I see Harris has tied himself up in knots across at the nauseatingly named Labour Hame. He has a complained that people are annoyed that the first minister described the riots as English rather than UK. He makes some rather bizarre comparison with the Norwegian slaughter of a few weeks ago, forgetting that Norway is, in fact, all one country and the UK is not. For Tom though, these riots must be British, for we must all pull together. Hugh Ord said this today:
"One of the greatest strengths of British policing is that operational decision-making is conducted not by politicians, but by professional chief police officers who have spent their whole career in policing. While David Cameron today referred to some of the more extreme measures available to us, they are not new, and responsibility for their deployment remains entirely a matter for chief officers. There can be no confusion here at all; it is a fact that we cannot be ordered to police in a certain way but we will be held robustly accountable for what we choose to do or not do.
"As one of only two officers in the country to have ordered the use of water cannon and baton rounds in public-order policing, my professional judgment is it would be the wrong tactic, in the wrong circumstances at this moment."
My current opinion of the police is pretty low, given the Murdoch scandal, and the fact that at least the Met has seemed utterly rudderless over the days of the riots, but I'm in agreement with Ord here. Heaven alone knows what will happen if people start using water canon and plastic bullets. They have only ever been used in North Ireland in the past. And that worked, didn't it?
These decisions must never be in the hands of 'here today, gone tomorrow politicians' with no knowledge or experience of policing. God save us from Tessy may with a water canon!!
..........
A year ago the economy was recovering and the public sector deficit shrinking.
Then Gideon introduced policies to suit the Conservative party’s political funders (banks and multinationals). So has this done any good?
Silly Question. No. Osborne’s plans are a total failure. Public sector debt is increasing (contrary to what Hague told us last week), there are lower tax revenues and higher costs in benefits. Growth forecasts have just been re-adjusted down (to 1.5% this year...they’ll be lucky), there is higher un- or under- employment (ie people working part time and claiming top up benefits), and thus lower living standards.
I got the demand for car tax today. Can you believe that it has increased by £10, around a 7% increase. A government agency putting up prices by more than the official lie, sorry, I mean the official inflation figure? What an odd thing for a government to do. What an odd government. But it's another thing to cause people anxiety. Another cost added to people's already expensive lives. I wonder if people like Cameron know that you have to tax the car, or do they have a little man to do that sort of thing for them?
Tris,
ReplyDeleteSuch is Labour Shame’s mental gymnastics on the issue of the English riots, that they’re beginning to resemble one of those cartoon characters who have their legs knotted behind their necks.
As ever, on Labour Shame, the bottom of no barrel is deep enough that it can’t withstand yet another gouge mark and so, predictably, it was only a matter of time before one of them introduced an analogy with the IRA bombings of ‘Britain’. Here’s how it was introduced (by Tom Harris):
“It’s a fact that the IRA never targeted Scotland. Would it have been okay in the 70s to announce that the republicans were attacking ‘the English not the British’ before the bodies had been removed from the wreckage of the Birmingham pubs?”.
The emotive language used indicates that Harris believes that he’s on safe territory here. What kind of cold-hearted ‘nat’ would contest this? But the issue here isn’t so much whether it would have been “okay” to announce this, but rather, whether it would have been factually correct, then or now, to announce this or, less combatively than Harris, simply acknowledge it. And by Harris’s own admission – “the fact is that the IRA never targeted Scotland” (let’s not forget Wales here either), this is a fact. It doesn’t lessen our sympathy or empathy with the people of London, Birmingham and Brighton, who were killed in these atrocities, any more that our failure to take on American nationality lessens our sympathy or empathy with the victims of 9/11.
There’s a final point worth noting here. In over 25 years of reading reports on the IRA and its activities, I have never been able to find one source, anywhere, that provides an explanation as to why the IRA did not attack cities in Wales or Scotland. In fact, it’s as if it’s a taboo subject. Harris knows this, of course, which is why he made the ‘analogy’ in the first place.
You could bet your sweet life that if the riots had happened in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Dundee they would currently be dubbed the Scottish riots by the British press and the English PM.
ReplyDeleteIt’s the old arise Sir Fred Goodwin and have knighthood for services to British banking one minute and then what a git that Fred Goodwin is his Scottish bank ruined the British economy the next!
Another post which goes to the nub of the matter, Anon.
ReplyDeleteHarris is daring us to get 'all nationalistic' about an emotive subject, doubtless in the hopes that someone will, giving him an opportunity to play to his faithful in shaming them for lack of solidarity with our English neighbours.
But of course, politically incorrect to say it or not, the IRA concentrated its terrorism, hitting innocent people of all political shades indiscriminately ... in England alone.
I don't know why that is. I'd hazard a guess that they suspected that hitting big English cities would cause more anguish to the London government than damage done to somewhere in the other Celtic countries. No more than a guess. I'm not good at putting myself in the shoes of terrorists.
Most people would feel deep sympathy with other humans whose lives have been blown apart by terrorism... or indeed by anything else.
I have, for example the deepest sympathy with these innocent Libyans killed by Nato, the Norwegians killed by a right-wing fruit job or the people affected by the English riots.
These killings, however, weren't somewhere in Africa, somewhere in Scandinavia or somewhere in the UK, they were in Libya, Norway and England.
Get over it Tom and grow up.
Thanks for another interesting contribution Anon. Come back again, often.
Yes they would Munguin. I can almost guarantee it. Doubtless in order that there would be no unnecessary interruption to business in London, or damage to tourism all over England.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the issues I saw mentioned on Harris's page. Why should the tourist trade in Edinburgh be damaged by riots in London?
An Open Letter to David Cameron’s Parents
ReplyDeleteht. George Laird.
Brilliant CH.
ReplyDeleteAll the time I heard him talking, I was thinking just that.
The politicans, the police, the press and the BBC, the lords, the scroungers in the royal family, the bankers, the top businessmen... and I'm sure there are more, are a set of morally bankrupt scumbags.
I wish we could see the back of the whole lot... or at least our independence, and we'll sort out any morally bankrupt scum of our own... from whatever class they come.
His mother (his father's dead) should hang her head in shame.