London Student protests - Wed 8th Dec+ Thurs 9th

[teuchter]

Strawman! That is just not true....

Go on then - tell me what the realistic alternative is.

 

[editor]

The far-left flags were everywhere BA, they clearly started the violence.

Unlike you, I bothered to go to the protest and talk to people. Quite a few of the students I spoke to had voted LibDem and they were incandescent with rage at Clegg's shameful deceit and any violence was a direct response to his lies.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Fuck them.

I just got home after attending the embers of the protest at the end of Victoria Street. While there I got chatting to a 17year-old girl. A while later a group of people who I believe to be neo-Nazis turned up and started causing trouble. They were trying to start on an old man of about 60. A policeman calmed him down. They then started picking on this girl. They all started to scream "Cunt!" at her and she called them this back. The group (about 12-15) walked up to her in a very menacing way. We backed off towards the police and then one of the group pushed the girl violently in the head, causing her to fall down on her back. I pulled her away to the police and asked for help. Two of them smirked at each other and one said: "You wanted free speech." They then continued to watch as the neo-Nazis caused trouble. This occurred at around 7pm.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education...rotests-charles-camilla-attack-aftermath-live

 

[dennisr]

What I wrote was consistent.

Consistent only in its bollocks and inability to read what is in front of you

As much as the main argument is with idiots like moon - what pisses me off about fools like you is that you don't face the consequences of your uninformed 'violent crowd' fantasies (from 200 miles away). One of those youngsters has life threatening injuries, many more were badly done in. You are busy wanking over that and thinking its some 'autonomous' bid for freedom - It isn't its folk deperately defending themsleves from state attack. Some of those kids are not having to pay an awful price for the bravado they showed - you don't.

And if you think this action appears out of nowhere and is the only method of struggle open to that movement you are a complete idiot. But most of us here already know that

 

[Proper Tidy]

Would such a police force employ any police?

Um, yes.

It's what the first A in ACAB stands for that makes it illogical to hold such a position and start talking about "accountable" policing.

Why? Somebody joining a police force that is genuinely accountable and genuinely serves the people is very different to somebody joining a police force that is unaccountable and protects the state not the people. You have to question the worldview of people who believe that they are serving the public by acting as thugs for the state.

 

[belboid]

You're not actually very good at doing joined up thinking are you?

Self defence is no offence, by the way.

And pro active self defence is the best defence of all.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Better to break the law than break the poor

 

[teuchter]

Um, yes.



Why? Somebody joining a police force that is genuinely accountable and genuinely serves the people is very different to somebody joining a police force that is unaccountable and protects the state not the people. You have to question the worldview of people who believe that they are serving the public by acting as thugs for the state.

They are still joining a police force though aren't they, and that police force employs coppers, and we are told that ACAB.

Or, when people say "ACAB" is it really just to get a rise, and what they actually mean is "AC who are currently employed by the police force in its present form AB"?

Seems to me that if you are going to talk about a police force being "accountable", that's quite a difficult thing to define and there is going to be a sliding scale (with probably more than one dimension to it) of "accountability" , with different people deciding on different points along that line as being suitably "accountable" for them.

I don't see how the ACAB position fits with anything like that.

 

[shaman75]

Fuck this makes me angry.

9.32am: A 20-year-old student was left unconscious with bleeding on the brain after a police officer hit him on the head with a truncheon yesterday, the Press Association news agency is reporting:

Alfie Meadows, a philosophy student at Middlesex University, was struck as he tried to leave the area outside Westminster Abbey during last night's tuition fee protests, his mother said.

After falling unconscious on the way to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, he underwent a three-hour operation for bleeding on the brain.

Susan Meadows, 55, an English literature lecturer at Roehampton University, said: "He was hit on the head by a police truncheon. He said it was the hugest blow he ever felt in his life. The surface wound wasn't very big but three hours after the blow, he suffered bleeding to the brain. He survived the operation and he's in the recovery room."

Mr Meadows was with a number of friends, including two lecturers, Nina Power, a colleague of his mother's, and Peter Hallward, a philosophy lecturer at Kingston University.

But as they tried to leave the area where protesters were being held in a police "kettling" operation, the second-year undergraduate suffered a blow to the head.

After G20 police were criticised for planning only for violence. Yet this appears to be what they have been doing with these protests. They certainly haven't been facilitating them have they?

And now we have youngsters undergoing three hours ops for bleeding on the brain?

 

[Proper Tidy]

They are still joining a police force though aren't they, and that police force employs coppers, and we are told that ACAB.

Or, when people say "ACAB" is it really just to get a rise, and what they actually mean is "AC who are currently employed by the police force in its present form AB"?

Seems to me that if you are going to talk about a police force being "accountable", that's quite a difficult thing to define and there is going to be a sliding scale (with probably more than one dimension to it) of "accountability" , with different people deciding on different points along that line as being suitably "accountable" for them.

I don't see how the ACAB position fits with anything like that.

You are making no sense. Would you prefer it if they said 'ACAB except possibly in a post-revolutionary situation'?

How is accountability on a sliding scale? Either they are, or are not, accountable to the public, as opposed to the state bureaucracy. And they are not.

Anybody who joins the police and hangs around for a while will know exactly who's interests they serve, so I don't see the objection to people pointing out that they must basically be shits. 80% of police work is probably socially useful, but it's the other 20%, that we see at its most pronounced during, for example, the miners strike or the student protests. For example, look a drugs - they are everywhere, in every level of society. The City runs on coke. Yet it is overwhelmingly the poorest in society who are criminalised over drugs. Why? Because the police don't target the City - they target the estates.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Charging at a crowd of people on horseback is an act of violence. The police started the violence yesterday. That much is crystal clear.

