it’s the animals fault.

No. If your dog attacks somebody, whether through provocation or just for the hell of it, it is your fault.

Like a gun you cannot blame a dog for the way it is used; you can blame the owner for not being trained or for poor handling, but then you need to ask – just like a gun – if that dog (that sweet, loveable, big old softy who wouldn’t harm a fly) was really necessary or was it just there to massage your wimpy ego.

I have a 19month old daughter who has the hugest smiles and gives wonderfully loving cuddles, who loves dogs (and cats, even tortoises!) but when one comes bounding up to her and the owner says it is fine for her to stroke the doggy I am on edge, ready to throw myself onto that potentially savage beast and save my daughter. She knows our rescue cats are quite contrary since one will have a swipe at her when he is in a foul mood and he thinks I’m not watching (and he knows too, since he has been tossed out into the rain for the night at least once as punishment, which is why he watches me too). But domestic cats DO NOT have the same attack capabilities as a dog: that one in America the other month was a one off, unlike all those other dog attacks that you can read about every other week.
Even apparently well trained dogs can flip – that police dog that attacked an arrested man, lying on the ground in Weston-Super-Mare, was obviously not under the control of its handler (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-27298762) when it lunged and grabbed the man, dragging him along by his shoulder – so what dog can you really trust?

So come on in, the door is open.

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Nice.

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The ‘public’ control themselves; criminals ARE a lower caste…..and DO need to be controlled!

Are they? So now we need to define the word ‘criminal’.

Do you ‘borrow’ pens from work, do you speed in your car or occasionally answer your mobile phone when driving? Just a few examples…

At least you used the word ‘some’ in you diatribe rather that smear the entire Police Force with the same brush!

Well, it must be statistically impossible for the whole police force to be corrupt…isn’t it?

You’ll have to forgive me but I only recognise three of the names that you listed…

Hmm.

Well, I went through your list of eleven people who ‘died at the hands of the Police’ and there is certainly cause for concern in most of these cases, BUT…

I did not say ‘died at the hands of the police’. I know that some of those did not die, but not for want of somebody trying.

…you did have to go back thirty-five years to 1979 to get just these eleven cases (there will be more obviously). And then there were cases of accidental shootings and mistaken identity, and as for the rest, well, as a sample of the ‘public’, they weren’t all exactly as-white-as-the-driven-snow were they?

There are more cases; I grew bored.
It is the accidental and mistaken cases which, in some ways, are the worst – it could just as easily been you or some other innocent member of the public, not even someone who (in your opinion) deserved it. And those who you believe to be scum – were they armed? Did they actually pose a threat at the moment of death? Or were they executed without trial, because a trained marksman was apparently so scared that instead of doing his job properly he shot an unarmed naked man, or a man with a mobile phone, or a man with a freshly restored table leg in a plastic bag…

Don’t get me started on that other ‘wonder’ weapon of the police service, the taser – a blind man with his white stick mistaken for a rampaging Samurai sword waving loony, anyone? How about tasing an epileptic on the floor in the middle of having a fit?

Yes, the Police could do better. No, no Police Force can never make any mistakes (especially given the circumstances of armed stand-off with potentially armed criminals or terrorists). So where do you suggest the Police go from here?

I guess you are going to tell me – it is your question, after all…

Better training? More money. Stricter recruitment policy? More money. No firearms? More dead Police, criminals and public. (So more money.) Same money? Fewer Police and more crime?

Why not properly declare a police state and destroy the illusion?
Look, I have had a police gun pointed at me by lazy coppers who went in like Rambo because they couldn’t be bothered to make enquiries: not proper, but any (see a previous thread).
You know that thing about give a man a fish…? Well, give a man a weapon of some sort and the macho gene kicks in: much better training would work wonders, but then you might be reguilding the already guilded lily.
But whatever solution is used there needs to be absolutely no accidental deaths of innocent or unarmed people – they are you and I and (to mash up an applicable quote from Boris) we have done nothing (no amount of pilfered Biro’s, even) to deserve a death sentence.

Anybody can sit at a keyboard and say the Police killed people they shouldn’t have; anybody can say they wouldn’t have made those mistakes…..anybody.

Indeed, unless they’ve been accidentally shot dead by a subsequently very apologetic police officer.

But while Police Officers are human beings, just like anybody, they’ll make mistakes.

And some of those mistakes are really dumb, the kinds of mistakes that wouldn’t be tolerated in – say – the army. And they get away with it!

I’ll be really interested to hear Gordon Brown’s views on what we should be doing with the economy too.

