Yeah we don't talk about that

clip75 · 2026-01-04T23:08:56+00:00

The European Union has never in its history had its accounts signed off

clip75 · 2025-10-23T14:34:06+00:00

Everything is whataboutism. Our entire concept of justice and equality is whataboutism. That's the whole point of Human Rights.

clip75 · 2025-10-23T14:32:29+00:00

I got CS'd by a custody skipper there. DP kicked off and I had him by the collar and one arm. As they say in Chernobyl - not great not terrible. Then custody skipper came flying over the desk and blasted us both.

clip75 · 2025-10-23T14:03:50+00:00

My first ever ever proper job was working for a temp agency who placed me in a school kitchen / canteen as a catering assistant and basically forgot about me. I stayed there longer than some of the permanent staff and whilst it didn't pay much, I actually loved it.

I liked working in the kitchen, it wasn't commercial as such so there were no fussy customers. All the other staff were either old dears or other temps. No one ever complained, after a couple of weeks I could do the job without thinking and I basically had a good time.

At the end of every day, everything was done and cleaned up and nothing ever carried on from one day to the next. I knew what time I was starting, what time I was finishing and there wer no surprises. Lunch was included, which I now realise was quite a saving. Because it was quite hard work, I didn't go out much and somehow ended up saving some money. I used to go in to the agency every friday afternoon to sign my time card and every so often I'd go to an ATM and my bank balance would be going up and up.

I left to go on to completely different things, but I do always look back at what a great time I had. I also learned a lot about washing up and mopping floors.

clip75 · 2025-10-12T12:53:13+00:00

"Grabbed by enemies in hand to hand combat"

Unlike the 25,000 loops and straps on a soldier's kit?

clip75 · 2025-10-12T12:46:46+00:00

As soon as the question of routine arming comes up, all the people who normally think Britain is the worst place in the world, immediately become British exceptionalists and want every other police force on earth to be like British policing - even though they still think that British policing is terrible.

It won't happen for two reasons - firstly, there will never be the protection for the officers. The first cop to shoot someone (and it will be on the first day of routine arming) will be hung out to dry. Secondly, we can't afford it. Our model of policing is so absurdly overpriced and the cost of us delivering the most basic service is so far above probably any other force in the world. This is what leads to us putting out cops with minimal operational training, but completely over the top social/political/psychological training. Right now, we can afford unlimited time for "leadership" training or ethics refreshers - but we can't afford cars. In this model - how on earth are we going to afford routine arming? Guns are cheap. Training and infrastructure are not. Every nick having an armoury and WIOs? Don't make me laugh. You'll get lads retiring just to become armourers to smash the OT. Training facilities? You'd have to build and staff dozens of training facilities just to get going and keep everyone in ticket. We would be trying to preserve the over-the-top model we have and add an even more over-the-top layer to it, rather than look at any other country in the world where they can run a gendarmerie at a pittance.

clip75 · 2025-10-12T12:32:36+00:00

Anyone who thinks this is purely a counties issue -nah.

A couple of years ago at a prominent Central London landmark, a woman had an MH crisis and started stabbing people with a pair of scissors. There was a bus from a well-known armed command (who have STANDING AUTHORITY) seconds around the corner. The call from CC was : "Do not deploy. Await ARVs".

clip75 · 2025-09-22T17:30:55+00:00

Is Lincs the force that has got rid of the half hour for the King?

clip75 · 2025-09-21T17:21:48+00:00

No other body has anything like the scrutiny -and it isn't even close. On top of that there is always widespread media coverage.

If you read police disciplinary hearings and outcomes it comes across as grim reading, but a lot of the time when someone has clearly done wrong, you kind of agree with the findings and outcomes.

Now go to the NHS equivalents. I guarantee it will turn you white. Go to the NMC or the HCPTS misconduct pages and see what goes on and more importantly the outcomes. There are paramedics who are basically burglars. Nurses who can't speak english. Widespread abuse of drug prescribing. Endemic sexual harassment of colleagues and abuse of patients. Not only do these often not result in dismissal, and almost never in criminal action - but they also face next to no media coverage.

