A Silly Story... But Maybe Not So Silly

A guy has been found guilty of a crime. What crime I hear you ask? Murder? Rape? Theft?

Nope... he tried to have sex with his bicycle.

Jesus Christ, I hear you exclaim after you finished laughing, why would someone do that, especially in public?

Well actually he was in a locked hostel room. The cleaners used a master key to get into the room and then the manager of the hostel called the police when they reported what they had seen to him.

My first thought was... why on Earth would someone call the police over an incident like this? Sure I'd have thought the manager might have thrown the guy out for upsetting his staff. But the police? If I encountered someone privately having sex with an inanimate object, calling the police wouldn't even cross my mind, unless they were doing it in a public place with no respect for those who might see them. Would the manager have called the police if it was a woman in bed with a vibrator?

And then my second thought... why did the police arrest him rather than simply move him along with an embarrassed smirk? Surely they have better things to do than protect a mans bike from inappropriate sexual attention.

And then I saw the punishment... three years on the sex offenders register! Why?? Are they scared he might start making love to other peoples bicycles? Perhaps they are worried this is an entry level sexual crime... next thing you know he might be doing cars! BUSES! Don't let this guy near one of those vacuuming street cleaners.

All in all an embarrassing, if quite amusing, incident has come to cost us, the taxpayer, money for the arrest and prosecution of a man whose actions, while stupid and bizarre, weren't going to harm anyone else.

Trust me if doing stupid and bizarre stuff that might embarrass (but not significantly harm) others is now illegal then I've got a whole list of customers I'd love to turn in to the law. And it's a very long list. I may need a whole courtroom set aside for the prosecutions for the next few years.