Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
Reading through the responses last week to the news that DWP officials have been questioning motorists, it seems apparent that many of you are not entirely au fait with some of the powers these people have.
I’m no expert myself, but I have by chance learned a few things over the years.
More powers than the police
I can still remember vividly the shock I felt when a young – mid twenties – chap showed me his DHSS warrant card and assured me, with great smugness that he had more powers to interfere in peoples’ lives than did the police.
As an example he pointed out that the police, however much they suspected someone of wrong-doing, could only enter and search private premises after convincing a local magistrate to issue them with a warrant.
Whereas he could enter and search such premises whenever he felt he had cause, with no need to seek anyone’s permission.
Stopped for no good reason?
Coming now to the ‘stop and search’ episode – it seems it was not the DWP snoops who did the stopping but the police. For no good reason apparently.
But having been stopped there was nothing illegal about the snoops approaching the motorists and their passengers and asking their questions. Of course those with nothing to hide could – and I certainly hope did – tell them where to go.
But anyone in receipt of any sort of government money will have felt an instant spasm of fear. Whether innocent of wrongdoing or not.
Power to stop payments
For the snoops have an even greater power than the right to search private homes at will. And that is the simple threat, “As I am not satisfied with your replies to my enquiries, I am stopping your payments as of now.”
In a word, these anonymous individuals can as easily as that threaten to deprive you and your family with the loss of food on your table and of the very roof you shelter under.
“If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to fear”
This is the point, of course, where the complacent fools of our society – along with the blatantly fascist mind sets of the putzes – will pronounce that if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to fear.
It’s doubtless what the citizens of Nazi Germany and of Russia said when they saw someone else being stopped in the street by some unidentified individual.
The criminal fraudsters too smart to be caught
But of course it is precisely the innocent, who stammer over their responses, and those who have been tempted to digress from the straight and narrow by the chance to earn a little extra for Christmas, who will fall into the net.
Not the truly criminal fraudster. They’re much too smart to be caught out by such pathetic midgets.
