Preventive policing? Don't even think about it Drinking in Aberdeen just got a whole lot more complicated, as police warned those popping out for a swift half that they may need to undergo drug testing before they are served. In Lancaster, police were last week setting up scanners near the central bus station to check passers-by for knives. Meanwhile, on Waterloo station, …
Spot on - that's why the Yanks cleverly put that "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" bit in their Declaration of Independence. Methinks they'd been through that drill a time or two before.
@Jamie
I shouldn't fret about money contaminated w/drugs traces - it's a world-wide phenomenon and as such, I'd think it wouldn't be hard to establish some plausible deniablity around the issue, though that doesn't make up for the hassle of getting, well, hassled over it.
Decentralising government, and move the ability to appoint and pay police at a local level is the answer.
I think this is happening because there is very little real crime in the UK, we don't need many police at all, they are just making work for themselves.
But yeah, without something rational coming into play, we just move a few steps closer to a revolution, they do happen and we have a history for it in this country, and the mood of the country is definitely one that could easily swing into pro revolutionary stance.
I think people are becoming increasingly annoyed that their liberty is being systematically undermined. With increasing unemployment due to the economic downturn, there will be gangs of fit and able people, with not much to do and increasing resentment.
A lot of the economic downturn is due to excessive taxation, and of course policing is one of those things that has received a lot of tax money. In some ways it could be said that policing has cost a lot of jobs and livelihoods, it appears to be a net loss to our society and economy, and overdue for a major overhaul. Less money needs to be paid for policing, if they can waste tax payers money over this I am sure there are many other places where savings could be made. They certainly seem over staffed and under worked, putting the appointment of the police to a local level would allow the people better monitoring of the police, they are certainly no saints.
You will soon end up having to carry an ID card everywhere with you otherwise you'll be fined, which you'll probably have to produce to buy dangerous things like petrol or mobile phones. Everyone's DNA & fingerprints will be on a national database. You will be searched routinely entering railway stations or shops where you'll be swabbed or gone over with a sniffer dog to see if you've been handling drugs or explosives . Your faces & movements will be scanned by artificially intelligent CCTV to determine if you're a wanted criminal or your behaviour is suspicious. Your conversations in the street will be eavesdropped on by concealed microphones to see if you're planning a crime or are decrying how immigration has gotten out of control. Every car journey will monitored by automatic number plate recognition cameras & checking what mobile is switched on in the car to identify if you're driving too fast or what toll to pay for the road your on. Radio frequency identification tags will be attached to everything you buy so that a quick scan of your house will reveal the contents, so no getting round credit cards by buying in untraceable cash. All communications & web searches will be searched using massive supercomputers that look for keywords & dodgy contacts to be build up detailed profiles of your religious or political beliefs, sexual preferences, friendships, interests, etc.
Policing used to be based upon the premise that the the Police Force policed with the consent of the public. This has not been the case for a number of years now. The Police chiefs seem to have the attitude that the public have to be controlled and retrained, the public being always in the wrong. If the Police chiefs had to be re-elected regularly then this would change overnight.
I am possibly in the top few percentile of Reg readers as regards to age. Also a former member of the armed forces and, until a few years ago, a committed Conservative. Everything that would make you think that I would be a staunch supported of the Police. I am not. I believe that the current Police Service (SERVICE, WTF! They do not SERVE me they are always trying to bully and control me) is broken beyond repair. The entire force should be replace with a tiered local / national FORCE. Any current member of the Police Service being ineligable to apply.
@Stu - The so called Poll Tax was based on the apparently ridiculous idea that all of the adults in the community contribute to the running of the community. This was to replace the totally unfair Rates system which was based upon Property values. Those brought into paying for their local services, something that they felt should be free for them (Why FFS?) protested and rioted. Thus we now have another unfair system where property owners are punished for trying to improve their lives. Now you tell me why it is wrong for all adults in the community to pay toward the running of that community.
Unless the law gives a maximum blade measurement in SI units, it's unenforcible. "Inch" is nowadays officially a slang term, denoting *approximately* two and a half centimetres (a fact of which TV and monitor manufacturers take full advantage). If you think two people out of twelve can say with a straight face that four is "about" two-and-a-half, then you can get away with carrying a 12cm. blade.
What about Opinel-type knives? Within the time it takes you to get the blade successfully deployed, someone else could have stabbed you several times with a different type of knife, or disarmed you. This is a poorly-written law and it needs to be challenged in court.
"The Itemiser is already being used in pubs in England where concerns have been raised about the possibility of customers getting a positive reading simply by touching a surface where there are traces of drugs.
