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Environmental campaigner Rachel Whittaker got a shock when she was told to stop handing out leaflets in Telford Town Park - and all because she hadn’t undergone a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check.
The 34-year-old had been wearing a penguin suit when she was told to stop protesting because she hadn’t been fully checked.
A few days later, however, she returned to defy the ban. Find out what happened with our exclusive video.
5 Comments
”One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws…An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Good on Rachel, but I wonder if all the supporters and well wishers will chip in and pay her legal fees when the Council bring the inevitable “jobs-worth” leagal action against her?
Rachel, you seem to think that your desire to prance around dressed as a penguin trumps considerations of child protection. It doesn’t. You are 34, not 14. Grow up.
That’s ok rachel be selfish and abuse the system.
Health & Safety is there to PROTECT not UPSET.
I wonder Rachel, if your child (which you obviously don’t) was in the park one day, and there is an “UNKNOWN” indivual handing out leaflets that is not CRB checked, therefore could be a persistant offender, suddenly this person does abduct your child.
I bet you would be first to blame and try and sue the council for not doing enough.
I say “pat on back” to T&W council. it’s good to hear they are putting the safety of our children at there park seriously.
Stop be so self indulged and follow the process like everyone else, you may thank it someday!!!
This is crazy, the leaflets would pinpoint who or what she was representing yet a paedophile could just wonder the park without anything happening.
I would under stand a CRB check if Rachel was interacting with children
Good on you Rachel. The decision to remove you in the first place was completely unfair.
If the council decides it wants to have a CRB check for anybody who wants to interact with anybody else in a public place as she was doing… then don’t we all need a CRB check? Anybody walking through a park could be a potential risk… not just the ones bringing attention to themselves by dressing as a penguin and handing out leaflets… there are better ways of going unnoticed!
If she was specifically handing leaflets to children, then I would agree a CRB check might be justified due to the nature of what she would be doing. BUT she was not. The leaflets were aimed at adults who are more than capable of looking after their own interests should anything happen. Therefore this is not a problem and the use of a CRB check to remove her from the park is unsatisfactory.