{"id":7011,"date":"2018-03-27T10:47:50","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T08:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7011"},"modified":"2018-03-27T10:50:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-27T08:50:05","slug":"the-british-police-should-be-avoided-at-all-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/7011\/","title":{"rendered":"The British police should be avoided at all costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is sort of a follow-up to my previous post. Over the past week, the good folk on Twitter have posted three things which ought to leave British citizens in no doubt as to the nature of the police forces which rule over them:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">You may think online you are anonymous, you can create fake profiles and<br \/>\nno-one can trace you. That\u2019s wrong! The messages you type and send can be traced back to you.<\/p>\n<p>The same laws apply to online messages, images and videos. What you post now can affect you later in life.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Police Scotland (@policescotland) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/policescotland\/status\/976490843791126528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 21, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Can you spot the difference between an Orwellian Police State and the United Kingdom?<\/p>\n<p>Neither can I. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/z8O8TXXN6R\">pic.twitter.com\/z8O8TXXN6R<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 ???????? Joseph Kane ???????? (@KANE2028) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KANE2028\/status\/976125773647110144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 20, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I&#8217;m just going to leave this here&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/SBrW9LcIOB\">pic.twitter.com\/SBrW9LcIOB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Orwell &amp; Goode ???????? (@OrwellNGoode) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OrwellNGoode\/status\/973994126239764480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 14, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This state of affairs would not matter so much were real crimes not a problem in the UK. The trade-off in having oppressive laws in Singapore, and a police force willing to enforce them, is that violent crimes and crimes against property are extremely low. Now crime might be dropping overall in the UK (not that I trust the government figures), but knifings and acid attacks are a weekly occurrence in London, young girls are being groomed and raped en masse in various cities across the country, and every few months some lunatic Islamist pulls off an attack and we all light candles. Regardless of what the actual crime figures show, the perception among the public is that serious crimes are not being dealt with while the police, who are always moaning about a &#8220;lack of resources&#8221;, are engaged full-time in monitoring people&#8217;s speech and arresting anyone who utters unapproved opinions. A year ago <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/4303\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">I wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[F]or policing to work a critical mass of ordinary, law-abiding people across both the middle classes and working classes\u00a0<em>must<\/em>\u00a0see them as being on their side against the criminals. Not necessarily on their side\u00a0<em>per se<\/em>, just on their side against the criminals. It doesn\u2019t really matter what the rich think, they can hire their own security and\/or lobby government to have the police look after their interests as first priority. It is the masses that need to be kept on side.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>If the\u00a0police in Britain &#8230; want to remain relevant, they had better make up their minds whose side they are on and inform the law-abiding masses of their decision, preferably via demonstration rather than empty speeches.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I already think we are well on the road to many British people considering the police part of the problem, merely another branch of the criminal classes to be avoided at all costs. I keep hearing that the &#8220;rank-and-file&#8221; don&#8217;t buy into this crap and it is foisted on them by politicians and upper management, but this doesn&#8217;t explain the almost gleeful manner in which ordinary policemen and women go about enforcing these Orwellian rules. There is plenty of room for a bobby on the beat to turn a blind eye or refuse to report actions which will obviously result in a gross miscarriage of justice and perhaps that happens, but I read about far too many instances like <a href=\"https:\/\/inews.co.uk\/news\/uk\/van-driver-arrested-terror-offences-filming-police-officers-bad-parking\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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\u00a0Ashton-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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think it&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t wise up soon and change course, there is even a chance I&#8217;ll stop and watch. I doubt I&#8217;ll be alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is sort of a follow-up to my previous post. Over the past week, the good folk on Twitter have posted three things which ought to leave British citizens in no doubt as to the nature of the police forces &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/7011\/\">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":[104,42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7011"}],"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=7011"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7014,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7011\/revisions\/7014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}