Tag: EUtopia

I Repeat:

KevinLeave a comment

I Repeat:

Get Out. Get Out NOW.

I wish I could say I was surprised.

UPDATE: Reader “eeky” points out this earlier story:

Man accused of attacking DVLA inspector with broom walks free

Monday, September 29, 2008

A man accused of beating a DVLA inspector with a broom handle as walked free from court after claiming his alleged victim had exaggarated the incident.

Inspector Hayden Hart had claimed he was attakced my[sic] Paul Clarke, 26, as he patrolled Wood Street, Merstham, checking parked cars for out-of-date tax discs.

The inspector said he was clubbed repeatedly by his attacker, who warned him: “If you come near my vehicle again, I’ll break your f****** legs.”

But Mr Clarke, of Wood Street, Merstham, walked free from the Crown Court at Guildford after winning his appeal against conviction for assault by beating at Redhill Magistrates Court on March 12 this year.

Mr Clarke, 26, of Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, denied the offence, insisting he had never actually struck Mr Hart during the confrontation on June 12 last year (2007).

The court was told that Mr Hart was driving along Wood Street stopping to inspect parked vehicles to make sure that they were displaying valid vehicle excise licenses.

Giving evidence at the appeal hearing, Mr Hart said: “I had seen four vehicles which I was going to report for not having up-to-date tax discs.”

He said he was inside his Honda filling out the appropriate forms when he heard a loud bang on his window and looked up to see a young man.

Mr Hart said: “He was carrying a broom stick without the head on the end of it.”

He said the man appeared very aggressive and threatened violence against him.

“As I got out of my car to ask him what he was doing, he struck me on the arm two or three times with the handle,” he said.

Mr Hart said he grabbed hold of the stick and there was a scuffle before the other man walked off.

He said he suffered extensive bruising on his arm and had to have time off work because he felt so shaken by the incident.

“I felt very depressed,” he said.

However, under cross-examination by defence counsel Richard McConaghy, he admitted the bruises might have been caused when he had leapt out of his vehicle to see what was going on.

Mr Clarke said he had confronted Mr Hart because he thought he had seen him trying to steal something from his pick-up truck.

“I didn’t realise he was a DVLA inspector. He might have been a prolific thief,” he said.

He said he had the broom because he had been sweeping up some glass in the road – and the head, which was loose, had fallen off during the fracas.

Mr Clarke accused Mr Hart of exaggerating his injuries, adding: “I reckon he wanted some time off work and compensation.”

After the court was told that it was not possible to prove that the bruising to Mr Hart’s arm had actually been caused by Mr Clarke, prosecuting counsel Laurence Aiolfi applied to have the offence changed from assault by beating to one of common assault.

But the judge, Mr. Recorder Stuart Lawson-Rogers, refused to agree to this – allowing Mr Clarke’s appeal to succeed.

Eeky and I seem to agree that someone decided Mr. Clarke needed to pay his debt to society for failing to conform to the “passive victim” standard. Loaded sawed-off shotguns don’t magically appear in most people’s gardens.

A Brilliant Bit of Analysis

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Reader Phil B. (not Phil R. who attended GBRIV this year, but another Brit reader) has posted a long comment that deserves front-page status. Here it is, in its entirety. Pay particular attention to his analysis of our resident “useful idiot.”

I must disagree with Kevin regarding the ability of anyone to convince the voting public that anything to do with guns is acceptable or normal. I personally do not believe that it is possible to peacefully reverse the restrictions and negative image of firearms in the UK for various reasons. Let me start from first principles to outline why I have come to this conclusion.

You must understand the nature of the Politicians, Quangos (Quasi Autonomous Non Governmental Organisations) and the Civil Service (which is neither civil or a servant but a Master). Ministers come and go and are briefed by the civil servants but it is the Civil Service which effectively runs the country.

It is overwhelmingly Marxist/Leninist in its ethos and has been infiltrated so successfully by the left that the average citizen (or even a group of such citizens) does not even understand the rules of the game.

Communism can be simply and easily summarised : “A group of PROFESSIONAL Revolutionaries, taking over the levers of power of a Country and running the country for their own benefit”. How will they mange this? By organisation and eliminating opposition by whatever means is necessary.

Briefly, the left wing intent is to destroy the existing society and replace it with a society of its own design.

Lenin proposed five conditions for successful “Revolution”, namely :

1) The weakening or destruction of the existing State and its institutions

2) The destruction of the existing society so that it can be replaced by the type of society required by the “new” post revolutionary society

3) An inability of the existing institutions to govern or bring about change .

4) The armed forces must be demoralised and rendered ineffective (including the Police).

5) The “proletariat” must be in a mood for change.

He also stated that Freedom and Liberty is precious and therefore must be strictly rationed. All power must be accumulated to the State and freedoms and rights will be permitted ONLY if the State allows.

Once you understand that mindset and these principles, then you can use them as a template to see how many of the trends in society fit the pattern and “advance the cause”. The destruction of marriage, the recent posting on this blog about the way all parents are to be treated as paedophiles, the wrecking of the education system, “equality” legislation, gay and minority rights etc and so forth ad infinitum all assist one or more of the five principles. Try matching the attack to the principle.