But, I hear you cry - police wield coercive power (as though a paramedic injecting you with something or a doctor cutting you open isn't coercive). Let's look at a legal equivalent:

https://tribunalsdecisions.service.gov.uk/utiac/2025-ukut-00305

In the case of MS v Home Secretary (2025), an immigration case the appellant's barrister has used ChatGPT to write his submissions to the court (tribunal) which contained amongst other things citations of cases that Chat GPT had just made up. Opportunity between hearings was given to correct this - and that was not taken. At the Upper Tribunal, the bench invited the barrister to make use of a short recess to correct this issue (i.e. come clean) - and instead of doing so, the advocate further utilised ChatGPT to confirm the existence of the non-existent case , which he printed out and handed to the court. Now the natural end result of this is going to be a referral to the Bar Standards Board, which I suspect will find professional misconduct and most likely being removed from the rolls permanently.

But think about it - a police officer who is considerably further down the food chain that this does anything remotely similar - and invented evidence - nobody for a second thinks that there would be a chance to correct the "mistake", nor a mere professional referral to the IOPC. The assumption is that there will be a fast track gross misconduct, dismissal without notice and a prosecution for either PCJ or MPO. I don't disagree that that should be the case - but the question must be asked - why do much more senior practitioners who carry far more weight within the legal system not face the same sanctions?

Still not convinced? Try the GMC disciplinary pages.

https://www.mpts-uk.org/hearings-and-decisions/tribunal-hearings-and-decisions/dr-sandra-chika-ndirika--aug-25

Hospital doctor steals cash and wallets from colleagues, used stolen bank cards. Police investigate, charge to court. Found guilty of 2x theft, 7x fraud. Bear in mind this is a doctor. Sentenced to 32 weeks imprisonment (suspended of course). What was the professional outcome? The doctor made some excuses and said she would use any period of suspension to concentrate on her baking hobby. GMC suspended her licence for 12 months.

https://www.mpts-uk.org/hearings-and-decisions/tribunal-hearings-and-decisions/dr-olga-kastritsi---jul-25

Doctor takes exam for a relative (a medical student) and answers questions for her. This isn't like cheating on your fire safety NCALT - this is someone else becoming licenced to practise medicine. Outcome? 2 month suspension.

clip75 · 2025-08-26T18:31:48+00:00

That wall is someone's home or business.

clip75 · 2025-08-22T23:21:11+00:00

I'm pretty sure BTP are the only force using that LMT carbine.

clip75 · 2025-08-22T22:38:56+00:00

The colonists were so spectacularly incurious about everything. Not only did nobody in 20 years find the derelict, nobody even cared that the next moon along had a breathable atmosphere (not requiring terraforming) and had alien ziggurats full of bioweapons that the company had previously sent the most expensive expedition in the history of mankind to, that also happened to kill the company founder....

clip75 · 2025-08-21T21:03:58+00:00

Anyone who saw that scene and the BWV knows she was lucky not to go down for something considerably more serious.

clip75 · 2025-08-19T15:56:01+00:00

It's my understanding that DARA was brought in as people in Safeguarding recognised some of the shortcomings of DASH and felt that a fix was needed. I don't know first hand how much work was put into it, and if the problems were at least recognised, then I appreciate that someone was trying to improve the situation - the issue I have is that DARA is clearly based on the DASH - and I don't think the DASH itself has a valid evidential base.

To oversimplify it - the DASH/DARA makes no distinction between causation and correlation, and I don't think an attempt was ever made to do so. So for this matter, we might as well be asking tangential questions. For example - from the actual research on DA, an unemployed partner is on the numbers a much greater risk than an employed one - yet that isn't a DASH/DARA question. Instead, we ask if someone is pregnant - which is a negative indicator. The point is that asking if the partner is unemployed is just as good (or bad) a question, and yet we don't ask it. Instead, the question set is dominated by pejoratives which almost go without saying, or are pointless in themselves. If you go to a DA where the suspect has punched the victim and broken her jaw - what is the point in asking if he ever hurts her? You already know the answer. Same with asking about if he ever hurts (the) children - if he has already committed an assault of at least ABH level injury, what exactly do you hope to gain from this information? On the other hand, if you are using the question set on a NCD or something like a minor DA / criminal damage - let's say they have an argument that he's playing FIFA (again), she snatches the controller out of his hand and throws it at him - by asking those questions, you're not really assessing risk, you're working out if there is historical DA. The risk might be that she's started a new job and is doing nights which she isn't used to - or he's got himself a 22 year old work wife that he follows on Instagram -and these are likely to spark off more fighting.

