This is just terrible

The female officer shown inside Fortnum and Masons telling the protesters that their exit from the store and  subsequent journey home was going to be expedited was either lying or was being seriously mislead by her colleagues outside: the UK Uncut protesters were all arrested as they left the building. I'm actually not sure which is worse, but either way police actions like this have, I think, enormous potential to seriously undermine public trust. Especially when they are caught on camera.

Whatever the potential justification - presumably, to make sure people (a) left the building and (b) did so peacefully - police officers simply cannot mislead people in this way. To do so completely undermines the role the police should have in maintaining an honest, respectful and open relationship between state and citizens. More specifically, such dishonesty damages the ability of the police to act as honest brokers between competing parties (here, Fortnum and Masons and the protesters), public trust in their fairness, and their ability to give unbiased evidence in any subsequent trial.

A couple of more specific points arise from this situation. Firstly, the protesters were, apparently, only inside the building for so long because the police outside would not let them out. One obvious defence -or at least mitigation - at trial will presumably therefore be "I wanted to leave when I was asked, but the police wouldn't let me".

Second, and much more important in terms of public perceptions of last Saturday's events, of the 149 charges made so far 138 arise from the UK Uncut occupation of Fortnum and Masons.1 In other words, to an entirely peaceful event exactly the same in format as several previous protests. These figures completely undermine press and government accounts that paint last Saturday as marked by massive violence. There obviously was some trouble, but there were only 201 arrests in total. So violent protests lead to a maximum of 63 arrests (actually less, since some were for drunk and disorderly etc.). So it can't have been that bad, surely?

1. For a full list of the charges made see here.

Priceless

I don't think I'd be the first to point out the alarming hypocrisy of the variation in the British government's reaction to events in Libya and Bahrain, respectively, or more particularly its lack of reaction to the Saudi intervention in the latter (probably using, incidentally, British built weapons).

Perhaps the first 30 seconds of this clip puts it all in some kind of context .....

Hat-tip.

Social cleansing? Maybe it is .....

Many of these boats are literally across the park from me. I always think to myself that the people there have a great set up - genuinely living in a different way to most of us and usually, as far as I can see, having a good time doing it. I'm not sure I could live on a boat, but I can certainly see the attraction of waking up on the water every morning - in inner-city London, mind - to nothing more than the sound of waterbirds and wind in the trees. OK, so the birds might grate after a while .....

Now it seems that the little niche they've carved out for themselves is to be taken away, in a move that must be linked to the area's proximity to the Olympic site. Just another step down the financially/commercially ordained homogenization and, frankly, mundanization(1), of all our lives. It seems to me difference that involves not buying into the dominant tropes of work/consumption/mortgage-holiding is increasingly intolerable to commercial and indeed governmental interests. Who, naturally, have the whip hand in almost all cases. So a group of people who weren't doing anyone any harm and in fact improving the nature and fabric of the area in which they live are to be moved on, for no other reason, it seems, that they may look a bit scruffy and had found a way to live on the cheap.

(1) Hideous neologism, I know.

The Old Firm, political opportunism, and police agendas

Every so often you read something and think 'I wish I could have written that'. Sometimes it's just a pithy comment, sometimes the way the thing's put together, sometimes the overall tone and content.

I think this pretty much has it all. Well worth reading in full, but a few choice sections must include:

And we read, too, about the pious outrage of assorted local politicians and police chiefs, which, yet again, betrayed a disturbing level of ignorance and stupidity about the nature of drinking in parts of Glasgow and its link to poverty and lack of education.

....

The clear implication by the police is that Old Firm games cause all of this. It's a depressingly simplistic attitude from an outfit whose role is to remain at the end of a very short leash held by our democratically elected institutions.

...

Our political chiefs and assorted executive plods should stop wasting our time and money posturing at their bogus "Old Firm" summit. Instead, they should be holding a poverty summit to look seriously at the issue of deprivation, which in turn leads to alcoholism, drug addiction, violent crime and domestic abuse. This is the apocalypse that stalks the needy in our midst, not Celtic versus Rangers.

I should say for the sake of balance that there's a danger of hyperbole at the end - I'm not sure the centre of Glasgow is really a no-go area for women on Friday nights, for one thing - but I think someone who manages to put both politicians and senior police (who really should know better) so firmly in their place, punctures right-wing myths and middle class snobbery and appears to have some actual alternative suggestions of their own can be forgiven for getting a bit carried away.


In related news, we're reminded again that having elected 'police commissioners' is not necessarily such a great idea. And this the view of someone from a country were they regularly elect dog-catchers, for chrissake, so I doubt it's the mere notion of elected police that's worrying her.


In fact it's interesting to note, in what appears to be a disturbing outbreak of informed comment, that one objection is that the US political system is, you know, different to ours, and you can't just import policies willy-nilly and expect them to be gleaming successes and/or magic bullets. Something all the more concerning given it's not at all clear what, precisely, is the ill elected police commissioners are intended to cure, even if they are just about the only innovation in police policy (other than cuts) the coalition government have come up with to date. Not that a cut, or at least ceasing an activity, is necessarily a bad thing.