Interestingly, Lenin did not prescribe what form the revolution takes or how it is prosecuted. Everyone thinks of the “Revolution” as armed people storming the Winter Palace in St Petersburg (or Leningrad if your atlas is a bit older). However, he also said that ALL aspects of society should be attacked simultaneously and if an opportunity arises to spring the revolution, then it should be taken. If the communists can actually take over the Government of the day and run the country for its own use, then that is also considered as “revolution” and equally valid.

The left wing has infiltrated and hollowed out from within just about every organisation – including the Conservative party (“Right” wing or Republican) which is “Blue Labour” – their policies and attitude is a milder version of the Left policies and attitudes. As a “for example” I will quote from Mary Ellen Synons blog “Euroseptic”

(original here http://synonblog.dailymail.co.uk/2009/11/dave-pétain.html )

Tony Blair promised the British people a referendum on the European Constitution. Then, after the text was renamed the Lisbon Treaty, Blair broke that promise because he said it was no longer a constitution, it was a treaty, and he had only promised a referendum on a constitution.

David Cameron promised the British people a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Now, after the text has been signed by President Klaus of the Czech Republic, Cameron has broken that promise — he has sent out his Tory spokesmen to say there will not be a referendum because Lisbon is not a treaty, it is now European law, and he only promised a referendum on a treaty.

Do you spot the similarities?

In the UK. The brothers Milliband (both professional politicians who have never had a job outside of Politics) and are the sons of Ralph Milliband, an ardent and active communist, are holders of significant power in the UK. David Milliband is Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Edward Samuel Miliband is Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. Ralph Milliband was attacked by David Horowitz in an essay called “The Road to Nowhere” and Kevin blogged this a while back.

Examining the political credentials of the rest of the Government Ministers reveals a similar catalogue of “ex” Marxist/Leninists in significant positions of power and influence.

A revolution? I believe it certainly is and all the conditions listed above have been very largely been achieved.

The Daily Mail newspaper reported that Labour has deliberately encouraged “multiculturism” and unlimited mass immigration to destroy British society and forever change Britain to spite the right wing. As the newspaper concerned has not been sued by the Labour party or the Government or forced to issue a public retraction of the statement that I can only assume that it must be true.

(See here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debat…telling- us.html

and

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/…sed- racism.html for details. )

However, there has been a deafening silence from the rest of the press and as the majority of people rely on the TV for news and the BBC (the state sponsored broadcasting organisation) in particular, very few people are aware of this.

This addresses Point 2 above Examining the relentless attacks on marriage from a myriad of different directions (removing tax breaks for married couples, elevating the “single parent family” by favourable benefits so that it is financially more beneficial for a married couple with children to LIVE APART, the elevation of gay “Marriage” etc.) add to this.

Constant change and bogging people down in pointless activities contributes to points 2 and 3 – Markadelphia is expert at this. Consider the amount of time that the readers of this blog have wasted in rebutting in detail his postings – while you are busy researching facts, carefully editing replies and spending your time and effort concentrating on the garbage he writes, you are not concentrating on other, perhaps much more important things. “Make the enemy do useless things” is one of Sun Tzu’s maxims. And while you are doing this, he, like a butterfly, flutters off onto another topic, equally as pointless and you respond …

What you must bear in mind is that for a professional revolutionary, infiltrated into an organisation, IT IS THEIR FULL TIME JOB to work towards the destruction of society. Kevin, all the rest of the bloggers and I must devote our spare time to this – a revolutionary can work 8 hours a day at the office and then go home to carry on in their leisure time.

My point is that, regardless of your arguments, no matter how detailed your research, no matter how much you can demonstrate that your point of view is reasonable, it will be ignored, dismissed and trivialised. Critical Theory so well developed by the Frankfurt school of Communism will be brought fully to bear to render your arguments invalid (“You are wrong”)

The existing State holds the levers of power and they certainly are not going to give it up – remember, rights will be allowed if the State is convinced that it will not be harmed by the relaxation and can be withdrawn at any time.

You might as well try to persuade by sweet reason a hungry grizzly bear to turn vegetarian and not eat you. It is not interested, its mind is made up and you are wasting your time.

Now, having outlined the methodology of the Left and given some examples to illustrate the way that the left operates, let us examine how they have used Critical Theory in particular to shape the way firearms are viewed in the UK.

Since 1920, the propaganda output by all the British media, both State controlled and privately owned, has been that Guns are evil. Gun “Nuts/Fanatics/Crazy” people have been (and still are) the target of all the insidious destruction of their reputation and character which the left practices so well.

Using Critical Theory, firearms and owners are attacked and trivialised at every opportunity.

Rich, upper class people shooting grouse and pheasants (I am neither rich or upper class but have shot both pheasants and grouse on a very modest budget) can be dismissed using the “Class Enemy” approach and vilified as brainless, moronic bloodthirsty destroyers of the environment (when not clearing the peasants from their land so that a privileged minority can lord it over the country for their own sadistic pleasure, of course).

