Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009, John Rowland wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, Mizter T wrote:

Whatever, the police really need to get their act in order.

Oh, you noticed that?

I am really utterly perplexed by how the police maange to get away
with being a bunch of incompetent thugs. Not that there aren't good
individual policemen, but there are certainly some very bad ones, and
the organisation as a whole is a disaster. It just seems that nobody
with the power to do anything about it gives a toss. Or has it just
not occurred to people that things could be any better?

The problem is that policemen who joined because they wish to uphold the
law feel outnumbered by policemen who joined because they wish to get
away with breaking the law - so outnumbered that they can't even enjoy
mixing in the staff canteen any more, and end up quitting the force.

I could well believe it, but do you have any specific reason to think
that?

tom

--
curry in a sack

Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

Paul Corfield wrote:
redcat wrote:

I'm coming to London soon. Maybe I should just leave my camera at
home :-/

Change your plans and then write to Gordon and Boris and say that the
lack of proper control over the police and their treatment of
photographers has meant you have decided to spend your tourist pounds
elsewhere.

I read that as "terrorist pounds"!

Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

rail wrote:
In message
"John Rowland"
wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

I don't actually think that basing a critique of the Met on that
event - the killing of de Menezes - is particularly effective at
all. Be in no doubt, it was an abhorrent screw up of the first
order, but to extrapolate from this one very unusual event ideas
about how other more regular day-to-day policing happens in the
capital is not a strong argument at all.

I believe that was a significant event. In particular, since the
Menezes whitewash I have frequently seen police vehicles pull up at
a red light, wait for ten seconds, get bored, put on the flashing
lights, drive through the junction and then put the lights off
again. I never saw this once in the years before the Menezes
whitewash. It might seem like a little thing, but it's highly
visible (unlike all the other things they might get up to) and it
suggests that the Menezes whitewash has changed the police's
mentality from "the law must be obeyed" to "*we* must be obeyed by
*you*". Once a police car even pulled up behind me in Greenwich
town centre and put the sirens on (at 3am!) causing me to drive
through the red light out of their way, and then they drove through
the lights and put the sirens off. They really couldn't care less,
since Menezes.

Are you aware why they switch the sirens off once they have crossed
the junction?

It could be that the emergency has been cancelled, but if you have an
explanation for why this started happening after the Menezes incident, I'd
like to hear it.

Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sat, 18 Apr 2009, John Rowland wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, Mizter T wrote:

Whatever, the police really need to get their act in order.

Oh, you noticed that?

I am really utterly perplexed by how the police maange to get away
with being a bunch of incompetent thugs. Not that there aren't good
individual policemen, but there are certainly some very bad ones,
and the organisation as a whole is a disaster. It just seems that
nobody with the power to do anything about it gives a toss. Or has
it just not occurred to people that things could be any better?

The problem is that policemen who joined because they wish to uphold
the law feel outnumbered by policemen who joined because they wish
to get away with breaking the law - so outnumbered that they can't
even enjoy mixing in the staff canteen any more, and end up quitting
the force.

I could well believe it, but do you have any specific reason to think
that?

The silences and facial expressions on ex-coppers faces when they tell you
they are ex-coppers.

Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

In message
"John Rowland" wrote:

rail wrote:
[snip]
Are you aware why they switch the sirens off once they have crossed
the junction?

It could be that the emergency has been cancelled, but if you have an
explanation for why this started happening after the Menezes incident, I'd
like to hear it.



It didn't start after the Menezes incident, it is to reduce the amount of
noise polution, which has the advantage of making the siren more noticeable
when it is used. If you here a siren going continuously for a while you tend
to blank it out. Fire engines and ambulances do the same thing.

--
Graeme Wall

This address not read, substitute trains for rail
Transport Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

On Apr 18, 4:37*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

[snip]

I think the Bob Quick debacle, and the confusion over his accountability,
may be the final push that leads the government to set up a separate
police force to handle terrorism and so on. [...]

Except there wasn't any confusion over his accountability. With
regards to counter-terrorism matters, the Met is essentially
answerable to the Home Office as opposed to the MPA. All that happened
was that Boris, as Chair of the MPA, got wind of Bob Quick's
resignation and announced it first ahead of the planned announcement
by the Home Secretary. It was basically nothing more than a little bit
of political point scoring - Boris didn't push Quick out, AIUI he had
nothing to do with it. And it wasn't like Quick was pushed out the
door screaming in protest - after discussions had taken place he
realised his position was more or less untenable.

