight to uncover local Council 'sharp practise'.?
More to follow, I am sure.
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What has happened to this country? Wish I could say 'unbelievable'....
Have you seen this?
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2474442.ece
This is wild. Wasn't sure about the Jukes and Lalikaks reference. Looked 'er up and it reminded me of America's Hatfields and McCoys. Which reminded me of an article I'd seen in a local paper in Halifax the other day. Found it here on the Scotsman. Not sure how it is relevant to your post Merkin, fairly random, but it is rather interesting none the less, and thought you'd enjoy the read.
Cheers.
This comes from The Scotsman, an online Scottish newspaper:
"It is a centuries-old clan feud, bitter and murderous, that perhaps only someone named MacDonald or Campbell could fully understand. For rural Appalachia, the mountain area stretching from southern New York state to northern Mississippi, the conflict is one of its greatest sources of fame.
"Now research shows there could be a biological reason why bad blood has lingered between the McCoy and Hatfield families since the American Civil War.
"Now research shows there could be a biological reason why bad blood has lingered between the McCoy and Hatfield families since the American Civil War.
"Descendants of the McCoy family have been found to carry a rare hereditary disease than can manifest itself in the violent outbursts and blind rage - and even murder - that have defined the United States' most famous family feud and claimed many lives.
"Geneticists are trying to find out how widespread Von Hippel-Lindau disease is among McCoy clan members and warn that sufferers risk symptoms including severe headaches, high blood pressure and heart palpitations, which in some cases can prove fatal.
"About three-quarters of the McCoys with the condition have tumours of the adrenal gland, which can cause excess adrenaline to be produced.
"Dr. Revi Mathew, a Vanderbilt University endocrinologist who is treating a family member, said: "This condition can certainly make anybody short-tempered."
"Rita Reynolds, a McCoy descendant from Bristol, Tennessee, who is being treated for the incurable disease, recalled her grandfather, Smallwood McCoy: "When he would come to visit, everyone would run and hide. They acted like they were scared to death of him. He had a really bad temper."
"Some members of the warring tribes are not so sure the tumours are the root cause of the feud. 'The McCoy temperament is legendary. Whether or not we can blame it on genes, I don't know,' said Ron McCoy, 43, of Durham, North Carolina.
"'There was a lot of inter-marrying,' he said, adding that that could have played havoc with the gene pool.
"Compared with the Campbell and MacDonald rivalry, and Shakespeare's Montagues and Capulets, the feud dates to when the two families were among the first wave of settlers in the Tug Valley, which straddles the Appalachian Mountains bordering Kentucky and West Virginia.
"Many say the story began in 1865, the last year of the Civil War, over a McCoy who joined the Union army to fight Southern Confederate forces, and was murdered. The feud simmered and then erupted in 1873 over a prized pig, after Randolph McCoy, the leader of Scots-Irish settlers, clashed with a Hatfield and later lost a court case over its ownership.
"Added to this mix was the star-crossed affair between a prominent McCoy, Roseanna, and the son of the Hatfield leader Devil Anse Hatfield, who later abandoned his pregnant lover to marry his cousin. In revenge, Roseanna's three brothers murdered Devil Anse's brother, Ellison; they were murdered amid violence that claimed a dozen lives before a truce in 1891.
"In 2003, the families signed a further, though largely symbolic, peace agreement in Pikeville, Kentucky.
"Ron Eller, a professor of history and former director of the Appalachian Centre at the University of Kentucky, said:
"'There continues to be a lot of family pride on both sides, but the Hatfield and McCoys today frequently get together, and there is a lot of use of the feud for economic development purposes.'"
"There's long been a tendency to want to attribute genetic difference to the people of Appalachia.
"But not all participants in the feud were genetically related. On the McCoy side some of the leading proponents were businessmen from nearby Pikeville, not necessarily related."
Ranger, the Jukes and the Kallikaks as well as 'The people of Ship Street' were original degenerate families used as the object lesson to show us how nasty brutish and short was the life of the members of the working class.
My point in the thread was that my friend is of good character and the imposition of an ASBO on his mother would instantly label her for ever.
This lady lives in a cottage on the top of a mountain and is not being a nuisance by any measure.
Her son is an advocate of worker rights and is getting a hard time as a result of it.
We must be doing something right.
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