Category Archives: Police

Sorry Plod, you’re on your own

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Plod doesn’t really get it, does he:

Firstly, the reason a lone policewoman is struggling to get the cuffs on a drunk male is because someone decided women could do the job just as well as men and physical standards went out the window. This is what happens when the purpose of an organisation is changed to serve as a vehicle for progressives to enact their deranged fantasies as part of an overall aim of undermining society and the institutions on which it depends.

Secondly, people are reluctant to intervene in such situations because – largely thanks to Plod’s idiocy – the personal risks are too high.

Thirdly, as I said the other day, the public are increasingly seeing the police if not quite aligned against them, then certainly not on their side. Only if you pointed this out to Twitter Plod, they’d close ranks, start issuing threats, cite dubious government surveys which say “the emergency services” are as popular as ever, declare you a problem and “biased against the police” and, finally, block you. I’ve learned not to bother. Proposals like this amuse, though:

Is this going to be reciprocal, do you think? So if an ordinary citizen requests help from the police and they do nothing, Plod gets charged with the same offence? Yeah, sure. But what’s ironic is the police have spend decades creating a monopoly of force by disarming the public and prosecuting anyone who defends themselves, or “takes the law into their hands” as they call it. They are insistent the public should stand well back, or submit to getting their houses burgled or their heads kicked in, until the police show up as only Plod is permitted to deal with such things. Only now we find the police are manifestly incapable of doing half the stuff they’ve claimed a monopoly over and need the public’s help. But it’s not there, and Plod’s on his own. Who’s fault is that, then?

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Public Feedback

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I’ve written several posts expressing my belief that the British police are not on the side of the public, and they are rapidly losing their support. In particular, this:

I think it’s high time British policemen were shunned from polite society, particularly those in the higher ranks, unless they have unequivocally demonstrated whose side they are on. The default approach to a policeman should be that afforded to a bouncer at a Manchester nightclub, someone to be avoided except when absolutely necessary and even then contact kept to an absolute minimum. The day policeman cannot arrest ordinary citizens on trumped-up terror charges and expect to interact with normal society afterwards is the day they will start to change. But while the middle-classes support this stuff and engage with policemen on supposedly equal terms, rather than demand those responsible are fired on the spot, things will only get worse.

I will not ever call for policemen to be lynched by a mob. I would not ever condone policemen being lynched by a mob. But I suspect there will come a point in future where, if I see a mob lynching policemen, I will walk on by having seen nothing. If the police don’t wise up soon and change course, there is even a chance I’ll stop and watch. I doubt I’ll be alone.

Today I found this story:

A police officer has condemned people who cheered a man escaping police after a confrontation which left two officers requiring hospital treatment.

The incident on Romford Road, Newham, east London, was filmed and shared on social media with laughter and shouts of encouragement clearly audible.

Sorry, but if the police make it abundantly clear, day after day, they are not on the public’s side they can hardly complain when the public treats them with contempt.

But Supt Roy Smith described it as a “sad state of affairs”.

This adequately describes British policing in the modern age, particularly their contemptuous attitude towards ordinary, law-abiding citizens.

Supt Smith tweeted it was “disappointing to see members of the public filming this and laughing at the officers”.

I’d say Supt Smith doesn’t know his public very well, then. Too much time on diversity training and not enough walking the beat, perhaps? Now I’m sure policemen of yore would have found themselves in similar situations, i.e. low-lifes cheering on a criminal. The difference is they’d have expected it, and not gone bleating to the public about how “disappointed” they are. Here’s the tweet in full:

So how did this affairs come about, eh? What changed? And as for the police are the public, spare me. Remember this:

A van driver was arrested by a group of police officers after challenging them because they were parked on a double yellow line. Andy Mayfield, 53, was held in custody for 12 hours and strip searched under anti-terror laws after he started filming the cops, who were parked illegally outside their own police station in Ashton-on-Ribble, Lancashire in January. He was detained under the Terrorism Act and submitted to a rigorous questioning at the Newton Heath terrorism centre in Manchester before eventually being released.

This is more like the behaviour of an occupying army than a police force, and now they’re complaining the public is jeering them when they’re in difficulty. Like their political masters, the British police seem to suffer from a severe lack of self-awareness. I expect we’ll be seeing more incidents like this.

