Political Police

There have been a few instances over the past few week that have made me question the current state of Policing in the UK, especially with regard to Bias, either political or otherwise.

Being a working class lad, I've seen the move away from community Policing where the officers on the beat were a complete cross-section of the community and therefore "one of us", to the "professional Police" we have now with degree-waving graduates with no common sense, no skills, and no life experience put into situations that no training course could replicate.

Now it's all about absolutes: black and white. Now Policing is much more about enforcement rather than common sense and human rights. 

Now we have a Police force with little experience of working class life. Instead the grim estates are something alien to modern coppers and in effect they have moved from being one of those people on the estates Policing by consent, to a bunch of thugs with a war-like mentality against the citizens of the lower classes. Phrases like "War on crime", "War on drugs", only fuel the "Us and them" mentality that pervades the modern Police force.

Aided and abetted by the absolutes of fixed penalty notices introduced by Tony Blair, the Police are no longer interested in keeping the Peace. They regularly break the peace themselves, assaulting citizens to enforce wrongful arrests. 

The mentality of training that says every citizen, from a young kid to a granny should have their hands forcefully jammed up their backs, or be thrown to the ground, when making an arrest is wrong-headed. That's not Policing by consent: that is assault, that is bullying, that is just plain wrong.

Then we have bias in the Police: letting one section of the population off even when causing criminal damage and assault, to Baton-charging another section of the population when being peaceful.

Don't think we don't see the bias. Don't think we don't see the political interference. Not from politicians, but the political animals at the top of the Police Force. From inspector upwards, office politics and then political influences from various organisations sways everyone from inspector upwards.

How else do you explain one protest against lockdown being baton-charged. Yet a black lives matter protest mere days later being left alone by the Police? The same goes for the disruption and criminal damage done by extinction rebellion: untouched by the Police. But who is calling the shots? Who is making the decision to wade into one protest and back off from another? Are the pet political interests of Cressida Dick getting preferential treatment? Who is calling the shots and exactly how and why are those decisions being made?

Politically sensitive agendas are given preferential treatment, I assume to avoid political fallout.

This is not what the Police force should be doing. Their remit is to enforce the law without fear or favour. There should be no bias, no preferential treatment of political causes over others. There should be no abuse of people based on class or colour.

The Police needs shaking up. Those currently at the head of the Police need to be sacked and a new, unbiased leadership brought in.

I would utter the words "Common Purpose" again, but I've already blogged on that organisation and it's influence among the Police and other governmental organisations.

Jeremy Corbyn: Crisis of Confidence and Leadership.

It seems with every day that Jeremy Corbyn and those at the top of the Labour Party fail to get a grip of the Anti-Semetism issue, is another day that the Tories are let off scott free regarding Brexit.

Just like Brexit is consuming the Tory party to the exclusion of poverty, homelessness, crime and all the other important facets of government, the Anti-Semetism crisis on the opposition benches is preventing Labour from calling the government to task on those failures.

The fissures, fractures and failures in the Tory party right now should a mountain of material to kick into the open goal available, but at each PMQs we get bumbling Mr Bean presenting failure after failure to deliver a coup-de-grace, kicking wide of the very open goal week after week.

And that's it: we see him most Wednesdays failing the non-Tories of the country and then he disappears like a hermit, never to be seen or heard unil the next Wednesday. Not the sign of a leader. He should be up there, in the public eye on a daily basis thumping lecterns and desks and speaking about the injustices regarding the poor. Instead it seems he's more likely to stay at home and drink free trade cocoa with his plaid slippers on.

When he does rise from his cocoa-induced slumbers, it seems he's intent on giving his enemies ammunition by aligning with terrorist organisations, attending far-left rallies and not denouncing anti-semitic outbursts..

Jeremy Corbyn is doing the poor and needy of this country a disservice by staying in office if he can't put this to bed. Or to put is another way, if he can't put it to bed quickly, he is not the person to lead the Labour Party.

By bumbling along and letting things continue, by pushing it out to committees and endless investigations, he is allowing others outside Labout to disrepute the party.

Investigations need to be thorough, swift and decisive.  Failure on either count looks like dithering, prevarocation and right now looks like tacit approval of the anti-semitic sentiment in Labour.

The Labour party needs a leader that can lead. Maybe Corbyn has been on the back benches for too long and is used to just leaving it to everyone else to run the shop. But that can't happen... he's the bloody leader of the party!

It's gone on for so long, the party are calling themselves into disrepute.

Their failure to crack on and fight on behalf of the poor and the impoverished and the dispossessed shows thay have taken the wrong route in politics.

STOP IT NOW!

UKIP Death Rattle (2)

Interesting to hear Nigel Farage on LBC last night talking about the UKIP battle. He said that the UKIP NEC needs to be more professional and a lot less amateur.

He said he wouldn't go back until things had changed. But sadly I think the time for UKIP is long past. Unless the NEC can recognise it's flaws and sort things out, I very much doubt there will be a UKIP at the end of the year.

