UK Police Service - Customer Number 4 Please

I watched an emergency services programme last night, which I find often to be interesting for reasons our social workers, sorry police service didn't intend. Last night was a minor classic; it contained the central ethos of why UK policing is so bad.

This is the event; a shopping centre security guard calls the police as he has observed a shoplifter and is now following him 'at a safe distance'. The call taker confirms what he is telling them. A while later he calls again. The shoplifter is now in Asda and he can see, from outside that he is stealing bottles of spirits.

Again, the call taker is repeating what he is saying as confirmation. He asks if they have someone on the way. No, comes back the answer but they will send someone now and they should be with you 'within the hour'. The call handler then adds 'if you do detain him call again to update us'.

At this point, I would ask you to consider what you would expect to happen at this point. The police, who you not only are trying to rely on to act in support of maintaining law and order, but who in fact have spent many years telling the public to 'leave it to us', are not going to be there any time soon.

You are paid to safeguard the property of the stores and you are watching, for a second time shoplifting taking place, which is, let's be clear not an offence by name, but constitutes theft, which is covered by the Theft Act. A member of the public can detain an individual, but only the police can arrest. The Crown prosecute the crime.

It would seem that a reasonable person, abandoned by the police, but with a paid duty to prevent theft from shops, would intervene and seek to apprehend the shoplifter. The call handler acknowledged this was highly likely by making the comment about 'if you do detain him'.

As the shoplifter left Asda the security man approached him from behind and tried to detain him by putting his arms under the suspects arms to keep his hands away from his pockets (during interview he said he had seen the shoplifter had 'sharps' in his pocket).

They stumbled and fell over together, one of the bottles smashed and the shoplifter received lacerations to his stomach. The next emergency call was from the ambulance crew requesting police attendance as 'there is blood everywhere and we have the helicopter coming and everything'.

After significant intervention on the scene by the doctor and team, the man died. I think a normal, reasonable person would say that what happened was a tragedy, but an unforeseeable accident. Obviously, it needs to be investigated and the security chap interviewed and CCTV footage reviewed. Not quite what happened.

The security man was arrested for manslaughter and held in custody overnight. How many times have we heard of murder suspects absconding whilst on bail? Too often. Presumably, the police service, faced with a law-abiding member of the public felt emboldened to take strong action. He was clearly a flight risk and possibly a danger to the public. In their world.

Much better to have a quiet, compliant individual in custody than the nasty, violent types they have so often. The (older) sergeant who attended the scene, was seen shaking and near tears, but spoke to camera afterwards to say that the young lad (security) probably did the right thing, but 'did he think through the possible outcome - I don't think so.' What!!?

I guess, fully equipped with hindsight he is saying that, in the moments available to him to consider what to do next, the security chap should have done a full risk assessment, considered every possible scenario (including, I would hope that this might have only been the opening move to draw off security, for a gang of heavily armed master criminals to storm the store killing many people until Denzel Washington turns up), and only then acted.

Presumably, for this to work, he would also have had to have shown it to a third party and had it signed off, to prove it was in advance of events. There was one last excellent piece though; is two bottles of spirits worth someone's life? If you see someone steal a piece of meat, should you chase them, when this could happen?

Which fairly exactly misses the point of the reason the police exist. It is a tragedy that a man died, but that was not something anyone could have predicted (else, perhaps, the man might not have committed the theft) and it was based on choices that we all make.

I would also ask you to contrast the twisting and turning and the contortions of reason the police try when they 'kill' someone. No we do not see armed officers arrested and held in custody after shooting someone carrying a chair leg in a carrier bag. We get long and technical descriptions of why his actions seemed (quite correctly!) to the officers as those of an armed man about to 'engage them'.

Rather than the completely normal and to a reasonable person understandable, actions of a startled man with a chair leg in a carrier bag. Amongst all of the hand-wringing and angst over the death, no-one in uniform seemed to suggest that this would have been prevented if the police had attended when first called. Did they not consider the possible outcome of their inaction?

The Importance Of Bureaucracy

In Britain today, public sector workers and particularly those in charge of anything, have an absolute belief in their own moral superiority. When something goes wrong, they are most concerned that no blame is attached and no-one is held accountable. Public officials are, they feel, saints who only have the purist of motives. If something goes wrong, it cannot be their fault.

So, to hear that Kettering Hospital puts its 'reputation' above patients lives is no surprise, really. A young girl has an operation to remove her appendix and subsequently bleeds to death. A number of issues of hand-over and handwriting are mentioned, but the glaring omission in the 'care' provided was the gap between her last observation and when they found her dead - nine hours.

Although the hospital carried out an investigation into what happened, it will not disclose the contents of that report to protect their staff whose mental health might otherwise be endangered. It has the added benefit of being able to hide who might be responsible and exactly what went wrong. After all, what purpose would knowing that serve? None of the saints and angels involved meant any harm.

