Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015, 10:05 am
Militarisation and Privatisation of British Police
he above photograph was taken by me less than a day ago. It was captured near Town Hall (Manchester). I could not help taking it because it was such a poetic illustration of what had gone wrong with UK policing, especially in recent years.
In British newspapers, not to mention blogs, one dominant theme this week is a massive round of layoffs, potentially affecting over 20,000 cops. It smacks of austerity. There are no police cutbacks, however, just privatisation. Tories want to do to the public sector, police included, what they have already done (to some degree) to the NHS. Enriching already-rich private companies like G4S and Serco seems to be the goal here.
For the uninitiated, TAU is like militarised police in Manchester (here they are beating up nonviolent teenagers), so seeing them parked right next to the G4S van was just priceless.