Police Force Mergers Aren’t a Good Idea?

I have to admit, I am one of those who has been a strong advocate for police mergers in the past (see here), I mostly still am. The recent changes to a National Force in Scotland, in my opinion, could be also replicated south of the border (see here). However; Bernard Rix,  who has more than 20 years of consulting experience, with an emphasis on public sector, particularly in the police and criminal justice arena, suggests otherwise…

Sixteen reasons why “fewer forces” may not be the right answer: It seems that many working in, or with an interest in policing seem to believe that there’s merit in reducing the number of police forces. I disagree, and appear to be in the minority in holding this view. Here are my first sixteen high-level reasons why I feel that “fewer police forces” might not be the right answer…(Read More)

I still say there are many reasons to work on standardisation of process, equipment and administrative functions. British Policing, in many ways, is still a crime in progress. Also (in many situations), there needs to be far greater seamless interoperability in cross border incidents.

What do you think?

Related articles

• Merger of neighbouring police murder units ‘still a possibility’ (yorkshirepost.co.uk)
• Reforming the police force for the challenges of the future (itv.com)
• Rein in overzealous bosses, police chiefs appeal to Theresa May (thetimes.co.uk)

The #BoozeBritain Debate – Our Alcoholic Children

Have you ever noticed, you can bang on about something ad infinitum until you go blue in the face but often, many people just won’t listen until they decide they want to. Either that or they get a rude and/or painful wake-up call which actually forces them to listen and take action. Our Booze Britain culture and the consequent anti-social behaviour is one such issue…

Booze has become something of a political and commercial proverbial hot potato in recent years. It is also a subject of verbal conflict in our household of late, there’s a kind of pro and anti feeling towards alcohol emerging that was never really there before. If I say my wife was born into a Salvation Army family and I was born into a publican’s family, you can start to see where the differences of opinion might come from. That said, after life-long police careers we have both seen and dealt with the impacts of too much booze.

It’s not that one of us is teetotal and the other is an alcoholic, although we can draw on the experience of those circumstances. Neither is it the fact that neither of us drink, we both do. It’s more about the rights and wrongs of alcohol consumption as a whole but in particular, the quantity issues.

Our opinions have probably been even further polarised of late; since retirement from the police I have returned to working in the hospitality industry and my wife is working with a local community addiction service. I serve beer in a pub and she spends all her time helping people to kick the booze, this ‘conflict’ of interests often makes for some ‘interesting’ discussions!

It’s a kind of professional rivalry, in professions that are a world apart. In a nutshell, I say it’s not the booze that causes the problems, it’s the people who consume too much of it. The wife usually argues how the chemical and bodily reactions to alcohol are the issues causing over indulgence and addiction. 

I then counter with; “ok, but despite the physical/chemical reactions to alcohol, isn’t ‘addiction’ also a kind of personality disorder, one that some are prone to more than others? Ergo, the problem is the people and not the booze, and so the debate continues!

Calling Time on Booze Britain is something most of us would like to see but there are no easy cures for the problem, as I’ve pointed out before. I’ve also discussed the Minimum Unit Pricing issue before but that is only one aspect of the problems we see. One thing that my wife and I are usually in total agreement about are the quantity issues. We (our society) need to cut-down on our consumption levels and we need to understand and acknowledge the fact; our bodies need ‘recovery time’ from drinking. We also need to start considering the impacts of our overindulgence upon others.

News items on the subject, and they are myriad, often provoke further discussions about booze. One such piece came this week from Carrie Armstrong, a Geordie TV presenter and herself a recovering alcoholic. In a recent blog post, Alcoholic Children: Britain’s Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (also reproduced in the HuffingtonPost), Carrie explored the root causes of Booze Britain. Irrespective of her own addiction, coming from Tyneside which is undoubtedly one of the Nation’s cultural capitals of the phenomenon, Carrie is probably better placed than many to talk about the issues.

Although I don’t necessarily agree with all of her views about the causes of our current problems e.g. children surrounded by booze at home, her acknowledgement of the fact that many of today’s problems are down to “copied behaviour” and a “lack of consequences” is true. I agree that as a society, we have to stop looking at drunken behaviour as if it is in some way acceptable or inevitable. Neither should alcohol be seen as a valid excuse for our behavior, socially or legally.

