The event started in the early 1800s and sees competitors chasing the massive 1ft diameter cheese down the 200-yard Cooper\’s Hill near Brockworth, Gloucestershire, as they race to reach the bottom first.
Farmer Diana Smart, 86, has been making her handmade cheese for the downhill run for a quarter of a century and it is something, she said, that brought her \’such joy\’.
This year, however, Mrs Smart, who has provided the large piece of cheese since 1988, has now been warned off doing so after a visit by police.
Three officers visited her farm and told her not to donate five 8lb wheels of her cheese in a bid to prevent the \”dangerous\” event.
Mrs Smart said the \”heavy handed\” police visited her home last week and told in a \”threatening\” manner she would be responsible for any injuries caused – and so has pulled out.
Death is the only solution here. Up against the wall, a final cigarette and bang.
Rule Britannia
Shan’t do my fly up today. Dangerous, innit? Might get something caught in the zip.
Don’t they see how stupid this is?
True, I shan’t be running down the slope, but I’ll enjoy watching on yourtubes or whatever.
My 15 year-olds come home covered in bumps, scratches, sprained ankles and stuff. Try telling them no skateboarding or longboarding or football!!!
I’m struggling to work out on what criminal legal analysis they’d try to feel her collar. Conspiracy to commit GBH?
I’d like to see her defy them in order to see what happens. A court case in which an 86 year old woman is being prosecuted for making a large piece of cheese would be hilarious.
(I suspect that the answer would be that nothing would happen, because I cannot imagine even British prosecutors inviting quite that level of ridicule).
Following on from Ed Lud, I too am wondering exactly which power we gave the police that entitles them to do this.
A cigarette before shooting them? They’re H&S so probably have lived nicotine-, fat-, sugar- and joy-deprived lives. A cigar, pork crackling and fudge to show them what they’ve missed.
No need to waste bullets.
The three stooges who called, whoever sent ’em–inside the coppers or from the council/’ealth & safety–whoever-all sacked without compensation and their pensions confiscated.
That’ll do the job.
Yes, giving someone a roll of cheese forces them to run down a hillside. It would be the trial of the century.
However, they wouldn’t get her that way. Instead, they would inspect her operation in numbers and in minute detail, find the tiniest infraction which will inevitably exist, and shut her down.
There are now so many laws and regulations that we are all constantly and unconsciously breaking them. When everyone is a criminal, who to prosecute becomes wholly political.
Just checking, but this is the same police that continually whine about how they are overworked and underpaid and it’s ‘insulting’ that Teresa May tells them they should only concentrate on crime, yes?
And who regularly produce scolding PR pieces on misuse of the emergency number?
Remember, fellow travellers, that the police send three goons to threaten an 86 year old cheese seller but provided a guard of honour for Islamists to piss all over the flag at the Cenotaph.
In unrelated news, the police puzzle why citizens don’t respect the police any more.
Fuckwits.
It’s as easy to chase a car tyre, so it’s not exactly going to stop the event going ahead, is it. They can even paint it cheese coloured.
Which makes it all the more fuckwitted.
Tim, as you’re from Bath, are you talking about putting the Police up against a wall or the one-eyed yokels from Gloucester?
Luckily, there are no unsolved crimes in Gloucestershire for them to worry about.
By the way, Glospol say only one copper went, so someone is lying. (http://www.gloucestershire.police.uk/Latest%20News/Press%20Releases/2013/May/item34868.html) It would be interesting to know who.
The statement I link to is bizarre: what (criminal) legal liabilities are they on about, and if it’s civil what the fuck has it to do with them?
Anyway, I shall be at the cheese rolling, though not competing, and will report back.
So long as no one works with Gloucester council’s Safety Advisory Group people will get hassled in this manner.
It’s that spirit of the law thing again. I don’t think they must give notice (though Gloucester Police claim otherwise) but the Police and council would appreciate it if they did have notice. Except, what starts of as being just giving notice so that authorities know what to expect becomes ‘do this or we won’t support it’ – such as security fencing, stewards and charging admission fees.
From the link provided by Interested:
“People First Policing”
WTF does that mean? And how much id they pay for it to be contrived and then slapped all over the place?
I’ve run the police statement though babelfish, and it translates as ‘nice cheese shop you have here madam, it’d be a shame if anything happened to it’
Interested>
“what (criminal) legal liabilities are they on about”
Is there potentially a charge of manslaughter if someone dies and the ‘organisers’ were held to have been negligent/reckless? It’s far from clear that an event like this actually has any clear organisers, but that would be a defence to be tested in court.