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Forced Pride

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This got me wondering…

…whether taking part in pride marches wearing rainbow stripes on your face was compulsory for police serving in British forces. Or is it one of those things which are common in modern organisations whereby it’s wholly voluntary but if you choose not to take part you can kiss your career goodbye?

My guess is some police officers are happy to take part whereas others are very much against it, perhaps with the latter group being made up of old-school police approaching retirement. I wonder if the police officers union has been approached by anyone who objected to taking part but feared their career may suffer, and if so what their response was?

My guess it’s a matter of time before ordinary employees in corporate jobs are herded into the streets to wave rainbow flags during Pride month. We may even be there now:

At the annual Pride Parade in London this year, corporations like Barclays, Citibank and Starbucks led the parade at the front of the party while historical groups who have stood with the LGBT community in the UK for decades were pushed to the back.

My guess is people are going to start getting awfully sick of this, and a lot of them will be gay men and women.

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An Illustration of a Changed Society

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This thread was worth a read but it’s now protected, perhaps because of the reactions the author was getting to it. Basically, the lady in question was on the train in the UK and some creepy older guy sat down right beside two girls in their late teens and started harassing them. The lady intervened and the man spent the next few minutes yelling at her and became very aggressive, but ultimately left them alone. The girls thanked the lady, who lamented that nobody else in the carriage intervened. Now good on her for stepping in and rescuing the girls from this sex-pest, but there are good reasons why nobody helped her.

British feminists – of which the author is one, according to her Twitter bio – have spent decades eradicating traditional gender roles, and have been so successful that the role men now play in society is a mere shadow of what it once was. Indeed, many aspects of what was normal male behaviour is now illegal thanks to feminist lobbying. Now this may be a good thing for women in some ways but, like everything involving societal trade-offs, it came at a price. Men, having been told women don’t need their protection, having been accused of being rapists and sex-pests simply for being male, and having been told endlessly their natural behaviour is “problematic” to the extent young boys are given powerful drugs to control it, are now behaving very differently to how they used to. They are no longer chivalrous, they are no longer willing to assist strange women in distress, and are extremely risk averse. Feminists have worked extremely hard to emasculate men, and now they’re paying the price of living in a society where their efforts have been successful. Unbelievably, many seem to think their work is only just beginning and men are still a problem, but here we are.

In addition, men are now well aware that common-sense policing has long since disappeared and any interaction with Plod could well leave them in a world of trouble. If a man had intervened and a fight ensued, he would probably have been arrested. If he has a wife, a family, a job, or a mortgage the process in front of him might be very costly indeed. Why risk it? And how does he know what the circumstances are? For all he knows this might be a domestic dispute, and any intervention involving kids might see the idiotic police and feminist-driven CPS conspiring to put him on a sex-offenders register. Wasn’t there a story some years ago about a man being charged as a sex-offender after grabbing the arm of a young girl who was about to run into a busy road? Again, why risk it?

A few generations ago plenty of men would have done something in the situation described by the tweet’s author but society has changed, and this didn’t happen at the behest of the sort of men who would have come to the girls’ aid. Rather, the shift in societal behaviour was demanded by those who now lament the current state of affairs.  From what I can tell the main beneficiaries of feminists’ efforts to remove traditional male roles from society, and the collapse of common-sense policing, are sex-pests who are free to operate without fear of either. Well done, folks. Well done indeed.

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Is this jury nullification?

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Via JuliaM, this is an interesting story:

A father and son duo who opened fire on an police van have walked free from court after being cleared of attempted murder.

Richard Baldwin, an expert clay pigeon shooter, shot at an unmarked white van three times using his double-barrelled shotgun after thinking he was scaring off burglars from his property.

However the businessman was actually opened fire on a van which had two plainclothed police officers inside.

Maybe the prosecution aimed too high, and they’d have been more likely to secure a conviction on a lesser charge? I’ve been told that when Plod is on the receiving end of something he doesn’t like the charges are inflated, sometimes comically so. The downside to this is sometimes the charges don’t stick. But:

Both Mr Baldwin and his son were also cleared of an alternative charge of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, and carrying a loaded shotgun in a public place.

Hmmm. Perhaps there is something else going on?

Mr Baldwin, who was cleared of attempted murder along with his son, told The Daily Telegraph that he was ‘harassed’ by Irish travellers for more than a year before he opened fire on the police van.

Ah.