So inculcated are the populace and so selective are the reports presented by the media (“Look what happens in America” ) that anyone would think that an intelligent, sober, sensible, law abiding person merely touching a gun would instantaneously be transmogrified into a drooling, crazed murdering chimpanzee on acid and not to be trusted with a gun.

The press and media are so left wing leaning and biased against firearms that getting the message out will be virtually impossible.

The Police have actively campaigned for the restriction on firearms since the beginning in 1920. Their mantra is “We wish to reduce the number of firearms in the hands of the population to the absolute minimum” – and if you believe any number north of zero is “the minimum”, then you are as gullible as Markadelphia.

Thanks to the Police, taking anyone to a range to introduce them to the sport is lengthy, tedious, bureaucratic and intended to put people off. Journalists have stated that they want to infiltrate a gun club and “prove” how easy it is to steal a gun. (A few years back, a journalist smuggled a gun into the UK to “prove” how easy it was … and was not prosecuted for breaking the law). The penalties for having a gun stolen are severe and you can bet your bottom dollar that you will never own a gun again. Any Gun Club where the firearm is stolen will be shut down. More ammunition will be provided to “prove” that firearms owners are a danger. As you must vouch for anyone you take to the club, very, very few people will risk things and even fewer clubs will encourage visitors.

Gun ownership is being attacked and strangled from many directions and few people will be willing to risk introducing anyone to a club, or even discuss that they are firearms owners in case loose talk leads to a break in and theft of a firearm.

Samizdata has a blog entry describing the evolution of the “no right to self defence (link here http://www.samizdata.net/blog/ ar…ay_we_were.html ) and it summarises how and why it is impossible to use a legally held firearm in self defence (besides the conditions on the firearms certificate will state “Only to be used on Approved ranges”, or a named piece of land for shooting rabbits etc. so you will be breaking the law by doing so).

So to conclude, the decline in forearms ownership in Britain will only continue, and indeed accelerate as people are forced out of the sport and no new people come into the clubs etc. and those in charge of the system will be quite content to allow this BECAUSE it is what they want. Chairman Mao stated that “Power comes from the barrel of a gun” and there is no way in the world that these people will allow power to be given to the population.

So will there ever be a change in this status? I believe so but as I said at the start of this essay, it will not be PEACEFUL.

There is an interesting book called the War of the Flea by Robert Taber about revolutionary guerrilla warfare. It was published a while ago in the 1960s and the CIA bought up the entire first printing – not because it was so dangerous that the Public couldn’t be allowed access to it but it was so good it was issued as a standard text to their operatives. I often used to see it in second hand bookshops in the UK.

One of the questions Taber asked was “Why do people, when the risks and dangers are so great, both to themselves and their families, resort to armed revolution?”

His answer was quite simple – they cannot get any redress to their grievances either through the ballot box or through the Courts.

In the UK such topics as the Lisbon treaty, law and order, taxation, the deliberate encouragement of immigration to destroy the nature of the country, loss of liberties, ID cards, etc. etc. are occurring at an accelerating rate and the average citizen is bewildered by this. The torrent of legislation and the pettiness and disproportionate penalties for trivial transgressions of the law is proceeding unabated. The labour government, through “Enabling Acts” (i.e. under existing legislation a Minister can introduce a law without it being scrutinised or voted on by parliament) has introduced one new criminal offence for EVERY DAY they have been in power since May 1997. Such legislation has given the state unprecedented power to snoop and spy on the population and now it is more expensive to obey the law than to be a criminal.

The citizens do not understand the rules of the game being played by the left. They try to understand and reason their way to a solution – and while they are trying to address and counter the arguments and problems in detail and try to lobby their “representatives”, they are overwhelmed by the new legislation coming down the pipeline. The representatives will ignore or trivialise the citizens letter or enquiry – they are driving the process – and will divide and conquer using Critical Theory, accusations of Racism, Homophobia, Islamophobia etc. No matter, it helps destroy and fragment society and isolate people, engender suspicion and any “problems” can be sorted later (such as declaring sections of the population as counter revolutionaries, class enemies, etc. The solution involves firing squads or Gulags but it must be kept firmly in mind that the purpose of it all is for a SMALL group of PROFESSIONAL revolutionaries to run the country for THEIR benefit. See any communist country and the way the leaders behave.

Is there any redress through the ballot box? All political parties are singing from the same hymn sheet and Europe is gaining greater and greater (unelected and unaccountable) powers – see the quote by Mary Ellen Synon above.

Is there any chance of the Law Courts siding with the people of the country and reversing the Governments policies? Again, no. Rather they uphold stupid and malicious legislation. And any situation where it costs you more to obey the law than to disregard it is a dangerous situation. Some of the judgements are frankly bizarre and perverse to say the least and discriminate in favour of “minorities” and against the law abiding (as a “for example” search for “Travellers” on the Daily mail website for dozens of examples of this).

The mood of the people when I left in late January 2009 was becoming increasingly frustrated and angry. Society is so fragmented now that there is no longer a sense of national identity and people now have nothing to lose.

