Laugh 0r Cry

Guy Taylor, now 45, enquired what data the police held on him, as he is entitled to under the data protection act.

He was (and is) a political activist and he discovered, probably to his delight, that the police had been seriously interested in the stall he helped to set up at the Glastonbury Festival in 2009 and that a police spy reported that this stall "was selling political publications and merchandise of an XLW (extremely left wing) anti-capitalist nature."

Good on them, say I. Anyone who hadn't turned anti-capitalist by 2009 can't have been reading the newspapers.

Mr. Taylor deserves the last word:

"I can't understand what use information about what I did at Glastonbury has for the Metropolitan police. If they need to know the plans and schemes of anti-capitalists, the worst place to look is Glastonbury as we were rarely in a fit state to plan the downfall of a parish council, let alone the world financial system as we know it."

Mr. Taylor has one conviction, for spray painting in 1991, when he must have been about 15 years old.

His attendance at political demonstrations and at Glastonbury has been monitored ever since.

(Guardian, 16 July 2012)