The Lie, the Whole Lie, and Nothing But the Lie

They asked me my name
And I said, "Captain Kidd"
They believed me but
They wanted to know
What exactly that I did
I said for the Pope of Eruke
I was employed
They let me go right away
They were very paranoid

A comment piece in today's Guardian (Simon Hattenstone: "We cannot take them at their word") lists various episodes of police incompetence and/or malice involving people dying in their custody, like the hapless Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot in the head on the tube when, so we're told, he was already in custody and subdued.

There was a lot of warm feelings around and about towards the police-and-emergency-services following the 7th July London bombings; conflating the police with the fire and ambulance services is a bit like conflating "sex and violence". It's not necessarily the same thing. As I was being held against my will in Luton Airport the other night, along with hundreds and hundreds of other tired airline passengers, I noticed that the police tactic (they were called because people were getting increasingly annoyed at the delay in passport control) was to stand, arms folded, looking as mean as possible.

In this way, they sought to criminalise thousands of innocent people who just wanted to get their bags and go home, or onwards to hotels etc. There were no criminals or terrorists in the airport that night, and yet the police looked at all of us as if we were shit on the bottom of their shoes.

What happened to the smiling English Bobby, with his bicycle and his cheerful wave, eh? Institutions conduct themselves now so as to avoid culpability. Airports and airlines get around the pesky notions of human and consumer rights by inventing the phenomenon of "air rage", as if it is just being in an airport or plane that sends people savagely loopy, rather than the incompetence, ignorance, and rudeness of airport/line staff.

More recently, retailers started to talk about "shop rage" or something similar, saying their employees were being "attacked" without provocation. In other words, they're trying to shift the balance of power, because customers are just too uppity. You're not allowed to get angry with anyone these days, not allowed to express annoyance or ask for better treatment. If you do, you're marked as an anti-social element and dealt with as a criminal.

The truly paranoid will always lie on first instinct. It's no surprise to me that the police issued a load of tripe/misinformation in the hours following the Menezes shooting. It's the way things are set up; the truth is not an option, and it would never occur to them to tell it. In this time of crisis, they seized more power and were immediately corrupted by it.

It's a different government, but it reminds me of nothing so much as the Falklands war, when all kinds of jiggery pokery was going on, and we were lied to about it constantly, with Special Branch running around the country criminalising people who dared to ask questions about it all.