Wednesday 30 March 2011

The mire

Small minds
Hoax calls, made by children are usually benign and can be dealt with on the phone but a few of them are well-planned and executed little scenarios that require a lot of nerve to sustain under interrogation.

The caller sounds like she’s 12 years-old but she’s claiming to have murdered her husband. She says she’s 28 years-old and her husband is in his thirties. She is calm and repeatedly states that there is a lot of blood and that he has been stabbed through the heart and is dead. She even goes through the motions of giving CPR under instruction but it’s obvious that no effort is being applied and when she counts to 30 for the compressions, she misses the numbers 10 to 12 for some reason.

Resources are deployed, including the police because no risk can be taken with calls like these; it can be very hard to be sure of a person’s age or whether they are telling you the truth or not. When the crew arrive, they can be heard banging on the door in the background shouting 'Hello?' - to them this is a genuine call and they have good reason to be concerned when there is no response. But the child is in the room; she's still on the phone but now she's silent.

What was particularly disturbing about the call was the cold, callous voice of the child on the line. At any age in childhood the words ‘murder’, ‘killed’ and ‘dead’ should never enter the vocabulary for imaginative use - certainly not in this context, where an emergency service is being summoned on the pretext. Where were the parents of this kid? What kind of mind does the child have and how far would she go to get excitement like this?

When she was told that the call would be traced and the police would be sent to her, she said ‘don’t do that’ in an almost panicked way but it was all part of the game and she was soon back to her original story that her husband lay dead on the floor after having been brutally stabbed through the heart by her. We have some very, very sick children on the way to adulthood.

Gagged 
Thank God for the Press (at times); the news footage of the Libyan woman being hand-gagged and obstructed from speaking out against the Regime in her country was truly shocking but if the Press hadn’t been there, filming every detail and reporting the incident, who knows what would have happened to her. She was taken away by security men in a car and reporters were told she was safe; the Security men knew that harming her would result in consequences for them individually when this thing blows over. If the press hadn’t been there I’m pretty sure she would have simply disappeared forever.
In contrast, in a country where you can speak your mind without recrimination, we have a hardcore of mainly young men rioting and polluting every peaceful protest, not because they have an argument or a point to make but because they simply hate everything. They hate the Government (it doesn’t matter which party is in power), they hate the police and they hate anything that doesn’t pander to their unrealistic belief that a society can run safely without authority. They think jobs can be wished into existence without bankers and rich employers. Although I will concede any point made about greed in these professions. It's not really the argument, it's the way it is being 'protested'.

The vast majority of us do not behave like this. More than a quarter of a million people turned up to protest spending cuts that would affect their lives – they were trying to make a point but it was washed away in the tide of hooliganism that followed. I watched it all unfold at work, as did many of my colleagues and it was unbelievable that we had to use phrases like ‘be careful’ and ‘avoid’ on a night that is usually full of routine. Anything with a blue light bar on it was going to be a target for these idiots.

But let's get all paranoid and out of perspective; Trafalgar Square has been the site of more than a few riots instigated by those who wish to break the law. In 1848, protestors with no alignment whatsoever to the planned income tax demo (which was officially cancelled), gathered to use the meeting as an excuse to do what they would probably normally do if they lived in a society without police – they set about damaging property and stealing whatever they could lay their hands on, after a good deal of violence. Protests with a small group of hooligans, intent on chaos has been a repeated event over the past couple of centuries. What magnifies it to this generation is the fact that it is being perpetrated by 'intelligent' young people who honestly think, while they are naive enough to bathe in the bubbly bathtub of ideology, that everything can be solved by making everyone equal. When they grow up and get into middle-age, with a job, debts of their own and a family to raise, they will be different people - if they can get a job with a criminal record. It’s all so familiar.

So, while my colleagues once again put themselves in harm’s way to help others – and I include the police in that statement – a couple of hundred individuals, whose opinions are of no promotional consequence to the well-being of anyone but themselves, destroyed whatever they could because there were a lot of them and they knew the police would not lay into them heavy-handedly. There was, in effect, no immediate consequence for their actions (the result of bleating hearts complaining about former police actions to quell disorder – a job we pay them to do).

I have an eighteen-month old child. If there are no consequences for his bad behaviour, he will continue with it. I don’t need to physically hurt him to make my point but he will understand, very clearly, that his wrong-doing will be punished. Everyone has the right to protest and everyone has an opinion but if we smashed up private property and lit fires in the street because we had something to prove, where would society be and what kind of job would we, as paramedics, have? We'd be riot medics.

