A man has been fined for failing to take a picture of the rubbish he picked up on a beach and post it on social media.
The man, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of recriminations, has been fined £1,500 after forgetting to take a photo of a piece of plastic left on the beach at St Ouen, on the former holiday island of Jersey.
Last night the man, who has previous for failing to post a picture of his starter on a night out in the island’s capital St Helier, told The Rochdale Herald that he fears a backlash, public recrimination and potential deletion from people he never spoke to at school’s friends list.
He explained that he was out for his regular evening stroll along the sea front when he spotted the empty Marks and Spencer still water bottle lying at a near 90 degree angle on a clump of seaweed, just above the highwater mark. He decided to honour his civic responsibility by picking up the offending article and placing it discretely in the bin in the nearby car park.
Timothy Whithers, a local finance worker, who moved to the island from the City of London in 2016, and who was first to report the offender to the local Honorary Police, spoke to the Herald direct by satellite phone whilst slumped back in his French ticking deckchair, next to his duck-egg bucket BBQ outside his £59,000 motor-home, which he’d parked sideways across three parking spaces overlooking the beach.
Whithers squeaked “we don’t create such grandiose opportunities by leaving our BBQ left-overs, cans, tinfoil, and bottles lying around just so some arrogant so and so can discreetly dispose of them without telling the world about it”, adding, “there can be no excuse for such non-pretentious behaviour and is not what I expected when I moved to the island; just moments early I even witnessed him taking a sunset photo with his phone, so I know there was no excuses”.
A spokesman for Facebook, who were tracking the man’s every movement at the time, refused to provide comment on the specific offence but did confirm that they have suspended a man’s account in the Channel Islands area for 48 hours for breaching expected usage guidelines on the social media platform.
The fine will be taken direct as they already have his bank account log in details stored in the cloud.