But a spokeswoman for the SCDEA said the device was able to tell the difference between this type of contamination and drug use." (from the BBC article)
Whether that's really true or not, I don't know. Although the story as a whole is worrying, I'm willing to believe that the people behind the technology aren't completely stupid. Knee-jerk reactionary statements don't really strengthen a case - and we really do need to make the case for civil liberties as strongly as we can.
In other news, I had my bag searched in Embankment station shortly after the London bombings a few years ago, under no grounds other than that they were 'being really careful and searching anyone with a big bag' or something, IIRC. I can't remember if they told me I absolutely must comply. They were ever so polite, though ;-), and they did give me a form.
@John F***ing Stepp
The States have been looking a bit like they could turn into a police state from where I'm sat, with things like the Patriot Act...
I've read some bad accounts from the US on forums. Someone apparently got a house visit from police armed with automatic weapons after they'd been seen taking some photos of aircraft or something. They'd literally just been taking pictures of planes from public property and were covertly followed back to their flat which was later searched by armed police on grounds of suspicion of terrorism. They mentioned that they happened to be black, and the really scary thing was that they actually said they didn't mind! Unfortunately I can't find the link I saved to this, and it was just a post on dpreview forum; season appropriately. It seems almost too farcicle for words now and hardly worth posting - I wish I did at least still have the link.
Perhaps spineless wanker would be better than AC?
"I see those 2 getting shoved into a patty wagon." Yes, though your terminology seems to suggest someone of the american persuasion. The point being that getting hauled off to the old cop shop takes out some of the filth; they're no longer available to harass innocent members of the travelling public. Thus bringing, as I said in the OP, the show to a halt.
Got it yet?
Or have the colonials in the US lost the concept of rebellion?
NickJ
I got sniffed by a drugs dog coming off an international flight. So then I got referred to some jobsworth dork who questioned me like a crim. This after sitting on a plane for 2 days. One thing - I don't even take drugs. Not that have anything against it, but it doesn't do anything for me. Of course, being a fool and angry because I'd been on a plane for 2 days, I started arguing with the berk.
The reason is probably because I had about 3 countries worth of currency in my wallet and sniffer dogs are notoriously unreliable (70+% failure rate). Reg should do a story about that (maybe they have already).
and complain some more. Did you know that the effectiveness of sniffer dogs is only 11%. That is 11% of positives are actual positives. You have the right not to give your details as long as you are not being arrested or charged. If you are stopped and the police do not tell you what powers they are using (and yes this includes the rediculous section 44) you have grounds for a complaint.
The police rely on social compliance. Complain and make things difficult, the legal way. Regain civil liberties! I was stopped and subjected to a search that was conducted improperly....I am now in the process of complaining to ALL authorities and oversight.
not with the way the economy is going.
In fact we would be wise to sell off police equipment now, we could raise some much needed capital. One police station in each city, that seems fair. Most of the UK doesn't really need policing, and on the off chance you do they never do anything that helps.
So exactly how much use is your gun against this kind of government intrusion?
Say you live in a US state where open or even concealed carry is legal.
You go to bar, but are prevented from entering until your friendly local LEO has taken a hand swab for the portable drug test. You refuse. You are not permitted to enter the bar. Do you:
a) Go somewhere else, in which case they've won as per UK.
or b) Attempt to enter the bar despite the LEO's orders not to.
if "b", what will happen next? Of course the situation will deteriorate somewhat. If the cop stands in your way then any attempt to push past can probably be built up into assulting a police officer. Wups!
Say you decide that the situation's going *really* badly and the cop's attempting to make a trumped-up false arrest for assault and you draw on him, what happens next? He backs off and forgets about it - I think not! He probably withdraws to cover and radios for backup? You're in a whole world of shit now.
What if it goes incredibly badly, you draw your weapon and the cop too tries to draw his. What happens next? At best you're going to have to drop your weapon incredibly quickly and be ready for a world of shit. Say you decide that your life is in danger, don't back down and you shoot the cop, double-taps aimed at the centre of mass. Congratulations! You're now a merciless mad-dog killer with the entire attention of the criminal justice system focussed on you. Does anyone seriously expect a defense of "self defense" or some other justification being made to stick? No, the DA will be calling for the harshest possible penalties against this stone-cold, ruthless cop killer.
Now I sense that you are making a larger point about the utility of an armed populace, but I just don't see it. You can take the two preceeding paragraphs and project them into any situation where the individual is confronted with "legitimate", armed, oppressive authority. A traffic stop, being served court papers, being arrested at a demonstration. That's the way ot happens - at the individual level, piece by piece. They have the power, the backup and the laws, you have only your own life. Unless of course, you *do* organise with like-minded folk into a well regulated militia. Unfortunately, that kind of thing tends to attract attention from three-letter-acronym agencies, plus the BATF and may well end in an ugly seige...
