Justice in Banking

To the House of Commons:   

The petition of Elspeth  R… declares that:

Our current rules regarding banking and bankruptcy need urgently revising.

Since the downturn, there is very strong negative public feeling towards financial institutions. There is much anger at the bonuses and that public money has bailed out highly paid bankers of a crisis which we are suffering and paying for in many senses, whilst banks create debts for private customers as well as the country as a whole.

Banks extract huge fees from thousands of personal customers for going only a little over a limit, and these fees have no cap. Fees of up to £100 per month are taken automatically and there are cases where these have made those in hardship have four figure fees whilst investigations go on. This can lead to loss of banking facilities and demands for further money from banks. The High Court test case was a very drawn out way of looking at this issue, which is clearly deeply unbalanced. It is entirely in the bank’s favour, and the furore around the unsuccessful case shows how strongly popular feeling is about this matter. Banks make over £1 billion each year through these fees, on top of their other profits.  

Bankruptcy laws have been tightened without public consultation or even widespread knowledge; most websites on debt don’t mention it, including the government’s. In this time, debt has become very common. Debt is seen as bad but it is often the only way to improve circumstances, such as setting up business or paying for an education. Debt is also a result of materialism and consumerist society. Government cuts make this worse, especially to legal aid and for medical treatment.

Bankruptcy laws have been put in place by those who are well off. The previous £50 free spending money a month was tight – but the current £10 for 3 years shows no understanding of modern life or poverty. £10 per family member shows no understanding of single people and expects the burden and shame of bankruptcy to be spread across a whole household. And for a person already under pressure, to not have any kind of relief asks for other problems, such as depression. £10 a month means a single coffee a week. It won’t buy a meal out; it won’t allow you to leave your home town. It isn’t even enough to rent a DVD each week. It isn’t enough for a television licence. Bankrupts may have to sell anything of value. The law does not understand how things like DVD players, music and especially instruments, or computer games are vital. Whatever our financial circumstances, we all need a richer life; and after and during all the indignity and stress of debt, having pleasures and passions taken away is wrong and unfair. Being without a bank account is very hard in today’s society – even benefits want to pay into one. And anything extra the insolvent earns during those 3 years goes to the creditor, meaning that doing better financially gives them no relief and no benefit. Insolvents are even asked to pay to become insolvent, and are publicly shamed by having their bankruptcy published.

Our whole ethos is built up on a contractual debt, blame and punishment that enters into every part of our existence. Banks and law unfairly control much of our society. The recurrence of recessions and other problems suggest that our current systems are not the way, and invite us to urgently look again – not try to continue much as before.

 The petitioner(s) therefore request(s) that the House of Commons

 urgently revisit these rules and the ethos behind them.

Regarding bankruptcy:

One should not have to pay to declare oneself bankrupt. It should last and have effect for only one year. There should be no public publication and shaming. The allowable personal budget should return to £50 per month, and to rise appropriately with inflation. Bankruptcy should not affect members of a household or family, only the persons directly filing for it. Creditors should not be able to take extra monies earned in this time.  There should be a system in place to allow bank accounts for bankrupts without further fees. There should be no ban or public offices or other roles. Personal bankruptcy should not stop a self employed business and vice versa; this is the livelihood and will mean no money for the person filing as bankrupt. Creditors should not be able to force borrowers into bankruptcy, particularly when the creditors have created the debt, such as with banking fees or aggressive lending.

Student loans of all kinds should be covered by bankruptcy; the 2004 ban should be repealed as should the March 2011 legislation.

Having to attend a court hearing should be stopped – this is extra stress and cost (to attend) and quite often humiliation.

Information from debt advice centres should also be looked as many of these encourage insolvency as a way of freedom, and do not present the facts properly.

The law should protect genuine people from large preying creditors without encouraging non payment from reckless borrowers.

Bailiffs should stopped. It is unsupportable to be harassed in your home for goods not related to the creditor’s claims.

The blame, debt and contract system of out society needs to be revisited and debate begun and implemented about a fairer way forward.

