This tale will surely be touted as being a triumph of common sense.

A council has apologised to an 88-year-old widow after a street cleaner told her she could be fined for sweeping leaves from her porch.

Betty Davies said the council worker had seen her sweeping the leaves and later knocked on her door in Splott, Cardiff.

Mrs Davies said she was “lost for words” when told she could be fined, but was being let off with a warning.

The council then quickly backtracked, and said that obviously they wouldn’t be fining anybody over sweeping leaves; that would be very silly, wouldn’t it. Thusly common sense triumphed.

Nobody, it seems, is even asking the bigger question: why the feck does a council have the power to fine people for such a heinous ‘crime’? Perhaps it’s a teeny-tiny overstepping of the line of common sense to put such a power into law? Who looked at the number of pressing things that need laws written about them, or existing laws that need enforcing (like, for example, criminal negligence in government and significant bribery in politics) and thought “No, what we really need is to punish those evil bastards who sweep leaves out of their damn gardens.”

Fuckwits, that’s who…