The natural History Museum in London, my girlfriend had her bag searched
she was asked before they opened it, "do you have any knives, penknives or scissors"
In my pocket at the time was a multifunction penknife with all of the above, but because I wasn't carrying a bag, no-one asked me, so I went through unscanned and unsearched!
Security, they had it, but it was a bit pointless really.
(in other news I neither stole anything or stabbed anyone in some sort of psychotic rampage)
Compare and contrast:
Weybridge Surrey, 1987; Electronics tech at college (day release) gets criminal record for carrying a Swiss Army penknife and a set of 6" screwdrivers (in a tool roll amongst other tools - including a sliding Stanley knife!) as they could be classed as offensive weapons.
Hounslow, Middlesex, 1987; friend of above gets beaten by ethnic minority because he won't tell them the time (can't - doesn't have a watch!). Hospital doctor (also ethnic minority) "loses" medical notes between just-past-midnight discharge and Plod's arrival next morning. Assailants get let off due to lack of interest^H^H^H evidence.
Note: other members of same ethnic minority in Hounslow regularly sighted at the time carrying "religious artifacts" - "ornamental" knives with 8-inch blades. No action taken.
Of course times have changed since then - the Politically Correct Brigade have made it harder for Plod to question any non-white English male for fear of being labelled "institutionally racist" while requiring ever more "efficiency" from the Boys in Blue. I'm less safe walking down the streets now than I was back in '87 but there are more Police personnel with bigger budgets and more high-tech kit (like CCTV) than there was then.
Actually, I feel sorry for Plod - (s)he's caught in the middle. Most of them want to make the country safe for everyone equally but they are not allowed to by the people who hold power over them - NuLabour and various racial "equality" groups (so how come the only people who seem to be able to be Racist are white British people then?)
The pubs doing a great trade are the city centre ones with happy hours and loads of boozie idiots getting into fights. The ones the police are 'randomly' targeting. BTW random in this instance means without reasonable suspcion rather than being a mathmatical thing.
Couple this with the smoking ban and the stupidly strict drink driving laws it's clearly an attack on the whole principle of pubs. The principle of a pub is that any adult can just walk in and buy a drink and talk to people. A club is not the same since you have to show ID and they can choose not to let you in.
They need to monitor cafe's but as yet I can't see the pretext. Probably not a big problem since there is no alcohol to loosen peoples tongues.
I think it's clear where this is all leading. Peoples interaction with other people is to be regulated and monitored.
I better make sure I have no tools in my coat pockets.
We are being backed into a corner. If we go along with it then we don't get too much trouble as long as we have nothing to hide. In fact it may even make us safer. But it will get worse and worse until we are just a flock of scared sheeple who will do anything anyone in authority asks. If we resist then we are targeted as clearly we have something to hide.
@@just say no
"Now here is a twist . If they can do this to grown folks then why are they not arresting little pukes that cause hell ?"
Problem, reaction, solution as Alex Jones says.
Don't arrest the little pukes and you get a problem, grown folks then react and say Something Must Be Done, solution stop grown folks going into pubs and see if they have knives or drugs. The perpose of which is to trane us to behave like sheep, not to stop knife crime. The police on the ground grumble but don't know they are being used like this. They are like Robocop when he had a load of daft Directives.
"Over the last few years, that limit has been seriously eroded. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows arbitrary stop and search..."
Oh no it doesn't. It may be being used like that, but the legal power is "only for the purpose of searching for articles of a kind which could be used in connection with terrorism" (s45). That is a pretty broad category of articles, but the officer arguably must have that purpose in mind and use of s44 powers in pursuit of other policing objectives is pretty obviously unlawful.
Blown lamp? we should be so lucky.
I've seen Panda cars (=cruisers, I think) drive past vehicles with a missing headlamp. last one I saw was stopped at a pedestrian crossing facing a van that only had its nearside headlight working. No effort to apply the law made. I followed the panda for several miles (our journeys were similar) and he wasn't in any hurry to go somewhere. And before you warn me that the driver might not have been "traffic trained" - he must have a driving licence, therefore is required to know the law w.r.t. vehicle maintenance / lights.
I for one do not welcome our new legally oppresive overlords.
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I was recently asked to remove my crash helmet before the petrol station attendant would allow the pump to dispense petrol. They wanted my face recorded on their CCTV.
I no longer use BP petrol stations for exactly that reason.
If I went to a pub and was asked if I objected to being searched, I would object, leave and never visit that pub again.
