Women visited by police after raising concerns over sewage to local MP | Hacker News Reader

Women visited by police after raising concerns over sewage to local MP

lyme-online.co.uk

131 pointsstuaxo50 comments

Given the murder of David Amess, I can see why MPs are a little twitchy over people who are potentially out of a given area (though not constituency) attending

Perhaps involving the police was heavy-handed and there could have been another way…

Another way to do what? Intimidate a woman into silence for the crime of petitioning her elected official?

I bet their petitioning elected official licenses were expired.

Perhaps informing the women that the meeting was only open to town residents? Oh wait...

After emailing him, they were told the meeting was specifically for residents of Chideock...

Looks like the police were sent anyways. Unless there was more content in the emails than has been reported, this was absolutely heavy-handed intimidation.

they weren’t “sent”, at least, not by the MP. The police were advised by the MP of the unusual email for security reasons, the police made their own decision, and later apologized

>The police were advised by the MP of the unusual email for security reasons, the police made their own decision, and later apologized

Right, but the MP almost certainly knew exactly what process he was kick starting by telling them to look into it. The beauty of the system is that everyone has plausible deniability.

Give it a few weeks. If this is a pattern it should start to come to light once a few cases are publicised.

Complaining to your MP about toxic conditions in local waterways is "unusual"? That's exactly the type of correspondence an MP should expect. Referring such correspondence to the police is ridiculous.

The MP should have told the women the town hall was closed to non-residents and left it at that. The cynic in me believes the MP knew exactly what the police were going to do when forwarded "unusual" emails.

interesting that they didn’t publish the emails - that’s suggests that they somehow don’t support the narrative “ After emailing him, they were told the meeting was specifically for residents of Chideock, but Mr Loder replied: “Let me know which villager has invited you and I will come back to you to see what we can do.”

Which implies the two women claimed to have been invited by one of the villagers eligible to attend the meeting? Strange that that wouldn’t be explained in the article if it was true, suggesting the claim was NOT true. And that I think could reasonably be seen as unusual by someone responsible for security for an event.

Its suspicious that they tried to meet him before and he got out of it with excuses like his laptop battery being broken. Tory MPs often seem to be in bed with privatised industry and its not a leap to suppose that's what's happening here.

Worse, the MP was clearly giving them the run-around from previous meetings. Sending police to ask questions the citizens themselves likely answered in their emails, or answerable via telephone, is an escalation of this tactic. Political assassins seem very very unlikely to politely inquire about attendance.

As typical, police wasting time investigating potential lefty protestors instead of doing something useful for society.

They do this for any perceived dissent from the current government opinion, like re-tweeting a joke about the latest official pride flag:

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/irishman-arrested...

Then why have the police, for decades spent overwhelmingly more resources investigating and infiltrating left-wing groups than far-right groups? When was the last left-wing terror attack in the UK?

I know right-wingers like to latch on to the handful of examples of police overreach when targeting right-wingers, but the reality doesn't match up. There is a huge discrepancy.

Maybe the broader issue is the sheer amount of government licensure in the UK and the cover that provides for civil servant and enforcer abuse, rather than defining cases as a right/left problem.

It's very clearly a right/left problem. The police exist as a force to protect capital interests. No threat to capital? Police aren't likely to be interested in you.

Left-wing groups are threats to capital, and that's exactly why they're targeted so much more than groups of neonazis.

Your whole thread here makes it clear that you are ideologically biased.

Oh no, not bias! How awful!

I never said I was unbiased. The truth is almost always biased.

'They are pro law and order. They want to be able to use the law to order you around'

The "pride flag as swastika" meme is extremely offensive, given the actual history of the Holocaust.

yep, distasteful jokes are worth being hauled off for

Someone's feelings might have got hurt. That's not a joke.

You're right, poking fun is serious business

Anyone that thinks that's a matter for police, let alone jail, needs to go outside more.

It's a Hakenkreuz, not a swastika.

