de Tocqueville had this figured out 180 years ago: pic.twitter.com/uAlXJJ4FxE
— TurnedFourthing (@turnedfourthing) May 2, 2026
I thought that this apparently minor news story from the Telegraph, the comment made by someone called Bernie@Artemisfornow while linking to the story on Twitter, and the reply to that comment with an apt quote by Alexis de Tocqueville were all worth highlighting.
In case the screenshot goes away, the Telegraph story has the headline “Volunteer banned from cleaning graves over ‘health and safety’ fears” and the standfirst “Ben McGregor says South Tyneside authority has threatened him with legal action, despite praise from families“. It continues,
A volunteer has been banned from cleaning graves because the council says it is not safe.
Ben McGregor, 25, washes the headstones at Hebburn Cemetery, South Tyneside, with only soap, water and a bristle brush.
He lost both his father and his best friend to suicide and, after struggling with his own mental health, said that “if I am helping others, it helps me”.
However, the Labour-led council claims it would be “inappropriate” for Mr McGregor to continue his work because “safety checks have not taken place”.
He has been praised by families for his transformations of the headstones, but said the council had threatened him with legal action if he did not stop.
Mr McGregor said: “The one that stands out to me is a woman who was suffering from cancer. She was crying on the phone, saying that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. The council’s response has blown my mind. It’s doing my head in”.
To which Bernie@Artemisfornow replied,
This is England, where even the kindest, most human acts are subject to control by authoritarian pen pushers.
Using “health and safety” to stop a young 25 year old man from cleaning gravestones with soap and water.
This is how you crush a society. You do it by smothering small acts of decency, like driving people home from the pub and cleaning gravestones. You do it by putting rules in the way of people pulling together, until eventually they just stop trying.
and TurnedFourthing @turnedfourthing in turn replied,
de Tocqueville had this figured out 180 years ago:
After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupifies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
I have always believed that this sort of servitude, regulated, mild and peaceful, of which I have just done the portrait, could be combined better than we imagine with some of the external forms of liberty, and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.
Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is rule by the most insipid, the most tedious, the most rigid and the most self-righteous.
Have the Council closed the graveyard to all visitors because of ‘health and safety’? Did the Council consider getting a signed waiver enough to allow further cleaning? Did the Council consider arranging health and safety training for Ben McGregor?
Or is it just some jobsworth revelling in an exercise of ‘tiny authority’?
If he gathered a big enough (and diverse enough) group to go along and clean graves with him, the council would back down.
I thought I’d died and gone to Hebburn…
In history British people mocked other nations for their bureaucracy and endless regulations – “Spanish Practices” a term still in English usage – mocking Spanish bureaucracy and endless regulations, mockery of French obsession with regulations (from Louis XIV and Colbert), then mockery of Prussia-Germany for the same reason.
But now it is Britain that is saturated with bureaucracy and endless regulations – and note the perverted “work ethnic” of the British officials – they would be ashamed of just taking money (wages, pension and so on) without “working” – so they interfere with every aspect of life, with fanatical zeal.
A man cleaning the place up voluntarily? Can not have that – “elf-and-safety”.
It is not funny – a country like Russia, with endless farmland and huge deposits of raw materials (the “Treasure House of Nations”) can, to some extent, get away with a big interfering government, but densely populated and resource poor (what natural resources Britain does have we are not really allowed to use) Britain (the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) can NOT get away with this.
There is not much of a foundation to the British economy – it is, mostly, smoke-and-mirrors (celebrated by the Economist magazine and other liars) – it can not support the vast, and intensely interfering, government we have now.
Those people who have left have acted wisely – as things are going to get very bad here, very bad indeed.
Americans should not be too cocky about all this.
Visited the Chicago stockyards, supposedly the center of the world livestock industry, lately? If you have, you must have a Time Machine – as they closed down decades ago, indeed most industry in Chicago has gone. Yet the government of Chicago is bigger than ever – more regulations and more spending.
It is the same in New York City – most of the industry of the city is gone, but the government is vastly bigger than it used to be.
