Heathrow
Yes, as in the airport.
I highly doubt those masks are made of any thing flame/heat retardent.
I always assumed they were made of Nomex, like racing drivers wear.
Maybe not, they just wanna look like ninjas.
I highly doubt those masks are made of any thing flame/heat retardent.
Watching Question Time with steam coming out of my ears. Our officers put their lives on the line for these people and get no support
Britain said Thursday that it would seek U.S. law enforcement advice on fighting gang violence as the U.K. deals with riots that have gripped several of the country's cities.
Prime Minister David Cameron, who has summoned lawmakers back to Parliament because of the crisis, said he would act ?decisively to restore order on our streets,? and he cited prominent U.S. police chief Bill Bratton as a potential source for advice.
Bratton, whose resume includes top cop jobs in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, said in a written statement that he would ?be honored? to assist the British.
Since the riots first started, London's Metropolitan Police have been widely criticized for its slow and inadequate response. The situation has deteriorated to the point where citizens are forced to stand guard in front of their homes and businesses because of the lack of police presence.
For the first time, its deputy assistant commissioner admitted Thursday that the force did not deploy enough officers to control the outbreak of violence early on in the riots. Cameron also acknowledged shortcomings by police. He said they treated the early riots as a ?public order issue? rather than a crime problem.
And according to law enforcement experts in the U.S., the first few hours are pivotal.
Bill Gavin, the former head of the FBI in New York, told Fox News that there?s a philosophical difference between London police and its U.S. cousin departments. In particular, London failed to deploy an overwhelming force to halt the rioters.
?The time for reasoning is after you?ve controlled them,? Gavin said, adding that Bratton would serve as a suitable adviser.
Bratton?s experience with law enforcement is extensive and diverse. He reduced gang-related crimes in Boston and Los Angeles. He has worked with the British in the past, and was given an honorary title by Queen Elizabeth II in 2009, Reuters reported.
"There are many lessons from these experiences that I believe are relevant to the current situation in England," Bratton said.
Britain's riots began Saturday when an initially peaceful protest over a police shooting in north London turned violent. That clash triggered wider lawlessness that police struggled to halt.
There are currently 16,000 police deployed on London's streets to deter rioters and reassure residents, and those forces are expected to remain through the weekend.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bill Gavin, the former head of the FBI in New York, told Fox News that there?s a philosophical difference between London police and its U.S. cousin departments. In particular, London failed to deploy an overwhelming force to halt the rioters.
?The time for reasoning is after you?ve controlled them,? Gavin said, adding that Bratton would serve as a suitable adviser.
So, you actually endorse Syria- and Iran-style internet cuts? Now you are firmly running on the sharia platform as Mayor of Hull.
Spectre, that was a brilliant piece of analysis and I am quite happy with it coming from someone who's opinion can not be done away as being "leftist do-gooder" talk.I don't have time to comment on this fully at the moment, but I thought I would toss this in here. Keep in mind that I'm having to be brief here, so I'm sure I won't get to touch on everything I'd like to even in this segment.
[common sense]
OK, sorry for that, then.No, if they ban Twitter and Blackberry. Then people would move to other messenger services.
Why is that justified though?
As much as people will say "I can't believe that there are rich corrupt people out there who are willing to tread on the poor to remain wealthy" what is neglected is the fact the amount of people who wouldn't do that are very, very few.
Short of becoming a communist country (and I'm talking proper, complete equality here, not the former USSR or North Korea which were/are, of course, dictatorships under the guise of communism) there is no way to abolish class divide and some people simply being more wealthy than others. And as we know communism, outside of theory, simply does not work.
The world has always worked under a system where certain people are powerful and rich and others are not. Obviously this is a horrible way for it to work, with people being born into money and never lifting a finger to work in their life, but it is the the hierarchy that the world grown under since early civilisations, be it for better or worse.
So many people grown up being promised things ("buy these clothes, your friends will think you're cool... they just happen to be twice the price of un-branded ones and of worse quality...") and told that respect and money is all that matters and you can have it all. Of course it is a lie, most people never become massively rich, they end up living average lives and buying crap with fancy labels on it to make themselves feel like they have got somewhere.