If you accept that Taber was correct (regarding ballot boxes and the law courts) then you must conclude that Revolution in the UK is inevitable.

I learned that to avoid trouble, don’t be there when it kicks off and I believe that Britain is heading for a revolution of one form or another because the pressures and change in society are so great that it is at breaking point. What will replace that particular version of society is anyone’s guess but I can guarantee it will be a less benign, harsher and more impoverished existence. Revolutions destroy wealth and stability and I’m getting too old to start from scratch again. That is why I am writing this in New Zealand.

HOW the revolution starts (without guns in the hands of the people it will be difficult, but not impossible) and what direction it takes I would not like to predict. It will be bloody, long and protracted – but sweeping away of the old regime and the replacement with a new form of governance will be something to observe from afar.

You can bet that those people who have put their life on the line to get rid of the corrupt, non representative and self serving system will not meekly hand in their weapons to those in the new authority. Instead, they will be as brutal as the Communists and quite a few of the existing Politicians, Civil Servants and others will meet an untimely end in one form or another.

So is there hope? That’s a strange way of looking at it but perhaps there is.

As usual, you will want to know where the information comes from.

For a concise and easily read summary of the aims and principles of communism, Geoffrey Fairbairn’s “Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare The Countryside Version” is as good as you will get. One chapter on Leninism sums it up completely in 19 pages of a paperback.

Chairman Maos quotes are found in my copy of “Mao Tse Tung – Selected Writings” which is surprisingly readable and well written. Not that I would be persuaded to subscribe to his philosophy.

Lenin’s works are too numerous to list in all their gory detail but the following are worthwhile to understand the way communist organisations are set up, organised and run. Note that Lenin had experience of the Army and organisation so if his writings seem to be written as a military textbook, referring to “This Army”, now you know why. His acceptance and insistence on the use of overwhelming violence stems from his Military Training and may give an insight into the tactics of the left wing political parties. Try these two as a primer.

On Organisation
Selected Works

Incidentally, if Lenin DID write this stuff, he was an excellent technical author ..

Sun Tsu – The Art of War. I prefer the translation by Samuel B Griffiths (a former US Marine) but there are plenty more out there.

The Daily Mail is a large circulation newspaper with over 3 million readers per day (see the Audited Bureau of Circulation Website for exact figures. Make sure you enter the full title as there are thousands of newspapers with Mail as part of the title) and covers some of the stupidities of the various laws passed over the last 13 years. Try entering BNP as a search string in the website and read some of the comments under the articles. Or “Travellers” for the way the law abiding are second class citizens in their own homes.

Samizdata is, I find, patchy and does not cover a single topic (as Kevin’s Blog does) but in the right hand sidebar, you can search under TOPICS for self defence etc. Plenty of British points of view.

I’ve been reposting other people’s words a lot recently, but just DAMN! When they’re that good, it would be a crime not to.

UPDATE: Phil added this, in comments:

For anyone thinking that I’m paranoid and seeing “Reds under the bed” at every turn, these links should give a ring of truth to the article

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ …oliticians.html

and

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/…B-45- years.html

It is rare that such information is publicly and explicitly stated which makes it all the more startling.

Those articles are chilling.

How’s that Gun Control Working Out for You?

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Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world. We recognize that only the strictest control of firearms will protect the public.

— Home Office Minister Alun Michael, 11/3/97 press release.

That was right after passage of the handgun ban.

Today?

Armed officers placed on routine foot patrol for first time

And not just any guns, either!

Police officers armed with submachine guns are to be deployed on routine patrol of Britain’s streets for the first time. A hand-picked team from CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s elite firearms unit, will walk the beat in gun crime hotspots where armed gangs have turned entire estates into “no go” zones.

Local politicians and anti-gun campaigners have reacted with anger at the news that the officers will carry Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns – capable of firing up to 800 rounds-per-minute – and Glock semi-automatic pistols.

This, in a country where at least one media outlet called the full-auto Glock 18 pistol the Most Terrifying Gun in the World!

CO19 currently provides armed support in volatile situations like sieges and terrorist attacks, with its officers on constant call in vehicles around London.

But this is the first time that armed officers will be sent on permanent foot patrol anywhere in the country outside Northern Ireland.

“Historically, CO19 was only called out when someone rang up to report a gun crime,” said Inspector Derek Carroll, head of the new unit.

“But a lot of streets in London have young people in postcode gangs, aged 14 and upwards, and a lot of communities feel that they are controlling areas of estates.

“We are looking at gangs that have access to firearms and will be robust in dealing with them and disrupting and deterring them.”

Really! Gangs have access to firearms on an island nation with “the strictest control of firearms” that they were promised would “protect the public”?

Say it ain’t so!

The team of 18 constables, led by an inspector and two sergeants, will begin their patrols of Brixton, Haringey and Tottenham on Nov 9, following successful trial schemes.

The officers – some on motorbikes – will carrying out weapon “sweeps” of their neighbourhoods in an effort to deter gang members from carrying guns, and are also intended to be a reassuring presence for residents.