As Carrie says, we must look towards ”tightening laws on adolescent drunk-child behaviour.” By that I don’t necessarily mean create new laws, we have plenty of legal tools to deal with the issue, it’s just for one reason or another, not least the cut-backs born out of austerity measures, they aren’t often utilised to their full potential.

Carrie suggests that we can also make inroads to the problem by “adjusting our homes to protect our children from what’s in them,” referring to the availability of booze at home. I wouldn’t subscribe to that observation per se, I was raised in a pub, so were several members of my family. I have friends whose parents were/are licensees, I and many people I know have spent all their life surrounded by ‘available’ booze and they aren’t alcoholics. Or indeed, the type of individuals who inflict anti-social behaviour upon others.

I’m still convinced that as a society we have allowed generations to grow up without boundaries of ‘acceptable’ behaviour, both at home and in the street. We have a general social acceptance that it is cool to get bladdered at any and every opportunity. It is (generally) the psyche of the people not the substance (irrespective of the chemically addictive properties) that cause most of the problems. This factor was also (partly) an underlying theme within Carries blog post, and one that is set to get worse with reductions in resources available to deal with the issue. 

We need to start and provide the consequences for our drunk children’s behaviour. Not have them be the consequences of ours…(Carrie Armstrong)

The problems that we see on our streets today, in our Hospital A&E departments during most weekend evenings, as well as being dealt with by our Criminal Justice System (CJS), are just the first sips of the big booze glass. Yes alcohol problems are a massive drain on our public services however; for all the drunkenness we see in the media and pouring through the revolving doors of the CJS, there are many more people suffering in silence. Ones who mostly evade the radar of general public perception of the issues. People from all walks of life, both professionally and socially, who have a constant struggle with alcohol addiction and all the associated issues.

Like some others (thankfully), Carrie Armstrong knows this and is doing her bit to try to help others going through the problems and issues she has experienced. In How To Be A Sober Girl | Because Alcoholism may be Ugly But Recovery is Beautiful, Carrie says; “I believe that Recovery is the greatest experience life has to offer. That it is exciting, empowering and satisfying.” I have a great friend in the USA (and she knows who she is if she reads this) who would wholeheartedly agree with that ethos!

Living a sober life should be everybody’s aim, but by that and from my personal point of view, I don’t necessarily mean absolutely no booze, unless that’s what you want or have to do. As one old bloke always used to say to me, during my formative drinking years; ”there’s nowt clever in o’er much strong drink lad”. By that he meant, don’t drink too much or you’ll get into trouble.

When I started drinking it was in the controlled environment of a public house, not on a street corner or in the park with packs of loss-leader power fiz from the local supermarket. This is a total contrast to the drinking ‘apprenticeship’ most receive today.

I drank in an environment where my peers and I were being social; getting a bit tipsy may have sometimes (but rarely) been a side-effect of that social interaction but I (unlike many) don’t like not being in control, or not knowing what is/was going on around me. Unlike today, there was never any aim to get as much strong booze down our necks as quick as possible, get out of our heads and cause problems for others. If we did, we had the social and legal consequences to face, unlike now.

Each path to (total/partial) sobriety is different and a personal one but as Carrie Armstrong points out in her blogs and videos; it was “the greatest gift I ever gave myself.” She shows how she achieved that point in her life where she was happy without booze, she can also show you what a sober girl’s (or boy’s) world should (and can) look like…

Related articles

• Hospital admissions linked to alcohol rise to more than a million in year (guardian.co.uk)
• Booze Britain: The Alcohol #MUP Debate? (healthiestbeauty.wordpress.com)
• Is it time Big Booze took problem drinking seriously? (guardian.co.uk)
• Louise Mensch: British women need to give up booze to be healthier like Americans (express.co.uk)
• Northamptonshire Police chief calls for booze ‘debate’ after Twitter campaign (northamptonchron.co.uk)

It’s time to ban religion?

With the harrowing events in Woolwich last week (see here) I can’t help thinking; why not ban religion once and for all? Ban Islam, ban Christianity in fact ban all sodding religions…

Perhaps that’s a little extreme (and tongue-in-cheek) however; as religious belief seems to be a predominant root cause of so much that was/is wrong in our world, shouldn’t it also be a totally understandable one? Extreme events tend to nurture extreme responses.

