Nail it down or lose it!
Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:02 pm
Just come back from holiday. Next door have a skip full of junk in their front garden. I just happened to look out as a big Merc Sprinter bumped up the kerb. Out got 3 Ukranians, and started skip-diving. Then one of them came into my garden, picked up the old radiator and rear springs from behind my Moggy (hidden from view from the road), and went to load them into the van. On being approached, they looked all innocent and said "scrap??" I politely-ish assured them it wasn't, re-gained my property, took their number and went to the Police station. The local patrol found and stopped the van. Turns out they claim to be registered scrap dealers from Surrey(about 80 miles away!) and they spend their days cruising the Home Counties taking the view that if they saw something that looked like scrap, then it was! Police said there were numerous complaints about them. but nothing technically they could do to stop this practise, though in mitigation, the people said they were going to load up the van, then knock and check that it was OK to take it before driving away, so maybe, just maybe I had jumped the gun...! I suppose if they hadn't got a response by knocking on my door to "check", they would have put the items back where they were!