I think one can also be charged with battery (and so more serious variants) on the basis of recklessness.
So I’m not sure, but I suspect there are potential criminal charges that might apply. Whether it’s in the public interest to pursue those charges is another matter.
Isn’t that an illegal restraint of trade?
They don’t have the legal authority to do what they are doing. And when the police do that, they should face a premium penalty.
@Dave – No.
Manslaughter is not an easy thing to run, and the idea that the CPS, stupid as they are, would even countenance charging an 86-year-old woman with it because she made the cheese that rolled down the hill that some unfortunate chased, and thus broke his neck, is laughable. It wouldn’t even be believeable as a plotline in a sitcom.
What this is really all about is police overreach, and some idiot of an inspector in some neighbourhood or communities department trying to gain some gold stars on his PDR for the purposes of promotion.
TTG @15
wins teh thread
Interested>
I completely agree with you – note my last sentence – but that doesn’t mean the police were wrong on the legal situation. There can certainly be criminal charges against the organisers of an event, whether or not these people count as organisers or would be charged over this event.
Dave, Interested, it’d have to be Conspiracy to Commit Manslaughter, as far as the old girl is concerned – and averred on a gross negligence basis (I may be a little out of date with that latter piece of terminology, and too lazy to look it up). Or, as I wrote above, Conspiracy to Commit GBH. Or ABH, come to that.
I suspect there’s also some more or less obscurepiece of strict liability rregulatory codswallop which she could face, eg. Failing adequately to ensure produce is not consumed to the consumer’s detriment. Don’t ask me, I gag noisily whenever I read that kind of thing.
As to charging an 86 year old and the CPS’ finer feelings, I was once instructed to prosecute a man of similar age and previous good character for the sin of saying nasty racist things to a delicate petal of a plod, when he’d had a bit too much cooking sherry, and plod had been slow to show up in response to his complaints of harassment from da yoof (which shared plod’s race). The old codger was nicked, da yoof pedalled awf.
I’m pleased to report that the jury kicked that prosecution out in nothing flat.
Methinks that the media are spinning this somewhat.
@thespecialone: So the police didn’t take time out from dealing with criminal matters to ‘advise’ a private business that was in no way breaking the criminal law about their potential liability under civil law? What business is it of the police to get involved in civil matters? Can I expect them to be prepared to get involved if I am involved in civil litigation? Will I be able to get them to ‘lean’ on my opponent? Whose palm at ACPO do I have to grease to get that to happen? Or is it just the case of one Common Purpose parachutee at the local council having a ‘word’ with another in the local police force?
@thespecialone – if the special part of your name means you’re a special police officer, you do know that the regulars hate you? Plus, read the statement from Glospol. (If it’s because you have special needs, apologies.)
@Ed Lud
It is gross negligence invol manslaughter still, yes. Absolutely no way you can conspire to commit manslaughter by gross negligence. You can very technically conspire to commit manslaughter but not in these circs. Literally no way the CPS would wear it. Not least as I’m sure you know because of CPS targets. I guess your 86 year old was a v long time ago!
Interested – “Absolutely no way you can conspire to commit manslaughter by gross negligence. You can very technically conspire to commit manslaughter but not in these circs.”
Really? I and a mate come up with a scheme to use some landmines he happens to have in his possession. Against dogs who sh!t in the local park. So he sneaks in and plant a few, but does not put up any signs warning people. Which I forgot to bring when I drive him to the park. I do not plant the mines, I do not even go into the park. Some old codger walking his lurcher discovers one the hard way. What crime has been committed?
“Literally no way the CPS would wear it. Not least as I’m sure you know because of CPS targets. I guess your 86 year old was a v long time ago!”
But then Nick Griffin was arrested and jail for incitement to racial hatred. Specifically he was jailed for saying gangs of Muslim men were grooming and raping White girls.
Personally I never thought anyone would be jailed and tried for telling the truth in my life time, but they have. So nothing surprises me anymore.
@SMFS you would have committed manslaughter, rather obviously, not conspiracy. Plus a range of other non inchoate offences.
Nick Griffin broke the law. It’s not yet an offence to supply cheese.
Ed Lud was making an interesting technical legal point – you’re just drooling over your keyboard again 🙂
Interested, the old geezer I prosecuted was about three years ago. On balance, I’m inclined to agree with you that the CPS wouldn’t wear it. But only by a hair’s breadth.
Edward, as a matter of interest, given your libertarian attitudes as posted elsewhere, why didn’t you have something else on on that day?
By the way, the cheese rolling was excellent. One of the winners was a guy who’d travelled over specially from the States.