The Thin Yellow Streak
17 November 2010 02:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fridgepunk
Dear Former Bullington Club Member David Cameron,
I know you, like many changelings, experience troubles when it comes to communicating via the expiration of air through a larynx, used as you are to communicating via the great link. And I know that, obviously, the various words used to describe experiences conveyed via the limited senses of us solids outside of the great link can be a bit tricky to get right.
At the same time this does not really excuse you declaring that you could;
"see a line, a thin blue line of extremely brave police officers, trying to hold back a bunch of people who were intent on violence and destruction.
"They were very brave those police officers, but as the police themselves have said there weren't enough of them and the police response needs to reflect that, so I'm very glad that the Met Police commissioner has said what he said."
For starters, you were in china, distant from the protests by several thousand miles. While I get that the senses of solids can be confuddling to one more used to the great link they do not convey fucking omniscience, nor was there any live feeds regarding the protests on the telly.
So no, Former Bullington Club Member David Cameron, you did not "see" a "thin blue line" (should be "dayglow yellow streak" btw), any more than you "saw" this streak of yellow "try" to "hold back" a bunch of people who were intent on violence.
here is a picture to emphasise what I'm saying:
Note the bravery of PC Herpaderp there in the back, note his valiant cries of "erm, excuse me, can I get past?" but, alas, his job has been rendered impossible by fierce resistance from a slight of frame press photographer who probably didn't hear him, and so didn't budge up slightly to the left and allow PC Herpaderp to pass without unnecessarily violating the photographer's personal space, and Lo! Was the protester able to repeatedly kick in a glass window.
If ever a policeman deserved to be represented in cast bronze statue form, preferably portrayed on a horse with one leg cocked a-high, it is surely PC Herpaderp.
The problem that happens at these protests, every fucking one of these protests, whether the G20s, or any of the Oakland protests or whatever, is that the police are strangely incompetent, if you judge them by anything other than "number of people arrested" (which like in our torture camps, is a measure that produces a much larger number than the number you get when you look at how many people are charged and successfully tried for what they've been detained for).
It's a common theme at these protests that reports will talk about "violent protesters" performing violent actions (violence which is frequently just vandalism, which is quite a long way from the teenage obstructionism of the SA) and generally some other stuff about the police arresting a bunch of protesters. The problem is that the police tend to do a lot of arresting of the peaceful protesters, and a shocking deficit in the number of violent protesters being stopped from engaging in felonies even when they are physically able to do so, and tend to do what they can to avoid being able to physically stop crimes being committed even though they have a multi-million dollar worth of surviellance equipment strung up all over london that supposedly is neccesary for situations like this.
So please excuse me if I refuse to find the idea of vandalism very shocking, and excuse me if I am unable to congratulate the police on "doing" a "tough job".
Because "arresting students for doing illegal things" is not a hard job, and it's not even a job they've actually done, and it seems that the best place to be at a protest and the best activity to engage in at one, if one's sole wish is to not be arrested, is to be involved in the bit of the protest that engages in the most reprehensible acts, as protesting peacably in a way that involves you violating no laws will ensure arrest while the obligate kitten felchers who plant explosives beneath parliament after setting fire to her majesty's ships while they're in dock who are holding ten foot wide signs displaying signed confessions to said acts of treason, arson, terrorism and animal abuse on them, some how are rendered beyond the reach of law.
Maybe to a former member of the bullington club such an out and out inversion of what constitutes the police's legal duty as policeofficers looks like a good thing.
You are wrong.
I know you, like many changelings, experience troubles when it comes to communicating via the expiration of air through a larynx, used as you are to communicating via the great link. And I know that, obviously, the various words used to describe experiences conveyed via the limited senses of us solids outside of the great link can be a bit tricky to get right.
At the same time this does not really excuse you declaring that you could;
"see a line, a thin blue line of extremely brave police officers, trying to hold back a bunch of people who were intent on violence and destruction.
"They were very brave those police officers, but as the police themselves have said there weren't enough of them and the police response needs to reflect that, so I'm very glad that the Met Police commissioner has said what he said."
For starters, you were in china, distant from the protests by several thousand miles. While I get that the senses of solids can be confuddling to one more used to the great link they do not convey fucking omniscience, nor was there any live feeds regarding the protests on the telly.
So no, Former Bullington Club Member David Cameron, you did not "see" a "thin blue line" (should be "dayglow yellow streak" btw), any more than you "saw" this streak of yellow "try" to "hold back" a bunch of people who were intent on violence.
here is a picture to emphasise what I'm saying:
Note the bravery of PC Herpaderp there in the back, note his valiant cries of "erm, excuse me, can I get past?" but, alas, his job has been rendered impossible by fierce resistance from a slight of frame press photographer who probably didn't hear him, and so didn't budge up slightly to the left and allow PC Herpaderp to pass without unnecessarily violating the photographer's personal space, and Lo! Was the protester able to repeatedly kick in a glass window.
If ever a policeman deserved to be represented in cast bronze statue form, preferably portrayed on a horse with one leg cocked a-high, it is surely PC Herpaderp.
The problem that happens at these protests, every fucking one of these protests, whether the G20s, or any of the Oakland protests or whatever, is that the police are strangely incompetent, if you judge them by anything other than "number of people arrested" (which like in our torture camps, is a measure that produces a much larger number than the number you get when you look at how many people are charged and successfully tried for what they've been detained for).
It's a common theme at these protests that reports will talk about "violent protesters" performing violent actions (violence which is frequently just vandalism, which is quite a long way from the teenage obstructionism of the SA) and generally some other stuff about the police arresting a bunch of protesters. The problem is that the police tend to do a lot of arresting of the peaceful protesters, and a shocking deficit in the number of violent protesters being stopped from engaging in felonies even when they are physically able to do so, and tend to do what they can to avoid being able to physically stop crimes being committed even though they have a multi-million dollar worth of surviellance equipment strung up all over london that supposedly is neccesary for situations like this.
So please excuse me if I refuse to find the idea of vandalism very shocking, and excuse me if I am unable to congratulate the police on "doing" a "tough job".
Because "arresting students for doing illegal things" is not a hard job, and it's not even a job they've actually done, and it seems that the best place to be at a protest and the best activity to engage in at one, if one's sole wish is to not be arrested, is to be involved in the bit of the protest that engages in the most reprehensible acts, as protesting peacably in a way that involves you violating no laws will ensure arrest while the obligate kitten felchers who plant explosives beneath parliament after setting fire to her majesty's ships while they're in dock who are holding ten foot wide signs displaying signed confessions to said acts of treason, arson, terrorism and animal abuse on them, some how are rendered beyond the reach of law.
Maybe to a former member of the bullington club such an out and out inversion of what constitutes the police's legal duty as policeofficers looks like a good thing.
You are wrong.
