UGLY NEW FACE OF POLICING

ANYBODY in any doubt that COVID-19 is a civil obedience issue much more than a public health issue should listen to south Wales police and crime commissioner Alun Michael.
There is no longer a properly resourced and equipped police force so politicians are now asking us to do the job partly, it appears, by pitting us against each other.
“People no longer listen to radio stations and read newspapers like they used to” Michael told Radio Wales this morning (as he is fond of doing often like a genial, eccentric and sentimental old uncle looking back in history through rose-tinted glasses or his dusty old gas mask as you sit on his knee and get lulled into a sweet misty fog of concealment and trickery).
“Crazy, irresponsible fools like that Jacqui Thompson in Carmarthen and that Jac o the North are going on social media to demand their rights, complain about useless politicians on salaries and expenses and authentically and honestly voice their own opinions, pointing out inconsistencies and mistakes to right wrongs and expose corruption in the way that journalists should but don’t. In the old days they just used to believe what the BBC and the local newspaper (which Welsh Labour was partly funding to ensure their messages got through) used to say so there was no need for a police force as people were nicely obedient and compliant as they never had an authentic voice,” he might well have added but definitely did not.
He was responding to a story that a gang of revellers had broken the rules at the Coyote Ugly bar in Cardiff one night by literally trying some herd immunity, which, I think, the majority of people now consider to be the most appropriate response and, too often, are forced into due to the obvious lack of leadership, clear and coherent messaging or meaningful enforcement of rules which are highly questionable at best and too often confused and contradictory.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54041805
But by herding in close proximity, the Coyote Ugly hordes were selfishly putting everyone else’s life in danger by acting irresponsibly (a bit like Stephen Kinnock, Dominic Cummings and numerous others).
Controlling crowds, however, is “not a policing issue” Michael said when pressed about why his force had not taken action at the time – instead, it is now our individual and collective responsibility to listen to official messages and act on them out of public duty, he said, before issuing yet another threat to close down businesses struggling to make ends meet if we failed to do so, sounding for all the world like a kamikaze pilot speeding up with relish while blaming the American warship for just being there in the middle of the ocean.
Which, of course, is like telling a burglary victim that it was all their own fault because they didn’t fit alarms, special locks and had no lights on in the night and any more of that type of behaviour could mean we lose our houses altogether.
Burglary, perhaps, may no longer be a “policing issue” when there are race and identity hate crimes and historical sex crimes aplenty for our politicised police to tackle.
The opening up of business in Wales has been used like a stick to beat the public with by our politicians, who, don’t forget, must have given the establishment a green light to open.
Opening a late-night drinking venue on St Mary Street in Cardiff alongside the many “gentlemen’s clubs” where “ladies” reveal all at a price is like telling Satan he can go back to business as normal then throwing your hands up in horror when the clients wear black and start spitting on the Bible.
Wales on Sunday, who broke the story, are so poorly resourced and equipped now that they can only afford to do cheap, easily researched and captured stories with pictures taken probably on a mobile phone of queues of people outside Coyote Ugly.
Other media outlets are so poorly resourced and equipped that they can only afford to follow it up by appealing for fearful and emotional responses from poorly informed people angered by behaviour which annoys and agitates them, thereby fermenting further division and dispute between rules-based people, or, more accurately, those who claim to be rules-based pitted against practical adapters and interpreters with independent views and voices.
And politicians – better resourced and equipped than the police and media and growing faster – use the dispute and division to further marginalise, de-legitimise and then criminalise independent views and voices mainly on “social media” and unofficial internet outlets like blogs, thereby denying us our only way to challenge, question and confront.

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