I don't think the Bob Quick affair has any implications of the sort
you're imagining to be honest.

[...] The foundation for it is
already there in the shape of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, and it
wouldn't be too hard to transfer over the Met's national
counter-terrorism, diplomatic protection, etc units. And then it could
absorb the MoD police, the security-related activities of the BTP, the
Civil Nuclear Constabulary, etc. And then hey presto, we have a British
FBI. Optimists would say that this would put these important operations
under the control of a more professional and specialised leadership, where
they can be properly run and supervised, but pessimists would say the
exact opposite - we'd have a runaway national police force which would
inevitably not have proper scrutiny.


SOCA does however currently operate to a fairly tight remit and is
very secretive, so one could argue that it's far from the ideal
foundation for this.

Anyway I reckon the boat for significant structural police reform in
this country has already sailed, and it was missed. It'll be a while
until there's another sailing.

Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

"rail" wrote in message
...
In message
"John Rowland" wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

I don't actually think that basing a critique of the Met on that event
- the killing of de Menezes - is particularly effective at all. Be in
no doubt, it was an abhorrent screw up of the first order, but to
extrapolate from this one very unusual event ideas about how other
more regular day-to-day policing happens in the capital is not a
strong argument at all.

I believe that was a significant event. In particular, since the Menezes
whitewash I have frequently seen police vehicles pull up at a red light,
wait for ten seconds, get bored, put on the flashing lights, drive
through
the junction and then put the lights off again. I never saw this once in
the years before the Menezes whitewash. It might seem like a little
thing,
but it's highly visible (unlike all the other things they might get up
to)
and it suggests that the Menezes whitewash has changed the police's
mentality from "the law must be obeyed" to "*we* must be obeyed by
*you*".
Once a police car even pulled up behind me in Greenwich town centre and
put the sirens on (at 3am!) causing me to drive through the red light
out
of their way, and then they drove through the lights and put the sirens
off. They really couldn't care less, since Menezes.



Are you aware why they switch the sirens off once they have crossed the
junction?




I am sure the official reason will be that it so they are not heard by the
criminals at the scene they are going to but we all know that they misuse
it all the time. Like the excuse for parking on double-yellow lines is
always that they are investigating a crime when we all know they are
regularly seen leaving the "scene of the crime" with takeaways, burgers,
chips etc presumably all very important evidence?

Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 15:20:08 on Sat, 18
Apr 2009, John Rowland remarked:
Once a police car even pulled up behind me in Greenwich town centre and
put the sirens on (at 3am!) causing me to drive through the red light out
of their way, and then they drove through the lights and put the sirens
off.

Sirens are not enough to allow someone to break the law by running a red
light. You need to be instructed to do so by a policeman in uniform,
which means you need to see that the people giving the instructions are
both police, and in uniform.


And even then you could be fined if there is a Red Light Camera and find it
very difficult to prove you moved out of the way of a police car. If you
write the police and ask should you through a red light in circumstances
like that then you will told that you should never go through a red light.

Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

John Rowland wrote:
Paul Corfield wrote:
redcat wrote:
I'm coming to London soon. Maybe I should just leave my camera at
home :-/
Change your plans and then write to Gordon and Boris and say that the
lack of proper control over the police and their treatment of
photographers has meant you have decided to spend your tourist pounds
elsewhere.

I read that as "terrorist pounds"!


Ah! Subliminal brainwashing! :-)

Photography on London Underground - yes, it's allowed
 

In message t
"MB" wrote:


"rail" wrote in message
...

Are you aware why they switch the sirens off once they have crossed the
junction?




I am sure the official reason will be that it so they are not heard by the
criminals at the scene they are going to but we all know that they misuse
it all the time.

Well*you are totally wrong.

And no they don't*misuse it all the time, the sirens are connected to the
black box recorder on board the vehicle so that the use can be monitored.

Like the excuse for parking on double-yellow lines is
always that they are investigating a crime when we all know they are
regularly seen leaving the "scene of the crime" with takeaways, burgers,
chips etc presumably all very important evidence?


Cite?

--
Graeme Wall

This address not read, substitute trains for rail
Transport Miscellany at www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail