{"id":551,"date":"2006-02-25T15:19:59","date_gmt":"2006-02-25T14:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2006\/02\/25\/green_light_for_abuse_of_power"},"modified":"2025-10-10T22:03:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T21:03:28","slug":"green_light_for_abuse_of_power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2006\/02\/25\/green_light_for_abuse_of_power","title":{"rendered":"Green light for abuse of power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the Guardian today, Jenni Russell has a column describing the danger you are in when you argue with a petty &quot;public service&quot; jobsworth:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nOne of them aggressively thrust a BAA [British Airports Authority] complaints leaflet into my hand, saying: &quot;If you&#39;re so worried about it, you can fill in that form.&quot; I said that all I was interested in was the situation now. &quot;There&#39;s no point talking to BAA because they won&#39;t do anything anyway,&quot; the younger one said. I said that was appalling, and could I take his name because I would raise it with BAA. No, he said, as he and his colleague immediately covered up their name badges.<br \/>\n&quot;Look,&quot; I said, exasperated, raising my voice. &quot;The sign behind you says you&#39;re here to help customers; why are you being so unhelpful?&quot; &quot;Right,&quot; said the older man, gleefully. &quot;You&#39;re being threatening. I&#39;m calling the police.&quot;<br \/>\nWithin minutes, to my shock, two policemen were at my side. They were grave. One was suspicious; the other, eventually, sympathetic. But I was left, just as the BA [British Airways] staff had intended, feeling intimidated and powerless.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/comment\/story\/0,,1717661,00.html\">We are giving the authorities an open invitation to abuse their power<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Guardian today, Jenni Russell has a column describing the danger you are in when you argue with a petty &quot;public service&quot; jobsworth: One of them aggressively thrust a BAA [British Airports Authority]&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil_liberties"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-8T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42565,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions\/42565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}