In the English-speaking world it is a swastika.

I can understand the desire to reclaim the word swastika, but it might be an uphill battle.

One step at a time.

> current government opinion

The current government opinion is actually often at odds with the police over this matter; they have been chastised openly on twitter by Braverman.

The police force are seemingly acting as a force unto themselves, captured by special interest groups.

It seems odd then that nothing has changed. They've had 12 years governing (yes some in a coalition), likely for another 2 years.

I could buy not doing something for a year or two but at this point I'm more inclined to believe that it's deliberate. A nice way to stoke up a bit vote galvanising, "oh look at what the woke lefty is doing now, look over there and ignore the economy".

The UK stories that genuinely baffle me are the ones about police having children with activists they were sent to spy on:

* https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/22/fourth-offic...

* https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_undercover_policing_relatio...

What is going on here? Does this happen in any other country? What??

You've heard of speed dating, now try snitch dating!

While you are here, how about executing a random person in the London subway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Me...

That was horrific and so deeply tragic. Without diminishing that I would say this kind of event is extremely exceptional and there's an enormous bar to a police officer even carrying a weapon in the UK and that was an Mi5 failure.

Person who authorized that was promoted into becoming the (now former) head of the metropolitan police btw.

There are cases of American police sleeping with women they are supposed to be arresting. Arguably, they should not be able to have sex with someone they have power over, but some locales have affirmed their option to do so.

Happens in the US as well: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/female-fbi-informant-sl...

I'd argue a "Pride flag swastika" is a bit more than "current government opinion". JFC. I'm honestly not seeing the problem here..

The fact this is getting up votes is nuts

That's a sure way to torpedo any conversation, imply victims and mix with [political affiliation].

When in fact the whole police thing is based on order and control, anything out of the ordinary. ie. guy walking with winter gear on a hot summer day is subject for "investigation".

Not saying is good or bad ( perhaps both, but that's the police being the police )

> That's a sure way to torpedo any conversation, imply victims and mix with [political affiliation].

A sure way to torpedo your understanding is to assume that there's some natural law that things tend to be apolitical.

Living in London almost all my life I sometimes feel like I live in a different country when I read stories like this. I just genuinely can't imagine this happening here.

Totally mad and I can't believe the officer followed his bosses orders.

If the government (and by proxy it's enforcement agencies) didn't have so much unaccountable power over people being visited by a police officer over something frivolous wouldn't be nearly as intimidating nor would the government's enforcers wouldn't have to deal with allegations of intimidation over such actions in the (probably majority of) cases where they are not being used to intimidate. The intimidation here is entirely predicated on the police's ability to screw these women over with no recourse on a whim.

No comment. (I live in UK)

Seeing how the UK treated and is treating Assange, this is no surprise.

It truly is a police state. Massive surveillance with CCTV, as well as online, strict speech laws, a literal monarchy that at the very least has massive political power if not absolute political power.

Who says Britain and China don't have a lot in common? There's little doubt that when British (and American) politicians and bureaucrats look at China's authoritarian system of control, their essential emotion is one of envy.

Whataboutism is the worst.

In Britain, I can freely say that Rishi Sunak is, I dunno, some random insult like a "paki". In the US, I can go even further than that: I can freely say that Joe Biden is a child molester. On a public website. I can register joebidenisachildmolester.com if I wished.

In China, if I say that Xi Jinping looks like Winnie the Pooh, I can be put in jail and disappeared. Much less say something absolutely true, such as Xi Jinping being a two-bit dictator.

There is very little in common between Britain (or the US) and China.

The systems of authoritarian control in the USA and Britain are different in style from those employed in China, but they do share the same goal. Note also that the United States still has the world's most populated prison system, whether one measures in in absolute numbers or as a per capita percentage.

USA also has a lot of violent and career criminals, many of them decades-long repeat offenders, so that should be factored into the equation or risk appearing disingenuous.

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