Luton Crown Court heard Mr Baldwin had become increasingly angry after police took 25 minutes to respond to his pleas for help.

Mr Baldwin took his legally-owned weapon and take matters into their own hand to track the suspected burglars.

…

Mr Baldwin made a number of calls to police regarding harassment of his family from the travelling community, but he claims they were ignored. An officer also told him not to use racially offensive terms when referring to travellers.

He claims that tyres and tools were stolen from Mr Baldwin’s garage and that he had never had problems with the travelling community until this group of people began to abuse him and his family.

Could it be the jury decided to signal its displeasure at useless Plod refusing to do their jobs, yet finding time to lecture the victims of crime on racism? I hope so. I’ve been saying for a while the British public ought to begin withdrawing their support from the police; jury nullification in cases where the defendant should never have been in that position were it not for useless Plod is one way to go about it.

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The Arrest of Tommy Robinson

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Yesterday the right-wing provocateur Tommy Robinson was arrested for livestreaming the comings and goings outside a British court building where a rape trial involving Muslims was ongoing. Within hours the British government had placed a gagging order on the press, so as usual it fell to Twitter to tell everyone what went on.

The chattering classes are this morning stroking their chins and sternly reminding us that filming outside a courtroom is illegal and Robinson is currently serving a suspended sentence for the same offence. Reporting on ongoing court matters is strictly controlled in the UK in order not to prejudice a trial, and people make a valid point when they say Robinson’s actions could result in a mistrial. At best, he’s been very naive and probably ought to find himself a reliable legal adviser if he’s going to keep doing stuff like this.

However, there is a lot more going on here and the chattering classes are either deliberately overlooking it or, more likely, utterly unaware of it. Robinson has not been arrested for filming outside a court building, he’s been arrested because he embarrasses the ruling classes. He has been constantly followed, monitored, and harassed by Plod wherever he goes solely because he draws attention to the failings of the ruling classes. In this particular instance, he is making the point that the mainstream media is silent on the issue of Muslims raping vulnerable, underage British girls in northern, working-class towns, leaving it to people like him with iPhones to keep everyone informed. While he’s probably mistaken the lack of media coverage of this ongoing case for self-censorship rather than mere compliance with the law, the wider point is that the media does self-censor and particularly so in cases such as these. The modern British media is merely a mouthpiece for the ruling classes, which is why so many journalists have taken to Twitter to pompously besmirch Robinson and justify his arrest and incarceration. The last thing mainstream journalists want is some pleb without the proper credentials, much less a degree from Oxford or Cambridge, reporting on things they’d prefer went unmentioned.

While it is true that Robinson has committed some sort of offence here, Britain is fast becoming like many authoritarian states in that everyone is committing an offence merely by going about their daily business, and it’s therefore just a matter of who the police choose to arrest. And even if you haven’t committed a crime, the police can arrest whoever they like for wholly imaginary reasons and face no consequences. With the process being the punishment, it doesn’t really matter if you’ve committed an offence or not: if the ruling classes and their minions in uniforms decide you’re a problem, they’ll make your life hell and convince themselves they’ve acted lawfully. We should remind ourselves at this point that nobody rotted away in a Soviet gulag for no reason: there was always a charge attached to their incarceration. The fact Robinson was originally arrested for breach of the peace and later that changed to prejudicing a trial shows the authorities aren’t really interested in what they charge him with provided he ends up behind bars.

Somebody asked on Twitter yesterday why the government is terrified of upsetting Muslims to the point they’re prepared to jail the likes of Robinson. I responded by saying they’re not: the government and their bag carriers are not in the least afraid or Muslims because they pose no threat to their way of life, and are often quite useful in cementing them into positions of power and privilege. What they are genuinely terrified of is the ignorant, white masses rising up and hanging them from lampposts, and the event which triggers this could well be widespread revulsion at what the ruling classes have seemingly allowed Muslims to get away with in towns like Rotherham and Telford. The nightmare scenario for the likes of Theresa May and tossers writing in The Times and The Guardian is not a crazed jihadist bombing a concert or knifing someone on Westminster Bridge but an angry mob of people who look and sound much like them.

