In Plod we Trust - not

**Percy** · 27th-December-2009

From Captain Grumpy.

http://www.grumpyoldsod.com/paranoia.asp

Good article by Daisy Waugh in the Sunday Times colour supplement this week ...

Had a brush with the old filth on my way back from dropping off the children not long ago.

A beefy one on a motorbike started gesticulating angrily at me, so I had to pull over. Unfortunately, I was on a very busy roundabout at the time, and I had no idea where I was legally allowed to do it.

But he kept on gesticulating in his beefy way and, what with the flashing light and the other cars and yellow boxes and traffic lights and bus lanes and pouring rain, I went into a sort of meltdown and just hit the brake.

Oh, he was livid. Oh, God, the panic. Added to which I hadn’t the faintest idea what I’d done to offend him so horribly in the first place.

He gesticulated me to a side street and made me stand in the rain so he could explain. Turns out I didn’t stop at an amber light. Is that really an offence? He sounded like King Canute barking at the sea.

Silly me. I broke that fundamental rule of survival on the mean streets of modern England. I looked his way. Hoodies, police officers — these days, if you want to get home unterrorised, and with the contents of your wallet still intact, it’s better to avoid eye contact with either.

If it’s not an orange light they get you on, it’s biking on a footpath, or eating a Kit Kat at the wheel, or failing to strap the children into hard hats and flak jackets before driving them to school each morning. I have no idea what the rules are any more.

And actually I’ve become so irritated by the flood, I can’t even be bothered to find out.

All I know is that whenever I see a policeman — any uniformed authority figure at all, in fact (it’s quite hard to tell them apart) — I feel a wave of terror and rage, and a random check list of possible offences runs through my head.

Am I carrying a knife? Is my seat belt secured? Do I need a food safety certificate? Am I inciting racial or religious hatred? Abusing the children? Adulterous thoughts? Bus lanes! Litter? Cigarettes? Recycling bin?

Oh, my God, am I supposed to be wearing something luminous?

It’s worse when I’m driving the children, none of whom can be trusted to stay in the requisite safety harnesses beyond the first 30 seconds of any journey. A sort of auto-spiel of hysteria kicks in: Aaargh! Police! Children, hide!

Duck! Where’s the baby? For Christ’s sake, hold her down… Everyone, hit the floor! Close the windows! Nobody talk! Are they flashing us? Nobody look! Pretend not to see.

It’s a shame, though, isn’t it? In the days when it was a simple matter to be a law-abiding citizen, I used to feel quite well disposed towards the police.

I remember once, years ago, enjoying a youthfully inebriated late-night amble through the dark London streets when a police car pulled up beside me. I smiled. They smiled. The driver asked, in a polite and friendly manner — one human to another — if I was in need of help. I thought not, but apparently… hic… I was being followed.

To this day it makes me cringe to think how the alcoholic fumes must have stunk out that car — but they were very polite and didn’t comment. And they drove me all the way home. Saved me from possible violent death, they did, and £15 in taxi fares, bless them.

Do the police rescue fresh-faced, happily inebriated damsels any more? I don’t know. I suppose they do — but I bet the poor little innocents get frisked for drugs first, have a swab taken and their DNA put on the database, and get fined and forced to attend some sort of moronic drink-rehabilitation workshop.

Perhaps I underestimate the good nature of our authorities. Either way, something’s gone wrong when relatively sane mothers-of-three force their children to lie on the floor the moment there’s a police car on the horizon.

If the Noughties in Britain will be remembered for anything — which they may not be — it’ll probably be for the heartbreaking romance of Jordan and Pete. But maybe there’ll be an irritable little footnote, somewhere, on the damaged relationship between the people and the state.

The GOS says: Nice article, Daisy, if a trifle overstated. But I certainly share this feeling that you have to look over your shoulder whenever you leave the house. In fact, it's become virtually impossible to avoid breaking the law in some way or other from time to time, however law-abiding and well-intentioned you are. The old cliché "If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" never rang more hollow than it does as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. Makes you proud, really.

But ..."the old filth", Daisy? Could it be that you are trying to sound all streetwise and down with the homies, in your quaint 1960s way? If so, that should have read either "the old bill" or "the filth". There's no such organisation as "the old filth".

**dad_savage** · 28th-December-2009

Yeah, that's one of the benefits of living in Sydney. Our police as so corrupt and inept that they're not entirely bad to deal with. Just give them half of whatever it is you've gone out to get, and chances are they'll bugger off. Allot like women really.

**Percy** · 28th-December-2009

In Tas, the police don't arrest women as there are 432 forms to fill in from the Office for the Status of Women. Its easier with men as there is just one form admitting guilt. Anyway apart from automatic arrest of the man for DV, which is non-bailable here, the only other 'crime' our inept, corrupt rozzers care about is speeding and every hill has a cop at the bottom with a speed thingo monitoring everyone. They buy them at Dick Smiths for personal, off-duty use. Even our Commissioner of Police is in and out of Court every other friggin' week for corruption, which he seems to get off from every time.