I never had to deal with peer-pressure, I left school and was essentially left to work out my own opinions and find what I want from life without much outside influence. What I want from my life is contentment, at this point I'm fairly sure that entails a job in IT tech support, a red brick terrace house and a Austin Allegro and buying half my (very good quality and long lasting btw) clothes 2nd hand.
Now society and the media may tell me that is an awful existence to want, and why on earth wouldn't I want to be rich or an Aston Martin or designer clothing?
But the fact is if you remove the pressure to be what is declared to be a "success", and to gain what is said to being "happiness" by the media and have the ability to sit back and think about what you really want out of life I bet you'd find a lot more people willing to settle for a comfortable life rather than massive riches...
Sadly of course, this isn't how the world works, and people want to be rich and "respected" because that is what they are told to want. In the same way they are told nobody in their right mind would be content with working as a lowly cleaner... yet if a Polish person happens to take the job its "stolen" from some good, honest local.
The peoples want what they are told to want by the media, they are told to want money and Gucci handbags. They resent rich people for having money and Gucci handbags, thus causing rage. If media wasn't allowed to do this shit, less people would want money/Gucci handbags, thus causing less rage.
There would still be some rage, because some people will still want money/Gucci handbags but hey, unless the world goes Communist the rage will always be present.
Spectre, that was a brilliant piece of analysis and I am quite happy with it coming from someone who's opinion can not be done away as being "leftist do-gooder" talk.
This Spider-Man mantra, "With great power comes great responsibility" used to work for the rich as well: Industy barons like Krupp in Germany (I know, he provided war machinery to all the wrong people but that has nothing to do with my point) and I think most others of their generation took pride in caring for their workers. Up until the stock market madness took off for the first time in, I think, the 80s, the idea of running a company was producing good while making a profit, which means that there was leverage to feed the workforce through touch times and so on. Nowadays, a company's main goal is to maximize profit, no matter what. Actually producing something, be it cars or the Dicke Berta or computers or ideas, has become a side-effect of profit.
It might sound like communism, but I think there should be a law agains companies making a healthy profit laying off people to make a bigger profit in the next quarter because the shareholders/stock markets demand it.
Regarding the question of police officer markings: We got this debate in Germany for some time now, with civil right groups demanding for every cop to wear a unique unifier, preferrably a name tag even on riot gear, as videos surface on YouTube of cops beating up students (on the "freedom not fear" rally, none the less) and peaceful soccer fans.
The conservatives, while at the same time demanding a law that forces Germans to use their real name when posting online, say that unique identifiers would put the lives of the officers at risk ("this pesky do-badders will visit them at their homes!") and will be the end of efficient policing.
Exactly. But when you grow up being told lies all the time, then you might start believing them, like these peope probably did. You can live with that, if you got money. But if you haven't, you might end up randomly and senselessly smashing stores up.
Give people a serious chance of having some proportionate goal and of making some achievable improvements in their own life, and give them the will to accomplish that, and not one of them will revolt. Revolt comes from the shatters of illusions. you need achievable dreams, to give energy to people, you need real opportunities to achieve them to set people at work, and you need a fair society (not where everyone is "equal", but where disparities are not too big) to avoid people deluding themselves. Then you will have little to no revolts.
You don't need a large army to quell riots. A small force of nincampoops is highly sufficient.^ Wonder does that mean Cameron's slash and burn military cuts will also be reversed.
Does he really have to? We know they have done great injustices in the past, and that makes it important to watch police actions so we ensure no wrongdoing takes place now. That doesn't mean any of us are out to make the police the bad guys in this.If you are so determined to make the police the bad guy in this whole thing, then yes, go ahead and show us where they have gone wrong in the past.
No, but it has happened before, so there is a reason to look into it.I would agree that wearing a balaclava under a riot shield is probably unnecessary, but just because it is being worn does not necessarily mean that the officer is planning to commit abuses.
It's probably, partly so they all look the same. It's about scaring people psychologically, you're not met by a bunch of individuals, but by a mass of black clad scary riot police.They don't want you to see how scared they are.
