Crown Prosecution Service claims there is 'significant public interest' in prosecuting men arrested for taking discarded food.
![Paul May and fellow defendants will appear before magistrates charged with stealing food from a bin]()
Paul May and his two fellow defendants will appear before magistrates charged under an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
A man will stand trial next month after being caught taking some tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese from the dustbins behind a branch of Iceland.
It is expected Paul May, a freelance web designer, will argue that he was taking the food because he needed it to eat and does not consider he has done anything illegal or dishonest in removing food destined for landfill from a skip.
The case will require magistrates to scrutinise the phenomenon of "skipping"– taking discarded supermarket waste to cook and eat, and will highlight the issue of how much supermarket food is discarded, despite long campaigns to reduce the waste. It will also focus attention on a group of people taking radical steps to feed themselves as they struggle with the rising cost of living in London.
May, 35, along with Jason Chan and William James, all residents of a squat in north London, were arrested on 25 October, just before midnight, after a member of the public called the police to report three men climbing over a wall at the back of Iceland in Kentish Town .
Police arrested the men as they left the area with a holdall and trolley containing food. The total value of the items taken allegedly amounted to £33 and they were of low value, consisting of tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese and Mr Kipling cakes.
Initially arrested for burglary, the three men were charged under an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, after being discovered in "an enclosed area, namely Iceland, for an unlawful purpose, namely stealing food".
Police returned the items to the Iceland store. The men were held in a police cell for 19 hours before being released, May said.
Lawyers for the three men have asked the Crown Prosecution Service to consider dropping the case, but the CPS responded this month that the case would go ahead, because "we feel there is significant public interest in prosecuting these three individuals".
This is what David Cameron has reduced some people of England to do,he's reduced benefits and forced tenants out of their homes because of the bedroom tax. This Conservative government is the worst that has ever been, and they wern't even elected, they had to form a coalition with another set of robbing bastards which are the Lib/Dems. Multi millionaires Cameron and Clegg have turned Great Britain in to a hell hole, they have turned their backs on the English people in favour of the Muslims.
All the Muslim immigrants who the Labour party brought over and which was carried on by Cameron and Clegg when they took power, made it right that they should be given houses or flats, which were fully furnished, with new flat screen TV's, a land line phone which the local council pays for, and they are each given a mobile phone which all bills are paid for, all their gas and electric is paid for and they even get their shopping paid for.
While all this is going on, the English indigenous people are being evicted from their homes because they can't afford the rent, people are dying because of the bedroom tax, and at the same time their benefits are being cut, and they are even taking it out on the disabled, by taking the sick off disability, knowing there will be deaths, and there has been, but Cameron and Clegg don't care less.
How are people to live with what's being done to them, people are having to do what they would never have ever dreamed of, and that is lowering themselves to search the skips for food at the back of Iceland, they are searching for food that has been thrown out, which has passed their sell by date and is no use. So the people who have nothing because of Cameron, have no other choice but to search the skips or starve, and if that's not bad enough, they are arrested and charged. Cameron is a F*****G joke and the only way to deal with a slime ball like him is to rebel against the government and bring them down. Our own people are starving while these no good lowlife Muslims are living in luxury, thanks to the government, something needs to be done, because the next person visiting the skips for food,could just well be you.