He has been remarkably quiet on the subject…

And to think he is a Middle East Peace Envoy spouting we should get involved,

Well, the wests appointed envoy…

Which probably means no one needs to take any notice of him. I know I’m not.

I’m probably going to be unpopular for this, but I actually agree with some of what Tony Blair has said recently.

Hissssss!!!

I think he’s quite right in saying that this would have happened with or without our intervention in 2003. Saddam was oppressing the population, and even if it hadn’t happened so soon, I believe that eventually there would have been a violent and bloody revolution.

No, Blair is not right in anything he says. Ever. Even when you think he sounds convincing.
Fact.
And it was never ‘our’ invasion: Shrub and Bliar took it away from any legal process when they ignored their own legal requirement concerning the search for WMD’s.
Anyway. Saddam was not oppressing the population as a whole – pedantic I know, but true. Apart from the Sunnis there were practising Jews who left it several years before emigrating to Israel since it was only after the invasion that they started being oppressed. And there has been many reports with interviewees claiming that things were better with Saddam in control; maybe they remembered little things like electricity or water being available 24 hours a day, or basic food supplies being available without having to bribe someone. Then there has been the various battles between the liberators and the religious factions who tried to take advantage of the situation, which did the population no good at all (unless they worked in the undertaking business).

I also agree that we need to meet this challenge head on. Showing tolerance to these intolerant Islamic groups will not result in peace, only growing sway for them. The fact that Al Qadea has an embassy in the Middle East is an affront to international relations.

Libya was friendly with the IRA, as were some politicians in America – not to the embassy stage, admittedly.
And we were tolerant of the Taliban, right up until we weren’t and invaded Afghanistan…

He is a vile man, who has caused harm to millions of people. His war was illegal, and he should stand trial for war crimes. He managed to unite warring Islamic factions under a common hatred of the Western world, and has created a legacy of violence and Islamic subjugation. But it should be our justice that he faces, nor backwards justice systems from countries that still believe that stoning people is okay in a civilized society.

And he is our war criminal, but don’t forget that he was not the only one pushing for invasion on the basis of false and misinformation.

Don’t have time to read all the previous at the moment but here is a thought…

But there isn’t much of it; it wouldn’t take long.

Be longer now, admittedly, so you should have read it then…;o)

…Britain / ‘the West’ gets a fair bit of blame for imperialism and all the ‘straight lines’ on the maps that we left all around the world but take Iraq for example; what was the experience of the average Iraqi in the decades before the self-rule under Saddam Hussain? How does that compare to the experience of the average Iraqi (and let us not forget the average Kuwaiti or Kurd) under Saddam Husain, the average Iraqi / Iranian during the Iran-Iraq war, or the average Iraqi in the last few weeks under ISIS?

In the main it was, apparently, not too bad – especially if you were on his favourable side of the fence; as I said above some parts of the population weren’t picked out any more than the rest (although some parts would have been on a more constant basis – the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs, for example). Obviously when the Iran/Iraq war was in full flow there would have been shortages and conscription (well, more than usual), and if your face or creed didn’t fit in with Saddams view of the world then you might be removed from his sight.
And after the invasion…well, we can guess. Attempts at overthrow, battles, massacres, attacks, counter attacks, kidnappings, etc. Some will have suffered greatly, others will have gotten away with relatively little stress.

Why not do some reading yourself. For pre invasion try Where is Raed? ( http://dear_raed.blogspot.co.uk/) – it goes back to 2002 (used to go back further – one of the earliest posts mentions that it won 2nd prize for blog design – but I believe it had to migrate from elsewhere) and its associate Salam Pax ( http://salampax.wordpress.com/) which covers more of the post invasion period. Neither are recent, though.
Riverbend (http://riverbendblog.blogspot.co.uk/) was a Young Iraqi woman who blogged about the invasion and occupation until she and her family apparently emigrated to Syria(!) in 2007, after which her blog stops, although in 2013 she blogged that she was now in a third Arab country.

I have no desire for Britain to rule or control Iraq but some, and I stress some, of the time that Britain ruled Iraq has got to compare pretty favourably with most of the time that Iraqis had control over their own destiny.

Britain never ruled Iraq. The Kingdom of Iraq was occupied by Britain until 1947 – to maintain the supply of oil (sound familiar?), and Iraq and Britain maintained contact throughout the remainder of the Heshemite rule, until the coup in 1958.
America ruled Iraq after 2003, and Britain had a small role thereafter.

Please, don’t disturb the cattle – they are disturbed enough with the knitted udders and stuff.

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Oh, you wanted this one instead…?

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