Residents that have been told, literally for decades, that guns are evil, and that fully-automatic weapons are only useful for mowing down large crowds indiscriminately.

You’d think someone would comment on the dichotomy there.

“My view is that just because you carry a gun, it should not affect the way you police,” Inspector Carroll added. “We chat to people and they love it.”

Unlike their counterparts in the United States, British police officers not routinely carry guns, although armed patrols are frequently deployed in the aftermath of shootings and to guard potential terrorist targets.

In October 2000 armed officers on the beat were temporarily introduced in Nottingham after a string of drug-related deaths.

Jennette Arnold, a Labour London Assembly member for northeast London constituency, said that the patrols threatened to tear up the contract between the community and the police.

Already torn, Ms. Arnold, already torn.

“No one asked us or the people I represent if this was acceptable and when they do I shall tell them it isn’t. It isn’t acceptable to throw away the principle of policing by consent,” she said.

Gill Marshall-Andrews, chairwoman of the Gun Control Network campaign group, described the routine arming of officers as a “very retrograde step” and warned that it could lead to higher levels of gun crime.

“This is likely to raise the stakes and encourage more criminals, especially young criminals, to arm themselves,” she said.

Soooo, you’re saying that having armed foot patrols in the area might “escalate the situation”? Who do you represent, Ms. Marshall-Andrews? The residents or the thugs?

“Gun crime in this country is very low by international standards and that’s largely because there aren’t many guns about. Arming police officers sends out all the wrong messages.”

The Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, has long campaigned against attempts to arm a larger section of the force, but said it had no objection to the new scheme.

Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the national federation, said that although majority of his members did not wish be to armed, forces must be free to respond to particular threats.

“The ethos will always be that the British police are unarmed, but we need officers to be able to use firearms when appropriate,” he said. “My feeling is that the current balance is just about right.”

The Home Office declined to comment, saying that the operational use of firearms was a matter for local forces.

Officers from CO19, formerly known as SO19, have been involved in a number of high-profile incidents in the capital, including the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell station in 2005.

No internal link to that one, but a second on Bing gets you this:

Police officers in Jean Charles de Menezes shooting escape punishment

No police officers involved in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes will be disciplined, despite an inquest finding that catastrophic failures led to his death in London.

Same paper. Imagine that. The public should feel very secure!

Gun-related crime is on the increase in London with 1,736 gun crimes reported in London between April and September this year – up 17 per cent on 2008.

The problem of turf violence between drugs gangs was highlighted earlier this month with a spate of shootings in north London linked to two Turkish gangs, the Tottenham Boys and the Bombacilar.

Yup, Gun crime in the UK is very low by international standards, but it keeps going UP. It keeps going up in the face of Alun Michael’s proclamation that “only the strictest control of firearms will protect the public.”

It’s a stone bitch when reality won’t conform to the theory, isn’t it? And it’s even worse when someone points it out.

(h/t: TFS Magnum)

Backlash?

KevinLeave a comment

Backlash?

In Part II of the “Dangerous Victims” trilogy I quoted something I found over at Samizdata:

Discourage self-help, and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians. Over-stimulate self-assertion, and for the arbitrament of the Courts you substitute the decision of the sword or the revolver. – The Law of the Constitution, by A.V. Dicey (MacMillan, London 1885).

Yesterday I found this story (sorry, I don’t remember where I found the link that took me there) from Saturday’s Daily Express:

TIME TO TACKLE AN ACUTE CRISIS IN BRITISH POLICING

REPORTS of the law-abiding being serially neglected by the police when their property comes under attack are proliferating. Every day brings new stories about people who have been let down by constabularies that always seem to have higher priorities than protecting the public.

It appears that far from being an occasional aberration, such neglect is the norm in many parts of the country.

Too many forces have fallen under the command of politically correct top brass who think officers should be at best neutral when they intervene in altercations between harassed householders and gangs of thugs.

The latest examples are all too typical. In Lincolnshire, Ted Nottingham has felt compelled to advertise a reward for the capture of yobs who have vandalised his car more than 40 times and have now wrecked his neighbour’s vehicle.

In Stourbridge, disabled widow Brenda Hill has been forced to put up notices in her car, begging vandals to stop smashing it up after five attacks in the past year.

She knows who the culprits are and so do the police but nothing has been done to stop them.

We cannot go on like this. The current public outcry must be the catalyst for fundamental change. There is no more important task facing the police and the courts than reclaiming the streets from young hoodlums.

There must come a point when offering understanding and support to the fractured families of the underclass is not enough.

The time has come for the police to get tough and give decent people their neighbourhoods back.

I’d like to think the unspoken next sentence reads “Or we’ll take them back ourselves,” but I’m not sure there are enough dangerous victims left in (formerly) Great Britain.

But I can hope.

UPDATE: Reader “teqjack” links in comments to the latest bit of insanity from across the pond:

You can’t expect the police to be heroes: Public want too much, says health and safety report

The public have ‘ unrealistic expectations’ that police will put themselves in danger to protect ordinary people, according to new safety guidelines for officers.