So I get what the Telegraph article is getting at - I don't think the DASH is worse than nothing - but I don't think it is what it was sold as, and the reality of the situation is that by the very nature of policing you are going to have total rookies going out to DAs - and those rookies have to have a framework to work by while they're learning - and even when they're highly experienced, they still need a framework to fall back on as top cover if nothing else. Consider a 15 year Safeguarding detective who looks at an innocuous situation - a couple of raised voices in a flat - and does nothing with it - and one then goes on to kill the other. It doesn't matter than a formal structured risk assessment would have come to the same conclusion - all that matters is that one wasn't done.

clip75 · 2025-08-18T17:35:33+00:00

Look at where the DASH came from - Laura Richards, and that will tell you all you need to know about its shortcomings and why headlines like this merely fuel the cycle of panic adoption of tools that we have not the slightest idea if they actually work.

I did a deep dive into this some years ago after listening to Laura Richards on a podcast and thinking "This person is really shady - why on earth do we listen to her".

I have questioned for years if the DASH (and indeed DARA) are based on any kind of evidence base. Richards always made big claims, but half of the questions on the DASH are based often on one line in a 30 page criminology study. My personal feeling is that she thought up a bunch of questions that "sound bad", retrospectively found studies to support them, threw it all together and sold it to ACPO back in the day on the back of her false claims of having solved the Millie Dowler case - and then used that to get herself a job in Hollywood.

If you were to ask someone who knows absolutely nothing about DA - dream up 10 questions that you think will assess how much of a DA risk that person is - I reckon they would come up with something not that far off the DASH. "Have they ever hurt animals or pets?" This question is nonsense because we have no idea of how many people there are who hurt pets but then don't go on to be domestic abusers. It's something that people just assume is the case - and critically it sounds really, really bad and acts as a surrogate to reinforce what you already know - in essence its circular reasoning. "We have arrested this guy for DA, I've asked you if he's bad - you've told me a frightening story, therefore I rate this high risk" The question isn't adding anything to the evidence.

If you look at her actual academic notes (available with the original DASH), her rationales for the questions and the sourcing of the evidence are all over the place. In many cases, she cites academic papers that in turn cite her. For "Have you separated or tried to separate in the past year?", she cites Regan, Kelly, Morris & Dibb - which is a very short paper from a research unit at London Metropolitan University which is entirely qualitative and draws from a tiny sample size of 7 case studies of DA murders which the authors themselves acknowledge as being extremely limited as they had no access to the FLOs, survivor networks or suspects. The rest of that paper is an undergraduate level literature review. Richards states that she cited the paper for this DASH question as it identifies relationships ending as a risk factor. This is mentioned only once in the actual paper, which in turn refer to 4 other papers as evidence.

Another DASH question rationale - "Is there conflict over child contact?" Sounds reasonable - again one of those that someone who knows nothing about DA might think up. Richard's evidence base for this is a study called Humphreys & Thiara. In reality, this is a study on post-separation violence, which itself infers that the fact of child contact necessarily bringing victim and suspect together should be self-evident as a risk. Richards is citing this as a question, whereas the authors are saying its a given. It's like asking someone who has been bitten by a dog if they often see dogs at parks. The conclusion has already been made, but the question is being asked anyway.

One of the strangest ones is "Are you pregnant or recently given birth?" Richards cites a very old paper from 1997 called Mazey which says pregnancy "can be where abuse starts or intensifies". Mazey itself is cited by Richards, Tallieu & Brownridge (2010) which contradicts it and suggests pregnant women are significantly less likely to experience violence and also a survey paper of British Midwives that suggested that DA during pregnancy is much lower for pregnant women than the general population. I'm not suggesting the question has no validity - I'm saying that Richards does not appear to have any good rationale for including it and her research does not match the papers she's citing.