Banking fees should be abolished. They are not necessary; they are only partly as a deterrent. If one goes over your account’s limit, the account should simply not allow further withdrawals until further funds are put in. Banks should be banned immediately from following up fees with demands to further repay overdrafts. where unreasonable fees have been charged and or hardship has been caused, these fees should be returned to customers.

And the petitioner remains, etc.

Signed

If you have any stories of how these issues have affected you or someone you know, please share (you can give as much personal detail as you feel comfortable). You can put them in comments or send them to me privately. All details will be respected.

I’ll have a BTS service on this on Sun 30th Jan, 8pm GMT

The Gene Jeanie – police (de)programming

I contine my police reform series: see the tag cloud to the right.

I want to share my police history: not my own record, but how they tried to do a Miss Jean Brodie on us as children.

“Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.”

Police came into my primary (first) school to teach us about safety (Jean’s heidie would approve), using the stories of Minnie Mole and some more realistic videos to instil care in road crossing, avoiding pylons, and what I later realised was paedophilia. (The latter worked: I am proud to have told the Duke of Edinburgh that I don’t speak to strangers). We had a class visit to the police station where our fingerprints taken (I’m cynical enough to wonder if they were retained) and we were handcuffed and put in cells for ‘fun’ and were implicitly told, don’t have this done for real.

I had the excuse to watch British cult children’s television – not as much fun as I hoped. I found these cartoons and animations boring, but there was another kind of boring, of the drilling kind – the installation of values. The gentle paeans to idyllic English life taught us that police were part of the community; perhaps a little stiff and severe (and even thick), but that they were on our side.

Like the local constables who had came into school, these programmes (interesting word) taught us that our Bobby was an avuncular counterpart to Auntie Beeb, the national broadcasting corporation who made many of the shows we watched. (It also created Gene Hunt, contemporary bully cop).

American imports criticised the police more: Top Cat and the Dukes of Hazzard were constantly outwitting their cops, and that the latter set were corrupt. CHIPS tried to make these hard hated highway patrols into cool heroes both sides of the Atlantic. But I saw through the mirror glasses.

I think there’s literally been a game of good cop/bad cop between Britain’s police and America’s.

I grew up being encouraged to think that this country was just and safe and sane; and that our police were like my description of a city gate in my novel: a burly but friendly doorkeeper.

Recently, I posted my change of view on city walls. My police views altered some time ago.

In some shops here, there are lifesize cardboard cut outs of police officers. These really say: we haven’t got security staff here, but we want you to feel the presence of the law, should you be tempted to thieve. I was dismayed to see a child told: there’s a police officer, so you’d better be good. Even though he was as flat as Mavis Cruet under one of Evil Edna’s spells (in Will O’the Wisp, a cartoon about a fat fairy and a wicked witch in the shape of a walking television set).

Police are the inverse Santa.

Police didn’t come into my later schools, when we were capable of committing crimes, but I began to learn of police in other ways. I knew that to report assault could mean a second ordeal at the hands of law, where finding evidence was more important than thinking what it felt like to suffer.

I knew firsthand that police were given quotas of motorists to stop on their shifts.

The most shocking thing I learned was also direct, from the wife of the officer involved – here in provincial England. She boasted to colleagues about how her aspirant husband had publicly decrutched a woman on suspicion of drugs.

Whether he found them or not is irrelevant. This is abuse, rape, of the most despicable kind.

Drug users are still people; their human rights are not waived. This breaks several, and other rules.

I can recall the details of the persons concerned and when I was told.

Such a person should not be ‘serving’. If one abuses someone supposedly in your care then you should step back and make amends. Especially if this wasn’t an isolated incident, you should be considering whether you should still hold that job, or if even your pension at public expense is appropriate. The answer is no.

Throughout the following years, I have read so much about police brutality. I’ve had OK encounters with police, and even had them apologise to me. But I’ve also had angering encounters, and others I know have built up a resentful view of the police from their experience.

The pettiness, the unhelpfulness, the insensitivity, the overkill reactions, the got’cha mentality.

And this is not to violent crime, but minor misdemeanours.

This is a point I’d like to stress: much of policing isn’t about real safety and the crimes that we would unamimously consider obviously wrong.

