PowerSwitch

Theft of fuel, catalytic convertors, copper cable, even food is destined to increase.

Do you think the UK will allow itself to be eaten alive from the inside .. or will policing, sentencing etc becomes a lot harsher over the coming years?

(I suspect that the 'top peoples' areas will stay/become heavily policed but the rest of us will have to put up with increasing levels of crime)

I no longer bother with the coppers. If there's a problem I "sort it out" myself.

There are already two classes of justice in the disUnited Kingdom.

I live in a small village where a local diamond merchant was allowed to have hugely noisy parties at his house on the outskirts. Complaints to the authorities and the police achieved nothing. After two months of random disturbance I visited his house with a sledgehammer and remonstrated with the party goers. We don't have a problem with it any more.

With apologies to the author of - Things you should have learned by now - volume II

"The machinery of justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is theirs. Only the little people suffer at the hands of justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your toture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well f**k them. make it personal.

Vortex wrote:Do you think the UK will allow itself to be eaten alive from the inside .. or will policing, sentencing etc becomes a lot harsher over the coming years?)

This I wouldn't bank on. Think of the current jails system and ho much it all costs etc... This is (sort-of) why I started the Self-Defence thread a couple of years ago. (Not that I currently believe the justice system protects / prevents people from getting burgled / mugged nowadays in any case.)

GD wrote:

Vortex wrote:Do you think the UK will allow itself to be eaten alive from the inside .. or will policing, sentencing etc becomes a lot harsher over the coming years?)

This I wouldn't bank on. Think of the current jails system and ho much it all costs etc... This is (sort-of) why I started the Self-Defence thread a couple of years ago. (Not that I currently believe the justice system protects / prevents people from getting burgled / mugged nowadays in any case.)

Not long ago I spent a month riding across North Africa with a prison warder. Boy did I learn a few things about the prison system. Apart from the fact that you do lose your liberty, it isn't exactly hardship being banged up. Prisoners have lots of 'rights'. Take all that bloody nonsense away and keeping people locked up becomes much cheaper overnight. Much cheaper.
Hands up anyone who doesn't think that as time goes by things are going to get a little bit less easy for everyone, including prisoners. The PC brigade will be too concerned about their own prospects to continue arsing things up for the rest of us.

waermund wrote:I no longer bother with the coppers. If there's a problem I "sort it out" myself.

There are already two classes of justice in the disUnited Kingdom.

I live in a small village where a local diamond merchant was allowed to have hugely noisy parties at his house on the outskirts. Complaints to the authorities and the police achieved nothing. After two months of random disturbance I visited his house with a sledgehammer and remonstrated with the party goers. We don't have a problem with it any more.

With apologies to the author of - Things you should have learned by now - volume II

"The machinery of justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is theirs. Only the little people suffer at the hands of justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your toture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well f**k them. make it personal.

Nice one. Can I borrow your sledgehammer?

Nah. There will just be a massive increase in the amount of private security services offered.

Vortex wrote:Theft of fuel, catalytic convertors, copper cable, even food is destined to increase.

Do you think the UK will allow itself to be eaten alive from the inside .. or will policing, sentencing etc becomes a lot harsher over the coming years?

(I suspect that the 'top peoples' areas will stay/become heavily policed but the rest of us will have to put up with increasing levels of crime)

A police state is an inevitable consequence of peak energy.

It is already beginning...

I worked in a prison for a while a few years back. Very, very cosy in winter, most inmates spend their time playing playstation, smoking skinny roll-ups, snoozing and waiting for the 12 o'clock methodone. Not saying that I would like to live there, but things could get a lot worse than they are. I always question how much food prisoners get too - unlimited calories+gym access for violent criminals always strikes me as an odd one.

I once had a friend who got mixed up with some Russians in Japan and got caught holding some dope for them by the police. Sitting on a concrete floor, rice and water and no heating in the winter cold. Quite a contrast to here where petty criminals deliberately reoffend upon release just as soon as they've put a plug of heroin up the jacksy to keep in favour when back inside.

Feel your pain and sense of anger, Vortex. Haven't had anything stolen of late but am suffering at the hands of some idiots myself at the moment - I generally go to the allotment for an hour after work and then walk the couple of miles home. There are regularly these kiddies hanging around on the road I take, usually two or three male youfs of 17 or so and often a couple of white girls that invariably makes the boys' behaviour worse. They make comments like 'f*ck me, your ugly', 'look down when your passing me blud' or they spit close to me as I pass. Today one of these young charmers landed a gob of spittle on my trouser leg. I was feeling a bit tired and somewhat downbeat about what the elements and slugs had done to my yield this 'summer', but most of all just outraged that these little shits think that it is ok to do such things because there is one of me wearing office attire and two of them, and that there are just so many of them in Bristol and all the other major cities where I have lived.

