Something you should be worried about

Someone with an over active imagination managed to mistake the MP3 player a man on his way home from work was listening to for a gun. They reported it to the police.

We all know that tinny buzzing can be annoying ;-) and it must have been playing at least loudly enough to drown out police shouting at him , as proved to be the case.

It is fortunate whoever it was doesn’t regularly use the tube, or there would be armed police running round in droves all over the place.

The police did what they are supposed to, given the circumstances (Hurrah!), fortunately they were not quite so ‘enthusiastic’ as those who dealt with poor Jean Charles de Menezes and the music lover survived the experience.

The poor guy only realised something was up when passers by and traffic reacted weirdly staring at him. He took out the earpieces and realised he had lots of policemen behind him pointing guns at him and shouting not to move. Fortunately for him he didn’t try to change tracks before he realised…

On discovering he was armed with nothing more deadly than music they still – get this – arrested him and carted him off in hand cuffs anyway.

Now in days of yore, say 30 years ago, even 15 years ago, they would have thought twice about that. But that was before New Labour - and here it all starts to become an example of a dawning fascist state at work.

They could have verified who he was and all this could have been done on the street where they stopped him, or in a police car. At worse he could have ‘assisted them with their enquiries’ at the station and sorted the matter out easily there.

Here is the bit you should really be concerned about though. By now they must have known pretty well the guy was guilty of nothing more than going home from work on the bus, speaking to the witness should have easily confirmed this.

What happened to the discretion that British police officers used to be so famous for using. All gone now under a flurry of ‘Policies’ and ‘Targets’ and ‘Initiatives’. Stuff just serving the public, serve the State. I bet it showed up as at least one extra detection, probably several.

No they had to arrest him, like a clueless call centre operator running through their script - and worst still they took his DNA and fingerprints – and the State will keep them.