Restoring Sanity
Uncommon sense one Blog at a time

So the Olympic Countdown Clock in Trafalgar square has stopped working. Despite blowing – sorry, investing – billions on the games it seems it was decided not to invite Rolex, Tag, Breitling or other leading watchmakers to build this high-profile timepiece, but to turn to budget brand Swatch, best known for their disposable, plastic eighties wristwatches.

At the same time, commenting on ticket sales, Lord Coe has boosted public confidence that the money spent on the games is well worth it when he told the BBC: “So, good, so far – let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

Surely in a time of austerity when so much money has gone into – and continues to go into – hosting the games we really need to do more than keep our fingers crossed that they are going to be a success? The sad truth is, however, that this event will never recoup the money spent – especially when you limit the way that people can buy tickets to Visa credit cards only – and that the right thing to do would have been to pull out of this wasteful exercise as soon as we had the chance.

Unfortunately, it is now way too late for that – though possibly not if you gauge the passage of time by the Olympic countdown clock.

While recognising that the halcyon ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ days are long gone, should we be a little concerned about some of the trends of modern policing? Not least the regular ‘tooling up’ of officers as if they were some sort of quasi SAS unit.

Who, for example, can forget the picture of the frankly scary (or scared?) Taser-toting officer attending the recent stand-off with sad loss to society Raoul Moat? Putting aside the fact that he now has his own Facebook tribute page, did this look like a man in control of a tense and sensitive situation?

And, according to many news channels, this was also the first time that shotgun-style Tasers were deployed in the UK, despite the fact that they have not been given full Home Office approval. What’s more, according to police sources, West Yorkshire Police (whose officers used the taser shotguns against Moat) had not previously been trialling the new weapons.

And this is the real problem. Not that police officers should be given the tools to handle often dangerous situations, but whether they have the skill and experience to use them. A point underlined by the constable and acting sergeant who took 12 attempts – eight times with a rifle and four times with a shotgun – to ‘humanely’ kill a cow that had wandered onto a school playing field. Not to mention that officers have accidentally discharged their weapons 110 times since January 2007, which is almost four times as often as when confronted with actual threats.

Is it possible that a small minority of officers find the ongoing ‘machofication’ of the police one of the main attractions of the job? That, rather than preventing and detecting crime they want to be free to tool up, hide their badges and make copious use of their batons (coincidentally the Met Police has announced today that the riot squad officer who, at last year’s G20 protests was filmed hitting Ian Tomlinson with his baton and pushing him to the ground before he subsequently collapsed in the street and died, could be sacked)?

Now don’t get me wrong – if some scumbags are attacking the police (as in the recent riots in Northern Ireland) then fair dos if the police then decide to beat the living daylights out of them. But what the majority of public want to know is that their police services can deliver effective law enforcement and that they know how and when to (and when not to) use force and the tools they are given, whether that’s a firearm, a Taser, or a baton. And this not only requires training but also the recruitment of the right types of individual in the first place.

George Dixon may no longer want to apply, but that shouldn’t mean taking on Andy McNab wannabees who are attracted by the hardware and the power rather than an urge to serve the public by preventing and detecting crime and catching criminals.

Isn’t it refreshing to have a Prime Minister who actually says what most people think rather than trying to walk a politically correct tightrope?

How anybody – let alone 30,000 genetically illiterate idiots who have joined the RIP Raoul Moat group Facebook page in support of the narcissistic prat – can think that this violent, self-obsessed psychopath is deserving of anything but utter contempt is amazing. And for some of those cybertwats to want to congratulate him for shooting a police officer is beyond comprehension.

The fact is that he chose the path to his own demise, showing no compassion or remorse for the innocent people he killed, injured or scared along the way.

And, ultimately, we should all be very grateful in these frugal times that he chose to take his own life, rather than costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds of in lawyers fees, court costs and accommodation at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

And as for all those liberal, hand-wringing, naive do-gooding fools who think he should have been given a second chance, or who believe this wouldn’t have happened if only social services had listened to his ‘issues’, just grow up. The potential for recidivism is so much lower now than it would be if he’d served 2/3 of a pitifully short prison sentence and we won’t have to face the sickening sight of the loser taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights on some spurious technicality that the police tasers messed up his Mohican.