These cities are going to collapse – they have not always existed, Chicago was only a few thousand people in the 1830s, and they have no divine right to exist.
“But financial services…..”
Even if one believes in the Credit Bubble economy (I do not) there is no reason, in the computer age, for it to operate from high tax places like New York City.
Mayor Mamdani did not create the vast government of New York City which spends vastly more, even per person, than any other city government in the United States – it has been getting worse and worse for a long time, but by his endless spitting on, and urinating on, “the rich” (i.e. the taxpayers – including the Wall Street “financial services” Corporations) he has finally brought it home to them that, in the electronic age, there is no reason to be in New York City. And it is not just taxes and spending – it is also (like Britain) endless regulations.
“But what happens to the millions of people who live in New York City?”
Nothing good.
And nothing good will happen to people in Britain either.
Let’s hope the councillors at South Tyneside are made to feel suitably embarrassed by such nonsense.
My mother’s grave is in a Suffolk church and my Dad occasionally goes to clean the headstone, as other relatives do with headstones in the graveyard. This is a church matter, and provided people don’t damage the area, cleaning such stones is tolerated, even encouraged.
Johnathan Peace – the councillors will be told it is nothing to do with them.
The officials will say they are just following law-and-policy.
I am glad that the church in Suffolk still allows your father to clean the headstone of your mother.
One hopes that stories like this, and ones far more serious than this, reach a tipping point with the electorate who finally say “enough!” and then throw out the lot.
Unfortunately there are many metaphors to describe the more likely process of slow decay; the frog in the pot brought to a slow boil, the centre cannot hold, the drunk having to hit bottom before reforming, and so on, and the Tocqueville quote brilliantly captures this.
What I fear most is that there seems to be no bottom.
Cities continue to “function” at levels of dysfunction that we can only imagine. Lagos, Sao Paolo, Addis Ababa, Manila, add your own examples.
“First world” countries have always felt a world apart from such horrors, but mind viruses can destroy the work of centuries in a few decades.
White guilt, weaponized compassion, and our old friend, the will to tyranny, are redefining injustice as justice, “1984”-style. Even those of us who think we are in in relatively sane polities are only one election away from the madness.
Roberto – it is indeed a grim situation Sir.
I have a book called On Guerrilla Gardening by Richard Reynolds. It was first published in 2008 and, if Mr. Reynolds is to be believed, this kind of thing was pretty common even back then, the book is full of examples. The foundation of the GG movement seems to have come from examples of people being willing to volunteer the time and materials to turn a piece of unsightly wasteland into a public garden but being stopped, as in the story here, by officialdom and their endless bureaucracy. The solution they found was to just get on quietly and do it. By the time the stuffed shirts find out about it it’s too late the garden has been created. The bad publicity to be had by destroying the garden once it is already there is far worse than they would have had from just blocking it from being created in the first place.
FWIW, this is death by a thousand cuts, but the real way to crush a society is to make it against the law to complain about it. Which is what Britain is more an more doing. The real way to crush a society is to make energy so expensive with pointless NetZero rules that doing much beyond just surviving is prohibitively expensive. The real way to crush a society is to tax the productive so heavily the bugger off to Monaco or the Caribbean and leave you with no jobs, and the real way to crush a society is to make it impossible to rent a house by imposing laws so draconian that nobody wants to be in the rental business anymore.
This jobsworth bullshit is just an ongoing irritation that happens in all governments. I remember Esther Rantzen talking about it constantly in her TV programme (whatever it was called) every week in the 80s. So I don’t think it is anything new. What is going on in Britain is a whole new level and is far, far worse. Petty bureaucrats are one thing, monstrous tyranny a whole other animal.
” – Well, WE didn’t say he could do that, so he CAN’T!!!” A.K.A., “In a Communist country, everything not absolutely compulsory is absolutely forbidden.”
Fraser Orr – even the war on Freedom of Speech, on political and cultural matters, goes back a long way here.
