Day 3783: Police Action! aka Correcting Conservative Contradictions on Constitutional Change

Wednesday*:


Doesn't it seem EXTRAORDINARY that sections of the Conservatory Party are crowing about last week's rejection of AV while AT THE SAME TIME trying to implement a HUGELY BIGGER change to the way we elect our public servants than ANYTHING the Alliterative Vote might have done: namely replacing APPOINTED police authorities with ELECTED Wild West Marshalls, er, I mean Police Commissioners!

I mean, our coalition partners couldn't be MONSTROUS HYPOCRITES could they. So they must mean that the "No2AV" vote is ONLY a rejection of a not-very-good electoral system and are keen as mustard for MORE FAR REACHING REFORM.

Certainly anyone who claims that Constitutional Change is off the agenda for a thousand years (or thereabouts) is clearly an opponent of Mr Balloon's REFORM AGENDA, and so not at all to be taken SERIOUSLY.

And that is why it CAN'T be right to suggest that the Conservatories are fighting tooth and nail to STOP any locally elected presence overseeing health, when they are clearly GAGGING FOR locally elected oversight for crime! I mean, that would be like suggesting that they want to rig up a system of elections for HANGING and FLOGGING (where Conservatories think of themselves as STRONG), but not for CARING and SHARING (where Conservatories might think Hard Labour would be more likely to be the election-winners)!


Liberal Democrats are, of course, IN FAVOUR of giving more power back to our bosses, the people of Great Britain. That's why it's right there in the Coalition Agreement that:

We will introduce measures to make the police more accountable through oversight by a directly elected individual…

Though we might just have to put a steadying fluffy foot on our partners to restrain their FERVOUR to overturn the constitutional status quo and remind them that that sentence finishes:

…who will be subject to strict checks and balances by locally elected representatives.

That's why it is QUITE RIGHT that Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords stepped in to call a pause to this ADMIRABLY RADICAL race to change to our DEMOCRACY.

Call us OLD-FASHIONED, call us CAUTIOUS if you must, but we thought – as with Mr Andrew Landslide's Health Service Reforms – it might be better to GATHER EVIDENCE and RUN TRIALS before diving in with all four fluffy feet into an UNTRIED and UNPROVEN policy.

For example: we asked one Police Commissioner about his SUCCESS in reducing crime through a policy of allowing a BARKING MAD billionaire-in-tights to go vigilante on his city's ass, but, being fictional, Commissioner Gordon declined to comment.

There is, of course, as much evidence for the existence of BATMAN as there is for the benefits of the Conservatories' policy.

So, while we are VERY GRATEFUL that the Conservatories want everyone to know that "No2AV" means "Yes 2 REAL CHANGE", let's do this in a MEASURED and EVIDENCE-LED way.

In fact, I think that – since he is the MAIN MAN in charge of guiding constitutional change – Captain Clegg needs to step in, take this reform away from the Home Office and make it part of a PROPER LOOK at local democratic representation, perhaps linking it to greater accountability in HEALTH as well.

Best of all would be to make it part of a LOCAL REPRESENTATION ACT and introduce reform to the whole of local government elections – starting with using British PR for council elections.

I'm sure that that is JUST what the Conservatories want! It's certainly what they DESERVE!

PS:

*Thanks to Google gobbling up all the diaries on blogger yesterday, this is a REPOST. So, sorry to all of you who were experiencing some DÉJÀ VU!
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Day 3783: Police Action! aka Correcting Conservative Contradictions on Constitutional Change

Wednesday:


Doesn't it seem EXTRAORDINARY that sections of the Conservatory Party are crowing about last week's rejection of AV while AT THE SAME TIME trying to implement a HUGELY BIGGER change to the way we elect our public servants than ANYTHING the Alliterative Vote might have done: namely replacing APPOINTED police authorities with ELECTED Wild West Marshalls, er, I mean Police Commissioners!

I mean, our coalition partners couldn't be MONSTROUS HYPOCRITES could they. So they must mean that the "No2AV" vote is ONLY a rejection of a not-very-good electoral system and are keen as mustard for MORE FAR REACHING REFORM.

Certainly anyone who claims that Constitutional Change is off the agenda for a thousand years (or thereabouts) is clearly an opponent of Mr Balloon's REFORM AGENDA, and so not at all to be taken SERIOUSLY.