**dad_savage** · 28th-December-2009

Oh yes, the fines. Revenue raising; they love it. In Sydney we have speed cameras which people have literally proven have absolutely no discernable function aside from simply to randomly tag a set number of motorists per day. I'm not joking. The Government got tired of not knowing how much money they were going to make off fines, so they're making efforts to standardize the process i.e fine a certain number of people a year regardless of guilt. This is how it's working with speed cameras at any rate.

Of course the Government is always looking around for new things it can make into crimes, especially small misdemeanour crimes that can be punished with fines. They just love it. If you drop a cigarette butt in Sydney, bang! $100+ fine, yet you're still paying taxes to fund cleanup projects and other things, to clean up litter. Every road at a Toll Booth on it, ostensibly to pay for the cost of it's construction, but if that's the case why is there still a toll to cross the Harbour Bridge?

It's getting to the point of insanity, particularly in Sydney, and particularly in regards to the roads. We're already rated right up there in regards to most expensive cities world-wide. Sydney roads are shit, make no bones about it; layout wise Sydney just sort of 'grew' so there's absolutely no question of it being on a grid-system or a planned city, the roads are a fiendish maze and it's very easy to get lost in the dizzying array of one-way streets, no X turn signs and so on; for the most part the roads are too small, that is narrow, and in general terms of conception just poorly laid out, dangerous and given to terrible traffic. The roads are, furthermore (the most insulting aspect) simply bad in terms of quality, upkeep, surfacing, grip, maintenance and anything else you care to name, potholes, slicks, slips, all abound in dangerous quantities. I bought expensive new alloy tires for my car and it took three months (and remember I have no job to drive too so my car isn't often used) of Sydney roads to knock them out of shape. New projects are rare, and often made where they're least needed. There is one connection between Sydney itself and the (very populous) 'Northern' Suburbs where I live (near manly) a tiny two-lane bridge called 'the spit' and it's a drawbridge at that. For years it has needed to be enlarged, for years the council and state gov. have been considering building a 'City to Manly' tunnel, but I honestly doubt it will ever happen. Especially now; because their new favourite tune is sung in the key of global warming hysteria and the Government 'for our best interests' is trying to force everyone onto public transport.
They sold our monorail (which I rather liked) to some East Asian country, and promised they'd replace it with 'an extensive light-rail system similar to Melbourne's trams,' their extensive light rail system has been around for about ten years now and has about as many stops on its circuit and is absolutely useless and about four times as expensive as any other form of transport. Two jet cats service the whole Northern Beaches, which is madness because the old 'Manly Ferry' (which they have the temerity to charge $25 for) literally takes an hour to travel fourteen kilometres.
All that, and worse, and more, but this is the icing on the cake. This is what we pay for this crap; aside from direct fees which you pay to use public transport, tolled roads and so on. There's petrol taxes, naturally, and tax on every kind of car part, accessory or product as well as large taxes on the vehicles themselves. There's what you pay on your income tax, which is no small thing I can tell you and then there's car registration, which has recently gone up, green slip, pink slip and insurance which needs to be done yearly and licence renewal which depends on how much you're willing to pay; then they have the following: speed cameras, red light cameras, parking meters & signage; all of which collect vast sums in fines each year and which frequently target people who have not broken the law, in regards to the automatic cameras, of course if you break any kind of road rule and are seen by police you will be fined for it, but it gets better because there’s all sorts of new rules and procedures being introduced. A recent hubbub was caused by police in regards to new ‘littering while driving’ laws - that they’re so commonly broken that patrolling police do not have the time to pull over and fine each separate individual, so now they will be given ‘litter cameras’ (which we’ll pay for) with which they may snap a persons licence plate, so that a fine is sent to them in the mail. This takes out the ‘middle man’ (you) ensuring you cannot actually face your accuser / defend your rights and will as a result no doubt be used willy nilly by the police on whomsoever they desire whenever the mood strikes them.

It’s illegal to throw anything out of a car and the fine doubles if the car is moving. The RTA is going to institute mandatory registration of bicycles; no doubt followed not long after by licensing requirements. All this is done for money, naturally, money which is most certainly NOT being spent on keeping our roads safe and serviceable (because they’re neither) or on expanding our road network to deal with the traffic problems and safety concerns of a growing population.

If I ran my business like this my stores would be firebombed by an angry mob of disillusioned customers, looted and then burned to the ground. I’d either be killed by the mob, or in the firestorm, at the very least an effigy of me would be burned, but at best I’d end up bankrupt and in jail.