Cambridgeshire police have come under fire on social media after a tweet was posted about non-essential shopping aisles at a local supermarket.
The tweet, from the official Cambridgeshire police account, mentioned that while officers were out on patrol they noticed "the non-essential aisles were empty", in the Bar Hill Tesco.
Hundreds have hit back at the tweet, questioning the force how they can determine which aisles are non-essential and arguing it is not their role to monitor where people walk or what people buy.
To some extent this is a kind of statistical artifact. Give authority and draconian guidelines to any large body of people and a certain percentage of enforcers will make those guidelines even more draconian. What it does show how a totalitarian regime might easily evolve within what is supposed to be a democracy. Give it time and it will happen - is happening.
It also shows how vigilant democracies have to be if they wish to prevent this kind of thing because it goes much wider than policing supermarket isles. Unfortunately people who think of themselves as progressive usually portray the necessary vigilance as a kind of antiquated bigotry. Yet mission creep within a society which is already heavily policed is not a good sign. It won't end well.
5 comments:
On the other hand, most normal British citizens won't give a fuck!
You raise a good point here, Mr H - hence the response, and please forgive the Anglo-Saxon interruption...
For those who are historically inclined, I think we're getting an interesting insight into what life must have been like under the Commonwealth Puritans.
Some tendencies are more insidious than others. For the reasonably well-educated and confident citizen with a smartphone, the plod over-reaching themselves pose little threat. As soon as they commit themselves to a ridiculous course of action, they are pilloried on social media and their twitter accounts become a long list of citizens asserting their rights in caustic terms.
I'm more bothered by the Thursday night clapping. This is becoming more than de rigeur. . Not doing it (so far I have resolutely refused) makes one a little suspect in some people's eyes. Non-clappers are a bit like non-churchgoers would have been in overtly pious communities. This makes me distinctly uneasy.
The 8 o clock clap is being set up to mask the inadequacies of UK healthcare in comparison to the German system. We're all so sodding grateful that those people we've paid a fortune in taxes for were good enough to save some lives, unless of course you were in a care home, in which case tough shit boomer, we'll put you in IC when it's too late to do any good.
Scrobs - this fine weather may make those normal British citizens think about holidays they won't have though.
Macheath - I'm sure you are right and equally sure that some people think it is the way to go.
Sam - round here the Thursday night clapping sounds very forlorn. It has to be on a reasonable scale to work and at the moment it hasn't caught on here.
Nessimmersion - I agree. I find it creepy.
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