And that is why it CAN'T be right to suggest that the Conservatories are fighting tooth and nail to STOP any locally elected presence overseeing health, when they are clearly GAGGING FOR locally elected oversight for crime! I mean, that would be like suggesting that they want to rig up a system of elections for HANGING and FLOGGING (where Conservatories think of themselves as STRONG), but not for CARING and SHARING (where Conservatories might think Hard Labour would be more likely to be the election-winners)!


Liberal Democrats are, of course, IN FAVOUR of giving more power back to our bosses, the people of Great Britain. That's why it's right there in the Coalition Agreement that:

We will introduce measures to make the police more accountable through oversight by a directly elected individual…

Though we might just have to put a steadying fluffy foot on our partners to restrain their FERVOUR to overturn the constitutional status quo and remind them that that sentence finishes:

…who will be subject to strict checks and balances by locally elected representatives.

That's why it is QUITE RIGHT that Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords stepped in to call a pause to this ADMIRABLY RADICAL race to change to our DEMOCRACY.

Call us OLD-FASHIONED, call us CAUTIOUS if you must, but we thought – as with Mr Andrew Landslide's Health Service Reforms – it might be better to GATHER EVIDENCE and RUN TRIALS before diving in with all four fluffy feet into an UNTRIED and UNPROVEN policy.

For example: we asked one Police Commissioner about his SUCCESS in reducing crime through a policy of allowing a BARKING MAD billionaire-in-tights to go vigilante on his city's ass, but, being fictional, Commissioner Gordon declined to comment.

There is, of course, as much evidence for the existence of BATMAN as there is for the benefits of the Conservatories' policy.

So, while we are VERY GRATEFUL that the Conservatories want everyone to know that "No2AV" means "Yes 2 REAL CHANGE", let's do this in a MEASURED and EVIDENCE-LED way.

In fact, I think that – since he is the MAIN MAN in charge of guiding constitutional change – Captain Clegg needs to step in, take this reform away from the Home Office and make it part of a PROPER LOOK at local democratic representation, perhaps linking it to greater accountability in HEALTH as well.

Best of all would be to make it part of a LOCAL REPRESENTATION ACT and introduce reform to the whole of local government elections – starting with using British PR for council elections.

I'm sure that that is JUST what the Conservatories want! It's certainly what they DESERVE!
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Day 3021: Top Cop Dropped – Did he jump or was he, ahem, pushed?

Thursday:


Today I am practicing with the word: HYPOTHETICAL.

Here is a HYPOTHETICAL situation: the Prime Monster is VERY VERY cross that his massive photo-opportunity important world summit to rescue his job the planet's economy from the mess that he caused didn't cause, has been suddenly overshadowed by another DEATH linked to POLICE SPIN and COVER-UP.

Hypothetically… HYPOTHETICALLY… his spin doctors summon the crème de Scotland Yard in a hurry to brief them on "operation: LOOK! TERRORISTS!" And, all in a lather, PC Plod comes rushing round with the "who can we bang up" list without thinking to stick it in his briefcase…

No, no, no. You would have to be APPALLINGLY CYNICAL to suspect the police of rounding up a bunch of ALLEGED TERRORISTS just to bump from the headlines the story that another group of police were looking increasingly like LYING MURDEROUS THUGS. AGAIN.

But when someone dies and the police do their best to cover up their involvement it BREEDS cynicism.

When someone dies and it turns out that a policeperson gave the victim a thwack and a shove before he staggered off to have a heart-attack you can't help but have cynical thoughts

Three thoughts:

ONE – we must DEMAND that the law that says you cannot film or photograph the police must, MUST be binned immediately. Eye witness accounts of police behaviour apparently COUNT FOR NOTHING and only video footage can prove when the police lie. In which case, we must be able to gather that evidence.

TWO – while there are MANY good policepeople, it is clear that as a body our police have become POLITICISED. This is hardly surprising, the Labour Mayor Mr Ken Spivington spent years making the Met a branch of his office, and Second Home Secretary Ms Jacquie-boot Spliff has done her best to carry on that tradition.