 

[Sean]

The more I read about the police violence the more sick and angry I feel. He's lucky to be alive and the chances of tracking his attacker down and prosecuting him are zilch.

 

[teuchter]

How is accountability on a sliding scale? Either they are, or are not, accountable to the public, as opposed to the state bureaucracy. And they are not.

Can you explain how a police force "accountable to the public" works exactly? How does one create such a thing, so that it definitely is accountable to the public? Who gives them their orders, pays their salary, and so on? How is this all scrutinised and who decides whether or not they are doing something in the interests of "the public" whatever that actually means? What happens in the instance where one section of "the public" has a different opinion to another section of "the public" about what the police's role is in a certain set of circumstances?

 

[AKA pseudonym]

Dave Gilmores (Pink Floyd) son. has publically apologised for pissing at the cenotaph....

 

[shaman75]

Can you explain how a police force "accountable to the public" works exactly? How does one create such a thing, so that it definitely is accountable to the public? Who gives them their orders, pays their salary, and so on? How is this all scrutinised and who decides whether or not they are doing something in the interests of "the public" whatever that actually means? What happens in the instance where one section of "the public" has a different opinion to another section of "the public" about what the police's role is in a certain set of circumstances?

We could have a truly independent body to investigate the police with enough resources to manage those investigations without relying on the police to investigate themselves for starters.

 

[Crispy]

Can you explain how a police force "accountable to the public" works exactly? How does one create such a thing, so that it definitely is accountable to the public? Who gives them their orders, pays their salary, and so on? How is this all scrutinised and who decides whether or not they are doing something in the interests of "the public" whatever that actually means? What happens in the instance where one section of "the public" has a different opinion to another section of "the public" about what the police's role is in a certain set of circumstances?

Might want a new thread for this

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The police are an instrument of the state, teuchter. They are there to enforce the will of the state, by violent means as necessary – and some aspects of that enforcement will be seen as good by most people, other aspects less good. The police force exists above all else to maintain the current distribution of property and to maintain order. You change the nature of the police by changing the nature of the state and, crucially, by changing the nature of ownership. It makes no sense to discuss the one without reference to the other.

 

[gunneradt]

Fuck this makes me angry.



After G20 police were criticised for planning only for violence. Yet this appears to be what they have been doing with these protests. They certainly haven't been facilitating them have they?

And now we have youngsters undergoing three hours ops for bleeding on the brain?

Is it any wonder people get hurt when things are being thrown and others agitated deliberately.?

 

[8ball]

Is it any wonder people get hurt when things are being thrown and others agitated deliberately.?

Presumably you're talking about the 'kettling' here...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Fuck off.

 

[gunneradt]

Presumably you're talking about the 'kettling' here...

no Im talking ablout the police having items thrown at them and god knows what else. If it had been a copper hurt everyone would have been saying 'great'. It wasn't - and this was bound to happen.

He will get little sympathy I suspect

 

[frogwoman]

Would they really?

 

[gunneradt]

Would they really?

check back through some of the threads at the gloating at some of the injured coppers

 

[Proper Tidy]

Can you explain how a police force "accountable to the public" works exactly? How does one create such a thing, so that it definitely is accountable to the public? Who gives them their orders, pays their salary, and so on? How is this all scrutinised and who decides whether or not they are doing something in the interests of "the public" whatever that actually means? What happens in the instance where one section of "the public" has a different opinion to another section of "the public" about what the police's role is in a certain set of circumstances?

You really want me to explain democracy to you? Fucking hell teuchter, you're better than this.

We have a state bureaucracy - under the guise of so-called liberal parliamentary democracy - that is not accountable, and the police are only semi-accountable to that bureaucracy. Were we to remove that bureaucracy and replace it with a system of social & economic order based on genuine democracy then immediately the police would become semi-accountable to the people. Add reforms to policing - to make local forces accountable to local people, not to a centralised police bureaucracy, and the jobs a good un. Of course some people would still resent the police - nobody likes getting caught - but we wouldn't see police attacking ordinary working people because it serves the interests of their paymasters or their paymasters' paymasters.

For the people by the people isn't a difficult concept to understand.

 

[scifisam]

no Im talking ablout the police having items thrown at them and god knows what else. If it had been a copper hurt everyone would have been saying 'great'. It wasn't - and this was bound to happen.

He will get little sympathy I suspect

So trained policemen in armour are entitled to beat people up if a missile is thrown at them? You don't expect them to have any self-control at all?

 

[Streathamite]

no Im talking ablout the police having items thrown at them and god knows what else. If it had been a copper hurt everyone would have been saying 'great'. It wasn't - and this was bound to happen.

He will get little sympathy I suspect

sorry, but this is bollocks, by just about every account the police were by far the guiltier party

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The police started the violence. 'Kettling' is violence.

 

[Vintage Paw]

So trained policemen in armour are entitled to beat people up if a missile is thrown at them? You don't expect them to have any self-control at all?

Ah but let's not forget, they did show remarkable restraint by not shooting protesters. We should be proud of them.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Ignore him, he's just a gypsy-hating tax-dodging parasite. He's lower than a scab.

 

[stowpirate]

Unlike you, I bothered to go to the protest and talk to people. Quite a few of the students I spoke to had voted LibDem and they were incandescent with rage at Clegg's shameful deceit and any violence was a direct response to his lies.

I wish I had seen this one coming and got on the train with camera ready for action. There was a point during the unfolding events that the subjects nearly became citizens. Unfortunately this is going to become the defining news story.