I also query how helpful they are when violence does occur.

I am aware of course of those who have been brutalised and traumatised by the police, and that many have been actually killed by them.

So I’m wanting to ask: what are the police for, and what should they be for?

What good – in the moral sense – do they actually do?

If the police were more like the officers of Trumpton and Rupert the Bear – the community worker we could rely on for any problem and felt relieved to see – would police be worth keeping and even increasing (as opposed to the calls to defund if not abolish, which I support)?

This would be much preferable, although there is an intruding side to this sort of police too. Are they best placed to take on the matters which are given to them? There is an ever widening remit, and I especially worry about so-called mental health being entrusted to the police.

But we know that police are not really about safety, but conformity. Law and Order means: do what you’re told; comply.

On one level, I feel sorry that police are constantly being asked to enforce changing and perhaps obscure rules that they don’t make without having much freedom to question them. But I am concerned that police, who I think are encouraged not to be thinkers, and certainly not to publicly raise their views, are the method in which these undemographic rules are transacted. And they also expect the same military model of compliance from us that they receive in their own ranks.

Much of police life is about meeting targets, telling people off for whatever they’re told to tell us off for. So police are thinking: ‘is anything wrong here? Do I see the breaking of a rule?’ before: ‘can I help?’ and, moreover ‘is anyone in danger, and am I the right person to handle this?’

Police talk into radios and begin procedures, perhaps without asking the ‘victims’ what they’d like to happen; we’re encouraged that all emergency services are systems to be complied with and to enter without choice or question. Of course we do have a choice, and should question.

The mindset that’s comfortable to burst into a violent situation is perhaps not the same person who can comfort a victim. Police often come in larger groups and use more force than is necessary, which causes more distress – and advertising. It’s tempting to wonder if a show of strength is more important to them than the problem. I am always concerned by solving and fixing mentality. Their blazing sirens – now that dreadful wail – their aggressive door knocks, their outfits (notice the change in uniform) all say: we’re tough, fear us. This is not discretion!

Whereas it’s tempting to believe that Britain’s police have worsened with their changing dress, I note that the old Bobby tall hats, smart buttons were worn by those who force fed Suffragettes and broke up pickets and rioters in the last century – whilst Chigley’s whistle called the stop motion factory workers to dance and gentle steam engines onto the tracks. I had to wait almost three more decades before I understood the truth of how our police and army had behaved in contemporary political situations that I was only dimly aware of from school.

Policing involves them having power over us. Their asking our name and address gives them knowledge which they will not reciprocate. I’ve known them to hide the identifying number on their epaulettes when they misbehave. They (wrongly) believe they have the power to make us stop our walk, our vehicle, ask for proof of who we are, ask what we’re doing, to look at our belongings, even bodies, and take them (or us). I’ve already commented on the ironic disparity of this, but I again say

NO TO STOP AND SEARCH

Why do they ever need to do this, except to instil in us that we, the citizens who pay for them, are under their control, and that they are the visible arm of those in power – and we don’t have any.

In a book called Londoners by Craig Taylor, a Metropolitan police officer said of arresting and searching: take away someone’s liberty for a few moments and they’ll soon see who’s boss. What needs taking away is that officer’s badge. Clearly, he has no business in policing and this quote should be an embarrassment to the Met. It proves searching isn’t about safety, but status.

I don’t look to stats to see if crime rates lower because of stop and search, because I believe in qualitative first and I know that stats are malleable. It’s because of our broken systems that we require proof, and perhaps police forces feel that by doing something proactive that they can count and we might see that they may have a measurable way in reducing crime.

I note the assertion that these powers are in fact a legal fiction – ie something presented to be true, but which is not. I’ll write more about this anon, but we do have the right to stand up to this fallacy.

I hate the notices: plain clothes police operate here…. we are watching you…

Is that meant to scare the would-be vehicle thief, the pimp and kerb crawler, or are those eyes next to the black and white chequer really meant to scare us all?

Eyes worry me as they are not necessarily under helmets (or the newly favoured bully boy caps).