"Kettling" has been described as a FAILURE. But it's only a failure if you assume that the AIM of the strategy is to maintain public safety and allow a calm demonstration that prevents damage to people or property. If your aim is to provoke people into acts of aggression in order to justify your own hyperbole, then wahey way to go. Instant attack on banks. Though for all we know, they were only breaking in to the Royal Bank of Scotland to get to the TOILETS! The police promised us a "Summer of Rage"; you might start to think that they are going out of their way to ENGINEER that!

The police have an AGENDA, and it is no longer certain that that is the same as serving the public.

THREE – Our news media are all completely COMPLICIT. The reporting of the G20 protests might as well have been dictated from the Scotland Yard press office.

And they seem to have no problem with blithely accepting the policepeople's version of YET ANOTHER "terrorism" story even at the same time as they are (SHAMELESSLY) reporting the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what the police were telling them only the day before. "Hero police tackle terrorist threat" jostles for front pages with "police-state thugs in death attack" with barely a blink.

And the resignation of a policeperson for a silly mistake seems to warrant MORE COVERAGE – the The Today Programme were like kids on tartrazine, so excited were they to have Bojo the Clown announcing live on air that he had accepted the resignation of a senior police man – than the need to address SERIOUS and DELIBERATE LYING about the LETHAL police strategy.


The resignation of Mr Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick CHANGES the STORY again – maybe not to the "successful anti-terrorist heroes" that the government wanted, but it's still not "POLICE-STATE KILLS INNOCENT MAN… AGAIN!"

That's classic SPIN.

So it was JOLLY HANDY that one policeperson was willing to "fall on his sword"…

…in case we started to take a SERIOUS look at all the others.

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Day 3019: Put the Police on Notice

Tuesday:

I guess this means I'm on another database!

Thanks to Auntie Helen via Facespace, and you can have your own go here.

Day 2910: In other news… Dracula rejects inquiry into theft from bloodbank

Friday:


Look, perhaps I'm not understanding this:

"The Metropolitan Police force has rejected calls for an inquiry into errors made by, er, The Metropolitan Police"

Since when was it up to the police to decide whether or not anyone should oversee their actions?

Meanwhile,

"Mr Frown has rejected calls for an early* inquiry into the Iraq war started by Lord Blairimort and paid for by, er, Mr Frown"

Is it me, or is there a PATTERN developing?

It is an ABUSE of POWER, if you are able to cover your own fluffy bottom by preventing inquiries into your own FAILINGS.

And the continued BLURRING of the lines between the Metropolitan Police and the Hard Labour Party (that began with that CLONE of Lord Blairimort being in charge, and appear to have continued with the TERRORISM Squad now enforcing the Hard Labour's anti-leak policy) must surely be TERRIFYING for those concerned about the encroaching power of the state.

Is it not about time that Parliament – notionally the "highest court in the land" and at least on some VAGUE level our actual representatives – had the power to COMMAND inquiries into the police, or courts, or army, rather than having to grovel and wait their turn? And shouldn't, in the interest of proper SUPERVISION, the Opposition parties be able to order their own inquiries so that Parliament is actually ABLE to OVERSEE the actions of the Almighty Executive?

Now, if you will excuse me, I must nip off to reject Daddy's inquiry into where all the sticky buns have gone!

PS:

*this, incidentally, is clearly some new and interesting definition of the word "early" meaning "more than five-and-a-half years after the event".

And even if the argument that "our boys are still on the battlefield (i.e. holed up at Basra airport)" wasn't wearing a little THIN so many years after "mission accomplished", you would still have to point out that it never used to stop people holding inquiries when millions (not thousands) were in actual battle.

e.g. Following the horrible mess made of the attempt to take Gallipoli in 1915, when a great many people were shot in the Dardanelles (©Comrade Nutski, "The Correct Way to Kill"), a commission was set up in 1916 and conducted an inquiry into the affair… while World War Part One was still in full thunder.

Mind you, there was a LIBERAL in charge back then, so what do you expect!

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Day 2833: Blair Resigns! Brown(e) Resigns! Don't get your hopes up!

Friday:


Knife crime news, as BoJo the Clown knifes that Clone of Lord Blairimort who's been running the Met, by having people shot, bugged, paid off or racially insulted.

Who would have thought that he'd have the bottle!