Tommy Robinson to some degree represents that angry mob, and even those who don’t like his methods or opinions are forced to admit he has a point: the government is failing massively on many levels, and eventually things will boil over with ugly results. The idiots in government think by chucking him in jail the problem will go away, just as Twitter and Facebook think they can eradicate alt-right opinions by banning users who hold them, as if covering their ears is the answer. History is littered with national leaders who spent time in prison for criticising the previous regime; not that I think Robinson will become Prime Minister, but it demonstrates that rulers who jail those who are inconvenient often don’t remain in charge very long. It’s a sign of extreme weakness rather than strength, and it’s no coincidence that Robinson is being arrested at a time when Britain has one of the weakest yet childishly authoritarian Prime Ministers in living memory.

The next week or so will probably test May’s government more than she realises. The public are already incensed over Count Dankula’s Nazi pug prosecution, and if Robinson is harmed in custody in any way, the ruling classes might find he has a lot more supporters than they thought, and some are ready to step up and take things a little further. The IRA in their successful campaign to bomb their way to the bargaining table were able to rely on an enormous number of people putting money into hats passed around in pubs. Similarly, jihadists are supported in large part by thousands of hands placing notes into bowls passed through the crowd during Friday prayers.

Let’s leave the who, what, and how to one side for a minute, mainly because they’re questions I can’t answer. Instead, let’s try a thought experiment: if hats were passed through the British population asking for money to tackle the problems Tommy Robinson is highlighting, how many people would cough up, and how much money would be raised? I expect if the ruling classes knew the answer, they’d turn white.

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Hidden Purposes

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Yesterday two stories were brought to my attention, which share a connection. Here’s the first:

All new police officers in England and Wales will have to be educated to degree level from 2020, the College of Policing has announced.

It said the training would help address changes in crime-fighting.

Prospective officers can either complete a three-year “degree apprenticeship”, a postgraduate conversion course or a degree.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council said the changes would “help modernise the service”.

Many people are unhappy with this, saying it will remove yet another formerly respected career path for the working classes. They are probably right, but this is a feature not a bug. As I wrote here, New Labour and their successors made it central policy to get more women into the professional workforce, and for more people to go to university. Well, a generation later we now have lots of middle class graduates, but what are we supposed to do with them? A sizeable chunk will have graduated with liberal arts or other degrees which are near-worthless to an employer, yet these people have been sold the lie they can expect professional employment anyway. One answer is to stuff them into state institutions and provide them with what passes for a career, sitting in pointless meetings, dreaming up rules, and shoving paper around, and that’s what’s happened. Eventually the institution in question will become little more than an employment scheme providing what is effectively welfare to the dim but entitled middle classes, its core function forgotten. I’ve provided plenty of examples in support of my opinion that the British police long ago stopped being police in the commonly-understood meaning of the word, and this latest announcement is fully consistent with that. Consider this statement:

The college’s Chief Constable Alex Marshall said the feeling was the nature of police work has changed significantly and officers were just as likely to be “patrolling online” as on the street.

“Cyber-enabled crime has increased,” he said, “So has the need for officers and staff to investigate and gather intelligence online and via information technology.”

He also said protecting vulnerable people has become a “high priority”, with officers now spending more of their time working to prevent domestic abuse, monitor high-risk sex offenders and protect at-risk children.

Even investigating a pub fight – which used to mean interviewing the victim, perpetrator and the bar staff – now also extends to researching videos, pictures and comments published online.

You don’t need a degree to be able to research videos, pictures, and comments online. Nor do you need one to work with vulnerable people. What this is about is shifting police work from the wet, windy streets to comfortable chairs in front of computers in air-conditioned offices – the type of job the government promised graduates with worthless degrees from mediocre universities. Also, I am sure it is no coincidence that this shift is occurring a few years after the police made considerable efforts to recruit more women, and made policing an attractive career choice for young mothers. It is a lot easier to comprehend this latest move if you understand what the British police is actually for.

Here’s the second story, provided by Phil B in the comments:

Germany’s armed forces are suffering from severe shortages of weapons and equipment that put the country’s ability to meet its Nato commitments in doubt, a parliamentary watchdog warned yesterday.

The German military is “not equipped to meet the tasks before it”, Hans-Peter Bartels, the parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces said as he presented his annual report.

Operational readiness is “dangerously low” and the country’s ability to take over a frontline Nato taskforce next year must now be “in question”, he warned.