Instead of going down to the pub I would go home, contact my friends and arrange a meeting at someones house. There we would drink alcohol (SHOCK!), smoke cigarettes (OH MY GOD!) and plot the downfall of the Nanny State. Soon they won't be worrying about Al-Quaeda as they will be too busy trying to rescue the country from the riots that were caused by pushing people too far. WE ARE NOT CHILDREN! STOP TREATING US LIKE CHILDREN!
"...Now you know why we made the right to keep and bear arms the 2nd amendment right after the right to say what we want and associate with who we want.
An armed society is a free society...."
-----------------------
Danny. In light of my previous post, can you please explain how this works in a first-world setting, such as the US?
I'm quite willing, even hopeful, to find out that I'm mistaken.
If it were the case that I'm completely wrong, at least there'd be some hope, somewhere...
The point I was making, was that trotting out the complacent "an armed country is a free country" stuff doesn't really hold water, in my view.
But, basically you agree with me that in order for the armed populace to counter oppressive government, they *would* have to form some kind of militia, as per my final paragraph?
BTW, yes I have heard of the provos, but never *heard* them - I slept through their kind donation of £30 million worth of urban regeneration funding for Manchester, but my GF claimed it rattled the windows.
I think the example of the IRA is a good one in this context, because unless you view the Turner Diaries (minus the apalling racism) as a credible fortelling / strategy guide, I don't really see any mass armed resistance arising. I reckon only a very small number of people would be willing to give up their relative comfortable safety, cross a big, thick, black line on the ground and actually begin war against their own government.
And how the hell would this group of terrorists - for that is what they would be labelled by the compliant media - operate? How can they apply pressure to the government? You say the provos "Killed and bombed Whitehall into compromise". Largely true, but for the armed US patriots, traditional terror tactics are out - no bombing planes or shopping malls or or placing car bombs in urban centres for that would be murdering your own people. No attacking big business targets for the same reason.
Government buildings are being progressively hardened and protected. Security screening is becoming the norm. Military bases are pretty well placed to secure and defend themselves. Police and police stations? Maybe... local / state government? Again maybe. Low-level political assassinations aplenty? No idea...
Add in the fact that government is incrementally increasing its powers to spy on its own citizens thus making coherent organisation more and more difficult. Anything other than face-to-face communication or hand-delivered messages would be to invite discovery and exposure. Oh, and expect infiltration by military intelligence and a few informers...
I just don't see how it would work, *unless* a sizeable portion of the populace were to partake in rebellion and I don't see it happening. People have different pressure points. No one thing is going to set them all off at once, allied with the theory of frog boiling techniques.
Like I said to a previous poster - I'm quite willing, almost hopeful to find out I'm utterly wrong. At least there would be hope somewhere. I'd be interested to hear your ideas about the ultimate role of the armed populace (ie. ultimate = the arms get used) in warding off oppressive government.
Unless you don't want to give your plans away, that is ;-)
It took 200 years from the time Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery and 40 years the time from Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus to Barack Obama being elected president.
However, it only took about 7 years to get from Gorbachev to Russia being run by the (ex) head of the KGB, and about the same amount of time from Hitler being elected to WW2.
It takes a long time to make 'good' changes, but we seem to be very happy to slide down the slippery slope to a totalitarian state very quickly.
An interesting account of how this happens comes to from Gustave M. Gilbert, the German-speaking prison psychologist who had free access to all of the prisoners during the Nurenberg trials. On the evening of April 18, 1946, Gilbert visited Göring in his cell, and he later described their conversation as follows:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Göring shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare war."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." (Nuremberg Diary, pp. 278–79)
Maybe in years to come some politician will be interviewed (after the revolution) and they will be asked how did you get away with it., and they will reply "Oh it was easy, we just keep telling people that if they have noting to hide………"
Mine's the coat I put on before leaving....
Not so good; it is really not even logical to think of 'armed rebellion' when you take a handgun up against a tank.
An armed society does serve as a sort of canary in the mineshaft to tell you what might come; that is, I would fully expect random searches to be next if carrying a handgun was outlawed.
They won't shoot you over here if they suspect you are carrying a handgun; in fact the police over here automatically suspect you are carrying a handgun and are somewhat surprised if you are not.
Being polite helps; when I was stopped last, I handed the patrolman my license, registration and carry permit; so yeah, he might think I'm a nut* but at least he thinks I am a polite nut.
*2 1911s and a backup; yeah he thought I was a nut.
"Ever heard of the Irish Republican Army ?"
Yes, they were funded from the US and given training in the ME. And it still didn't work. Ever heard of Stormont (spelling?)? Only when the political arm were brought out and started talking rather than demanding did anything change.
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