Woman visited by West Midlands police for taking a PHOTO of a sticker

[Jarnsaxa]

Haven't seen a thread about this yet. A 73 year old woman woman who stopped to take a photograph of a sticker that said "Protect women's spaces" .has police on her doorstep accusing HER of causing 'alarm and distress' for taking a picture with her phone. Of a sticker.from daily mail

She solved this in the sane hour she solved the small boats issue. All done and dusted.

I’m not even bothering to sort that mistake as that typo is the closest we’re going to get to sanity on this issue.

The key question here is: who watches the watchkeepers? Who polices the police? If the government, in the form of Suella Braverman, can't stop them, who can?

Taking a photograph of a sticker is not a crime. So why are the police allowed to behave as if it is? Who is going to stop them?

Did these politicians when they were little boys and girls sort out letter writing...to Santa, the Tooth Fairy?

I suspect they got better results than their adult writing campaigns to get our public services serving all the public and not just the TQ+.

At the moment they're still trying be nice, be reasonable, be rational. They will learn, like the rest of us did.

This is going to have to involve very strong boundaries, real consequences, and a full government inquiry in the end. And everyone who's been through the training by biased, political lobby groups, particularly those in leadership provisions, are going to have to be regarded as compromised, and put through a programme not just to undo the misinformation but Prevent type work based on undoing something I can't describe here as it will be deleted. Because some of those doing the most harm are passionately committed - as we see in the tweets today - to fighting the law and impartiality. To 'declare war on it'. While in positions of public service and responsibility.

The longer everyone woofles about hoping someone else will fix this, or that people will just be nice, the worse all this gets.

Mind you, at least they're now doing something, no matter how weakly. It's taken bloody years to get them to this point.

The key question here is: who watches the watchkeepers?

Quis ipsos custodiet custodes ?

The reason I provide the original Latin (apart from learning it at school) is to show it was put into words nearly 1700 years ago. And I suspect Juvenal (who would have had a field day in 2023 UK) was echoing an existing truism.

Police officers ordering this and acting on it to bully and intimidate (and lecture) women need to face loss of job and criminal prosecution. At the very least they are wasting police time.

Basically, they have assumed or at least treated her as if she had placed the sticker.

I nearly typed the Latin myself but was worried about being accused of showing off.

I think Juvenal was talking about men providing guards to look after their wives in their (the men's) absence, wasn't he? So the line was probably intended comedically, even if the sentiment could be applied more widely.

Even if she had been posting the sticker, the offence would have been defacing public property (and would also have applied to the poster of the original trans sticker) whereas they seem to have accused her of wrongthink. Which isn't, as far as I know, a crime in this country.

And of course there was no evidence that she had posted the sticker anyway, which adds to the outrageousness of it all.

Well all credit to whoever did place the sticker.

A tiny little sticker on a big Trans advert. Hebden Bridge is plastered with those posters.

They were satires ....

The fact jokes from times long gone and places far away can still make us smile is a reminder of our humanity - it's what keeps me sane,

IANAL but the individual police officer could be charged with the criminal offence of Misconduct in Public Office. Given that the Police Force and the CPS won't rush to such a prosecution, the officer could be subject to the civil charge of malfeasance in public office. This would require a member of the public affected by the police officer's action going to law.

I was foolish enough to look at one on a postbox this morning.

I don't think she ever claimed she'd do anything, just that she's very against it and has written a letter to show how she feels.

After all, this is all Labour's fault, she just the Home Secretary.

Madness! She’s not the only one taking pictures of stickers in Hebden Bridge. Brava to the sticker stickers, and the sharpie wielders of the Calder Valley. I’ll be gardening for sure if she decided to take this further.

And being the Home Secretary she has fuck-all control over how individual police services conduct their business. Police priorities are defined by PCCs. The only police authority that Suella Braverman has any influence over is the Met and that is restricted to its national responsibilities.

How did they know she wasn’t taking the photos on a ‘tut tut, see what that’s nasty women are saying’? I assume they are approaching this in the same was as someone making ‘pedophilic images’ ?

How did they know she wasn’t taking the photos on a ‘tut tut, see what that’s nasty women are saying’?

Oh, I’m sure it’s personal. I bet the people who saw her on CCTV and reported her recognised her and knew her to be a GC lesbian and decided to cause trouble for her.

So very sad in a small town partly revived by a community of lesbian women, to see community spying on each other and reporting to the authorities in this McCarthyesque way.

Shameful.

It is reminiscent of McCarthyism

Can’t believe we have to put up with it

Taking a photo doesn’t even imply approval or disapproval of the sentiment contained on the sticker.

This scares me to my very core. If we don’t protect the right to speak of those we disagree with, then no one really has the right to speak. Any idea or belief can fall out of favor.

The Police are doing themselves no favours with this sort of action. As for those stating Suella Braverman is on the case. It seems she deals in soundbites and I haven't noted actually any action resulting, it is not as if this type of case is anything new. "Suella Braverman said the Police in England and Wales must investigate every theft" we all know that is not practical even if Police numbers were doubled.

Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt."

C.S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

I was lucky not to get caught looking at one just up the road in Todmorden a few weeks ago.
Hotbed of sticker and local action.
See the threads about Cathy Boardman..
I was foolish enough to look at one on a postbox this morning.c

Wherever will it end!? I have LOOKED AT an image of that sticker AND MADE AN IMAGE AND DISTRIBUTED IT! Well, sent it in a WhatsApp to my friend. We are all destined for the Gulags.

Actually, this weekend, shall we all LOOK AT STICKERS and send pictures of ourselves to the police LOOKING AT STICKERS?

They be a weird bunch in Hebden Bridge

<nods sagely>