The current purpose of the German army is not to defend Germany from outside attack or to fight anywhere. It could be argued that until 2011 it was a way of deferring university or employment for young men by making them do national service, but nowadays it doesn’t even do that. Its true purpose can be divined from these two paragraphs, though:

The hard-hitting report was seen as a direct attack on the current defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, who is said to be unpopular with troops.

Ms von der Leyen has presided over a series of shortage scandals during her time at the defence ministry, at the same time as introducing initiatives such as creches and flexible working hours for soldiers.

So it’s basically an employment scheme for the progressive middle classes, much like the British police. Last November I wrote this about the US army:

In part, the purpose of the military is to serve as a vehicle (one of many) for progressives to enact their deranged fantasies as part of an overall aim of undermining society and the institutions on which it depends as far as possible.

I don’t know if this applies to the Germany army – is it even possible to make German institutions more progressive so they can undermine the country further? – but it certainly applies to the British police. So there’s it’s other purpose.

Does the BBC story make a little more sense now?

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Not a good week for Britain’s image

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There’s actually not very much wrong with this per se:

A company director who fitted a laser jammer to his Range Rover and made rude gestures as he drove past police safety cameras has been jailed.

Timothy Hill, 67, threw the device in a river behind his home in Grassington when he found out that officers had launched an investigation.

Timothy Hill, 67, threw the device in a river behind his home in Grassington when he found out that officers had launched an investigation. But today he was jailed for eight months at Teesside Crown Court and banned from driving for a year for perverting the course of justice.

Now we might quibble over whether using a device to jam a speed camera constitutes perverting the course of justice and whether that deserves a custodial sentence, but what I’ve quoted above doesn’t seem too concerning. Ah, but this is Plod, and he just couldn’t keep his mouth shut:

Traffic Constable Andrew Forth, who led the investigation for North Yorkshire Police, said afterward: “If you want to attract our attention, repeatedly gesturing at police camera vans with your middle finger while you’re driving a distinctive car fitted with a laser jammer is an excellent way to do it.

“It’s also an excellent way to end up in prison. As Hill’s case shows, perverting the course of justice is a very serious charge which carries a custodial sentence.

I suspect the police are as incensed at the lack of deferential behaviour as the laser jammer, and in modern Britain that will do more than anything to bring the full weight of the law down on your head.

“It’s our job to keep road users safe across all 6,000 miles of North Yorkshire’s roads. Mobile safety camera vans are an important tool to do that – they are proven to reduce collisions and they help save lives.

“Drivers who fit laser jammers may mistakenly feel smug about ‘getting one over’ on the police. But we can tell if motorists are using these devices, and we will always endeavour to bring them to justice.”

Perhaps, but Timothy Hill isn’t the only one looking smug here. The public are getting increasingly fed up with Plod harrassing drivers and using speed traps as revenue generators, passing them off as safety measures. Condescending remarks like “it’s also an excellent way to end up in prison” only serve to illustrate the yawning chasm between the police and the public. Bad enough that Forth’s comments were, North Yorkshire police then decided to brag about it on Twitter:

The reaction to this has been absolute fury from Brits and, having crossed the Atlantic and gone viral, disbelief and mockery from Americans. Many people read the above tweet and noted the smug, condescending language from the police and, with good reason, believed this guy was jailed in part because he’d flipped off the police. Now you wouldn’t expect the tin-eared idiots who run the media accounts of British police forces to realise this, but perceptions matter. In the same week, this story did the rounds on the internet:

A teenage refugee who molested and tried to strangle a young woman as she waited for a lift home outside McDonald’s has been spared custody.

Eritrean Filmon Kbrom targeted the lone 25-year-old at 5am on July 18 last year after a night out in Maidstone.

Having urged her to follow him while grabbing at his crotch, the 18-year-old grabbed her by the wrists before trying to throttle her.

…

But a judge decided that there were exceptional circumstances which enabled him to avoid sending Kbrom to a young offenders’ institution.

He instead imposed a sentence of 19 months’ youth custody suspended for two years.

But Judge Philip Statman was unable to include a condition that he attends a ‘vigorous and intensive’ sex offender treatment programme, as is usually imposed in such cases, due to Kbrom’s basic knowledge of the English language.

Now perhaps the stories in the papers don’t adequately reflect the details in each case, but nevertheless you have millions of people seeing a policeman crowing about jailing a British citizen who flipped them the bird while an Eritrean asylum seeker is spared jail for sexual assault due to his poor English. Does anyone in this shambolic, idiotic government we have realise how bad this looks? Obviously not, because a few days before we had this story:

A teenager who posted rap lyrics which included racist language on Instagram has been found guilty of sending a grossly offensive message.

