To strive, to seek, to find…

This is crying out to be made into a hard-hitting, occasionally lightened by humorous comic moments, documentary. Or a really boring Bond film:

Council uses criminal law to spy on school place applicants

· Couple’s anger over surveillance admission
· Officials accused of playing James Bond

The authority said it had used such “physical surveillance” on six occasions under RIPA, which allows councils to carry out surveillance only if they suspect serious crimes, including terrorism.

A council yesterday admitted using laws designed to track serious criminals to spy on a family for nearly three weeks to find out if they were lying about living in a school catchment area.

The family are angry after Poole borough council, in Dorset, revealed it had followed them and watched them at home to check whether they lived in the correct area for one of their three children, a three-year-old girl, to be accepted at a local school.

From The Guardian

I thought London was supposed to be bad for catchment area fiddling. We’ve got nothing on the West Country here, nothing.