Local councils are strapped for cash, that is clear. But issuing fixed-penalty notices for things like this is not the answer
When I was a 16-year-old, in the late 1980s, another boy stubbed out his cigarette on my steel-toe Doc Martens on Haven Green in Ealing, west London. He belonged to some kind of gang, so there was nothing I could do about it, much as I would have loved to have lodged my new shoe in his gob.
The other week I found myself unexpectedly in the same place, subject to a different but equally searing injustice: I was fined £150 for feeding pigeons. This time, the man meting out injustice was a private enforcer for the local council.
Peyvand Khorsandi is a journalist based in Rome and London
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