Tag London

Entries 5 Total

Climate Camp’s open letter to the Met

Aug 26, ’09 12:50 PM

Open let­ter from the Camp for Cli­mate Action to Ian Thomas, the Chief Super­in­tend­ent of the Met­ro­pol­itan Police Ser­vice. Worth read­ing in it’s entirety.

Comments (0)

A gender experiment in policing

Aug 22, ’09 8:49 AM

Could be inter­est­ing. Jon Hen­ley for The Guard­ian:

The Met­ro­pol­itan police have announced a new strategy for next week’s Cli­mate Camp – put­ting women officers in charge of the oper­a­tion. Will this avoid the viol­ence seen at the G20 protests?

Per­haps the most noted Amer­ican researcher into gender dif­fer­ences in poli­cing, Joseph Balkin, observed that “police­men tend to see police work as involving con­trol through author­ity, while police­wo­men see it as pub­lic ser­vice”. In some respects at least, he con­cluded, “women are bet­ter suited for police work than men.”

Maybe this strategy should be trans­posed to inter­na­tional politics?

Comments (0)

There is no class war… yeah right

Apr 1, ’09 9:13 PM

Lon­don city work­ers got Load­sam­oney:

City work­ers have been lean­ing out of win­dows to wave £10 notes at G20 pro­test­ers on the streets below, the Press Asso­ci­ation reports.

Comments (0)

Where does this lead I wonder?

Jul 18, ’08 12:43 PM

Today I watched a bus driver in Lon­don half pull up to a bus stop and then pull away before stop­ping when he saw the only per­son wav­ing him down. She happened to be a little old lady with dark skin and a head scarf. There were mur­murs of dis­taste from the two people stand­ing nearby her but she dis­missed the prob­lem with a wave of her hand and walked off.

There seems to have been a notice­able uptick in this sort of thing over the past few months.

Comments (0)

Religion doesn’t deserve a free ride

May 24, ’08 1:22 AM

A teen­ager in the UK faced pro­sec­u­tion recently for hold­ing a sign up in the street with words on it.

The words? “Sci­ento­logy is not a reli­gion, it is a dan­ger­ous cult.”

He’s wrong of course. It’s both. Other cults like Chris­tian­ity and Islam have just been around for longer, so they get to be called Religions.

The teen was arres­ted by a City of Lon­don police officer; the same police force that was found to have mem­bers accept­ing “gifts” from the Church of Sci­ento­logy.

He was arres­ted on 10 May at a demon­stra­tion out­side the headquar­ters of the Church of Sci­ento­logy in Lon­don, under sec­tion 5 of the Pub­lic Order Act, which states, “A per­son is guilty of an offence if he … dis­plays any writ­ing … which is … insult­ing, within the hear­ing or sight of a per­son likely to be caused har­ass­ment, alarm or dis­tress thereby.”

This seems like a stu­pid law but it also goes onto say that the accused has a defence if their “con­duct was reas­on­able.” I don’t know what this means exactly but it cer­tainly seems reas­on­able to cri­ti­cise reli­gion and accuse it of being dan­ger­ous. Why should reli­gion get a free ride?

Justice Latey of Lon­don appears to have agreed. In a 1984 rul­ing in Lon­don he said, “Sci­ento­logy is both immoral and socially obnox­ious … it is cor­rupt, sin­is­ter and dan­ger­ous. It is cor­rupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has as its real object­ive money and power for Mr. Hub­bard, his wife and those close to him at the top.”

You could say the same about most reli­gions so I can see why some people who aren’t mem­bers of a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion might want to pro­tect oth­ers from reli­gious cri­ti­cism. Once you accept cri­ti­cism of the Church of Sci­ento­logy, for being a child­ish super­sti­tion for instance, you open your own reli­gion up to the same criticism.

It would be inter­est­ing to know if the officer who made the arrest is reli­gious, or, for that mat­ter, if she has had any involve­ment or con­tact with the Church of Scientology.

Comments (0)