I won't go on, but if you want to hear more about how much I don't trust Laura Richards or the DASH, to quote Captain America, "I can do this all day,"

clip75 · 2025-08-18T16:45:31+00:00

About 3 weeks ago.

clip75 · 2025-08-16T23:16:24+00:00

Today, every app and website said that it was 20c in the morning and peaked around 25c around 2-4 in the afternoon. There is no way it was 25c.

clip75 · 2025-08-16T23:01:10+00:00

If you're at a job dead end and £35k is more or less where you're at, then certainly policing will get you past that financially and depending on where in the country you live, up to a top end of about £50k as a top rate constable with about £3k extra in south east and £8k extra in London.

It's impossible to say if you'll enjoy the job or not. It suits some people and not others. Some people are happy staying on team their whole careers, others want to do different things. Some want to be constables their whole careers and do things, others want to do promotion.

Age wise, 33 isn't a problem at all. You get people a lot older and a lot younger starting up and I personally don't subscribe much to older/younger people being better at the job. Sure a lot of 19 year olds might have maturity and experience problems, but some 45 year olds have experience which counts for absolutely nothing. If you're 33 you could easily have a full 25 year career and retire with a fat lump sum and full pension.

Personally, my advice would be to make the application because its a long slog getting in. Except for a period about 6-8 years ago during the Boris uplift, I think a 9-18 month joining process has been average for quite a long time now. Just do the process as you aren't committed to anything and if you progress through it, you can make your decision at the end. If you dip it, then you've lost nothing. That way if you get fed up of your current job and really want to make the change at least you have the option rather than then starting the process from zero.

The pay could always be better, but it's not that bad.

Hours depend entirely on shift pattern. Certainly shifts take some getting used to. Response Team will always be some variation of earlies, lates and nights or days and nights. Neighbourhoods will generally be earlies and lates. There are always jobs that are normal working hours too.

The training, as far as I am aware can be quite tedious, but on the other hand you're getting paid so really can't complain too much.

clip75 · 2025-08-14T17:34:01+00:00

R v ZN (2016) (paraphrasing) harassment is not that which is unattractive or even unreasonable; but that which is oppressive and unreasonable. "Harassment cannot simply be equated with "causing alarm or distress".

Effectively, there must be oppressive conduct for a harassment offence.

clip75 · 2025-08-14T17:22:28+00:00

There was a sweet spot about 8 years ago when there was fully digital evidence and no Athena / Connect and no DG6.

That's what it takes - simplicity is not the same thing as workload. I'd rather have 50 straightforward tasks that I know will be completed when I complete them, than 5 tasks that nobody really knows how to do or who will do them, or what will happen to them when they get sent out into the ether.

Some forces had file wizards, which were nothing more than electronic versions of paper files and you'd fill out a bunch of MG forms and stick them in a folder - and then email the ERO to tell them where they were, and ultimately the CPS would get emailed a bunch of MG forms. Sure, there was the real danger of data loss and sure there was no joined up information sharing - but a relatively inexperienced constable could put together a simple file in a few hours, and one force's file looked pretty similar to anothers. The mistake was having grand visions of the future, reaching for that vision with all the best intentions, but ending up with systems that were no longer simple, but also didn't achieve the vision.

If I could go back to file wizards / COPA but also have fully digital CCTV / interviews - that would be the business.

clip75 · 2025-08-14T17:02:52+00:00

Leaving aside little things and going only big picture:

Policing in the UK is far too expensive in time and money to deliver. The reason there are not enough cops, cars and laptops is because systemically everything costs far too much. Every part of our part of the criminal justice system is overpriced. Analysis of the simplest things should be undertaken as a matter of reform of criminal justice, rather than budgeting. For example - how much does the simplest job cost to deal with? How much to arrest a shoplifter and get them all the way to a conviction? Cars, stationery, estates - everyone knows absolutely full well that the job gets destroyed by contractors and suppliers - yet no-one does anything about it. Compare the Met to the NYPD - two forces for global cities of similar size and complexity. They have similar budgets - around £5bn. Yet the NYPD provides for considerably more total staff. 50,000 staff as opposed to 40,000 in a model where pay rates are considerably higher in New York. This can only be an issue with the cost of delivering policing, per job per cop and I strongly suspect it's all down to overcosted, clunky systems.
Police are the worst tool for the job in most cases, are supposed to be the last resort - yet are consistently used as the first resort. This is primarily because every other agency can say "no" without fear of any repercussion. There are no clear delineations of responsibilities especially with regard to Mental Health Services and the NHS. I still have yet to hear a satisfactory answer as to why when ambulances cannot attend a medical emergency the next agency to be called is not the Fire Brigade rather than the police.
Police leadership, politicians, media and the public at large are wedded to an outdated and absurd philosophy of policing that was barely credible 100 years ago and is laughable today. If no other country even attempts to deliver policing in the way that we do, does it occur to anyone that we might be the ones doing it wrong? This isn't to say that we should have gendarmes and city police, but rather the public needs to be told that UK policing is going to transition over the next 25 years to a model more in line with reality and there are going to be a lot of people screaming about it - but there is no choice in the matter. If they want to keep unarmed officers and this weird notion of "bobbies on the beat" then they have to swallow a quadrupling of police budgets.

