The Daily Mail's Richard Littlejohn describes another very unfunny example of how Great Britain's nanny state is morphing into one of the pettiest, most legalistic and most counter-productive cultures imaginable.
I knew the pound has been falling in value, but I didn't realise it was so completely worthless it counted as litter.
Arthritis sufferer Stewart Smith had just left a charity shop when he was called back by two policemen, who pointed to the £10 note and a till receipt lying on the pavement. Stewart thought he'd put the money, part of his change from buying a T-shirt, in his back pocket, but it must have fallen out. Thanking the officers, he retrieved the note and prepared to go about his lawful business. Not so fast, chummy.
The cops informed Stewart he had committed an offence and gave him a £50 fixed-penalty notice for littering...
Stewart, a former warehouse worker who has to live on disability payments because of his arthritis, was stunned. A £50 fine would eat up more than half his weekly benefit.
He tried telling them it was an honest mistake. No one in his position can afford to wander the streets throwing £10 notes away. But the ever-vigilant McPlod were having none of it. Police in Ayr operate a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to littering. Stewart has been told that unless he pays up, he could face further action.
His solicitor is calling for the fine to be rescinded and an apology issued, describing the incident as 'a scandalous use of police resources'. But Strathclyde constabulary is refusing to back down. No doubt the Case of the Felonious Tenner counts as another crime 'solved', another box ticked, another target achieved...
Litter is a disgusting curse on the Great British High Street. Anyone who chucks fast-food detritus in the gutter should be strung up from the nearest lamp-post, with half-eaten KFC chicken legs stuffed in their nostrils.
But nicking someone for accidentally dropping a £10 note is just the latest manifestation of our pettifogging punishment culture. The only surprise is that Stewart Smith was collared by a couple of proper, warrant card-carrying policemen. You don't often stumble across a pair of them on foot patrol.
They're generally too busy whizzing by in panda cars, hiding behind bushes trying to catch motorists doing 54mph in a 50mph zone, gawping at CCTV screens, or lolling round the canteen filling in claims for racial or sexual discrimination...
Everywhere it's the same story of bloody-minded bureaucracy and ridiculous refuse collection regimes designed to inconvenience, infuriate and punish the public, reinforced by fines out of all proportion to the alleged 'crime'.
Meanwhile, in Coventry, school teacher Emma Harper's punishment for complaining about her dustmen was to have them retaliate by blockading her driveway with 15 wheelie bins dragged from all over the manor.
Just as the police have ceased to be citizens in uniform and have morphed into the provisional wing of New Labour, so public 'servants' have got it into their heads that the public's job is to serve them - not vice versa. In their warped view, we are not paying customers, we're all potential criminals.
The officious 'rules is rules' culture is enforced with Stalinist inflexibility and a complete absence of human compassion and common sense, whether it's a pensioner getting ticketed for parking on a single yellow for a couple of minutes while collecting a prescription from the chemist, or a harassed mum omitting to pick up an apple core which her fractious toddler has chucked from its buggy.
No matter if the excuse is elf'n'safety, saving the polar bears or keeping the streets clean, the intention is always to pick our pockets. So you end up with a disabled man being fined £50 for accidentally dropping a tenner. Even if it had been real litter, the sensible course would have been a mild ticking off and an instruction to dispose of it in the nearest bin.
But then again, as this column has always maintained, whenever you give anyone even a modicum of power, especially if it comes with a uniform, they will always, always, always abuse it.
Mind how you go.
