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RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Proof no good deed ever goes unpunished
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19-year-old Kurtis Green, from Dersingham in Norfolk, has been for the past 12 years lovingly tending the war memorial opposite his parents' fish and chip shop
Some stories make my blood boil. You won’t always find them on the front pages or leading the television news bulletins. But they tell you more about the condition of modern Britain than most of what passes for ‘news’ these days.
Take the case of 19-year-old Kurtis Green, from Dersingham in Norfolk. For the past 12 years he has been lovingly tending the war memorial opposite his parents’ fish and chip shop.
It began when he was just seven. Kurtis saved up his pocket money to buy gardening tools and started clearing litter and planting bulbs.
Over the years he has devoted hundreds of hours of unpaid time to his task. When he was 15, he mounted a successful campaign to persuade councillors to spend £20,000 restoring the memorial with new flowerbeds, railings, seating and block paving.
Kurtis won a Norfolk Young People’s Role Model of the Year award and was congratulated by the Queen.
Thanks to his efforts, the local branch of the British Legion collected a prize for Norfolk’s most improved war memorial.
But Kurtis wasn’t content to rest on his laurels. Deciding the plants and flowers could do with more irrigation, he tapped into a nearby water supply, which had been installed as part of the restoration programme.
Together with a fellow villager, 65-year-old John Houston, he went about the work in a professional manner. At the insistence of the council, he took out public liability insurance and coned off the area where the trench was being dug.
Once the work was complete, the trench was filled in and new grass seed planted. ‘It actually looked better than when we started,’ said Kurtis proudly.
But this is where it all began to unravel. No good deed, as they say, ever goes unpunished.
While Kurtis and John were carrying out the work, along came a councillor and started taking photographs on his mobile phone. ‘The next thing we knew we were reported to the police.’
Dersingham parish council claimed the work had been undertaken without permission and accused them of theft and causing criminal damage.
As a result, Kurtis and John were interrogated for two hours by police. ‘All we have been doing is to help the community and we are being treated as if we are criminals,’ Kurtis complained.
‘The policewoman was trying to trap us. She kept asking us the same questions in different ways.’
Sounds about right. No doubt some dopey WPC who fancies herself as Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect.
Sounds about right. No doubt some dopey WPC who fancies herself as Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect.
Kurtis went on: ‘We were accused of causing criminal damage by digging up earth to see if the existing pipe was OK, but we left the area just as we found it.
‘I can’t understand what the theft is supposed to have been. All the soil we dug up was replaced and the only thing we took away was the dirt under our fingernails.’
Restoration programme: When Kurtis was 15, he mounted a successful campaign to persuade councillors to spend £20,000 restoring the memorial with new flowerbeds, railings, seating and block paving
A spokesman for Norfolk Police said: ‘The circumstances are now being considered by the Crown Prosecution Service. Police are aware of Kurtis’s efforts in cleaning up the memorial and we will work with all concerned to try to reach an acceptable resolution.’
If they are trying to reach an ‘acceptable resolution’, then why the hell has the file been referred to the CPS?
I’m only surprised that the Old Bill didn’t raid Kurtis’s house at 6am and then ransack the place for eight hours, confiscating his computers and carting off dozens of bin liners full of ‘evidence’.
Of course, in the days when Dersingham had a proper police presence, a resident bobby who knew everyone in the village, it would never have come to this.
PC Plod would have told any jumped-up parish councillor who wanted a young man prosecuted for tidying up the war memorial to take a running jump: ‘Push off, Fred, or I’ll nick you for wasting police time.’
These days, Dersingham villagers who want to talk face-to-face with a real live copper are requested to report to a ‘surgery’ in Budgens supermarket on a Friday morning, between 10.30am and 11.30am.
Kurtis (pictured left) and fellow villager, 65-year-old John Houston, were interrogated for two hours by police after Kurtis tapped into a nearby water supply which has been installed for the restoration prgramme
Turn left at the fish counter, second aisle down. Mind how you go. Time was, too, that most parish councillors saw themselves as servants, not masters, of their community.
Today, the majority of those who work in every level of ‘public service’ seem to regard the public, at best, as an inconvenience and, at worst, as the enemy.