Nor even under unidentified unhatted fringes – I am not sure that plain clothes police are ethical – for surely it clashes with their ethos of being recognisable and transparent?

The watching eyes could be far away, from the many cameras – I’ve noted a new literally all-seeing sort appear since lockdown. In Jersey during that period, police said: no need to report on your neighbour (amen) – we’ve a pretty good idea of what’s going on.

Is this meant to comfort us?!

A friend suggested that the civil liberties abuses come from the firms who make security technology as much as the police. I’m deeply concerned about what they try to sell as desirable ‘solutions’ – what is the real problem?

Inequality. Fearful controlling governance that thinks that they must know what we’re all doing to feel any security of its own. That is a weak and immature way of ruling; such stifling leads to eruptions and to loss of relationship, and ultimately, to loss of power – theirs.

Recent months have exemplified the auntie-authoritarian gamut of our rulers.

This lockdown has been: get in your room so that you’re safe. (And we’ll make some changes to the house whilst your door is closed). Now you may step out, carefully, on the markers provided. Wash your hands and cover your face. Let us know who you’re with and where you are.

And this says so much about how we’re treated generally. We’re expected to look away whilst the experts work out what to do, and to trust them, even though we know we’re stifling in our rooms. Note that confining to rooms is the way that much of the world has historically dealt with people that it doesn’t want on the loose, people they want to ‘exclude from society’ and have most rights taken from them.

And note how many so called offences are politically motivated, and that we wouldn’t consider many people who’ve been caught and convicted by police as wrong or dangerous. If they are, we might wonder how shutting them up and bullying them at public expense ameliorates at all.

As this is a thesis length issue I’ll need to return to, I end by asking these questions:

• Is safety something to bully us over?
• Is stopping us and punishing us over arbitrary and changing rules something we want to pay our police for? Is this a worthwhile use of public funds?
• Does anyone have the right to random shows of strength in the name of something nebulous and arcane – namely terrorism, and now health?
• Do the police have the moral right to violently hold us against our will, to throw us down, bind us, humilate us, take off anything and go into anything?
• Is it right that this group is given wider powers and remits, when often their mindset and training is inappropriate to the task?
• Should law keeping be done by those who have little understanding of those laws?
• Should we allow enforcement to be done by those whose profiles often include people who enjoy having power and authority, enjoy chase and catching, and who have aggressive and even psychopathic tendencies? (Note how many enneagram type 8s are in policing)
• Why do we support a group infamous for prejudice and which often isn’t very effective?
• Should we accept that a group of society can break the very rules they’re here to enforce and have greater liberty than the rest of us?

Clearly, these are rhetorical: the answer in each case is a clear NO, NON, NU.

In a future post, I’ll think about what we could do instead… and then, what they could do instead.

In the meantime, let’s be aware that current policing is ultimately about giving our power away, and they should not and cannot take it. You do not have power over those whom you serve.

I remind that the police are here to serve us, the people – not the other way round.

Why I’m An Abolitionist

Not just of slavery – take that and being anti-racist as a given – but of the police and all enforcement, worldwide.

I’ve been thinking about police for some years. I began a piece about their reform three years ago in which I quickly saw that I needed to ask deep and fundamental questions about the whole of society. And by that, I meant globally. I realised that police are key to the kind of world we live in. And by that, I mean that how they treat us is how safe and free we are.

If you’re expecting me to say: good policing means an orderly, safe world – you’re wrong.

That wasn’t what I was going to say at all.

I may begin sharing my work from June 2017, for the time feels right. There is a worldwide hunger for police reform after the horrific death of George Floyd 2 weeks ago, but sadly he is one of so many that have been brutalised by the force we have to pay to supposedly look after us. Policing isn’t just an American issue, or an issue for those countries that we dismiss as being far away and undeveloped and run by despots. Those people matter too. And they might be your country. Even if you think your country’s police are safe and reasonable, I ask you to think again.

Here is a big point to make early on: that I will not use the country specific talk of so many. American friends and readers, you are especially bad at this, as if you are a synecdoche for the whole world. You aren’t, but right now, the infamous horror on your soil is opening a platform for all of us; and I hope that the strength of feeling against this disgraceful and horrific act is going to open the way for real action on something that has been mooted for a long time.

