The new policing bill has passed its first vote in the commons. It’s easy to get blasé about these things. Oh its only a little change. So what, noisy demonstrations are annoying. What do I care? But if you’re not careful you become the frog in a nice warm bath that doesn’t bother to turn the heat down before its too late. By the time you’re exercised enough about something to want to use your right to protest / jump out of the boiling water, you might not be able to. I think of it this way…what’s different now, in 2021, that means we need to make our laws about protests more draconian than they have been before? Absolutely nothing.
Maybe the ridiculously undemocratic and occasionally effective Lords will help fix it.
With images fresh in our minds of policemen manhandling women mourning a woman murdered by a policeman (probably), Jonathan Pie sums up the ugliness well.
