The way the police have treated Cliff Richard is unacceptable

(in case it changes, the current title given on HN for this is "Confirmation that the UK is a police state")

From wikipedia: "A police state is a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the population."

This story in no way establishes that the UK is a police state. It does, I think, show that the police's pursuit of justice was more than a little contaminated by their bumbling idea of PR.

From the HN title, I'd have expected something more along the lines of:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100279865/if-c...

or:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/07/deep-state-data...

or maybe:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/royal-family-...

or perhaps:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-destroyed-lorry-...

or even:

http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/g4s-ride-to-the-d...

not to even mention:

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/government-accused-...

just to pick some recent random examples, any of which might suggest to some that the UK is veering towards quasi-police-statehood.

But not a story showing that the police here try and play a story which is bound to attract huge publicity with some dubious image management in mind (though heaven knows what, exactly.)

(For anyone not following the recent UK news on child abuse allegations, it's certainly true that the police are in need of a bit of image management in regard to that issue, having apparently unreasonably curtailed several investigations into prominent alleged abusers; see, for example: http://ethicalalliance.org/united-kingdom-corruption-probe-i... which story now seems to have (ahem) disappeared from mirror.co.uk.)