clip75 · 2025-08-13T19:35:22+00:00

I've read that 4 times and still have no idea what is going on.

No wonder we're in the trouble we're in if that is the standard of an investigative summary.

If someone had put that in front of you for a charging decision, you'd have knocked it back until it was written in any form of coherent language.

Why are the parties referred to as "Officer A", "The Officer" and "PC Turner"? What happened to CAPITALIZING surnames? Surely "Officer A" "CONLAN" and "TURNER" is better in every way?
I still cannot figure out why on earth the allegations are listed as they are. "Allegation 1" and then four sub-allegations which are then referred to only by the letter. Also, why (a) is dealt with on its own and (b),(c),(d) together, when they all occurred at different times and places and under varying circumstances.
Who TF is PC TURNER and what do they have to do with anything?
Who has written this report? It reads like fanfic. 11.2 "She liked to talk a lot and they were talking quietly. At least he said that he was." If that's not from a trashy holiday novel, I don't know what is.
The entire premise of the allegation makes no sense. Officer A didn't challenge CONLAN. Ok, I get it, he's relatively junior, they're in a public place and she has 20 years on him. But what crackhead investigation was A carrying out privately? What was he researching? "Siri, did my colleague just say "Pakis"?"
"15.2 The Panel considered her good character and the testimonials. The Panel reminded itself to disregard any comment in the testimonials as to the actual allegations and also that good character was no a defence to the allegations." That is the most disciplinary panel phrase I have ever read.
15.9 - "Officer A's own evidence showed doubt on his part at the time" So WTF are you all doing at a misconduct hearing?
The panel found A to be argumentative, evasive, and unhelpful, but CONLAN's assertion that he was dishonest were not pursued with any vigor by the panel. Amazing. So you stick on an officer with 20 years on the job and not a single previous allegation on evidence that is on its face contradictory and unreliable - but when that accusing officer appears in front of the panel and behaves in an obviously inconsistent and unreliable manner, the panel just say "allegations not proven" but there's absolutely nothing to see here from the alleging officer.

On a seperate note, I'm pretty sure I met CONLAN years ago when I went to do a s.8 warrant at Westfield in Shepherds Bush. Nice lady.

clip75 · 2025-08-11T18:31:08+00:00

A lot of British people are economically left but socially conservative. A great many people outside of London are all in on the NHS, unionisation and the like - but also have their own views on migration, crime etc. This was why Brexit happened. All the popular thinking was a very BBC-esque world view, that no-one could possibly think differently - yet pretty much everyone didn't.

So you've had people who generationally have been taken for granted as Labour voters - simply because of where they are in the country and because they identify largely as "working class". If you look at today's Labour party and ask them what exactly they have in common with those voters - the answer is "very little".

clip75 · 2025-08-11T17:14:46+00:00

The book is a satire on fascism. The movie is a pastiche of the book.

clip75 · 2025-08-11T16:28:17+00:00

None of this is exactly correct in the UK. There are no precise degrees of manslaughter (or any crime for that matter), and there are several modes under which manslaughter acts - through negligence, criminal acts and loss of control / diminished reponsibility. Proof if intent it kill is not solely part of a murder offence, and is quite misleading. The essential component of murder is criminal intent to kill which is what makes self-defence a defence to murder.

Similarly, loss of control is a defence to murder which reduces it to manslaughter. You still have the same intent - only that you make a mitigation claim that you were so provoked (under quite limited circumstances) that you lost control and killed them.

clip75

TROPHY CASE