Chelsea Russell, 19, from Liverpool posted the lyric from Snap Dogg’s I’m Trippin’ to pay tribute to a boy who died in a road crash, a court heard.

Russell argued it was not offensive, but was handed a community order.

Prosecutors said her sentence was increased from a fine to a community order “as it was a hate crime”.

…

She was given an eight-week community order, placed on an eight-week curfew and told to pay costs of £500 and an £85 victim surcharge.

That’s right: a teenager has been successfully prosecuted for hate crimes for posting rap lyrics on a restricted Instagram account. So how did Plod come to hear of it?

She was charged after Merseyside Police were anonymously sent a screenshot of her update.

…

The screenshot was passed to hate crime unit PC Dominique Walker, who told the court the term was “grossly offensive” to her as a black woman and to the general community.

So a policewoman was sent an anonymous screenshot and decided to make it all about her. Those wondering where the crime is are not alone. Then on Monday we had this, (the background to which I wrote about here):

A man who filmed a pet dog giving Nazi salutes before putting the footage on YouTube has been fined £800.

Mark Meechan, 30, recorded his girlfriend’s pug, Buddha, responding to statements such as “Sieg Heil” by raising its paw.

The clip was viewed more than three million times on YouTube.

Meechan, of Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, was sentenced at Airdrie Sheriff Court after being found guilty of committing a hate crime last month.

He had denied any wrong-doing and insisted he made the video, which was posted in April 2016, to annoy his girlfriend.

But Sheriff Derek O’Carroll found him guilty of a charge under the Communications Act that he posted a video on social media and YouTube which was grossly offensive because it was “anti-Semitic and racist in nature” and was aggravated by religious prejudice.

I am sure Meechan will crowdfund the £800 within minutes, and whatever it costs him to appeal this ruling, but the point is that a man can be arrested and prosecuted for making a joke, albeit a very stupid and tasteless one, and posting it on the internet. Were it not for the massive publicity surrounding his case and the outrage his prosecution generated on both sides of the Atlantic, I am sure he’d have been given a custodial sentence.

This week, many Brits and Americans have referred to these stories and made the point I made myself here:

The thing that always enrages me about governments is they are doubly shit at performing vital state functions: murdering scumbags go free and innocent people get banged up; police harass citizens over trivial matters while serious crime remains a problem; jihadists are let into the country to carry out terrorist attacks but Canadian right-wing journalists are turned back at the airport and banned for life.

The police are happy to ignore gangs of rapists preying on underage girls and take pity on foreign refugees who sexually assault British women, but make a joke, post “offensive” lyrics, or stick a middle finger up to a speed camera and you’ll be prosecuted and fined or jailed. This might be overly simplistic, but it is a perception that has been created by the British government and, as I said before, perceptions matter. Why? Because of cases like this:

The parents of seriously ill toddler Alfie Evans will challenge a High Court ruling preventing them from taking him to Italy for further treatment.

The family’s lawyers told the BBC that a hearing has been scheduled at the Court of Appeal on Wednesday afternoon.

The 23-month-old’s life support was withdrawn on Monday after the court ruled Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital could end his care.

Tom Evans and Kate James want to move their son to a hospital in Rome.

On Tuesday a High Court judge ruled that the family could not take him abroad for further treatment, but that he may be allowed home.

Now I don’t know the details, but these sort of medical ethics cases are fiendishly difficult moral dilemmas, particularly those that require a decision over whether to switch off life support (I remember the Terri Schiavo case well). Regardless of the facts, it is perfectly reasonable for the public to ask why, if the child is condemned to die anyway, his parents cannot seek alternative treatment or better palliative care in Italy. The government’s response, although perhaps reasonable (I don’t know), is cloaked in an air of callous indifference, oblivious to the distress of the parents and ordinary human reaction to the case. Certainly, lining up policemen outside Alfie’s hospital room is appalling optics, but then this is what this post is all about. The Times, a mouthpiece of the ruling classes whose writers look down their noses at oiks who hold opinions on things they’re not clever enough to understand, tells us:

The heartrending case of Alfie Evans has been exploited by groups more anxious to advance a broad ‘pro-life’ agenda than to support a family in desperate circumstances.

