Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Persistent and pantless

Cover up or face life in jail, naked rambler is warned - Crime, UK - The Independent

Naked rambler Stephen Gough has been warned he faces spending the rest of his life in prison if he continues to refuse to wear clothes in public.

The former Royal Marine, a veteran of two “boots-only” hikes from Land’s End to John O’Groats, has spent most of the last four years in solitary confinement in Scottish jails after stripping off on a flight to Edinburgh. Since then he has declined to wear prison uniform or to appear clothed in court resulting in further custodial sentences for contempt.

This week he was found guilty of causing a breach of the peace following his arrest as he left Perth prison in December where he had just finished serving a 12-month sentence for the same offence. On that and a previous occasion police have been waiting to re-arrest him at the prison gates.

This all started from his attempts to walk nude across England:
Mr Gough completed his first naked ramble across Britain in 2003 during which he was arrested 15 times and spent 140 nights in jail, mainly in Scotland where the authorities hold a dimmer view of public nudity than in England and Wales. He finished his second hike with his then girlfriend Melanie Roberts three years later.
I don't know. If his problem is just that he wants to walk nude in the countryside, and his actions are all a protest about that, is it worth the effort to imprison him? If, however, he also was dropping into the corner shop nude to buy a bottle of milk, well I can see how that's a problem people shouldn't have to live with.

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