The Health and Safety Executive caused outrage by declaring that officers confronted with dangerous situations-while fighting crime or trying to guard the public ‘may choose not to put themselves at unreasonable risk’.

Its guidance published yesterday firmly plays down the need for officers to show bravery in the course of their duty if they make a ‘personal choice’ not to.

It states: ‘There is often an unrealistic public expectation that officers and staff will put themselves at risk to protect the public.’

The document concedes that ‘very occasionally in extreme cases’, police may be justified in putting themselves in jeopardy – in which case they may be let off without being prosecuted under health and safety laws.

The report – which has the backing of senior police chiefs – prompted anger and astonishment last night.

Paul Beshenivsky, whose police officer wife Sharon was shot dead by armed robbers in 2005, condemned the HSE as ‘meddling do-gooders’, saying: ‘At the end of the day a police officer’s job does involve putting your life on the line. Sharon knew that, and she got killed.’

He told the Mail: ‘The public are not allowed to take the law into their own hands, and now the crazy health and safety brigade want to stop the police dealing with criminals as well.

“Where would you draw the line? Would you say, “That shoplifter that looks on drugs, he might have a knife, I’ll walk away from that one?” The whole thing is madness.’

Police forces have been subject to health and safety legislation since 1998.

But it is the latest document’s advice on risk-taking by individual officers that has caused anger.

The report says police officers ‘may, very occasionally in extreme cases, decide to put themselves at risk in acts of true heroism’.

In these ‘rare circumstances’, the HSE adds, ‘it would not be in the public interest to take action against the individual’.

But it adds: ‘Equally HSE, like the Police Service, recognises that in such extreme cases everyone has the right to make personal choices and that individuals may choose not to put themselves at unreasonable risk.’

The guidelines have been backed by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the rank-and-file Police Federation.

But Sid Mackay, a retired Met Police Chief Superintendent whose daughter, PC Nina Mackay, was stabbed to death on duty in 1997, said: ‘They claim it is “unrealistic” for the public to expect the police to face danger, but that’s what the public believe the police are for, and rightly so.

‘The HSE will never understand, because they are completely risk-averse, but they have got their fingers into operational policing and they think they’re the experts.

‘The police are choking on paperwork, carrying out endless risk assessments for every operation, and then we wonder why they have become so cautious.’

Anthony Ganderton, the stepfather of ten-year- old Jordon Lyon who drowned in Wigan in 2007 after he jumped into a pond to save his stepsister, also attacked the guidelines.

Two police community service officers who arrived at the scene stood on the bank and radioed for help instead of jumping in to rescue the children, because they were not appropriately trained so risked breaking health and safety rules.

He told the Mail: ‘The point is they should do whatever they can to help people in trouble, especially when there are children involved.’

HSE chairman Judith Hackitt said yesterday: ‘This statement will assist senior police officers in balancing the risks involved in their duties to fight crime with meeting their health and safety obligations to their own employees and the public.’

The Home Office said: ‘Health and safety laws are there to protect the police as well as the public, but they must never hinder officers in the execution of their duty.’

They’ve gone completely batshit fucking insane over there.

Get out. Get out now.

Get Out. Get Out NOW.

KevinLeave a comment

I’ve quoted Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing that he developed when creating London’s first official police force in 1822 several times in the past. Time to repeat them again:

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.

3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

5 Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.

7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

I’ve also posted repeatedly on the decay of the UK’s culture, and its performance as a laboratory petri dish for what the Left wants to implement here.

This story (h/t: Ironhand) pissed me off:

Mark of madness: Police refuse to show suspect’s birthmark in ID parade… because of his human rights

When Tracy Ryan spotted a suspected burglar emerging from the dog sanctuary where she works, she thought she would have little problem pointing him out to police.

After all, he had a large port-wine stain on his face.

But when police set up an identity parade, they refused to take the man’s distinctive birthmark into account – in case it infringed his human rights.

An officer from the Nottinghamshire force explained that the mark was too rare to be included in a profile of the burglar when it was entered into a computer database.

It would leave only a small pool of potential suspects in the electronic ID parade, he said, breaking police rules.

Under laws designed to take into account ‘the rights and freedoms of the public’, witnesses must be shown a minimum of 12 photographs before they are allowed to identify a suspect.

These are selected from a database of people who have passed through custody in Nottinghamshire, in the hope that the burglar is already known to police.

Because only a handful of people on a database had a birthmark or port-wine stain, the characteristic gave fewer than 12 results.

The characteristic was subsequently removed and the search was broadened.

This forced Mrs Ryan, 39, to examine the faces of 93 suspects, none of which she recognised.

It was on August 25 that £300 in charity donations was stolen from the Crossing Cottage Greyhound Sanctuary in Sutton on Trent, Nottinghamshire.

Mrs Ryan noted that, apart from his birthmark, the suspected culprit was tall and wore a white tracksuit. She also took his car registration number.

Police have subsequently made an arrest and Mrs Ryan is due to attend a second identification parade which will include the suspect, who is on bail.

He will be pictured alongside 11 people of a similar appearance. But if he has a birthmark, it will still be kept secret.

