Email received earlier this week:
I have just paid a fixed penalty notice of £50 for littering, by dropping a cigarette end, outside Waterloo station last Thursday.
Unbeknown to me, a group of about ten civil enforcement officers were targetting people coming off trains and smoking by the bicycle racks outside the station.
Whenever I've done this before, there has always been a litter bin placed there, which I and most smokers use. It wasn't there last Thursday.
When I phoned Lambeth Council to pay the fixed penalty I was told that about 90 tickets had been issued that day at that location.
When I queried the unusual lack of a litter bin, I was told that the bins in the vicinity are often removed when a group of CEOs are performing an operation like this.
If this is true there's a word for such behaviour – entrapment.