{"id":10112,"date":"2019-10-17T20:05:50","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T18:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=10112"},"modified":"2019-10-17T21:03:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T19:03:31","slug":"the-end-of-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/10112\/","title":{"rendered":"Ridin&#8217; the bruv train"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Regular readers will know <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/category\/police\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">how I feel<\/a> about the modern British police, particularly the leadership. Here&#8217;s a video which surprises even me:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Today marks <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/pronounsday?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#pronounsday<\/a> \u2013 seeking to make sharing, educating and respecting personal pronouns commonplace. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PronounsDay?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@pronounsday<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/pe9x9GWTJj\">pic.twitter.com\/pe9x9GWTJj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Julie Cooke (@DCCJulieCooke) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DCCJulieCooke\/status\/1184397495423655936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 16, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In a different age this woman would be sent out to the forest to fetch firewood, being of little use for anything else. But in the modern era she gets to speak to us as if we&#8217;re retarded children, telling us which words we may or may not use to address people who are probably insane.<\/p>\n<p>Now I&#8217;ve speculated before about how it&#8217;s only a matter of time before the British public begin to do what happens in a lot of the world, and see the police as nothing more than a nuisance to be avoided at all costs. We&#8217;re already seeing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-england-london-46272442\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">incidents<\/a> of police men and women being beaten and humiliated while citizens just walk on by or, increasingly, stop and guffaw. This morning a couple of Extinction Rebellion morons thought stopping a tube train at Canning Town and preventing city boys and builders getting to work was going to be the same as lying down in the road on Westminster Bridge. They thought wrong:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Who\u2019s not proud to be British when they see this?!<br \/>\nProtest, resolution &amp; celebration in 60 seconds.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/iV07qiiiYe\">pic.twitter.com\/iV07qiiiYe<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 DD (@DemocracyNotEU) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DemocracyNotEU\/status\/1184726434708971520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 17, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Shocking moment angry commuters drag two <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ExtinctionRebellion?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ExtinctionRebellion<\/a> protestors off the top of a train in Canning Town and attack them. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/EZAMa9tT2t\">pic.twitter.com\/EZAMa9tT2t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Mahatir Pasha (@mahatir_pasha) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mahatir_pasha\/status\/1184713704673366016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 17, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>What is so heartwarming about this &#8211; aside from Swampy getting a good shoeing &#8211; is the mantra in Britain has for years been &#8220;don&#8217;t intervene, leave it to the police&#8221;. Only the people on the platform knew damned well the police wouldn&#8217;t do anything about these idiots, and even if they did the station would be <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/whitford747\/status\/1184818476650770432?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">shut for hours<\/a>. So they shook off a lifetime of indoctrination and dragged them down so everyone could go to work unimpeded. As the tweeter said, problem solved in 60 seconds.<\/p>\n<p>What interested me most was when the police arrived they arrested the two protesters, not the two who climbed up after them. I suspect the police might have got a whiff of a changing wind here. Had they turned up and done anything other than arrest the two crusties, they might well have found themselves on the receiving end of a mob beating. The police leadership might be stupid, but those who have to walk into a fired-up crowd are not.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s incident, coming off the back of the authorities&#8217; decision to ban any more unauthorised Extinction Rebellion protests in London, might be a sign things are starting to turn. On top of that, it looks as though Boris might have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/live\/uk-politics-50079596\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reached a deal<\/a> with the EU which can pass a parliamentary vote and see Britain leaving the EU at the end of the month as planned. While probably not perfect, it is better than May&#8217;s appalling Withdrawal Agreement and does actually represent Brexit in more than name only. That will leave an awful lot of Remain activists unemployed, and a fair few MPs staring down the barrel of a P45 cannon at the next election.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, things are looking a little brighter after today, aren&#8217;t they?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Regular readers will know how I feel about the modern British police, particularly the leadership. Here&#8217;s a video which surprises even me: Today marks #pronounsday \u2013 seeking to make sharing, educating and respecting personal pronouns commonplace. @pronounsday pic.twitter.com\/pe9x9GWTJj \u2014 Julie &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/10112\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[99,110,20,42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10112"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10112"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10117,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10112\/revisions\/10117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}