I am also going to make a point early on which has to be made carefully, for I do not wish to alienate readers at this stage, nor to ever sound as if I in any form tolerate racism or belittle that.

I do not.

However, I do clearly state that I ABHOR ALL FORMS OF INJUSTICE and that for me, there is a bigger bottom line here than racism. My friend said: the attention’s on that fire because that’s where it’s burning at present. And I see that the Black community wants us to look at the fire, because they want us to see what’s been done to them – again. And we witness that with you in anger and sorrow.

But I want to look at fire itself – at this flammable liquid and who’s pouring it.

I am concerned that in the understandable ire and strident voices against the many incidences of racism and the disproportionate amount of police related suffering among non-caucasian people, that there is a new imbalance and set of otherness.

When I began my piece, almost three years ago to the day, I knew that otherness – the concept of people or things being different to you – was the absolute fundament of all else. This basic decision about whether this other form is similar or not to me was quickly followed by, so how shall I relate to or treat them? And that for many, that equalled fear, resentment, treating as less than, abuse.

But there is also a subverted version of this which is being seen via the speaking out, as if those belonging to the other group are all corporately guilty and are ‘other’ to the victims.

Those of us who stand – and I hope that is all of us – against the brutalities of police abuse and against racism, but who are not black, can feel that our solidarity and care must be qualified and earned. What would I or you know about prejudice, brutality, and suffering?

Well, in my own case, more than you might be assuming. I realised that it was possible to stand so vociferously in my own groups’ pain that I wouldn’t let outsiders in, even those who wanted to join with us and stand with us. I could make them feel bad for not having it bad (enough). I could assume the happiness and ease of their lives as compared to me and mine.

I would also like to say – I am on a controversial roll now – that I note that ‘Black’ is often used as a synecdoche for all those ethnicities which aren’t ‘white’ – a description I don’t like. In Britain, we called non ‘white’ BME (Black and Minority Ethnicities), and there’s a new set of initials coined, again leading with B for black. But what about Asian (a wide and diverse group), native American, Australasian; Inuit, Latin… (another broad group who seem to have a new name), Romany, Jew…forgive me if I’ve missed a group, especially if it’s yours. We are many. We are one. We all matter.

I know that black and Asian people and others are disproportionally targeted for police searches and arrests.

But that oft-quoted fact seems to have the horrible logical upshot: that more of the rest of us should be subjected to arrest and search.

NONE OF US SHOULD BE.

I want to abolish stop and search. I want to abolish enforcement targets. I want to abolish spying, weapons, and customs.

I want to abolish the police. Why does only America seem to say this?

I did a little research – it sadly didn’t take much looking – to find negative police incidents in every country I could think of. I don’t know if the beating of a Romani in Romania in April got much international coverage. It should have. “Police brutality” searches get pages of internet search results, as does “police corruption”. Searching “police + bullying” seems to be designed to bring up how to handle bullies, and how to involve the police if you are being bullied. And yet, it was through US churches that I came across a call – and not a new one – to stop calling the cops.

How else might your issue be addressed?

I’ve long felt a discomfort with calling the police. I know that they can worsen a situation, and for some people, it can mean being taken into a system that harms you, or even kill you. There’s the phrase: suicide by police. I keep seeing the statistic that over 1000 people are killed each year by police in America alone. I did a little research and was sickened to learn that these deplorable figures in the US are not the world’s highest. I’m unsure how these deaths by law enforcement were classed – direct shootings or other violence, or did mistreatment in custody resulting in death also get counted? How many of these fatalties are reported and made public? I’m reluctant to quote Wikipedia, but according to its chart, Brazil had 6000, Venezuela 5000 deaths by enforcement each year; the Philippines 3000, Syria was similar to America; India and several African countries were in the hundreds – Nigeria had 800. China isn’t on there! Interestingly Canada is around 30 a year, unlike its neighbour. Much of the rest of the West – Australia, Malta, Scandanavia, Britain – claims less than 10 deaths each, perhaps a single incident, or none. But I know that in the last couple of years, police shot and killed a suspect at a busy London railway station, as happened at Amsterdam in 2018. Thus this high drama risked many people, and the supposed bedrock of democracy – the judical system.

