BS: UK now a police state.

Subject: BS: UK now a police state.
From: theleveller
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 09:20 AM

If ever was any doubt that this frightened, unrepresentitive government is determined to use every means possible to get its own way, even if it means we descend into a totalitarian police state, its suppression of the lawful and peaceful demonstration against the destruction of the NHS provides all the proof needed.

First they came for the dissenters......

http://newsallianceuk.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/armed-police-and-media-blackout-of-nhs-protest-shows-desperation-of-condem-regime

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 09:39 AM

Another report with videos here.
http://www.katebelgrave.com/2012/03/save-our-nhs-demonstration-london-17-march-2012/


No armed police, and quite a small number of demonstrators.
I doubt the D notice.
Just not very newsworthy compared to other events.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 10:05 AM

On the same day there were over a thousand demonstrators in a protest outside Syrian embassy in London.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Musket
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 11:02 AM

No, not newsworthy enough for The Guardian. The 'met have enough public relations issues to contend with without issuing D notices on a few protestors.

These political groups use their own form of propaganda and to be honest, are as bad as government they abhor.

The NHS doesn't need nor want bollocks being spewed out in its name, it needs rational debate to ensure the legislative agenda doesn't get as polarised as this in the future.

Sorry leveller, in the same way people are dubious when the government do something right, most will be dubious when extreme scaremongerers as News Alliance make a story out of nothing.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: theleveller
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 11:03 AM

"No armed police,"

Reports from demonstrators and eye-witnesses say there were:

"It was then that police with machine guns tried to break us up. A red police car drove at the crowd, trying to clear the protesters from the road. A young woman sat down in front of the car, and the officers got out. With their guns. Armed police on the streets of London, all because a woman had sat down and some people were outraged by the corrupt government and businesses who were gutting our welfare state. Protesters scarpered, but did not disperse. Instead they ran down the Strand."

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 11:20 AM

From the videos it looks like less than 50 protestors and all peaceful.
No armed police in any of the demonstrators' videos or pictures.
Why would there be?
What would motivate the police to deploy armed units?
At the Syrian demo maybe.
Could the witnesses be mistaken or dishonest?

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: theleveller
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 11:24 AM

If this was just a small, insignificant demonstration, why were the police instructed to be so heavy-handed? Is it now to be the norm that armed police be called to every protest? This is the inevitable result of the reduction in our civil liberties by successive governments, ostensibly in the name of fighting the "war on terror" – in his 2009 book 'Liberty in the Age of Terror', A C Grayling pointed out that this legislation (which he lists in full – read it and be very afraid) could easily be used against lawful protestors. It seems he was right in his prediction.

If the government thinks that it will be able to continually use the police to crush opposition to its unpopular legislation, it could be very wrong. I was recently speaking to my elder son, who is a member of an armed police unit, and he was saying that he and many of his colleagues are fed up with this – especially when their own pay and conditions are being devastated. In fact, he hinted that a strike by police was not out of the question.

"Could the witnesses be mistaken"

Oh, a conspiracy theory. Could it be that you are mistaken?

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 11:31 AM

I imagine it is the norm to have armed police on call.
The police did not "crush the demonstration."
It went on to Trafalgar Square.
Were the police "instructed to be so heavy handed" and were they heavy handed?

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 12:44 PM

7/7

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 12:52 PM

Doesn't seem so from the videos!

A picture's worth a thousand hysterical yelps from somebody who simply wants more of you to buy his "newspaper" (and I use the word news in its loosest possible sense).

Trojan units usually (possibly always) travel in fully marked police vehicles, and the unmarked cars (which are mostly Motorway patrols) are hardly ever red. They are typically dark blue, or black, so the red vehicle (assuming it exists) is more likely a Fire Service car, which also uses blues and twos.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 12:55 PM

But there were many armed police at Victoria Station last week to welcome the Napoli footbal mob!!!

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: theleveller
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 01:23 PM

"Trojan units usually (possibly always) travel in fully marked police vehicles, and the unmarked cars (which are mostly Motorway patrols) are hardly ever red. They are typically dark blue, or black, so the red vehicle (assuming it exists) is more likely a Fire Service car, which also uses blues and twos."

Do you know for certain that this is the case in London? Different police forces use different vehicles in different circumstances - I don't know what the policy is in London but the armed response unit my son is with sometimes used unmarked vehicles of various colours, including a red Volvo estate.

As for the hysterical yelps - these were not hard line agitators; simply people who had come out to protest about something they believed in. As with any good historian who goes back to primary sources (often eye-witness accounts), you have to judge for yourself whether they ring true or not and my opinion is that they do.

"and were they heavy handed?"

According to some accounts, yes.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Stu
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 01:53 PM

We've been sleepwalking into a police state for years. They're now a paramilitary organisation dedicated to protecting the interests of those in power, both politically and commercially. They're the Praetorian Guard for the 1%.