A lot of people were baffled by the 1965 Race Relations Act in Britain – after all there had NEVER been Jim Crow laws discriminating against black people here, so why copy the 1964 American Civil Rights Act (which was justified to “counter the legacy of the Jim Crow laws” in SOME States – which had only be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1954 – only a decade before)? They did not notice that the British Act actually went FURTHER than the American Act – as it attacked SPEECH (dissenting speech) – there were official assurances that this would only be done in extreme cases, but over time (Act after Act – and changing interpretations) it has become a general effort to crush dissent – as it was always intended to, eventually, be.
The establishment knew that their project (their agenda) would not be popular with the British people – and that not even intense indoctrination by the education system and the media would not be enough to defeat dissent – so the logical move was to ban dissent as “hate”, and that is the logical move they (gradually) made. It shows that even 60 years ago – the end game (demographic transformation) was very much on their minds – that it was never intended to just be a few people like previous migrations (such as the Huguenots leaving the France of Louis XIV, or the Jews leaving Imperial Russia).
A few people would not have needed Acts of Parliament demanding that they be employed, housed, and so on – and that even verbal opposition to them be limited by law – even in 1965 it was not intended to remain a few.
It will not just be about race, or religion, or ethnicity, or sex, or “gender”, or “sexual orientation”.
In the Netherlands (which I believe Snorri, wisely, left some time ago), the ban on advertising (sorry J.S. Mill but commercial freedom IS the same principle as general freedom – it is NOT a different principle) certain products has come into effect – censorship.
What products? Things like the AR-10 rifle? Which the Dutch government banned production of back in the 1960s – because it was going to the Portuguese to fight vicious Communist terrorist groups in Africa. NO – products such as “burgers”, “petrol driven cars”, “overseas holidays” and so on – no more public posters for such products – because of “Climate Change” (and if you believe that is the real reason – you will believe anything). Ditto the closing down of thousands of FARMS in the Netherlands – must not have independent family farms, the international Corporations, and governments (the Corporate State including the “NGOs”) will be angry.
The government of the Netherlands, like the international establishment generally, believes in “modern freedom”.
And “modern freedom” is spelled SLAVERY.
It’s time to remove ‘Dieu Et Mon Droit’ from the UK’s coat-of-arms and replace it with what seems to have become the true national motto, ‘You Can’t Do That.’
Roberto says “One hopes that stories like this, and ones far more serious than this, reach a tipping point with the electorate who finally say “enough!” and then throw out the lot.”
“Throwing them out” won’t be nearly enough. They need to be destroyed, made examples of, ideally with blood involved. Nothing less will have an impact. Ok, I take back the blood, that’s only a real thing in Minecraft which is of course what I was referencing. But destroy them utterly. No job anywhere ever. No assistance. Seize all their property. Utterly destroyed. But of course no violence!
Can you tell that I’ve already had enough?
A few thoughts:
1 Is this the full story? There appears to be only one source here. Is it possible that permission was not given or that damage was being done? Is it possible that Health & Safety laws were used because they were the most likely to succeed?
2 Bernie is Bernie Spofforth, the “woman in her 50s” who was investigated for spreading “misinformation” at the time of the Southport disturbances.
3 I wonder what de Toqueville was referring to 180 years ago? Surely, not GB or the US which must rank as the freest societies ever let alone at the time.
Challenge them. Make life difficult for them. When an official says that something is illegal, ask him under which law. Act, chapter, section, subsection, etc.
In the nineties Christopher Booker wrote a long-running column for the Sunday Telegraph about the excesses of regulation. I still remember that, in one column, a publican was told by some official that dogs were banned from pubs. The publican asked which law, or something to that effect. The official didn’t know. “So until you tell me exactly which law says dogs are banned in pubs, I will continue to allow them in mine,” was the publican’s reply. I don’t think the official ever came back.
I make a comment, I ask a question and discover that Paul Marks has already answered me. France, Spain & Russia are the examples I am looking for.
And, of course, Natalie’s point still stands: you get to a point where people don’t bother whether there’s a rule to stop them or not.
Patrick Crozier de Tocqueville was referring to the United States – but NOT as it was in the 1830s (when he was writing “Democracy in America”), but how it could become in-the-future.
