This Country Needs More Daffodil Police

You will notice that the little girl pictured here is a) in a park and b) skipping merrily through the daffodils. Being a well-brought-up type she is not c) pulling up daffodils just for fun. She is not, that is to say, one of Jane Errington’s children.

Miss Errington, a resident of Poole, is most aggrieved that her children – aged four, six and ten – were cautioned by police and warned that destroying daffodils in a public park could be construed as criminal damage and, were said flowers then removed from the park, theft. The Daily Mail uses the story to have a go at the Peelers who, we are meant to presume, should be doing more important things than policing this kind of juvenile vandalism. I must say that it’s odd to see the Mail so relaxed about this sort of anti-social behaviour.

And it is anti-social behaviour as well as being an obvious commons issue.