We don’t need a police state but we can’t have a stupidly tolerant one either. We need a middle-ground of understanding and a realistic approach to how we act and react to situations that threaten us or our society.
The Press may have saved the life of a Libyan woman who spoke out but they are also part of our current problem in this country – strategic photography and reporting has demonised the police to the point where we now no longer have the right to walk freely when a protest may go wrong. Not because the police are stopping us, but because they are wary of stepping too hard on top of those who are.

Be safe.

6 comments:

Joe said...

I was at the protest, and saw an extremely passive & pleasant police force for 99.99% of the time.

The only time that I saw any kind of aggression was going past the Fortnum & Mason building shortly after it was occupied by "UK Uncut". The rest of the time they were smiling, friendly people.

As for the LAS, there seemed to be a small congregation of them around the food trailers in Hyde Park, I wonder why that'd be!

I'm just pleased that the main protest was peaceful, that there weren't too many innocent people who got kettled etc, and that there were few injuries.

Xf said...

Joe

Yes, I think the fact that a quarter to a half a million people could get the job done without smashing the place up was pretty damned special.

As for the LAS and the food stand; what can I say?

MF said...

I was working in London on the 26th, and got caught in the events at Trafalgar Square that evening with several others on our way home from Hyde Park, and ended up doing first aid there until LAS arrived on scene to relieve/rescue us (The police had told us we were safest remaining where we were inside their lines until told otherwise). My team owes a huge debt of gratitude to LAS for getting us safely out of there that night.

Personally I think all the statutory services performed an amazing job that night in a difficult situation and it was a privilege to be able to work alongside them for however brief a period. I do hope at some point to come across the crews in question again to thank them personally.

MF said...

I was working in London on the 26th, and got caught in the events at Trafalgar Square that evening with several others on our way home from Hyde Park, and ended up doing first aid there until LAS arrived on scene to relieve/rescue us (The police had told us we were safest remaining where we were inside their lines until told otherwise). My team owes a huge debt of gratitude to LAS for getting us safely out of there that night.

Personally I think all the statutory services performed an amazing job that night in a difficult situation and it was a privilege to be able to work alongside them for however brief a period. I do hope at some point to come across the crews in question again to thank them personally.

Owen said...

"They think jobs can be wished into existence without bankers and rich employers."

Have you ever read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists? Several of the characters make points like this.

"they were trying to make a point but it was washed away in the tide of hooliganism that followed."

I think the point was made that not all the people in this country are content to let a government without a mandate to govern introduce potentially devastating reforms and/or mass redundancy across the whole of the public sector.

The media reporting of the protest focused excessively on the trouble that occured. I'm sure people can work out for themselves potential reasons for that.

"while they are naive enough to bathe in the bubbly bathtub of ideology."

I'd call Nye Bevan a man of ideological principle. Was he naive? Likewise many figures of the (old) Labour left had extremely strong Socialist views. Whilst belief in ideology (and how that belief is acted upon) can be deeply misguided at times, I think to characterise everyone as naive and imply that middle age will make them abandon those principles is quite naive in itself.

"that everything can be solved by making everyone equal"

People are inherently equal. I believe equality of opportunity is something that should be strived for. Social deprivation, poverty and a lack of education are directly linked to a vast majority of regulars to both police and ambulance.

Xf said...

Owen

I was hoping that someone would have a view on this.

Yes, the point was made but, if you read what I have written carefully, you will see that I agree with the Press obliteration of it because of their focus. I work for the NHS; I'm deeply worried about what's happening too but where do you think all the money is going to come from? There are countries going to the wall because of debt.

And people are not inherently equal - no living thing has inherent equality - nature disrupts that from the start... diability, mental illness, etc. From a purely biological point of view, there has to be inequality so that species can dominate over others and genetic variances can be sorted out. There is an Alpha dominant group within every species. We,as a 'civilised' society, attempt to make all things equal. This can be the cause of much trouble.

The naivity I'm talking about is rooted in historical fact. Not many of your respected names held on to their beliefs in whole, without compromise because as time went by they saw that their image of reality did not match the truth. Men like Gerry Adams held aspirations of change through violence but now look at him. A reduction of testorerone and a few decades of living changes things.

Challenge me on this; let me know in ten years time if all of the young men involved in abuse of their liberty continue to hold on to their beliefs so strongly. Or are they more concerned with their families and making a living?

I don't relate to the individuals that think wrecking a society is the answer to reform - we are not Libya. But I gave a balanced opinion, citing the fact that we have always had a small number of reactive people among us who disrupt from their base of ignorance.