I give you some examples of corruption and brutality, although it’s heart rending and stomach churning. The couple who called the police over their car being burgled as they changed a tyre and the moustache twiddling policeman who implied, give me the expected bribe and I might actually show some interest. The kettled protesters in many demonstrations and the violent clashes and cruel treatments, held for hours. The man who reached for his papers in his car’s glove compartment, and was shot dead because police assumed it was for a gun. The family watching video games at home – also shot. The young women who had sex with 2 officers in exchange for her freedom – who walked free from court. The immigrant told to give a handjob in return for her papers to remain. The organised chronic infiltration of environmental protesters, even entering sexual relationships and having children with them, only to dump their ‘partner’ once the operation was complete. The police who ran drug and child abuse rings, paid huge salaries tax free and given legal exemption whilst ‘peacekeeping’. I could go on… that was just a snippet of some cross-country examples which I could bear to type. None of those were hearsay. And all of those were in the West.

I note that some tabloid British newspapers sided with Trump and the mayor of Minneapolis against the strident calls to abolish the police. I was really interested in this call, which the council of Minneapolis have supported, and that another US place which was considered unsafe – Camden – stopped its police force, and instead created a community based safety system, and seems to be better for it.

But I want to go further than replacing one set of prefects with another. I don’t simply look at official crimes statistics to see if it’s worked.

Calls for the police’s removal seem to be followed by calls for other systems, and I am against systemic control. When we speak of decriminalising cannabis or prostitution (sorry, I won’t call the commodifying of physical love ‘street work’), it usually asks for regulation which means official licensing, and that the government financially benefits from these trades.

I’m asking about the very way that we organise ourselves and who has control.

I am very clear who should not have it.

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I’ve felt uncomfortable with the police for some years – at least 10. I consider it a good day if I don’t see any. I’ve always hated customs and border controls, which puts me off travelling, and I am concerned about internal travel. Why I am anxious about this journey, I ask myself. If I am anxious taking a walk, what am I worried about?

Ah. Doing something ‘wrong’. That some official, especially during the lockdown, will tell me that I have committed a misdemeanour and am liable to be punished. I have the wrong train ticket. I crossed the road in the wrong way. I didn’t touch my smart travel card on the right place. I’m eating or drinking something outside when I shouldn’t be. I’m wearing or not wearing something that I should be. I don’t have permission from the authorities for something, like holding a meeting or playing music, or having a stall or allowing my customers to drink outside my premises. And now, that I might be deemed to be ill or walking unnecessarily, and even barred from buying food that I need, or be forced to give my genetic material to the state, or be taken away and incarcerated, or worse, for not doing those things.

Or for refusing to comply (be meek) when told off for allegedly doing any of the above.

The year I really got uncomfy with the police was the year that I started this project. There were at least three incidents of terrorism in the world at that time, and I want to say that all of them mattered – not the ones in the West or in my country more. But in May 2017, a terrorist bomb was detonated at a pop concert held in an arena in central Manchester. Immediately following this, Manchester cathedral did bag searches! Canterbury cathedral already had armed police in the grounds – two hander rifles; and there were suddenly armed police at other places that I would never have expected them (police in Britain had hitherto usually been unarmed.) Everyone I knew reported having seen them. In provincial, safe towns and cities. Outside the zoo; the library; at the railway station. And everyone going to a concert at an arena in my city had to be searched. Well, with these terrible people about, it’s necessary, sighed one ticket holder. A large annual market in a small town now has a huge police presence.

My thought was: this spreads fear and compliance to the provinces. We’re not just to think that these abhorrent attacks happen in our capital or largest cities. I note that London, Berlin and Paris each had them in recent years. And as well as being the centres of political and economic power and greatest populace, these cities are the hub of creative ideas and free thinking. It was suggested to me that Berlin’s horrific incident sent a message to a chilled, liberal, egalitarian city: It can happen to you too. When it happened in Manchester, it says: it’s not just the capital that can suffer this. None of you are safe, so all of you will need to make sacrifices.

