I just want to clear up the leaflet incident that happened at the end of April 12th.

Two PC's (not community support) came over and stated they believed we were leafleting illegally. I explained the political/religious exception, which they felt our protest didn't fall under this clause ("You are protesting againsr something" was the argument)
As such (and since we had run out of leaflets pretty much anyway), we stopped leafleting.

Whether or not they went and spoke with the CoS doorman first is pretty irrelevant, the general consensus on IRC/PM is that they weren't present for the briefing about us and acted accordingly.

We need to be prepared for this in future, so I suggest firing off the email below (subject to review by anon) to PC McCormack and the council representative clarifying this issue for us, then proceeding from there.

Comments/suggestions/criticisms etc

Firstly, I think '76 should be the one to send this, as we know the Police like consistency when dealing with Anon - if he doesn't mnid, of course.

Secondly, do we need to send it to the council rep as well? Surely this is something that can be resolved simply by the Police?

Other than that, the text itself looks good to me.

yea it looks good, and hopefully will clear thing up

I forgot to put in a bit, its just to say we understand the reasoning behind the scheme and would like to point out our clear-up policy, and we'd be willing to extend that to 50 yards from the protest site (thanks Bruce for that info)

Edit: Yes, Anon76 should send this as our designated contact anon, but I do think we should include the council in this as it is the council who legally enforce this, from what I understand of the law (Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, for legalanon)

I advise we set up a brumanon email forwarder / gmail inbox from which mail to the police can be sent from now on. It shows as more professional and can be maintained if a new anon needs to take the helm for police contact.

Excellent email, if we can get confirmation from McCormack, that we are allowed to leaflet, we just need to print it out and keep a copy on hand to show to any other Police, PCSO's or council wardens who take issue with our leafleting.

Ah, right then. In that case, sounds like a good idea to make sure they get a copy.

Put a link to one of the 10 Downing Street petitions at the end of your leaflet:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/StopNarconon/
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/CoSVAT/
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/scientologyno/

Hey presto, your leaflet is now part of a political campaign. I think the tax angle is potentially fruitful as a way of involving people who otherwise wouldn't care, e.g.:

Are you exempt from paying tax? Do you think Scientology should be?
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/CoSVAT/

Using the petitions as our political exception may present problems IMO;
1) The petitions run out in october, removing our political angle
2) Not all the leaflets would be promoting the petitions, indeed the next protest is concentrating on Fair Game, not mentioned in the petitions
3) Similarly, any leaflets not promoting the petitions could be confiscated (IIRC from the law), which is epic fail

I think we email the police/council with the current email, and if they have a problem with it, we then ask about leaflets with the petitions on them. It could be that they would be happy with our track record and cleanup policy.

This.

Methinks it's important to point out their (In my opinion flawed) logic:

"Anti-religious/poticical != religious/ political"

I don't think this is a problem with the police/council, as there were a number of officers who didn't bat an eye to us handing out this stuff, only the two officers at the very end (I'm guessing just after shift change).

Charging em all with this (flawed) logic won't do us any good :)

Email sent. minus the petition links for now, but something we could bear in mind if the response is not a positive one.

We didn't do badly with litter on the last protest. Even without my liberated dustbin bags, the place seemed tidy when I left.

Fingers crossed for a positive response to the e-mail.

I went back past after everyone had gone, it was all tidy. Bins were filled, the rest was all in a neat pile near a bin.

Good job by everyone there!

I was also pleased to see very few of our leaflets dropped as rubbish further on down the street.

We have a had a quick reply from PC McCormack.

As he has previously requested that his emails are not publicly posted on the forums, I shall give the key points.

He says:

1. The officers were correct to inform us of restrictions on leafleting.

2. Leafleting is a licensable activity and requires a permit.

3. He does not know the full rules about exemptions.

4. He suggests that we contact Mahendra Chauhan From Birmingham Council for clarification of the exemptions.

If anyone feels that they need to see the full email, let me know and I will PM it to you.

Mahendra Chauhan was copied into this email so I guess we will need to wait for him to respond as PC McCormack seems to be passing the buck on the issue of exemptions.

So I'd suggest we wait until Monday or Tuesday and if we haven't had a reply from Mahendra Chauhan by then, we should send an email directly to Mahendra Chauhan.

Good-oh :D

This makes sense to me.

Any news yet?

Got an email from Mahendra Chauhan this evening, see below:

So hopefully the licensing section will come back with a favourable answer soon.

I understand B'ham City Council are now on strike until Friday so we are unlikely to hear before then.

...It's like France, jeez.

Vivé La Brum!

Are there any leaflet templates on the internet that we can mass-produce?
Also, how do we get hold of the Anonymous stickers?
I've just bought 100 violet Hello My Name Is stickers. I intend to write Mud on them and sneakily attach them to people, but when that gets boring I'll bring the rest for Anonners.

Anon stickers have been passed on to another Anon as I was (and will be) unable to attend.

Over 9000 xenu.net stickers were given, along with about 400 my name is stickers.

1812 has them nail.

Thanks.

y'harr.

I do indeed.

The free literature consent thingy covers all printed materials, given out in any form (even if we hired a chopper and dropped leaflets over brum it'd still be illegal)

I'm thinking if the council don't get back to us in time, anon turns up with pens so we can write down brumanon.co.uk or xenu.net for people who want to know moar.

Still no further news from the council so I've drafted a follow up email,

Thoughts, comments, suggestions etc...

Nice one 76, I doff my tin hat.

We need printouts of that to say we sent them, email again and cc to yourself. Also get a print of the legislation.

^ THIS.

They should be phoning me back later with regard to clarification on stalls, I also asked them about the leaflets so we should get an answer then.

Still no response from Mahendra Chauhan over the leaflet issue after our follow up email.

This means that if they are unable to give an answer they cannot enforce any leaflet ban on the day, but my biggest fear is that they'll come back to at the last minute with a negative answer as this would not give us any time to appeal the decision.

Continue pestering?

we could just leaflet and if someone stops us and asks who brought the leaflets, shrug and say, "Not sure. He was wearing a mask if that helps!"

:lol:

If they don't get back to us byt tomorrow, I'd err on the side of caution and not distribute leaflets, simply because Mahendra Chauhan may have not forwarded the decision to us, but the council workers would be aware. Fines do not appeal to me.
I think however we can get (sorta) around it by everyone taking an A5 pad and pen, and encourage people to come talk to us and offer to write down some web addresses (xenu.net, brumanon.co.uk etc) for them; although we won't have as much impact, we can still get information to the people who want to know.

I say do it anyway. We handed out leaflets on WC while talking to the police.