Ms Jacqui Spliff, the Hopeless Secretary, has complained that BoJo is "making the police political". Well, bad news, sister: YOU did that!

You did it when you recruited the Blairimort Clone into supporting the Labour whenever you wanted a stooge impartial police officer to say that detention without trial is a vital part of defending our fascist democratic police state.


It is, of course, long PAST time that the Met Chief should stand down. Really, he should have gone as soon as he understood that he had deceived the public (even if unintentionally) over the shooting of an innocent man.

Trust is simply vital in policing. Trust between the people and the police AND trust between a senior officer and those under his command. Sir Ian had managed to sacrifice both of those.

And then to contest the Health and Safety case – the one and only way in which anyone in the Met could be brought to face any kind of justice – and then to LOSE that case… how he could carry on then, I do not understand.

The Mayor was, in all honesty, merely telling Sir Ian what Sir Ian OUGHT TO HAVE DONE ages ago.

It's not entirely without RISK for BoJo, though. He must realise that if crime goes UP it's now entirely on his plate.

The politically EASY thing to have done would have been to follow the "procedure" as Ms Spliff demands – apply to the GLADs, get them to ask permission of the Hopeless Secretary to sack him, have that permission refused, er… He COULD have done that and then blamed the Met Chief for all woes, while shrugging off culpability and claiming his hands were tied by the bureaucracy. But he didn't. He went and handed Sir Ian the Pearl-Handled Revolver and stood over him to make sure he didn't use it to shoot ANOTHER innocent guest in our country.

So, reluctantly, a hooray for BoJo.


Anyway, just in time, the Labour has recruited a man who could teach the Blairimort Clone all about resigning: it's the return of Mr Mandy "Mandy" Mandlebrot, soon to be ennobled as Lord Prince of Darkness.

This is all part of Mr Frown's latest reshuffling of the deckchairs on the Titanic, which also sees Mr DES Browne, minister for Having a Confusingly Similar Name, resign after refusing Mr Frown's offer of a switch to a less important name. Er role.

Meanwhile Mr Millipede Minor joins his brother Mr Millipede in the Cabinet.

Milipede Minor will command the newly created "Department of Energy and Conservation" while his slimy elder sibling will remain in charge of "Abroad (No Tourists)"

This means that jointly they are the ministers for A(NT) and DEC.

Ahem.

Day 2531: Is 42 really the answer?

Thursday:


Much has already been said about the Home Secretary, Ms Jacqui Spliff's, inability to stop picking at the scab that is detention without charges, rather than listening to the CONSENSUS of opinion that 28 days is MORE THAN LONG ENOUGH!

Many have suggested that she has picked the number "forty-two" from the pages of the book by Mr Douglas Adams about the "Hitch-hikers' Guide to the Galaxy".

Actually, the BIGGER surprise is that she did not pick the number "one-thousand-nine-hundred and eighty-four" from the book by Mr Eric Blair about "New Labour Farm".

PS:

When organising a POLICE STATE, it is COMPLETELY wise to p… alienate off the POLICE?

Day 2496: Police! Stop or I'll Not Resign!

Thursday:


Let's start with a statement of the OBVIOUS: you CANNOT make the public more SAFE by SHOOTING them at RANDOM.

We listened to the wise words of Mr Brian on Questionable Time last night, saying it was TOO SOON to call for the resignation of Sir Ian clone of Lord Blairimort, that we should not RUSH to JUDGEMENT. There is the report of the Independent Police Complaints Commission to be published in the next few days, and then there will be an Inquest. Mr Brian is right – we should wait for those.

And THEN Sir Ian should resign.


Reaction to the guilty verdict in the case of Jean Charles de Menezes has been MIXED: Mr Mayor Ken says that Sir Ian has his FULL SUPPORT. Everyone else thinks he should GO.

Leadership candidate Mr Clogg, with his Liberal Democrat Home Secretary hat on, put it well when he said:

"It's absolutely nothing personal about Ian Blair. I have a lot of admiration for him. I just start though from a very simple principle that policing needs to be seen to be accountable."

This is the key point: it's about TRUST.

You have to appreciate what a rock and a hard place Mr Brian found himself in: he has worked for the police all his professional life, he knows these people and the job that they do – and especially how difficult it is. This is what would make him such a GOOD candidate for the Mayor of London: he UNDERSTANDS.