There has been a large increase in anti-Muslim incidents since the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby (see here). A backlash of anger (understandably) followed the killing but in our ‘connected’ times, it has also led to several people facing charges over comments posted on social media sites (see here).

Unsurprisingly, and never to miss out on any opportunity to promote their own particular brand of hatred, the English Defence League (EDL) organised a demonstration in Newcastle (see here).

Tommy Robinson (EDL leader) began his speech to the assembly by pointing out some (perceived) legal inequalities. He asked, can it be right that a few EDL members get arrested for inciting racial hatred prior to the event, yet hundreds of people who have threatened to behead him for his views go unchallenged by the authorities?

Most right-minded civilised people abhor the EDL as a group and I would include myself in that category however; we should also be able to understand many of the issues which breed such groups.

In the case of the EDL  their ‘anger’ has little to do with religion, it’s more a sense of anger at being on the receiving end of government enforced inequality. The clamour to actively promote the value of diversity in our society, mostly from a political popularity point of view, has created a (mistaken) belief that many indigenous people in our nation are being treated differently, and/or being alienated from their own society and the country in which they were born and raised. But isn’t that also a similar view expressed by many Islamic activists?

The emergence (and worrying growth) of the EDL is partly the fault of how people view multiculturalism and diversity in our society. Their far-right agenda and the way in which they capitalise upon support from the (often) less well-educated and disaffected youth of our nation, is partly to be expected. It’s also the same sort of marginalisation that spawns the views of those who turn to the activities of Islamism.

Although I don’t usually agree with the politics of Billy Bragg (but I do like most of his music), I have to broadly agree with many of his recent comments about the EDL and the Woolwich murder on Twitter.

But, by being outspoken on such an emotive issue in public, he has also stirred up a veritable hornets nest of vociferous and opinionated anger. By raising his head above the parapet, of our often socially or legally enforced political correctness, he has also made himself a target for verbal abuse (or worse).

Billy pointed out how his opinion had attracted a lot of criticism from EDL types by saying; ”Took a lot of flak yesterday for saying that the murderers of Drummer Rigby and the EDL are flip sides of the same coin.”

He continued on Facebook by saying; “Anyone who thinks the EDL are harmless should watch this report which implicates their supporters in the recent murder of Mohammed Saleem, 75, stabbed to death after leaving the Green Lane Mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham.” The ‘Terrorists?’ picture came from one of his more supportive replies.

The Woolwich murder has rightly shocked the UK but shouldn’t we also be worried about the potential for exponential growth of the far-right because of it?

The method used in the Woolwich killing is being viewed by security experts as something of a new template in terrorism terms; but it is also precisely the kind of attack which security chiefs have feared for some time (see here). The warning signs that a soldier would one day be targeted on the streets of Britain can be found in the heart of Al-Qaeda’s violent ideology (see here). Now French anti-terrorist investigators are also hunting an attacker who stabbed a soldier in the neck in Paris (see here).

The attack in Paris is seen by many as a ‘copy-cat’ attack, and one that tends to fit the modern-day jihad movement however; those who try to understand all the issues involved actually know, it’s not religion per se, or the particular ’brand’ of religion that is at fault here.

For decades in the UK and abroad, Muslim discourse has been dominated by fundamentalism and Islamism…(Dr Usama Hasan)

Islam, like Christianity does not in it self promote violence. It’s how a minority chose to interpret it, often for their own ends. To be fair the vast majority of Muslim leaders and Islamic faith groups in the UK immediately condemned the murder of Drummer Digby.

Condemnation isn’t enough. Muslims must take ownership of the problem in their midst, and the war on terror must be rethought..(Dr Usama Hasan)

Dr Usama Hasan, a senior researcher at the Quilliam Foundation and a part-time imam, went some way  towards explaining many of the issues involved. In his recent BBC article - What is it that radical Islamists actually believe in? - he also pointed out how much of the historical and misguided ethics of Jihadism are perpetuated by individuals for personal gain.

The universal verses of the Koran (eg 49:13, “O humanity! We have created you from male and female and made you nations and tribes so that you may know each other: the most honoured of you with God are those most God-conscious: truly, God is Knowing, Wise”) promote full human equality and leave no place for slavery, misogyny, xenophobia or racism.

