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Public Sector Workers - Reality Check
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Edited Jul 10, 2010, 11:58
Re: Public Sector Workers - Reality Check
Jul 10, 2010, 10:20
pooley wrote:
For the hard of thinking, here is how I see the problem.

Merrick suggests that all police are inherently bad. Oh, they may rescue the odd kitty cat but deep down they would much rather be bashing some poor innocent protesters head instead.

Merrick and others refuse to believe that the vast majority of coppers are good honest decent folk who do a fucking difficult job. A job that I don't think any of us could do.


I don't see that at all. He suggests that the role involves protecting the state, even when the state is doing bad things. There's a huge difference, pooley, between saying "The police are inherently bad" and "PC Brian Bloggs (12 years service, wife and 2 kids, moustache) is bad."

pooley wrote:
This dual role bollocks is fairly insulting. The whole "the good doesn't make up for bashing protesters" nonsense again suggests that all coppers do this.


In a way, yes. I wonder how many officers refused to take part in, for example, the policing of the G20 protests last year? (I reckon none at all) It might not be why they signed up, but they follow orders.

There is an important distinction here. The postman that merrick is on first name terms with is also providing a service to the public. But he also has to drop unwanted tree destroying junk through your letterbox. It's another role that runs with the primary role. Most posties dislike doing this, but they accept it as part of the job. In pointing this out, I'm saying that the role is bad, not that postmen are evil, or that they should no longer deliver mail of any sort.

pooley wrote:
And that they are somehow just doing the good stuff to build up trust so that they can follow an evil agenda. Ridiculous.


Prsumably waggling their bushy eyebrows and rubbing their hands togather, while going "muhahahahahaha"
It is ridiculous, and nobody here is suggesting any such thing.

pooley wrote:
Merrick an others also refuse to believe that some protesters are idiots and attend just for a fight or to cause trouble.


Read this. It was written by merrick a few years back, and says things like,

"I've seen this vagueness used by those with a violent agenda to polarise a group into "either you obey the police or you try to kill them"."

and

"There will always be individual outbursts of violence in any confrontational campaign, but this is different to tolerating it, and certainly different to using violence as strategy, believing it to further the campaign."

and

"We never get to see the people we're up against. We rarely even know their names. The police aren't against us, they're a tool used by those against us. And within the police, the ones in charge are not the ones on the front line, they'd never risk their own injury. They stay away, sending in as many ground troops as it takes. If we use violence as strategy, we give them the excuse to come in with bigger weapons against us, we enter an arms race with them."

and

"One of the big lessons of the recent direct action campaigns has been to see the person inside the uniform. At Newbury, security guards were quitting from Day 2, several coming to join the protest. Every security guard and every police officer is a potential protester. Individual police are not The Law, they are just its servants."

and

"A lot of people joined the police cos they thought it would help the community and the country. A lot joined out of the same feelings that makes us go on actions. You needn't have had too different a life for it to have been you in the blue jacket. In a very slightly different world in which we're all as well meaning as we are now, it might not have been Keith Blakelock who died that night in Tottenham. It might have been my father. It might have been you. Shouting insults doesn't make them realise they're being used against the nation's interest."

But like I said, rather than take these quotes out of context, take the time to read the article. This is not the writing of some immature knobhead who just wants to have a go.

pooley wrote:
Brilliantly someone said that this type of protester does not exist, and anyway real protesters keep away from them!!! Which is it....?

I have seen proteste
rrible things. Including getting innocent protesters caught up in violence so that theta get injured and can then complain. Cowardly an wrong[/quote]

I don't recall reading that here. Can you provide a link?

Gotta ask. Who does it benefit if things kick off? OK you're always going to get a few arseholes, but it's almost never in the interests of the protestors to turn things nasty. I think most people understand this. So when some anonymous individual in the crowd throws the first brick, well, at least some of the time, it's not going to be a protestor at all. You do know what an agent provocateur is, don't you?
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