I can't help thinking that many of the problems in our public services would be at least lessened if not completely cured, if public servants were held to account in the same way private firms are. Come to that, the politicians could be required to fall in line too, or pay the price. But I think that really is the block on reform. MP's will not countenance any suggestion that they should be accountable! Elections are bad enough, what with all the twaddle required to deceive voters!

And in the end Kettering Hospital upholds its reputation by not letting you know how bad it really is and no changes will be made for the better, because it was only an accident and as no one, but the victims family, suffered no-one will be that concerned if it happens again. As long as the cloak of invisibility is still available to the guilty parties.

Remember, whilst you might struggle to forgive yourself if there was an accident in which someone died, but where you could have done nothing to help, these people through indolence and a criminal level of negligence have allowed a death that was preventable in all likelihood and they continue to turn up to collect their wages despite being woefully inadequate.

Strathclyde Fire And Rescue

Much of the destruction of the fibre and strength of this country has been brought about, quite deliberately by people who have pushed what would be recognised as ideas of the political Left. These people, seeing that Marxism was ignored by many and rejected by most of the populations in the West, decided on another tactic. No longer would their agitation cause the masses, who were desperate for such leadership the Marxists imagined, to rise up, but instead they would join the Establishment.

By becoming teachers they could infect children's minds, always the most vulnerable, with their unaccepted ideas. Then these people would go on to run teacher training institutions to ensure all teaching became of the Left and to run Universities, all the better to catch the idealist but immature students, so willing to become activists. Judges were corrupted and little by little all official thinking, of any stripe accepted many of the basic principles espoused by Marxists.

This is why there is so little difference between politicians today, why the justice system is skewed to favour criminals (it helps to undermine the capitalist system) and so on and so forth. It brought about the virus that is Political Correctness and its pronouncement of the things you 'cannot say', to affect basic thinking and create thought crimes.

Naturally, the corollary of this is the idiotic ideas pursued by our 'authorities' and the lack of courage of our essential services, from police to Army. This has all been apparent and we see many manifestations of its evil affects, but seldom in sharp focus. Today we have news of Strathclyde Fire And Rescue Sevice. Seldom can the people of a region and the Brigades own rank and file have been so poorly served.

We read that a woman fell down a hole and broke her sternum and several ribs, which also caused a punctured lung. Trapped, she was partly immersed in water and cold. It was two hours before her daughter found her and called for help, so the situation was already serious. The Fire Brigade (we shall call them thus, in honour of their noble tradition, rather than recognising their new, trendy titling that is staggeringly inaccurate, in referring to it as a 'service') naturally arrived promptly.

An ordinary fireman was lowered on a rope to see what the situation was below. Enter onto the scene media relations officer Paul Stewart, who arrives just as a paramedic prepares to be lowered down to assist the woman, considering her situation 'time critical'. Stewart becomes aware that he is the most senior officer present and stops all activity, ruling that it is too dangerous according to the 'Fire Services' policies.

Here we have that sharp focus on Left ideology that is often lacking. Stewart has no appreciation of the situation, no care for the suffering, nor in fact the life of the accident victim, he is overwhelmingly concerned with the set of rules that govern his life. There must be no discussion or dissent, there is nothing but the rules to guide us here, he is saying. It is the same mindset that made him 'notice' he was the senior officer.

Not only did another senior officer with the same 'I'm with stupid' badge, back up the initial on the scene idiot, Stewart, but when the woman subsequently died the 'Service' decided it could find no fault with itself and no apology was forthcoming. Indeed, they described the operation as successful as they did actually get the woman out. Dead, but out. She had been there for six hours after the Brigade arrived. A coroner has described her initial injuries as 'survivable'.

Despite his direct responsibility for these life threatening but survivable injuries become life ending, Paul Stewart arrogantly spent his time at the inquest in self-justification, his lack of concern for the victim and her family continuing. His belief was, he assured the court, that there was not a 'time issue' in the rescue. This was something he doubtless 'believed' because he chose to ignore the paramedic as being of no value in the 'rescue'.

The belief of our 'leaders' in Global Warming and the economic destruction they are prepared to enact to 'combat' it, the insults to settled, two parent heterosexual families, the lack of action by senior police officers in the London riots and this event in Strathclyde are all of a piece. Usually the blame is lost in the amorphous mass of actions and reasons bandied about, but here the simple straightforward stupidity of left-liberal ideology is clear. It is designed to undermine our society, to ultimately destroy capitalism, which the people failed to desire despite agitation by Marxist activists, so it must now be forced.

That it kills people is just a part of the revolution, surely you can understand the necessity? Marx preached a lot of tosh about politics whilst requiring others to fund his extravagant lifestyle, so why should his followers not try to gain in the form of senior positions, with large salaries from what they seek to destroy? They are stupid, after all.