It was a BRAVE decision to support his former colleagues and try to explain a more NUANCED position, especially when the POPULIST PUNDITS – Ms Eggwena Curry, I am looking at YOU – are saying fatuous things like "less of this building relationships with the community; we want the police to catch criminals". Oh and just HOW do you think the police go about "catching criminals" WITHOUT building community relations?

It's about TRUST.


Mr Mayor Ken has said that the court's decision will make it more difficult to protect London from terrorists. HE IS WRONG.

(And, yes, this is the Labour attacking the courts (AGAIN!) because they don't believe the Rule of Law, only in the Rule of the Daily HateMail)

The REAL moment it got more difficult to protect London was the moment that Sir Ian – without knowing the truth – gave a press conference saying that they HAD shot a terrorist when in fact they HADN'T, and members of his police force KNEW that they hadn't.

Because that means that people do not believe him and do not trust his policepeople and that is the SECOND most UNFORTUNATE thing about the de Menezes case. And although Mr Brian may see and know about the GOOD IMPROVEMENTS that Sir Ian has made, there remains that VITAL question of TRUST.

It is tragic but UNDERSTANDABLE that mistakes can be made – even mistakes that end up with an innocent person dead.

But it is NOT acceptable that the police should DENY making those mistakes, cover up, mislead even DECEIVE people about those mistakes. That makes EVERYONE'S lives more dangerous – not just from the risk of FLYING BULLETS, but because it will DRY UP the sources of INFORMATION that the police and security services need in order to stop things before it is too late!

A police force that makes mistakes – and mistakes WERE made – is not protecting London as well as a police force that gets things right. And a police force that is IN DENIAL about those mistakes will make them again and again.

Someone DIED, and we have not been told how it went so wrong. We need to know what it was and we need to know that it was FIXED.

• Why was the building only being watched by one officer? Even the most bumbling spy knows that you need AT LEAST two observers in case one gets "caught short" – which is EXACTLY what happened!

• Why was Mr de Menezes not stopped before getting on a bus? Or onto a second bus? Or before entering the tube? Apparently the police were waiting for the armed officers – or, more accurately, the MORE HEAVILY armed officers – but why did they not know those officers would arrive too late? Does this not mean that the police allowed a person THEY BELIEVED to be a terrorist to REACH his TARGET?

• Why is it possible to get to a situation where armed officers respond on a shoot-to-kill basis against a man they can clearly see is restrained APPARENTLY without anyone instructing them to? Is it not EXTREMELY DANGEROUS to wind armed men up to a height of terror and then let them go running into a crowded tube? Pumped on ADRENALINE they nearly shot one of the surveillance officers too.

• Why did Sir Ian give out misleading statements at his press conference? Who briefed him? Did no one tell him his briefs were on fire? Did they have direct knowledge of the incident? Didn't he CHECK with someone who did? And why didn't THEY tell him the truth?

• And why did the defence go to seemingly ANY lengths – distorting photographic evidence, character assassination (Traces of cocaine alleged to be in his system? Hey, he was only a druggie!) – to try and avoid a guilty verdict?

The police have NOT answered these questions. Instead they have DENIED getting things wrong and denied that they endangered the public, even though one member of the public was very obviously endangered TO DEATH.

On the CRUDEST LEVEL, Sir Ian's decisions – including the decision to contest this case – have cost the London taxpayers over half a million pounds because he wouldn't accept that mistakes had been made.

Mr Mayor Ken makes more excuses:

"Police officers operated against suicide bombers in conditions of extreme danger – and subject to strains – both of risk to themselves and of their desire to safeguard Londoners lives, that no one not in their position can understand."

But that is FLIM FLAM trying to distract us from the point. NO ONE is blaming the firearms officers. They were placed in a position there they believed they were "in conditions of extreme danger" and they did their job. But who put them there and why did they genuinely believe they were in danger? Because that belief is what killed an innocent man.

In a case, ANY case where lethal force is thought to be necessary, there MUST be someone who is responsible. If there isn't, then bullets will end up flying at random and people will get killed. There has GOT to be something wrong with a system that allows that to happen. And the person responsible HAS GOT TO BE the man at the top who – ultimately – is in charge of the operations and systems and procedures.