In light of the Woolwich attack, there have been fresh calls to place the radical preacher Anjem Choudary under a new terror control order (see here) but; how far is Britain willing to go to prevent modern jihadis?

It is estimated that one in five terrorists convicted in Britain over the past decade were either members of or linked to al-Muhajiroun, the extremist group founded by Choudary and the exiled preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed…(The Telegraph)

The choice is not only how hard we fight to protect ourselves, but what we are prepared to sanction in order to pre-empt attacks. Already our government is in danger of making knee-jerk reactions to the Woolwich murder, they are desperate to enhance and/or preserve their self-interested political popularity. Now David Cameron has launched an ”anti-terror task force to tackle extremism” (see here), there has also been renewed calls to speedily introduce the so-called ‘Snoopers Charter’ again (see here).

The Prime minister is right to try to do something about radical preachers but it won’t be easy. That said, the ‘Snooper’s Charter’ would not have stopped the attack on Drummer Rigby (see here) and, it certainly won’t come to fruition within our statute books if Liberty et al have any say in the matter.

The choice is not only how hard we fight to protect ourselves, but how far we are willing to go to pre-empt attack. Each society makes such a choice, but must keep it under constant review. It is to defend that unending debate against the psychosis of certainty that brave men like Drummer Rigby put their lives on the line every day…(The Telegraph)

Many of the answers to the problems of this Islamic Radicalism actually lay within the Muslim community. Muslim organisations must fight the radicalism from within. They can, if they so chose, do something to stem the anti-British propaganda that is rife among (predominantly the young) converts to Islam.

Britain is a tolerant and diverse society. But speech and literature that incite violence and impinge upon the rights of others cannot be tolerated…(The Telegraph)

Back in 2011 David Cameron took steps to combat rise of radicalism. Government funding was removed from various Islamic groups “suspected of perpetuating radicalism”, reports were commissioned and written and another ubiquitous ‘task-force’ was put in place. None of these measures prevented Drummer Rigby’s demise, neither were they likely to. We can’t combat fanaticism by legislation alone. Which is why David Cameron has now told Muslim Britain to “stop tolerating extremists” and that those who don’t hold ‘British’ values will be shunned by government (see here).

Previously I’ve said that religion should be a personal thing, not something which is peddled to others at every opportunity, in a free society no one should have to endure being ‘sold’ religious belief, neither should they be forced or coerced into being a believer, no matter what the religion is. But Jihadism is only an extreme form of ‘sales-pitch’ employed by other religious missionaries.

The ‘salesmen’ from the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and the Jehovah Witness types, who come knocking at your front door at inopportune moments, are simply a little more covert and friendly with their methods than your average jihadi. Our world is (supposedly) ‘civilised’ enough now to negate any need for missionaries, fire & brimstone evangelical preachers or indeed jihadists, it’s time to move on.

It seems to me that the underlying causation factor of all this extremism is anger, from both extremities of the divide. This anger is expressed due to passionate belief in what is right or wrong, from the individuals own personal point of view. A personal perception that is also often capitalised upon by radical preachers, those who see the advantages in ‘brainwashing’ the minds of the (initially) less well-educated youth of today. A younger generation that, often due to immaturity or stupidity, see themselves as abandoned and cast aside by society.

I have to say our media machine is also at fault in here; in less than a week since Woolwich and true to form, they have produced an almost constant supply of emotive fuel for the opposing fires of anger!

Perhaps the answer is to turn ’anger’ and ‘stupidity’ into criminal offences and not to ban religion after all? But how do you legislate against stupidity or even the emotion of anger? If it was possible our prisons are already full in any case!

Related articles

• Some Thoughts on Life and Religion… (bankbabble.wordpress.com)
• Religion: The Rights and Wrongs? (bankbabble.wordpress.com)
• Turkey bans alcohol advertising amid claims of creeping Islamism (dailymail.co.uk)
• Two-thirds fear ‘clash of civilisations’ in wake of Woolwich murder (guardian.co.uk)
• Far right group, English Defence League, vows: ‘It’s war’ (express.co.uk)
• murder sparks anti-Muslim backlash – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)