Arrested for writing in snow!

Another civil liberties horror story, this time from The Daily Record;

A GRANDAD was arrested by police - for drawing a protest message in the snow. Geoff Lamb, 65, yesterday told how he was handcuffed, spent a night in the cells and had his car impounded.

It happened after police found him drawing a four-foot high slogan on a hill. The 100-foot-long message was on the flight path into Aberdeen airport so that it could be read by passengers.

The message read: "You fly, they die."

It was written by Geoff using a garden pressure hose and was meant to be a protest against climate change. But police arrested Geoff and a woman friend, aged 26. Geoff accused officers of heavy-handed treatment.

He said: "As far as I knew, there was no law against writing messages in the snow. What next? Are they going to start arresting people for building snowmen?"

The retired petrol engineer told how officers swooped as he wrote the message last week.

He said: "We wanted to let people flying to Aberdeen know that they are contributing to global warming - but in a funny way. But just as I was finishing the message, the police turned up. Even though we were well away from the airport, they said we couldn't write messages in the snow."

Geoff, of Bield side, Aberdeen, said: "We were put in handcuffs, arrested and taken to the police station. We were kept overnight and had our mobiles taken away. I had my car impounded and it cost me £150 to get it out again. We were charged with breach of the peace but I'm not sure why.

"I've now received a letter from the procurator fiscal saying the charges have been dropped. I should think so as well. This was ridiculous."

A spokeswoman for protest group Plane Speaking said: "I would have thought the police had better things to do with their time than arrest people for playing in the snow. This was a complete waste of police resources and a total over-reaction to what was just aprank."

Police insisted they were right to take action.