My fear after these atrocities was not Will This Terrorism Come Here but What Erosion Of Civil Liberties Will Happen Next? Of course I was sad for those who suffered – please take that as a given. Of course I would not like such an event near me, although I realised that one in my city, a mid sized historic low crime area, would serve the Population Control By Fear agenda well.

Happily, those armed guards didn’t seem to last, but the police got new powers and ‘toys’.

Because of this heightened discomfort, I read Norm Stamper’s Protect And Serve: How to Fix America’s Police. I was more interested in reforming police per se, but at that time, I couldn’t find other books. You can see my review on Amazon, but I generally disliked the book and was disappointed. The subtitle said alot [sic]: he, as a long serving ‘cop’, was pro-police and had a fix-it mentality. He praised the ‘tools’ – that’s those ‘toys’ – which are a disgrace, and I fear are very common among police internationally.

If both of us were stopped and asked to empty our pockets, who’d you want to let enter?

He had: spray, two guns, numchucks, a taser, two sticks, plus surveillance technology.

I have no weapons and no spying devices whatever.

So even when police stop people who are found with a weapon, is their one knife as bad as all this?! Sometimes people have knives for legitimate reasons, and are not planning to harm. Knives are widely used – in mediaeval times, even monks carried them. Now I’m not suggesting that we all do, but I’m making the point that knives have multiple and good uses. All the above list have only one – to harm, if not kill. And we know that these are (mis)used, and not seldom.

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In 2017, I wanted a new kind of police. I’d long queried army and security agencies.

But now I query them all. Or rather, I don’t query, I assert: NO.

I looked into why we have police.

The answer is that they were created – usually in the 19^th century – to protect government and their lobbyists’ interests. They were to stop rioters; to keep looters from cargo. At the moment, we’re especially being reminded that the American South’s forces grew around catching and returning slaves, and that many forces have a link to immigrant control, and controlling poorer people, who are often from non-white ethnicities.

I think we need to again go broader and deeper, and say: why do any of us need this force?

‘Disadvantaged’ covers a wide kind of person, and I know that poverty and mental illness aren’t situations that can always be easily spotted. I could add many more groups, such as the so called neurodiverse, who also can be picked on by the police, and with tragic results.

Injustice goes after whoever is different. We are back to ‘other’ again. And often other is misunderstood, and seen as a threat. And how you deal with threats is to control them.

I want us to back up a little and take in that police took over from the army and private watchmen, and that they are about controlling ‘rabble’ and protecting property. They are the servants of the ruling group. It is about council revenue acquisition under the guise of enforcing the law.

I have an essay about why the rule of law is unjust. I will just say here that for law to work, it uses fear. There’s the final punishment and that of going to court as a deterrent; and then there are the people who are our first contact, those on the streets, those who pull us into that system. Note that police groups are known as a FORCE. I’ve not heard fire brigades so deemed.

It really has struck me that police have come out of a fear and materialism based culture. They say that they keep us safe, but I wonder if they’re brainwashed into believing that, or just trot it out?

We don’t believe it.

What is truly being safe? We are told, during this pandemic, to keep safe, but I recall a card I loved.

Two butterflies; one in a net, one flying outside. The latter says:

You are safe, but I am free

I know which I’d rather be. The flying butterfly is in many ways safer as well.

When I walk about, am I scared of burglars or gangland war? For some, yes, that is a very realistic concern and it is not impossible that I could be attacked, or that my home could be.

We have a name for government licensed home attackers: bailiffs. (Sometimes they’re even attacking and pillaging on the behalf of the government)

And now, for some of us, we have home attacks in the name of health.

I am more concerned at being stopped, harangued – not by ‘criminals’, but by the very people who define what crime is. For I, like many of us, don’t fit, stand out, do or are something which the establishment doesn’t like. Let us find our unity, not demarcation, in that and go from there into an adventure of new possibilities and an equal, caring world.

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I’ve much more to say, which will include my thoughts on why I don’t admire Robert Potato Peel; how we can avoid using police and what a world without police could be like.