You might think that that is not fair – making one person be responsible for a decision, a decision that could cost them their JOB. Well, it cost someone his LIFE.


But do not have NIGHTMARES! This is, thankfully – and as the Judge pointed out – a very RARE incident. How many times have the police wrongly shot a suspected terrorist? Only Mr de Menezes. And the Forest Gate incident.

And just remember how many times they have shot a GENUINE terrorist in that time… oh.

Day 1917: Local SOCA league

Monday:


It is a good job that we did NOT try to go to MONGO, as it turns out that His Imperial Supremacy Grand Panjandrum HRH Sir Mr the Merciless was not at home.

Instead he is here in Britain, launching his campaign for total conquest the May local elections.

Local Elections OUGHT to be more important to people, because they are for the THINGS that you use MOST OFTEN. (After all, you want to use the PAVEMENT every day, but HOW OFTEN do you want a SMALL WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST????)

Unfortunatlely, people do not seem to see things that way. Because the local council deals with the everyday STUFF (read that as BORING!), then people do not think that they are that important and so do not pay proper attention to them. This means that even if Mr Blair and the Labour get SPIFFLICATED at the local elections they will just laugh it off.

On the other fluffy foot, it also means that people might vote for Mr Balloon just in order to stick one on Mr Blair. This means that he will probably do very well INDEED – and be very pleased with himself – even though he has not got any policies yet. In fact IRONICALLY, if he doesn't do VERY WELL INDEED, then it might look bad for Mr Balloon. Which is VERY confusing.

Meanwhile, I have found out where Mr Blair's stormtroopers went when they stopped hunting me down LIKE A DOG!!! Ahem. They are off playing SOCA.

Appaerntly this is to be like the American FBI and they will investigate X-Files like: do Aliens exist? where is the Loch Ness Monster? and how did Mr Blair make all those loans vanish?

In a funny way, the SOCA team are connected to the problem of local government.

If there is a PROBLEM that is big enough to make the NEWSPAPERS take notice, then it makes the GOVERNMENT in London want to take charge so that they can (if it works) take all the credit and look lovely OR (if it doesn't work – which is, lets face it, rather more LIKELY) then they can LOOK like they are doing something to fix it.

So this SOCA team is NOT really to make organised crime go away (because organised crime has got a bit of a bit bigger budget than Mr Blair's SOCA team) but to make exciting NEWS STORIES that will look good for Mr Blair and take some of the heat off him for the WAVE OF HYSTERICAL CRIME STORIES (copyright all newspages) that newspapers keep printing because they sell lots more papers even though it makes it look like Britain today is at the mercy of crime that is totally out of control rather than Britain today REALLY being one of the safest countries in all the world and in all of history.

Why is this like local governemt? Because big government has taken over all of the EXCITING bits so that they can LOOK like they are fixing the problems (or at least so that they can make it all look as LEAST BAD for them as they can).

On the plus side today, ROBIN HOOD is coming back.

Assuming that Mr Blair's SOCA team doesn't duff him up.

Day 1891: The Elephant of Surprise

Tuesday:


On the radio, a man from the police is saying that the police should keep their SHOOT TO KILL policy. But it should not be CALLED shoot to kill. Even though it involves SHOOTING people in order to KILL them.

Daddy Richard says I should look up DOUBLETHINK.

Anyway, the man from the police says that the police have asked themselves VERY SERIOUSLY whether they want to carry on SHOOTING TO KILL people and the police have said YES PLEASE.

Apparently this is because the THREAT of TERRORISTS is so great that the police must keep the ELEMENT OF SURPRISE.

I suppose it must SURPRISE the terrorists when the POLICE go around SHOOTING people at random. It probably confuses them when the POLICE are causing MORE TERROR than the terrorists.

I am not sure how this helps the situation, though.

There is probably a PLAN.

It is NOT a SECRET PLAN, though. The man from the police said so. He said that even though the public were not told about it, several police people knew about it so it cannot have been a secret.

Daddy is rolling his eyes again!

I am probably being OLD FASHIONED but I think that the police should probably be doing what elected people ask them to do rather than deciding what they want to do for themselves.



Incidentally, I have noticed that the police are ALSO run by a Mr Blair. I think that he might be CLONING himself.