The police really aren't going to do anything, and if I seriously hurt one or two of them with my rounders bat then I will probably get in trouble with the police (I can see them now, all scrubbed up for court with the mother attesting that Harrison was going to go to college next year to do Music Technology), have to make a massive detour on the way to work and risk reprisals. I fully accept that in a few years that we will be able to take matters into our own hands a great deal more without follow up, but the whole thing stinks at the moment. Sorry, rant over.

waermund wrote:I no longer bother with the coppers. If there's a problem I "sort it out" myself.

There are already two classes of justice in the disUnited Kingdom.

I live in a small village where a local diamond merchant was allowed to have hugely noisy parties at his house on the outskirts. Complaints to the authorities and the police achieved nothing. After two months of random disturbance I visited his house with a sledgehammer and remonstrated with the party goers. We don't have a problem with it any more.
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Is it just me, or does no-one else here have a problem with this ? If it's a true story, then I'm sure the "diamond merchant" would have had cause to complain himself about a trespasser with a sledgehammer. I'm sure that if the aformentioned 'diamond merchant' had such good connections with the local police/authorities to ignore complaints about his noisy parties, there would have been no problem with providing waermund with a nice cosy cell.

Jerry

zigspider wrote: Is it just me, or does no-one else here have a problem with this ? If it's a true story, then I'm sure the "diamond merchant" would have had cause to complain himself about a trespasser with a sledgehammer. I'm sure that if the aformentioned 'diamond merchant' had such good connections with the local police/authorities to ignore complaints about his noisy parties, there would have been no problem with providing waermund with a nice cosy cell.

Jerry

It's what I would have done. 999, then "Come quickly. Ive got a house full of guests and theres an uninvited madman turned up with a sledgehammer who's threatening us"

zigspider wrote:Is it just me, or does no-one else here have a problem with this ?

Indeed, this is hardly the forum for admitting criminal behaviour.

Never said I was proud of my actions... the point I was trying to illustrate is that there is not one system of law or justice. Two months of irritation boiled over and resulted in one night of loss of control.

As for the party goers - they were out of their heads on something or other which is probably why they never called the old bill. They did have private security - and when several of them turned up to escort me off the premises that was the end of the matter.

As for this not being a forum for admitting criminality - I assume that every other poster has a spotless track record.

Sometimes you need to take things into your own hands to sort things out. Vortex the police here are the same, they dont give a shit about thefts etc. they only seem to care about traffic offences as its easy for them. Any work for them and they dont want to know at all. I think areas of large numbers of people in the future will have more police and 1984 type scenario could be possible. but for us out in the sticks we will have to sort things out ourselves I think.

If your neighbours are having a noisy party, either go have a word then and there or wait until the morning and then go bang on the door and wake them up hungover.
Round here turning up at a party with a sledgehammer will start a riot, must be nice being a big fish in a little pond...

Things that might happen are just like the stuff occurring today, your kids come home without their bikes, your wife gets her bag grabbed, all small stuff if you're lucky.
Locks and chains, lights and traps, steps to take.

I'm not outlining what you might need to do, suffice to say necessity is the mother of invention.

You only have to look at the policing of the recent climate camp to see how repressive and political policing can be in the UK.
In the last few years the police have made a concerted effort to photograph participants in just about every political event. These tactics are orchestrated by the Orwellian Forward Intelligence Team from the Metropolitan police. They attend demos throughout the country clad in their distinctive blue and yellow jackets, training their lenses from afar, or if they want to intimidate you from closer up.
The purpose of theses tactics, well the police would say that it is to document attendees in case of subsequent violence. They don’t say however what happens to the images, or how long they are kept for. But these tactics also work to criminalise protest, to onlookers those attending with such intrusive and obvious police presences must be out to cause trouble, renta mob. The state is working to crush all dissent and opposition and gather intelligence on politically active people, but for what future purpose?
I see the destruction of civil liberties that we have seen in the UK in the last few years as just preparation for the time in the near future where the state knows that there will be unrest, people taking to the streets as the consequences of the decline begin to kick in.

Cameras on the streets, stop and search, sniffer dogs at stations, iris scans at airports, Id card in our pockets, facial recognition software, Number plate readers, emergency powers, databases....

welcome to the future
the future is now