As a teenager I used to get a comic called Crisis which carried a strip with the storyline that the UK had become a police state. The artist had portrayed the police as dressed in black, faces masked (gas masks, scarves etc), covered in body armour and carrying nightsticks of various designs . . . just like they are now. They've become violent, unaccountable and insular and no longer respect the people they are supposed to be protecting. Kettling, regular overuse of force, their absolute failure in the riots to protect the property of ordinary people from destruction. They are institutionally racist and corrupt; look at the way the Met has covered up their sordid relationship with Murdoch et al (how many officers arrested for corruption so far?), and their reluctance to pursue the killers of Stephen Lawrence (of which they only still have caught two).

The fact they treat modern protestors so severely is no surprise. This is going to get worse before it gets better, and that change will only come when our society accepts equality, freedom of speech and democracy, all things withering in the face of political/commercial power and citizen apathy.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 01:59 PM

Our police force is second to none. Sadly they had to deal with the great unwashed street protesters with one arm behind their back under Labour. Thank God that will change shortly.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 02:26 PM

In these times there has always to be some armed police in Central London.
No-one claimed to have had a gun pointed at them.
In Norway and Sweden all police are always armed.
Police states?

Heavy handed policing?
Not one person even claimed to be hurt.
Not one arrest.
Hardly heavy handed.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 03:46 PM

When certain people plant bombs on buses and in railway stations and attack funerals of dead service men and women, decent people expect the police to protect and maintain public order.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 05:38 PM

But not to prevent the exercise of democratic rights.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 09:33 PM

What did they prevent Richard.

We've already heard that the demonstrators marched on to Trafalgar Square, as planned.

They can't win.

Recently you wanted them to pit vastly inferior numbers against a horde (several hordes in fact) of criminal rioters and looters, at great risk to themselves of injury or even death.

Now you want them to ignore the potential for a demonstration to develop into similar mayhem and chaos.

And if they did what you want and a riot resulted, you would blame them for it.

Make up your bloody minds!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 09:38 PM

And Leveller, the hysterical yelps was a reference to the hack who was reporting this mythical police harrassment. BTW, how can you be sure that a journalist is reporting anything in an unbiased and a truthful manner.

Bitter experience would suggest the reverse.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: theleveller
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 04:24 AM

Sorry, Don, in your rush to dis anything that doesn't fit in with your own narrorw views, you've lost me. What particular 'hysterical yelps' are you referring to? The passage I quoted came from the blog of a member of the public who was at the protest, not a journalist. How many reports from eyewitnesses have you read? Perhaps you'd like to point us to them and say why they are lying?

Or are you just implying that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot and a liar? Like your so-called 'facts' they don't make a very convincing argument, I'm afraid. Your own hysterical yelps sound rather like desparation.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: theleveller
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 04:35 AM

Sadly, the protest itself was in vain. One of our proudest achievments, created in an age when some (I could venture 'most')politicians had at least some sense of altruism and the common good, is now dead. RIP the NHS. Here's a valediction from some eminent people:

https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/society/2012/mar/20/valedictory-nhs-privatisation-health-bill

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 04:39 AM

I assume, Don, that you are referring to the great UK riots. What I remember most about what I said about those was that people failed to grasp why. I don't immediately remember suggesting that the police should have gone in hard if it would have been suicidal.

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: GUEST,roderick a warner
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 09:08 PM

Screw the NHS - in my experience which is unfortunately considerable, it is a clumsy, out of date top heavy organisation that should have been scrapped years ago. It is not the 'envy of the world' - much better health treatment available in most of Western Europe, for example. (Again, I have some experience of these - the comparisons with the UK are not flattering). Unfortunately, despite all the usual retro rhetoric, it will still limp on for a while longer. Although any change should be an improvement. A health service for the 21st century is needed and some political courage to do something about it, rather than the usual old fashioned tribalist responses. Unlikely to happen from the Labour Party of Stafford Hospital fame - what was the final sad body count on Burnham's watch? - or the current bunch. At least some kind of a start, but root and branch change is needed, not playing around at the edges...

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: skarpi
Date: 22 Mar 12 - 03:26 AM

UK now a police state. ??

Thanks to who ?? but now its a great change for -the new world order-
to mark its way into the future

its would be going the same way here if the police would have money to grow ....but as you know Iceland is still in the crisis its not over here , far from it it will take 10 to 20 years to go out this shit .

so stay away from trouble ...

kv Skarpi

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: Musket
Date: 22 Mar 12 - 04:14 AM

roderick

You are wrong

Nothing more to add really

Subject: RE: BS: UK now a police state.
From: bubblyrat
Date: 22 Mar 12 - 06:05 AM

The protesters should hold their demonstrations in Henley ; you wouldn't see policemen of ANY description , armed or otherwise ,on our grubby streets here . We're in a "state" alright ,but it's got bugger -all to do with the police ; not Thames Valley , anyway.So there .