Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

jk0 wrote: »

You know that if even the cheapest phone is switched on, its location can be tracked by triangulating the base stations it connects to, don't you GQ?

Yup, I knew. One of my pals is an ambulance dispatcher and explained how they use triangulation in urban areas where there are plenty of masts. It's not so much use in rural areas where there are fewer masts, apparently.

My dumb phone is switched off 90% of the time. I can't have it on at work (call centre) and tend to put it on in the evening and off again at night. I have a landline and can be reached via that method, or pals can email me as I have the pooter on morning and evening, as you poor souls can testify.....:rotfl:

What's driving me spare about smart phones is the idiots walking around the streets playing with them and nearly walking into you. Several of them, every time you walk out. Drives me nutty. Not that I have very far to go, most days.

Was filling Mum in on the Iceland case and she was fascinated. Apparently one of the heavy hitters on Radio 4 news was grilling someone to come out with an answer as to whether taking stuff out of skips was theft. As she said, if it is, then she's a thief and so am I.

RAS

GreyQueen wrote: »

Was filling Mum in on the Iceland case and she was fascinated. Apparently one of the heavy hitters on Radio 4 news was grilling someone to come out with an answer as to whether taking stuff out of skips was theft. As she said, if it is, then she's a thief and so am I.

I understand (having skipped myself) that taking stuff from a skip without the "owner"'s consent is theft.

But only if the owner objects to the removal of the goods. Since the goods belonged to Iceland, the police need to have them on side and get them to agree to the theft.

Which is why they used the old act to avoid having to prosecute for theft. If Iceland made it clear they opposed the case, it would have been impossible to proceed.

I try and ask and have never been refused. These days folk are glad to have the extra space to avoid the landfill charges.

GreyQueen

It seems that Iceland didn't know about the "theft" and hadn't reported the guys to the police and weren't aware of what was going on until it popped up in the media.

Obviously, for Iceland to be publicly associated with prosecuting poor people for something of this nature would be against their best reputational interests. I do wonder if this scrabbling around for an excuse to prosecute paupers, so soon after the police stealing (confiscation is too clean a word) the bedding and other meager belongings of the homeless, is trying to send a message of intolerance and contempt to the desperate?

Trouble for them, is that many of the apparently solid and solvent citizenry are or have been in precarious circumstances, or know somebody who is/was/ maybe likewise, and there's a lot more empathy and sympathy than they might expect. There of the grace of......etc.

I hope that someone at CPS gets hauled up before Da Management and is made to account for dragging them into disprepute. When you think of all the things that CPS don't manage to bring a case about, that they were trying something so petty suggests to me that it was politically-motivated.

But I am a nasty little cynic, admittedly.

elaine241

Mrs LW
I agree with everything in your post and I am trying to add new skills to my existing ones. I would add a couple of things to your list, the ability/plan to defend yourself and/or a plan or place to run and hide if you are outnumbered or incapable of defending yourself.

Sorry I'm a bit thick couldn't work out how to quote your original post in my reply, tried the obvious tick box but wouldnt work,

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

It seems that Iceland didn't know about the "theft" and hadn't reported the guys to the police and weren't aware of what was going on until it popped up in the media.

Obviously, for Iceland to be publicly associated with prosecuting poor people for something of this nature would be against their best reputational interests. I do wonder if this scrabbling around for an excuse to prosecute paupers, so soon after the police stealing (confiscation is too clean a word) the bedding and other meager belongings of the homeless, is trying to send a message of intolerance and contempt to the desperate?

They are apparently being rather economical with the truth. The store manager was the star witness for the prosecution. So the company knew and the whole incident blew up in their face.

GreyQueen

Heh! Bet the store manager isn't in good odour with the big boss, then.

Karmacat

RAS wrote: »

I try and ask and have never been refused. These days folk are glad to have the extra space to avoid the landfill charges.

Me too!

A couple of months ago, however, I was looking in a skip at bathroom tiles that had been taken off the walls and dumped in the skip, broken etc (for a mosaic I'm doing!) just by the block of flats it was serving. And a very elderly lady leaned out of her first floor flat and screeched at me "thief"!!! I was shocked :rotfl: I mean, when I want to take stuff, I ring on people's doors to ask if I can! So I took that to mean that permission would be refused, and went my merry way. I actually felt quite sorry for her, but it did jar me a bit

GreyQueen

How very rude and unnecessary of her. It's not like there was a politician passing by on the street behind you or something? Then it would have been understandable.

Quaint if a person imagines that their broken tiles are of interest to more than a very few people in the entire country, never mind that a mosaicist is passing by (not sure if that's a word, please correct me if it isn't/ isn't spelled correctly).

I always think that skipping can be a win-win for the person who rents the skip. Since they're actually buying a certain cubic meterage of removal from the skip company, surely anything removed gives the householder a net gain in space, so they can put more stuff in? They gain.

The real theft regarding skips is to rob the householder of their cubic capacity by adding your stuff to the skip they have bought and paid for, thus freeloading off their budget.

Where I have taken stuff from skips, it has been very low value items, usually scraps of wood, and I have been careful not to leave any mess or destabilise the load. A successful skippage should look as if the items just evaporated.

I have acquired random items left around the alleys of my old neighbourhood; a Dyson, a wardrobe, a cabinet, a flowerpot, a small indoors dustbin (not sure if this was actually dumped so asked the neighbour - it was and we became friend as a result), flowerpots, offcuts of decking, a paving slab and small random bits and bobs.

I suppose I should have called the Council to remove it as fly-tipping, and that my then-neighbours had no business putting their discards outside their homes and gardens onto the streets should have been prosecuted for fly-tipping.

How much more civilised to just womble it discreetly away.

VJsmum

not sure how this sits with the modern day 'rag and bone" men who frquently take stuff from my neighbour's ever present skip? they seem to call daily.

like GQ i would have thought it win win.

in fact we are soon to have need of a skip ourselves and am hoping the rag man comes and makes space in it for us.

Karmacat, wish you would take our tiles

Karmacat

GreyQueen wrote: »

How very rude and unnecessary of her. It's not like there was a politician passing by on the street behind you or something? Then it would have been understandable.

Well, yes, it was rude - but I think of my auntie, also in her 80s, just moved to a sheltered housing unit, and, well, my heart isn't in it to call her out on her rudeness...

I always think that skipping can be a win-win for the person who rents the skip. Since they're actually buying a cetain cubic meterage of removal from the skip company, surely anything removed gives the householder a net gain in space, so they can put more stuff in? They gain.

Exactly! At my last house, a builder I'd asked for his skipped bricks (I was doing a garden path made of bricks) actually got into the skip for me, and passed them out :rotfl: and he made that very point!

The real theft regarding skips is to rob the householder of their cubic capacity by adding your stuff to the skip they have bought and paid for, thus freeloading off their budget.

That *is* theft, isn't it, theft of a service the householder has paid for.

Where I have taken stuff from skips, it has been very low value items, usually scraps of wood, and I have been careful not to leave any mess or destabilise the load. A successful skippage should look as if the items just evaporated.

Yep, I got hold of some nice long pieces of wood recently - a current project I'm organising is building myself a haybox cooker - with a wooden frame, and various stuff around the house (insulation foam, old pillows, both of which I have to wash, actually) as the insulation. The builders there were really surprised to be asked, but very happy

How much more civilised to just womble it discreetly away.

:j