Bizarre Censorship
You have to wonder whether the BBC are hell bent on closing down all their message boards with their current policy of removing seemingly innocuous threads or posts on the grounds that they have somehow crossed the line between what is and isn't acceptable.
This link which is itself to a BBC page was removed from this thread and yet this thread was allowed to start up within an hour on the same subject and at the time of writing has over 120 posts. Bizarre or what?
My reaction as soon as I heard about the incident involving the police and Ian Tomlinson was to think back to the death of Blair Peach. I was more of a political animal back then and I belonged to the ANL which meant, by some strange logic, that I felt, in addition to the shock at what had happened, Blair was 'one of us.' I still have a copy of the published enquiry into his death which most people at the time felt was a whitewash and to be honest the passing of thirty years has not done anything to change that view.
Of course we musn't slip back into the mindset that prevailed at the time of the Southall march that all police are the same, they aren't, anymore than all bankers are hopeless and all politicians are corrupt - okay maybe they aren't the best two examples. I can only add by way of anecdote my own experience of the SPG or whatever they were subsequently called and it came from a very enlightening course I did several years ago through the Adult Education system offered by our County Council. The course lasted eight weeks and covered every aspect of the Police Service, from catching drug dealers, to the reporting system to the dog handling team. One thing that came through loud and clear though from listening to the officers present and some of the wannabes is that like footballer supporters or lads out on a Saturday night there are some policemen who are just in the job for a good old fashioned punch-up. Unfortunately the majority who have a hard job upholding the law are often tarnished by the actions of the few.
6 comments:
Hi pau' I think I can expalin the hidden thread thing (no I'm not a mod in disguise!) The existing thread was started by Tom Augustus who is in premod, we can't see the hidden thred time now becasue after a an hour or more, and certainly after a day, you can't tell which wa sstaed first but i nearly all TA thredas they are re[peat threads because his takes 3 or 4 hours sometimes to appear, what is odd is that the mods delete a previous thread, normally they delete his! Never mind.
I remember the Blair Peach thing too, I was in the army and had mates in the Police Force and an aunt who lived in Southall!
Re Ian Tomlinson, the only thing we can be sure of from the footage is that the Police 'push' didn't kill him. It may well ahve added to his later death but any lawyer could make sure the police officer isn't cahrged so any 'conviction' will have to come from within the force.
What struck me is the colour of IT's face, very red and mottled/blotchy. I think he was already on his way out. Perhaps his newsround delivery job, having been made 1000 times worse by the demonstrations, road closures and riots had raised the stress levels and put him well on the road to heat failure (not making excuses, just an observation)
I think that reply is just about readable with the 10+ odd typos!
Doh!
You could be right about IT - only time will tell. What I find very ironic about recent events is how the left's (or Labour's) use of the police is receiving criticism from the same people who criticised the right's use of the police 25 years go - as Gavin has always pointed out left and right are not far apart at all on most issues. I think the herding of people into Cannon Street station was particularly uncalled for - the kettling idea - particularly given the timing and closeness to the 20th anniversary of Hillsbrough.
not that far but don't think you'll ever get them to say it! :-)
Me and Anthong Hart on the MB came to a quasi (no, not crazy!) sort of agreement over the liberalness of Maggie.
I'll have to check out the liberalness of Maggie - sounds like a Dutch film.
Hello....can I wade in? For the police, in a stressful job and stressful situations, violence, seeing it etc is a daily experience and they are hard...oh yes, they have to be, it's their job, so they tend to do stuff that is not part of every day life for the vast majority of people. Poor man IT was probably stressed for whatever reason but the stress of being hit by a copper for no reason, well it can't have helped him at all.
Then today we have the new footage released of the woman being hit. A copper is supposed to only use force that is commensurate with the situation. Now he was getting some verbals from this woman but did they warrant the force he used?
The police love CCTV, they love all this technology and now they are being hung by their own petards. This sort of low level police abuse has been going on forever. As a veteran of many marches, demonstrations and football matches I have experienced and witnessed first hand the sort of abuse meted out in both these examples and worse too. Trouble is now it's being recorded for the whole world to witness by CCTV, camcorders, phones, you name it, we record on it now.
And so the majority finally discover what the minority have know for years.
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