Writers such as Thomas Paine had argued that if a government was elected (and could be voted out) it could not, by definition, be a tyranny – Alexis de Tocqueville argued that this was nonsense, that of-course an elected government could be a tyranny – and could, by propaganda, get itself reelected by the majority of people.
A century after he wrote, Alexis de Tocqueville was proved correct – with the “FDR” regime (democratically elected and reelected) playing on the the terror caused by the Great Depression (itself caused by the Credit Money expansion of the 1920s – NOT, contrary to the late Milton Friedman, the failure to carry on pumping up the Credit Money bubble) engaged in tyranny – of the “soft” kind.
Some of its antics were demented, such as going around killing farm animals and burning crops – whilst claiming to care about the poor. And some were viciously criminal and destructive of constitutional order and the rule of law – such as stealing all privately held monetary gold and voiding all gold clauses in contracts (public and private) – making both private property rights and contract law, legal fictions.
President Franklin Roosevelt is held to have solved the Great Depression (which is false – historians who praise Roosevelt will also tell you that the Emperor Diocletian solved the crises of the Third Century, and that the, utterly vicious and blood soaked, Ottoman Empire was “tolerant”), and is held up as a hero to this day – in spite of (for example) his indifference to the murder of millions of people in the Soviet Union (by his friend, “Christian Gentleman”, Joseph Stalin) AND his (Franklin Roosevelt’s) private indifference to the murder of millions of Jews by Adolf Hitler – see Paul Johnson’s “A History of the Jews” for just how two-faced (how despicable) Franklin Roosevelt was, on the “Jewish Question”.
Before anyone claims otherwise – the claims made by Upton Sinclair about the Chicago stockyards, in his book “The Jungle”, were LIES – there were no workmen made into meat pies because they fell into the machinery – Sinclair LIED, he later admitted he lied.
The socialists would be very happy with Chicago now – there is not much industry left (most industry in Chicago has been destroyed by taxes, regulations and unions), so little (in their demented way of thinking) “exploitation and oppression” by industry – but this means that Chicago (a city of millions of people) is going to collapse – a “detail” they do not appear to have thought of.
My father (Harry Marks) was an ex Communist – and our home (although in England) was full of American socialist “literature”, by Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser and others – and, as a boy (half a century ago now) I made it my business to look into their claims – and their claims were lies, their fictional characters were supposed to be based on real people, but when I looked up those real people – they were nothing like the fictional characters (they were not perfect – but they were nothing like the fictional characters who were supposed to be “based on” them). It was agitprop (agitation propaganda) – and showed just how long ago American culture (literature and so on) started to be dominated by lying Collectivists – out to undermine the basis of civilization.
It goes back a very long way – as “The Myth of the Robber Barons” (by Folsom) shows – even in the late 19th century, the “muck racking” journalists (from the 1880s onwards) were not fearless seekers-after-truth – they were shameless liars, who wildly exaggerated anything bad, and left out anything that was good.
Chicago is the American city mentioned in “The Red Flag” (the Communist anthem) due to the Haymarket riot (in which several police officers were murdered by a bomb) in 1886 – and the socialists are getting their wish, in both Chicago and New York, “capitalist” industry is indeed being destroyed, but it will NOT be replaced by socialist industry (contrary to what Mayor Mamdani in New York wants – let alone the clown who is Mayor of Chicago), what will, eventually, happen is that there will be no industry in these cities – these cities of millions of human beings.
Do I have to spell out what that means?
You can not provide for millions of people by Credit Bubble financial antics – and, even if you could, there is no reason (in the computer age) for these financial antics to be based in New York or Chicago.
You can sit on a beach in Miami (or the Cayman Islands) and use your computer (and video conferencing) to trade in financial services – no need to be in New York, Chicago – or London.
No need to pay taxes in these places – or put money into the economy of these places.
This is one of those very odd stories that I simultaneously look at slightly askance, convinced that there must be more to it; and then at the same time really can’t work out what more could be to it.
