Piggy parade

Or: whose police? Murdoch's police! The Police Federation marched through London to protect their members privileges, and they are privileges. The mainstream press would like to connect today's public sector strikes with the federation march. The police are not workers, they don't see themselves as workers, they are not clamouring to be part of the TUC and they did not ask for solidarity from the unions, let alone the left. Nor should we have offered it. If you stand with the police you are standing against every kid being harassed on a council estate, against every student hauled before a court on a trumped up charge and against every family trying to get justice for someone killed in police custody. As far as we're concerned no cut to the police is deep enough. The entire force should be disbanded (and before anyone goes "ah-ha" there is the matter of what kind of state do we put in its place, but for now: Disband the Met).

Deaths in custody update

There have been three in the last week. Two of the people to have died at the police's hands were men in their twenties, not middle-aged alcoholic paper vendors, so no pretending they were just going to die somehow anyway, y'know, like. There was also this:

Armed police stopped two young girls aged 15 and nine in Birmingham last week.



The police claimed the eldest of the sisters fitted the description of an armed robber.

Two arms, two legs and a head... no gun though, but anyone could have made that mistake...

In fact she was on her way to collect her GCSE results from her nearby school.



Their mother, a youth worker, said, “This is the sort of thing which starts riots."

Indeed. It's amazing, isn't it? Hundreds of deaths - still no convictions.