I end by reminding that we are all valuable, all deserving of going about freely and without fear or bullying. We’ve recently seen the extreme of police bullying in those murders, but bullying starts with the milder end – the right to stop, interrogate, search, take something from you, watch you.

I believe that we must burn this candle at both ends and stop both.

I remind again of our solidarity as beings, however we self describe and whatever groups we affiliate with. Let our anger at evil acts not cause division and tip the seesaw the other way.

Let us remember too – and I find this harder – that our enforcement workers are people too, and fellow citizens. If any are reading this, please ask how being a good, decent and loving being fits with the tasks you’re given and the very ethos of your work’s existence.

If it were my world, you’d all be having new employment with immediate effect.

It’s all of our world and I’m not trying to rule it (I believe in facilitation, not ruling anyway), but I’ll be sharing my thoughts – which I’ve actually worked on for many more years than three – on how I suggest and invite to build something better than what we’ve all endured for so long.

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Why the AO and HMRC need calling to account

I’ve written before about the failings of ombudsmen and adjudicators, the latter being Trash Heaps (think Fraggle Rock). In fact, they both could be, as are the organisations we bring to them.

The Nottingham based Adjudicator’s Office is a hive running round the Queen – and yes, it’s been a woman for six years: currently Helen McGarry.

Like her predecessor, she’s no Wincey Willis (think 1980s gameshow Treasure Hunt).

There’s a hunt with obscure words and a deadline, but the treasure is all the treasury’s. For the AO deals with complaints about Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and The Valuation Office.

I’ve long had issues with HMRC – the tax office – and it’s not hard to find others who feel the same. They especially like to pick on self employed people and small businesses. Their compliance checks can mean hours, as well as pounds – photocopying and scanning, buying cloud software to upload… and then HMRC ungraciously deciding that they won’t accept your offering. All of course at your own expense. Often their drawn out investigations are because of their own misinformation.

May of us are deemed to have not paid enough tax or paid it too late, or that we have received too many tax credits and they will not only cease, but be demanded back.

I’ve been bullied for some years – I won’t give personal details, but I’ve had to spend much energy on fighting HMRC and learning what hard hearted bullies they are, and how the system is designed for you not to be able to easily recover from it, in any sense. I have strong evidence of collusion but also misuse of law. I think they want compliance or cessation. In any sense.

My case returned to the AO for the 3rd time – a different part, they won’t reinvestigate old ones. They also don’t award for their own failings. And they know that the next tier – the PHSO – is useless. I obtained figures of the tiny percentage of cases which are ever upheld, let alone given compensation. They elongate and annoy, and you need your MP to apply to them. Mine, Clive Lewis, messed up by not sending the supporting documents and he refused to resend the case, even when the PHSO asked me to. Hence Helen McGarry thinks she sits safe, knowing she’ll rarely be called to account by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

The recent investigation seemed to be no such thing. Even the bit about frustration and sympathy was a cut and paste job. It was condescending and had little or no back up. I’d reapplied for tax credits a year ago, but they claim that my area’s roll out for Universal Credit had begun just after, so it was too late. If I’d had a quicker response from HMRC, I would have gotten the award, worth a few thousand. I note the statements which make me look unreasonable: “if [I’d] chosen to…” – utterly inappropriate; the ones that make them sound fair… it’s a school of writing that I see throughout bureaucracy and sometimes in personal emails. McGarry claims the law is on her side; nothing can be changed now. But I’m well aware of law being bent or ignored or even created to suit governments.

I am tired of these organisations not being accountable, of not righting wrongs and even acknowledging them. I am tired of Trash Heaps whose rather ill-judged pronouncements become binding, and who do not expect comeback. I am tired of governments who bully, not work for their people.

If you are too, then let’s stand together against it. We need an AO who’s fit for purpose and a tax office that’s fair – it’s supposed to be collecting for the benefit of the people. We need reform. We need leaders who listen and laws that benefit and protect us, not the few. We need different values that aren’t about greed and control, but respect and fairness. And yes, love, even in politics. And that means love of justice, a fierce love that stands up for ourselves and others and doesn’t take no for an answer.