Fella reckons he’s cleaned 20 graves? Unless he’s doing it with some kind of power washer or something odd that possibly – just possibly – could leave the surrounding area dangerous to walk on, then big whoop. Good for him! Sounds like a decent young lad. I clean my Dad’s headstone everytime I go, and if I have time/leftover cleaning fluid/the inclination, I do the two either side whilst I’m at it and give them a tidy. I must have done that…200 times? (quick maths based on how many years since he passed etc)
I’d like to know exactly what it is that they thought he was doing wrong (endangering other people, somehow? How exactly??) – on the face of it, it’s totally stupid, and has “bugger off, I’m carrying on anyway” written all over it.
For once I agree with neonsnake – his comment directly above.
Sadly the officials may punish the man.
As I say, I’d be curious to know exactly what for. Partly out of curiousity, but partly because lmao I’m not about to stop keeping the “neighbouring” graves tidy.
Is he endangering himself? Somehow? If so, that’s his own business. I “endanger” myself everytime I drive on a motorway, probably to a much greater degree. One rather suspects that our good-hearted lad here isn’t exactly dangling upside down from a crane whilst performing his cleaning; rather I suspect that he has a brillo pad, a bucket and some Fairy Liquid and enough time to make use of them. Absolutely genuinely, good on him.
Is he somehow endangering the headstones? I dunno, maybe he’s using something that isn’t appropriate and might cause them to break down? Not exactly anything I have knowledge about – quite probably there’s some cleaning products that one should not use on a headstone, but frankly – I rather suspect not. If so, the story would say so.
So, is he endangering other people, then? In that case, arguably, I can see the case. I can sort of see a “he’s using a pressure washer with slippery soap and leaving the grass around the graves unsafe to walk on and dear old Doris is going to slip and hit her head” argument – but then, I’ve just completely made that scenario up, because that’s not in the story
*shrugs*
A few people have noted upthread that this might be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
I get the reasoning, but it’s *very* consequential, as it squeezes out mutual aid, co-operation, and just sheer neighbourlyness, which is the basis of a better/fairer/freer society.
With regard to the source of the story, it is the Telegraph.
The full story quotes the council spokesdrone as saying:
Please note the chap in question was using a stiff brush and soapy water to clean the gravestones.
I cannot add further comment as i know Samizdata likes to keep a lid on the foul language.
Americans should not be too cocky about all this.
Which Americans in these comment threads, or overall for that matter, are “too cocky about all this”?
Paul Marks –
… there is no reason (in the computer age) for these financial antics to be based in New York or Chicago.
You can sit on a beach in Miami (or the Cayman Islands) and use your computer (and video conferencing) to trade in financial services – no need to be in New York, Chicago – or London.
Yes and no. It depends on what type of financial trading is being done. There is a specialised type of trading called High-Frequency Trading (HFT). For these guys, nanosecond differences in data transmission times is the cause of success or failure in trades.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) built its own data centre at Mahwah, New Jersey. HFT firms could pay to ‘co-locate’ their own algorithmic servers inside the facility, right next to NYSE’s matching engine. The NYSE centre is regulated and it has to be seen as fair. So the NYSE came up with a solution: they measured the distance from their matching engine to the farthest HFT server and made sure everybody had exactly the same length of cable.
But the story gets even odder. The HFT servers closer to the matching engine had to coil their cables, while those farther away get a straight run. Some HFT engineers reckoned light signals bouncing around inside a long, coiled cable would in principle degrade and slow infinitesimally compared with a straight cable. So NYSE ran traders’ cables around the walls to minimise bends, again to make everyone was on a level playing field.
Then the HFT engineers started asking about the quality of the glass fibre itself, since not all optical fibres were created equal — some kinds of glass conveyed light signals more efficiently than others. We’re talking about nanosecond differences in signal times. But a nanosecond might as well be a second or a century to these systems, because the message that arrives first gets the trade.
That’s why the answer is ‘it depends’. Where speed is not critical then yes, it doesn’t matter where a trader is located. But sometimes it absolutely does matter.
@Philip Scott Thomas
That’s why the answer is ‘it depends’. Where speed is not critical then yes, it doesn’t matter where a trader is located. But sometimes it absolutely does matter.