The cost of yet another leadership contest and the libel lawsuit that has recently charged UKIP £200,000 I think will just about kill the party.

It's a shame that the UKIP voice will fall quiet, they were a force in UK politics and despite not getting much re[presentation in Parliament, up to the referendum they represented the voice of a sizeable chunk of the population.

From interviews over the last few days, new interim leader Gerard Batten seems unapologetic for things he has said in teh past. Things that the majority of people outside the Westminster PC bubble would not say. He handled himself quite well in interviews. A party leader unapologetic and with a spine, at last.

I must admit it's a refreshing change and certainly at first glance UKIP would be well served by voting him in as their proper leader.

What Now For UKIP?

If it's true that UKIP doesn't have enough money to run another leadership election, it doesn make you wonder why the party's NEC voted no confidence in their leader, triggering another membership vote rather than thrash the problem out and come up with a less costly compromise.

Not being a UKIP member, I don't know whet's going on in the party, but it seems to me the NEC cannot seem to support any leader the membership vote for.

From my observations it seems the UKIP NEC is quite evenly split between the various factions and if any one side sees a weakness then they pull away their support for the leader in an attempt to get their preferred candidate in place. It seems that the UKIP hierarchy have lost the art of politics: the sort of deal-making and loyalty that keeps a fractured party together.

Instead it seems the top of UKIP are a boiling mess of macchialvelian machinations: plotting, back-stabbing, disloyal and with no sense of direction or leadership. I get the task of restructuring the party is like herding cats or platting fog: virtually impossible.

If I was a member of UKIP I would be deselecting members of the NEC for the amount of treachery and chaos they have wreaked on teh party.

There is a distinct lack of backbone and sense of purpose. No wonder, since winning the Brexit referendum UKIP have lost most of their sense of direction. It's a bit difficult with a one-policy party to steering it in a dirction once that policy has been achieved.

However, if I may, here's some ideas:

1. UKIP needs to start being an honest broker in UK politics, pointing out where party politics is adversly affecting the performance of government.

First off, on the NHS, UKIP needs to point out that both Labour and Conservative are correct. The Conservatives are correct in that record amounts of money are going into the NHS budget, but that Labour are also correct in that less of that money is going into NHS care.

The reason being that most of the NHS budget is going into paying lawsuits rather than front-line care.

UKIP should point out to the other parties that omitting the whole truth to serve a narrative is devisive and morally wrong.

UKIP policy should be that to solve the problem of the NHS you first need to be truthful in order to understand what is causing the problem and fix it rather than throwing money at it. i.e. Reducing lawsuits increases the money available for care.

Including (but not exclusively as Nigel farrage used to try and make it) the increase in the population. No need to look like a racist eh? But seriously, in the last decade the population must have increased by a third. Tax take hasn't risen and spending hasn't risen in step with those figures. So what's going on? Quite obviously a lot of those new immigrants aren't paying tax and the government therefore doesn't have the money to pay properly for the NHS.

Also the payouts of those lawsuits is calculated on the victim being cared for by private care for the rest of their lives. However in most cases that ongoing care is then provided free by the NHS. A double-whammy to the NHS. In these cases, NHS lawyers should add a clause to the payout that if the patient seeks ongoing care from the NHS after a payout for the condition the NHS caused, then it's only fair the NHS should charge private rates and recoup those costs.


2. UKIP needs to start defending UK forces and defence spending. As with the NHS the two main parties are telling part of the truth. Labour want to ditch the Trident nuclear deterrent as it is horrrendously expensive. It sucks money from other defence projects. However it is a necessary evil: we do need a nuclear option in order to defend the UK.

UKIP policy should be to defend Trident.

However, the rest of the defence budget needs to be spent more wisely. If anyone has followed the debacle of the Snatch LandRovers, they would also have followed the plethora of vehicles that have followed as replacements. Umpteen different vehicles have been procured with different capabilities and now relatively new vehicles are being sold off after being bought at huge cost. Such a waste.

UKIP needs to highlight this wastage and suggest a more intelligent and open procurement policy.

Now on the big issue of the moment, Brexit.

There is a whole raft of nonsense running around about Brexit. UKIP need to cut through the bullshit and start providing clarity on where policy should be and the cost effecitveness of any concessions we make to the EU.

For instance the budget that we have so far agreed (without any agreement on trade, which to me seems like extortion) UKIP should be there in the fray telling it like it is.

It should also be highlighting the differences between a hard Brexit and being in complete control of trade, immigration and borders and the cost of shackling ourselves to the EU single market and customs union.

Instead, UKIP are consumed with infighting and plots. Without leadership and stability in the party, there is a very grave danger of Brexit not happening or at least being weakened substantially at great cost to the UK taxpayer.

3. UKIP needs to be shown to be inclusive. It seems that women and minorities in the party are pretty poorly represented. They need to have more prominent candidates for more posts. Showing the party as a team of people rather than the Nigel Farrage party. Having "normal" people in post would help.

But for God's sake vet them first and make sure their girlfriends stay quiet!