The suspected thief and the other participants will be made to cover one side of their face.

Mrs Ryan said: ‘Surely an unusual characteristic like a big birthmark should help a police investigation?

‘If there were just four or five people on the database with such marks, all the better.

‘I understand police have to follow procedures, but to me the rules are flawed and amount to a pretty lame excuse.’

It goes well beyond “lame.”

Her boss John Morton, who manages the home for 30 former racing dogs as part of the Retired Greyhound Trust, said: ‘The police are saying they can’t infringe human rights. But what about our human rights?

You don’t have any. You’re not a member of a protected class.

‘We are law-abiding people who have been victims of crime, and the police have a responsibility to maximise their chances of solving that crime. If this is the law, it has to be changed.’

Yes, but it won’t be.

But this story (also via Ironhand) inspired a RCOBTM reaction:

Police tell mother attacked by yobs at home: ‘We won’t send anyone… it may escalate the problem’

A mother who was punched to the floor in her own home by yobs was stunned when police advised her not to call officers to her house – because it would ‘escalate’ the problem.

Nikki Collen, 39, begged officers for help after a thug kicked in her front door and punched her to the floor in her hallway.

After her attacker fled, Nikki rang Warwickshire Police who promised to send an officer to her home in Kenilworth.

But an hour later she received a phone call from a woman police officer who told her it would be better if police did not attend because it might inflame the situation.

Mother-of-two Nikki, who is studying an Open University degree in nursing, said: ‘I couldn’t believe it.

‘I was attacked and wanted to report it but the officer was persuading me not to press charges.

‘She even told me that if the bullies saw a police officer at my home it could escalate the problem further.

Remember, this is in the same nation that produced Sir Robert Peel.

Sweet bleeding jeebus.

‘I was so scared I asked what I should do and she told me to try and sort it out on my own. I was really upset and felt really alone.

‘It’s a horrendous way to live and has got to the stage where I fear going out because of the abuse I will get.

‘I can’t cope with it and need some help from authorities. I’ve just had enough and need to move. Why should I put up with this?’

Because your betters tell you you should. For “social justice.”

Nikki, who lives with her son Josh, 17, and daughter Demi, 13, have been subjected to a terrifying campaign of harassment after a minor dispute over a bottle of hair conditioner last December.

Since then the family have been sworn at, had used condoms hurled at their house, had their windows smashed and graffiti scrawled on their home.

Nikki said the police had been called on numerous occasions but no charges had ever been brought against the bullies.

Of course not! That might violate their rights!

She added: ‘I am on anti-depressants, my nerves are shot to pieces and I’m terrified of walking out my front door.

‘This is no way to live. When it’s got really bad, I have to admit I have thought about ending it but I’m determined not to be beaten by the bullies who are acting like they are above the law.

‘All I want is a bit of support from the police.’

You and the rest of your countrymen.

Don’t hold your breath waiting.

The family’s problems have haunting comparisons to the case of Fiona Pilkington and her disabled daughter Francecca Hardwick, who were driven to their deaths after an 11-year bully campaign.

Nikki said: ‘I’ve read in the papers about Mrs Pilkington and just think the police simply don’t care.

‘If they can ignore that family for 11 years what hope have I got?’

A Warwickshire Police spokeswoman confirmed a female officer had spoken to Nikki about the attack on Saturday, September 19.

She said: ‘The policing team have had some involvement in ongoing issues in the street.

‘We have also been working closely with the local authority regarding tenancy agreements and ongoing neighbour disputes.

“Working closely.”

They’re engaging in dialog, no doubt. Surely that will solve everything!

If you live in the UK and are an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, GET THE HELL OUT. It’s too late to save your culture.

More from the Petri Dish

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Apparently shocking, SHOCKING news has been released in the place where Great Britain used to be that the .gov there has been manipulating crime statistics! From the Daily Mail:

Violent crime up 22% as Home Office admits police have been under-recording serious offences for ten years

Public trust in crime statistics has been dealt a devastating blow after ministers admitted the figures have been downplaying serious violence for up to a decade.

The Home Office admitted that as many as one in five of the worst attacks has been wrongly classified in published figures.

As many as 4,000 serious assaults each year were mistakenly recorded as minor incidents – and officials conceded they ‘simply do not know how far back it goes’.

So we should believe them when they say they’ve only been doing it for ten years, right?

Critics claimed the revelations were another serious blow to the credibility of Government crime figures following years of complaints of spin and statistical manipulation.

Claims I’ve made here dating back to at least 2004.

Here’s some of the BBC’s view of the story:

Police miscount serious violence

A number of police forces in England and Wales have been undercounting some of the most serious violent crimes, the government has admitted.

It means figures for serious violent crimes rose by 22% compared to last year – rather than showing a fall as previous figures appeared to indicate.

I’m curious as to what prompted the admission.

The mistake happened when some crimes classed as “grievous bodily harm with intent” were recorded as less serious.

Figures say overall crime is down, and ministers say these can be trusted.

And we should trust you . . . why?