Six months. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, now looking like a banana republic.[...]
At Camberwell Green magistrates, Nicholas Robinson, 23, an electrical engineering student with no previous convictions, was jailed for the maximum permitted six months after pleading guilty to stealing bottles of water worth ?3.50 from Lidl in Brixton. He had been walking back from his girlfriend's house in the early hours of Monday morning when he saw the store being looted, his lawyer said, and had taken the opportunity to go in and help himself to a case of water because he was thirsty. He was caught up in the moment, and was ashamed of his actions, his defence said.
But the prosecution told judge Alan Baldwin: "This defendant has contributed through his action to criminal activities to the atmosphere of chaos and sheer lawlessness." There were gasps from the public gallery as his sentence was delivered.
[...]
You don't need a large army to quell riots. A small force of nincampoops is highly sufficient.
Six months. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, now looking like a banana republic.
So, if you want to stop all crime, it's easy. Jail people for ten years for stealing a vallet. While higher penalties don't usually work, they do if they're that off the scale, at least for crimes that's not usually comitted in passions (like murder).
Six months. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, now looking like a banana republic.
Giving someone six months for stealing ?3.50 worth of water is a disgrace. That magistrate should be ashamed of himself.
Yeah. But it doesn't take several hundered thousands of troops to control Britain.The British might disagree with you and say that they have discovered that you do need a certain level of intelligence and self control in your riot-quelling troops. They tried it by using freed violent prisoners as riot troops in Ireland, and I seem to recall that nobody was happy with the outcome after that.
Perhaps.And to be fair, the US is not looking exactly real healthy or first rank ourselves at the moment. Neither, from my standpoint, is much of Europe far behind.
There are cases that warrant a strong custodial sentence. Stealing a couple of bottles of water does not.Well, first they would actually have to start jailing people and holding them in jail for any period. That Telegraph live page is listing stories of rioters getting long sentences... that are suspended, and then being sent home. Others are getting nasty sentences that are commuted to what we'd call probation. Looks good in the initial headlines, not so great a few days later. Before we start talking about potential cruelty of sentencing, I think we should actually wait to see if anyone actually has to serve any of these terms they're throwing about. It's the UK, so I strongly doubt it, no matter what the PM claims.
A Prime Minister starting to say that people will get prison sentences is wrong anyway. A Prime Minister should never pre-judge anyone, that's just rethoric toughness, it's idiotic.To be fair to PM Cameron, he doesn't actually have the power to actually make the judicial system do anything. On the other hand, he should also have started proposing reforms long before this event happened.
Which is what I feel is wrong. Stop treating these people like they are worthy of special treatment. Punish them as you would normally, making exceptions never really make any sense.The mentality is exceptional sentences for exceptional circumstances.
Jmsprovan, are you intentionally misrepresenting my opinions, or are you confusing me with someone else? Because I did not say that.This sort of thinking is bullshit, you are feeling sorry for someone who rioted and looted and putting the blame for the consequences of his actions on the courts. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? its not the fault of the courts for giving you a heavy sentence its the person's fault for committing the illegal act/s and the court handing down the maximum sentence appropriate (a magistrates court can only hand down sentences of a maximum of 6 months, for higher sentences the case needs to be referred up to a Crown Court)
Which is what I feel is wrong. Stop treating these people like they are worthy of special treatment. Punish them as you would normally, making exceptions never really make any sense.
This guy was convicted of stealing a couple of bottles of water. He was not convicted of rioting. Either you can prove a charge, or you can't. If you can't, the possibility the guy did something else doesn't enter into it in a proper court system.
The sentence does not match the crime in this case. A lot of cases will be more appropriate, but six months for a couple of bottles of water? Are you kidding me? You think that's justice?
That's bollocks. It's just an overreaction. Let's hope we don't see lower standards of evidence in the coming weeks. Justice is blind to the sobbing eyes of the accused. But it is also deaf, deaf as an adder to the cries of the mob. Freely quoted from John Adams.
If a magistrate is sentencing after what's going on outside, he or she has failed.