But that is the machines not the traders. The traders aren’t making nanosecond decisions. They may well be programming computers to do that, but updating those programs can still be done from anywhere.
FWIW, I don’t think stock markets should allow these sorts of automated trades beyond simple stop orders. I think they are a real danger to the liquidity and stability of the market.
neonsnake – you are showing what I call “German thinking” – and I do NOT mean any insult by that (I like Germany and the Germans).
In “German thinking” a regulation has a purpose, it may have a bad (an evil) purpose – but it has a purpose, a regulation that has no purpose should not exist – and, if it does exist, should be removed.
All this is totally alien to how British government (local and national) works – in British governance regulations are ends-in-themselves, it does not matter than enforcing them makes no sense, because the regulations are themselves sense-less, and the question “what harm is this man doing?” is not relevant in British governance.
Philip Scott Thomas – you may be correct that some forms of financial services have to be in city, but is that enough to maintain a population of millions of people?
Also why does that city have to be New York City or Chicago? There is a Stock Exchange in Dallas (and it is very high tech) – why not there?
There used to be beautiful Stock Exchange building in Chicago – which would have served as a tourist attraction even if trading no longer took place, but it is not just government officials who are dominated by insane fashions – so are Corporate bureaucrats (“managers”) – they destroyed the building, as so many beautiful buildings have been destroyed in Chicago – and New York.
And London.
Replaced by rubbish – such as the Lloyds Building.
Again all this is international – the Pompidou Centre in Paris (named after the “conservative” President who reversed Charles De Gaulle’s policy on Third World immigration – the migrants and their descendants are now destroying France) is rubbish.
The building is rubbish (it should be demolished) and the “art” in it is also rubbish – and none of this is an accident.
The architects did try and produce a beautiful building and fail – they deliberately set out to create an ugly building, and succeeded.
And the painters did not set out to paint beautiful paintings and fail – they deliberately set out to paint ugly paintings, and succeeded.
They said so – their work was a deliberate revolt against French art, such painters as William Adolphe Bouguereau – again I am not making this up, they-said-so.
The Progressive (for example H.G. Wells in Britain) hate beautiful buildings and paintings (and so on) BECAUSE they are beautiful – they wish to replace beauty with ugliness.
It is not just their political and economic ideas that are a disease.
Yes to all this.
When I was an avid curler, I used to volunteer to serve drinks at our small club bar. One day, I was informed that I’d now have to take the provincial Safe Serve course required of professional bartenders and serving staff. The curling club would pay for the course.
Instead, I declined and stopped working the bar. I explained that I had been happy to help out but now the question of government oversight of my personal liability had been raised and I did not wish to take on any such risk as an unpaid volunteer.
Fraser Orr
But that is the machines not the traders. The traders aren’t making nanosecond decisions.
That’s true. But HFT is a thing in itself. We’re not talking about leisurely decisions about programming their servers considered made over a rather decent latte. These guys are going balls to the wall all day every day. That’s why they tend to concentrate around NYC. Sure, you can have a trader in Toad Suck, Arkansas (real place; look it up), but he has to rely on data transmission times too. He will never be as fast as the guys back in NYC, close to the action. And that’s not even considering being outside the information loop.
Paul Marks
Also why does that city have to be New York City or Chicago?
Of course it doesn’t have to be. So why does it so often work out to be?
Forget various cities; just look at London. Why is it that tailors concentrate in Saville Row, shirt makers in Jermyn Street, and diamond merchants in Hatton Garden? None of that has to be, so why is it so? Maybe it’s because there are natural centres of gravity that defy logic.
The actions of human beings almost always defy logic. Sometimes things just are.
Well, no wonder.
He lacked the proper documentation!
He had failed to secure the explicit approval of the mandarin in charge of that function.
We cannot allow just anyone to clean stones. That would be anarchic and probably far-right-wingish. Next we’d have rebels filling in potholes on their own. That is no way to rule over a populace.
Marius – thank you. I’d missed the bit in Natalie’s post referring to him using soapy water and a bristle brush, but that was pretty much what I expected.