By “support a family” they mean persuade them to accept whatever choices the state makes on their child’s behalf, and deal with the consequences. A “broad pro-life agenda” is hardly something beyond the pale in such a case, especially when the alternative, state-approved option is just to let the kid die in a government hospital under police protection. Americans in particular are absolutely apoplectic over this, and see it as a clear example of arrogant, government-employed doctors disliking their expertise being questioned, and supported by judges who believe the state has a greater claim over a little boy’s life than his parents.

Now the criticism in this case might be unfair, but the British government has nobody but themselves to blame for being seen to consist of incompetent, nasty, vindictive, petty, individuals who hold the ordinary citizen in utter, absolute contempt. Theresa May, who exhibited these precise characteristics while Home Secretary and continues to do so as Prime Minister, must shoulder much of the blame for this state of affairs. What a disgrace of a country Britain has become.

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The police are not on your side

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A few days ago I said in respect of the Chavshrine™ (copyright holder: JuliaM):

If the police had any sense, they’d be all over this before it gets out of hand.

…

It’s the job of a responsible government to not let these grievances fester, and to identify potential flashpoints and intervene to snuff them out before they turn into something serious. As with most things, Theresa May’s government and what passes for a police service are failing in their duty miserably, leaving the British public feeling increasingly ignored, insulted, and bullied while certain protected groups are free to do as they please. If they don’t get a handle on this situation developing in Hither Green quickly, the burglar might not be its only casualty.

Well, I needn’t have worried: within hours of posting, the authorities swung into action. So did they remove the tributes from the nearby property? Of course not! This being Plod, they came out in favour of the travellers, issuing this statement:

My officers have a responsibility to provide reassurance to local residents so they can go about their daily lives, while also respecting the wishes of family and friends to mark the loss of a loved one.

“They are not there to safeguard or facilitate the laying of floral tributes; we are liaising with the local authority who are considering appropriate management of the floral tributes.

“I do not want anyone to feel intimidated or that they are not being allowed to respond in a dignified way to a tragic death.

“We would urge members of the public to respect the wishes of those who choose to place flowers and other tributes in the area.

In case anyone is concerned this whole fiasco is an exercise in intimidation, don’t worry, Plod has that covered too:

People laying flowers in tribute to a suspected burglar who was fatally stabbed should not feel intimidated, a senior Met Police officer says.

Yes, clearly it’s the people laying the flowers who are feeling intimidated, not the pensioner who knows he can never return home and is now forced to sell his house. And don’t you love the BBC’s language here? “Suspected burglar”, eh? What was this career criminal doing in someone else’s house? Checking for damp?

With the authorities making it quite clear whose side they are on in this conflict, the travellers have decided tributes to their relative’s untimely demise are not enough; now they’re putting up balloons and flowers celebrating what would be his birthday:

Flowers and tributes for stabbed burglar Henry Vincent have been moved from the street where he died to a local community garden.

It comes after his family marked what would have been his 38th birthday on Sunday by leaving balloons and flowers at the scene in Hither Green, southeast London.

At the request of the police, they left their tributes approximately 100 metres away from the property where he was fatally stabbed by pensioner Richard Osborn-Brooks, 78.

How lovely for those in the actual community who perhaps wanted to use this garden for its intended purpose, which I presume isn’t to honour a dead burglar. A year ago I wrote this:

At the rate they’re going, the British police are going to be awfully surprised when one day in the near future they are called upon to restore law and order and find the population treating them very much as part of the problem.

Judging by the reaction on Twitter, both from the public and police, I’d say that was rather prescient.

I’ve said on many occasions that I don’t know whose side the British police are on, but I am confident it is not that of the general public. This incident only serves to cement that belief. I don’t think the police are on the side of the travellers per se, but this dead burglar situation has made unlikely allies of the travellers and the police in that both see ordinary, native Brits as their adversaries. The police are the enforcement arm of the ruling classes, and for now the interests of they and the travellers are aligned. Should the travellers start causing the ruling classes trouble – as opposed to heaping misery on the plebs – they’d be squashed like flies, but that rarely occurs.

There are some positives, though. I’ve said before the sooner the public understand the nature of the British police and abandon the romantic Dixon of Dock Green image, the better. This farce can only serve to accelerate that process.

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