(Locally, we’ve had Tories stealing personally addressed hand-delivered literature and dropping it in local mailboxes… meaning that the recipients receive their opponents’ literature postage due. Perhaps great legals minds could cast a ruling on that one.)

In any case, a lot of what we were delivering this weekend WAS addressed.

how do you send the URL to google and internet archive, will keep my eyes open!

I doubt that last bit is correct in law. There are specific provisions about addressed mail but theft doesn’t depend on the property being clearly identified.

Did he/she say why not? Theft = dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intent to permanently deprive.

In any case they can’t have been advising on a specific set of facts. The tricky bit as regards theft in this situation is the mens rea of dishonesty. However that seems to be present here as they have admitted they were stealing.

That would seem to suggest that they didn’t believe their actions were in accordance with the standards of ordinary people which is the relevant part of the legal test for dishonesty.

It is also potentially a specific electoral offence – s115 RPA.

It’s probably true that activists from all parties do do this sort of thing, but to actively shout about it in a way that makes it look as if you’re proud of doing it is a little OTT.

But agree with the point that they should be pushed completely through the door, not a problem then.

Why are forest trees so tall? Simply to overtop rival trees. A “sensible” utility function would see to it that they were all short. They would get exactly the same amount of sunlight, with far less expenditure on thick trunks and massive supporting buttresses. But if they were all short, natural selection couldn’t help favouring a variant individual that grew a little taller. The ante having been upped, others would have to follow suit. Nothing can stop the whole game escalating until all trees are ludicrously and wastefully tall. . . . Homely analogies abound. At a cocktail party, you shout yourself hoarse. The reason is that everybody else is shouting at top volume. If only the guests could come to an agreement to whisper, they’d hear one another exactly as well with less voice strain and less expenditure of energy. But agreements like that don’t work unless they are policed. Somebody always spoils it by selfishly talking a bit louder, and, one by one, everybody has to follow suit. A stable equilibrium is reached only when everybody is shouting as loudly as physically possible, and this is much louder than required from a “rational” point of view. Time and again, cooperative restraint is thwarted by its own internal instability.