Your paragraph referencing that “Professional stonemasons are able to continue working because they are regulated, registered and insured, and notify the council when carrying out work on behalf of a grave owner with the appropriate documentation in place” has caused me to raise a cynical eyebrow; I’ve found myself invested in the story, so did a bit of digging.
Here is an article noting that the relevant council has issued a safety warning because “The local authority has stated that some memorials may have experienced ground movement and weathering, which can cause them to loosen or topple.”
Ok, fair enough, sort of. So perhaps – perhaps – there was more to it.
Here is another article referencing the specific incident of this young chap. It contains a before and after photo – have to say, damned good job he’s done. More pertinently, he says he has “insurance” – I personally have no idea what kind of insurance one would need, but it looks to me like he’s done everything he thought he should to be “above board” with it.
There’s some emotive stuff in there too – his dad, nan and grandad, and best friend are all buried there; further mention of the lady with cancer. My heartstrings are indeed tugged (genuinely), and one can imagine easily the benefit to his mental health of doing such a good deed. I absolutely can.
He also says this (emphasis mine):
“The Council mentioned that a gravestone fell on a young child down south but I do thorough checks before I start working on it them.
“Fair enough if I was a child but I’m not, I’m a 25-year-old man.
“There are children from local nurseries who go in to the cemetery and plant seeds, as well as teenagers who go in every Sunday to get rid of the weeds around the graves – I’m questioning where the insurance is for them.”
…which strikes me as a fair comment. “Down south”? Ok, so that’s a nasty incident, for sure, but evidently not in the same graveyard, then?
So, whilst – okay, fair enough – there was a bit more to it, to me there’s not enough more to it.
Except…there is a “bit more to it” that seems more interesting. As I noted above, and Marius pointed out, the professionals are still allowed to clean graves. If this lad is making a habit of this, that’s a decent number of customers that the professionals are losing.
Perchance, did one of them say something to the council along the lines of “Listen, he means well, clearly, but I’d hate to see him get hurt…he’s only young, been through enough already…I think he should be made to stop. For his own good, you know?”
Maybe, maybe not. But I can’t help but wonder.
For clarity, just in case I’ve been muddy in my words (and I’m ignoring Marius’s note about industrial strength language), I think this is fucking outrageous that he’s been stopped. I’m disgusted by the whole thing, for many reasons, some rational but many emotional.
(Paul, my very broad view on regulations is that in many cases they serve the purpose above – to discourage people from doing stuff, or legally prevent them from doing stuff, and act as a de facto barrier to entry, thus concentrating power/market share in an ever smaller amount of companies. So they do have a “purpose”, in that sense, even if they might have been intended and drafted in good faith)
Further – I got curious about the legalities of cleaning a gravestone that you own yourself, as I couldn’t quite wrap my head round whether it would be okay for the lady with cancer to clean the gravestone (which I assumed it was), and why her asking someone else – our young lad – to do it for her. Here is a link to the first relevant site I found (it’s not the same area, but I guess the same applies)
Apparently, it’s not as cut and dried as I thought. My assumption that one can clean their own gravestone (or, their relatives’ that they paid for, to be more precise – excepting some supernatural occurrences of the vampiric variety, I guess one isn’t cleaning their literal own gravestone) may well have been incorrect; some cemeteries apparently do insist that you have to use a professional (FWIW, it actually says that one shouldn’t use a wire brush)
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bobby b:
“Next we’d have rebels filling in potholes on their own. That is no way to rule over a populace.”
Which is precisely what happened round my way during the early days of lockdown (possibly I mentioned this before and that’s why you chose that example?)
Coupla blokes with the know-how, equipment and the relevant materials went round filling in pot-holes – I don’t recall the details, but I don’t believe they were paid in any way; I’ve a vague recollection that they were just bored and decided to “do some good” while they didn’t have much else to do with their time, and didn’t bother asking for permission, they just did it – something I thoroughly approve of!
Philip Scott Thomas – there were good, logical, reasons why New York and Chicago became important economically.
The trouble is – these good logical reasons, this economic foundation, no longer applies.
These places are going to collapse.
The left establishment will blame “Trump” – but it will be naught to do with him.