2005 Was a busy year for ASBOs in the UK.
Anto-social behaviour orders, those legal tools to bring the problem youth into line, are popular, 5500 of them issued so far.
Like this one:
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott praised Bluewater shopping centre's decision to ban "intimidating" baseball caps and hooded tops.
Hold on! Baseballcaps???
I thought it would be something more like this:
A highly regarded pirate DJ was brought down to earth - quite literally - by an Asbo aimed at curbing his rooftop broadcasts.
Having admitted operating a pirate radio station and causing £10,000 worth of damage by erecting a radio transmitter, the garage music supremo was handed a three-year conditional discharge.
Cartoon of speakers in a window
More significantly for his career, Tower Hamlets council persuaded magistrates to ban him from entering any building in the borough more than four storeys tall for five years.
A passion for music also landed one hard of hearing Ozzy Osbourne fan in trouble after played his favourite heavy metal tunes just a bit louder than the neighbours liked.
The floorboards were shaking, residents of his estate said. And it was only 9am.
But the excessive volume was not entirely the ageing rocker's fault, his lawyer argued. For one thing, his hearing aid had been broken during an assault and he did not have the £190 needed to replace it.
Not only that, but: "The windows were open, the washing machine was on and there was someone from the council cutting the grass outside."
Unmoved by the struggle to get his Black Sabbath fix, the court ruled it was a breach of an Asbo for previous noise pollution and a three month jail sentence was his.
Or this teenager, who's been banned from the street where he lives:
(slightly strange, but true)
The walk home got a little bit longer for one angry young man, who was banned from being anywhere in his street for four years.
While the 17-year-old is still allowed to live at his house in south Wales he can only come and go via a back alley.
His Asbo was imposed after magistrates heard he harassed his neighbours, attacked homes, shouted obscenities and had to be subdued by police with CS gas.
The prosecution said the youth, who did not contest the order, needed to be kept away from fellow residents, so they could "live their lives freely".
But are they all issued to teenagers?
Seems not:
In East Kilbride a 27-year-old lacking the decorum expected of her by neighbours was banned from answering the front door in her underwear.
The woman, who argued that she had merely done the gardening in an Ann Summers bikini one hot day, also faced the threat of jail if seen in the yard or at her windows in just knickers and a bra.
Would this be anti-social in anywhere else apart fromthe UK?
And some are definately old enough to know better:
And down on the Sussex coast summer just won't be as much fun for one ageing Eastbourne resident - who was ordered to cover up properly when sunbathing.
It was the complaints about his penchant for wearing nothing but a see-through, heart-shaped ladies' thong while enjoying the beach in fine weather that did it.
"This was a grotesque spectacle of an ageing exhibitionist. It's not clever," the judge warned him.
And a builder deemed anti-social. Not just for being a builder though:
It was when the hot water failed that the trouble started for prolific Scilly Isles knicker-thief Andrew Stephan.
Hunting for leaky pipes, his ex-wife's new partner stumbled upon the sizable stash of pilfered women's underwear, sex toys and photographs that the builder left behind when he moved out of the family home.
Police on the remote islands had to ask female residents to come forward to identify their "particularly personal items". It did not go down well.
Stephan was handed 150 hours of community service and an Asbo banning him from the islands until 2012. The ban was later reduced to two years.
The ban at the end of this seems a bit harsh to me:
(I'd consider leaving the country)
A man with a fetish for surgical masks was jailed for three years and handed an Asbo to stop him hounding medical staff.
Described as a "menace" by a judge at Leeds Crown Court, Norman Hutchins, 53, of York, would tell staff he needed the masks for amateur dramatics or charity events.
Hutchins, who pleaded guilty to obtaining property by deception, using threatening and abusive behaviour and possessing a knife, was said to have verbally and physically abused NHS staff 47 times in five months.
On his release from jail, Hutchins will have to abide by an Asbo banning him from all NHS premises, primary care trusts and private medical establishments in England and Wales.
And last, but by no means least comes one, where the ASBO for once lived up to it's name.
An anti-social behaviour order if you've ever seen one:
It was when the 15-year-old miscreant was hauled into court that the problem was first noticed.
Angered by his unruly, boozed-up behaviour, police had hoped magistrates would punish the youth for breaching his Asbo. He hadn't.
Closer examination revealed that he had mistakenly been ordered not to be in public "without" alcohol and that he was also duty bound to act in a threatening manner likely to cause harassment, alarm and distress to others.
After the boy escaped punishment as a result of the misprint, the officials behind the mistake were asked to deliver a new Asbo with more appropriate wording, the Daily Mirror reported.
Source -BBC
So what do you guys think?
Do you prefer the ASBOs or do you yearn back to the days when the old ladies of the neighbouhood kept an eye on everybody and you knew you'd be at the receiving end of your dad's belt, if you didn't behave yourself?
