The Jack-Booted Thug of the Week, International Edition...

... is the unnamed (As always tends to happen in these cases, it seems. Why are these thuggish martinets constantly given such courtesies by the media, in spite of the fact that those same "authorities" proudly affix their names to these supposedly "public" summonses?) Queensland, Australia police officer who gave a cab driver there a $100 ticket because the cabbie's socks weren't pulled up enough to satisfy the apparently rule-obsessed cop:

"The Courier-Mail yesterday obtained the ticket issued last month to taxi driver Kidd Moors in which the officer claimed the offence was: 'Failed to dress neatly'. He identified the evidence as 'WHT/runners, short running socks'."

(It's a crime for an Australian taxi driver to show a little ankle? The horrors! How do the cops even manage to figure out who's in compliance? Is there some sort of officially mandated checkpoint where such a sock inspection takes place?)

Why did this particular nit-picky ticket get issued? Just because the "authority" could, according to the cabbie, although part of the answer also appears to be revenue generation for the local government, based on some of the other asinine tickets they've been handing out lately Down Under:

"The driver advocate said a recent government blitz on Brisbane drivers resulted in cabbies copping $400 fines for not having a 2009 version of a street directory, or for allowing a car's window tinting to peel."

We're sure the peasants of that city will feel much safer going about their daily lives once they find out exactly how their scarce police resources are being wasted utilized.

More to the point, why is there an officially imposed-and-enforced by police dress code for Queensland private cab companies in the first place?