OK, admittedly the Jobsworth mentality has always been with us, but the ubiquitous urge on the part of so-called ‘public servants’ to bully and punish their fellow citizens has never been more prevalent.
Dersingham council refused to identify the councillor who made the complaint. Tony Bubb, the council’s Lib Dem chairman, resigned on Monday, but we are told his decision had nothing to do with the dispute over the memorial.
What went wrong? David Cameron used to bang on about the Big Society, though we haven't heard all that much about it lately
Parish clerk Sarah Bristow said she couldn’t comment because the incident was being investigated by police, but added: ‘The parish council did not give anyone permission to do anything.’
That’s odd, because Kurtis says he took out liability insurance at the council’s insistence.
Even so, why should he need the council’s permission? He’d been tending the memorial for over a decade. His grandfather served in World War II and Kurtis says he started his clean-up campaign because it ‘was not in a fit state’ to honour those who had fought for their country.
‘In those days, it was a complete disgrace. I just decided to do something to help.’
Precisely. In a sane world, the council would have made the upkeep of the memorial one of its priorities, not fobbed off the responsibility to a teenager.
The real disgrace is that so many war memorials remain neglected. As memory of the two world wars fades, respect for those who made the ultimate sacrifice has faded with it.
Last year, a man in Hartlepool was fined for using a war memorial as a public urinal. So the idea that a young volunteer can face prosecution for cleaning up a memorial is beyond monstrous.
David Cameron used to bang on about the Big Society, though we haven’t heard all that much about it lately.
Surely Kurtis Green is a classic example of the Big Society in action, a welcome reminder of the millions of good people out there willing to give something back to the community.
Kurtis takes the idea of genuine public service seriously. In his chosen career he’s a chef in a care home.
As his mum, Sandra, says: ‘All he is trying to do is some good. He is a kind, hard-working boy. He’s got a heart of gold.’
Yet what thanks does he get for it? He’s accused of criminal damage and theft by a vindictive, self-important creep with a mobile phone camera and then treated like a criminal by the police, who try to trap him into a ‘confession’.
Makes you proud to be British.
With an impeccable sense of timing before the Bank Holiday, Sheffield’s Labour-run council has decided to force most of the city’s ice cream vans off the streets.
Under tough new rules to restrict emissions, vehicles over five years old must be scrapped. That accounts for 90 per cent of the ice cream vans in Sheffield.
Rosita Hunt, of the 138-year-old family firm Granelli’s, said the cost of replacing the vans could be prohibitive for many ice cream sellers.
New rules to restrict emissions: With an impeccable sense of timing before the Bank Holiday, Sheffield's Labour-run council has decided to force most of the city's ice cream vans off the streets
‘It will drive firms out of business, just as the summer season is getting going,’ she said. Not to mention all the kids who will be deprived of their lollies and 99s.
All this in the name of reducing Sheffield’s ‘carbon footprint’ and saving the polar bears. As if this futile gesture is going to make any difference to alleged ‘global warming’.
You can just imagine the relief at the UN. ‘Delegates, China opened a coal-fired power station every day last year, but the good news is that Sheffield has banned ice cream vans.’
Only the crumbliest, flakiest . . .
Och, Rab, that's an awesome dorsum
From Glasgow, reader J. Lawson Purdie sends me another example of the Nanny State in action.
The NHS was able to cut the MRSA epidemic by the simple expedient of improving basic hygiene.
Hospitals started installing dispensers containing an alcohol-based sanitiser solution at the entrance to every ward.
Unfortunately, many of these had to be removed because winos were yanking them off the walls and drinking the contents. So extra efforts were put in to encouraging staff and visitors to wash their hands. Great idea. I don’t now why no one had thought of that before.
But, as usual, this basic measure has now spawned an entire industry, websites, leaflets and all, giving advice on the best way to wash your hands. In Glasgow, this involves a ‘easy-to-follow’ six-step diagram, featuring a cartoon of a germ in a Tam O’ Shanter.
For instance, Step Two reads: ‘Right palm over left dorsum and left palm over right dorsum.’
I will tell you this, boy. You can just imagine Rab C. Nesbitt arriving at casualty and trying to tell his dorsum from his elbow.
Especially after a night on the alcohol-based hand sanitiser.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2318548/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Proof-good-deed-goes-unpunished.html#ixzz2SDxdqknk
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