Naughtiest Thing

What's The Naughtiest Thing You've Ever Done?

So I've thought about it long and hard and I can't ever say that in my now relatively long life, I’ve ever consciously set out to break the law. On occasions I may have broken the law without knowing that the particular law I was breaking existed, or I may have drifted a few mph over the speed limit from time to time but that’s about as bad it gets. In many respects, I suppose I could be in similar difficulties to Mrs. May, our erstwhile PM when she was asked, ‘what’s the naughtiest thing you’ve ever done? Struggling for an answer with real street cred, that’s where I’d be.

Now I suppose this makes me an ideal citizen as far as the state is concerned. Happy to get on with my life, pay my taxes (not always happily I have to admit), keep the laws of the land and vote when required. And yes, for reasons that I believe are rooted in the struggle to gain universal suffrage, I have voted every time I’ve been offered the chance. The first time I exercised this right was way back in 1975 when I was asked - Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?

Now moving on to our current situation, it's becoming increasingly clear that our current government is pushing to the limit against the law that has just made it onto the Statute Book that is designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit. The rather innocuously named European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill is not one that anyone could reasonably claim to be unaware of. It caused quite a rumpus to say the least and arrived with us on Monday 9 September, which coincidentally was the day that parliament was shut down; which is probably just a bit worse that Mrs. May’s gambol through Farmer Giles’ field of wheat.

Now this government is in the habit of threatening all sorts of things and can we really believe what it says? An awful lost of posturing and rhetoric designed to put the wind up the EU has been the output from No. 10 in the last few week. I'm minded to believe that the threat to break or ignore this new law falls into the now bulging folder ‘Threats Issued To Get Our Own Way’ that is probably keept somewhere in the bowels of No. 10.

Pushing on a law to test it has always been something that the democratic process has had to live with, but the inevitable consequences of pushing something too hard, is that it breaks.

In 1921 my Great Uncle, Albert Baker, was imprisoned along with other Poplar Labour Councillors when he broke the law of the land and refused to collect the precepts from the hard-pressed rate payers of Poplar for the London County Council, The Metropolitan Police and the Metropolitan Water Authority. After three months in Brixton Prison, the Government relented and passed Local Authorities (Financial Provisions) Act 1921 which equalised the burden or the cross London authorities across rich and poor London boroughs.

If prison was good enough for my Great Uncle when he broke the law for political reasons, it’s surely good enough for any present-day politician who pushes a law beyond breaking point.

Now my Great Uncle Albert would surely have one of the best answers to the question; what’s the naughtiest thing you’ve ever done?