A former Home Office crime consultant told the BBC the government had been “hiding behind” its changes in the crime counting rules.

Professor Marian Fitzgerald, a criminologist at the University of Kent’s Crime and Justice Centre, said the long-term trend of increasing violent crime was now “catching up” with the government.

Pesky facts have a way of doing that.

The Conservatives said the new figures “fatally undermined” government claims that violent crime was in decline.

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: “They betray a government that is completely out of touch with what is going on, on our streets and in our communities.”

Not “out of touch,” in denial.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith insisted all the crimes in question had been investigated by the police.

She told the BBC: “What the statisticians are clear about is that the increases in the most serious forms of violence have actually in terms of numbers been more than counteracted by the decreases in less serious violence.”

Which means a good chunk of Britain’s petty criminals have learned that violence pays. But Home Secretary Smith seems to believe this is a good thing.

Crimes of “grievous bodily harm with intent” committed between April and June this year were being mistakenly recorded as lesser crimes.

When the figures were recounted using the correct classification, the official total showed serious violent crime had risen 22%.

Previous measures under the old rules had shown decreases every quarter of up to 15%.

And didn’t that make their political masters look good? Except to the victims of these crimes who apparently voted them out of office.

But Professor Fitzgerald said that the government was aware of the long trend of serious violent crime which had been rising over “several decades”

She told the BBC: “It started to go up really quite steeply from the early 1990s.

The handgun ban was completed in 1996.

“The problem this government has got is that when it came to power it dismissed out of hand the trends in police recorded crime which were a fairly good measure of serious violence

“It preferred instead to rely on the British Crime Survey which is very poor at picking up violence.”

For good measure it has actually interfered with the police figures by keeping changing the ways in which they have been recorded.

(My emphasis)

“What’s catching up with them now is the fact the police figures are reflecting that long term trend increase in serious violence. The government are hiding behind changes in the counting rules to try to explain it away.”

I repeat: And we should trust them . . . why?

Again, this is another example of “Cognitive Dissonance” explained once succinctly by Steven Den Beste thusly:

When someone tries to use a strategy which is dictated by their ideology, and that strategy doesn’t seem to work, then they are caught in something of a cognitive bind. If they acknowledge the failure of the strategy, then they would be forced to question their ideology. If questioning the ideology is unthinkable, then the only possible conclusion is that the strategy failed because it wasn’t executed sufficiently well. They respond by turning up the power, rather than by considering alternatives. (This is sometimes referred to as “escalation of failure”.)

Crime could not be going up in the wonderful Utopia that Labor was building in the UK. Therefore the statistics had to be wrong, and the government would manipulate them however it was necessary to prove that said crime was declining.

When that didn’t work, “Do it again, only HARDER!” Escalation of failure.

You’ll note that Labor is no longer in power in Britain.

Sometimes a Picture Suggests a Story. . .

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Sometimes a Picture Suggests a Story. . .

Checking my referral logs today, I came across this (click for full size):


The referring URL was a post at Something… and Half of Something from July of last year. Entitled Gay Rights, it linked to a piece I wrote about where a self-described gay liberal had his own epiphany and decided to purchase a gun for self-defense. The reader of that piece then clicked through to my post, Ignorance = Fear. Education is the Key. Interestingly, though, his next click was to my earlier post, “(I)t’s most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can,” and when he left the site, it was to visit Publicola’s list of people who offer an introduction to shooting.

Unfortunately the reader was in Amsterdam.

Now, putting together the scant evidence, I am led to the conclusion that this reader is probably gay, and probably worried. As reported by GayPatriot, assaults on gays in Amsterdam have been increasing, and increasingly brazen, but they’re being downplayed in the media. A 2005 post at Modern Tribalist details a first-hand account of such a beating, with (broken) links to more. The blog Narcissistic Views on News/Politics reports: Amsterdam Now World Leader in anti-Gay Violence.

I wonder if my reader was a recent victim, or nearly one, and has had his own Awakening?

I have no idea what the laws are in the Netherlands with respect to firearms for self-defense, but somehow I doubt they’re very “liberal” (in the original meaning of the term.)

Quote of the Day

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The trouble with the social-democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything.

After September 11, I wondered rhetorically midway through a column what we in the West are prepared to die for, and got a convoluted e-mail back from a French professor explaining that the fact that Europeans weren’t prepared to die for anything was the best evidence of their superiority: they were building a post-historical utopia — a Europe it would not be necessary to die for.

But sometimes you die anyway.

Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, concluding the chapter “The Four Horsemen of the Eupocalypse.”

I called Michael Crichton’s recent Next one of the most disturbing novels I’ve read recently. America Alone is the most disturbing non-fiction work I’ve read in quite a while. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you pick up a copy. If Steyn is even half right, the future looks bleak indeed, and it’s a hell of a lot closer than we think.

If you want further evidence of this, look at what the Brits did in Basra. And they’re our closest ally. The Fadhil brothers nailed it in one sentence:

In our opinion, although the deal was made last year, Britain made the decision to offer basically the same deal unilaterally years before that by watching the monster grow under their noses without doing anything serious to stop it.