you Brits are f***ed

Yawn.

-- Subaru WRX Range Rover LSE (Bob)

'"gimme the f*ckin' money"

So what's new? They've been doing this for ages on the motorways.

Can only be a good thing. Nothing to fear, nothing to hide.

We are going to catch ten times more criminals.

That's terrible...

You have a point, also made in the article. The potential intrusion into civil liberty should not be taken lightly. The State cannot be relied upon to be benign or benevolent. Power actually can corrupt.

Huw

Well said.

Once again, like guns, what will happen is that the law abiding will be penalised, lose liberty, but the villains will simply find a way around it. False, or more accurately, cloned numberplates are an obvious way round the new system and are extensively in use already from what I've read. How long before an innocent person gets arrested for a crime because his cloned numberplate has been registered by a camera at a crime scene?

My recent dealings with a member of the Police over my stolen 90 don't fill me with joy regarding their attitude. A SOCO who's first comment to me on the phone when the 90 was found was "glad to see your tyre depth is OK" obviously hasn't got her priorities in order in my book and certainly has no conception of customer service. When she's also not interested in a list of the tools stolen with the vehicle one does question what her job description actually covers.

aghasee uttered summat worrerz funny about:

If there was a bobby on my shift only churning out 10 arrests a year then there would be some serious questions being asked even without such technology. I wouldn't ask an officer to lock up 100 crooks if I hadn't done it myself in a year. In the main I may add for "Priority" Crime. To those less in the know thats the likes of burglars and drug dealers.

Lee D

It's easier to create 10 times more criminals that are easier to catch than go after 10 times more currently adept at not getting caught criminals.

The real 'problem' in the UK is the attitude that we must legislate for everything. Anything hits the press, the Government response is almost certainly going to be something along the lines of "we will introduce legislation to"...

Now, nothing per-se wrong with tackling the effect, but little is being done to tackle the cause.

If anything, we've moved substantially to a culture of immediate guilt, where innocence has to be proved.

.. and more towards a scheme where not only is the above true, but guilt is assigned by automated camera-based systems reading easily faked ID tags. The innocent-have-nothing-to-fear brigade are way off the mark on this one.

Not sure I follow the logic of that last statement. I fear the sky falling on me, don't think that has any affect on me hiding the booze from my errant offspring! I fear (sic) the statement lacks some grammatical necessities before understanding.

Paricularly if you need to defend yourself......

Richard

Not if the penalty for faking is *massive*, something like a no-quibble ten year automatic sentence for false number plates or similar. It's that faking that needs to be stopped so that the criminal *knows* they are going to prison even if they have not yet commited the offence which they were planning. If their crime was simply avoiding the congestion charge then that's their problem. I can think of no reason for having false plates other than to commit *some* offence, likewise using someone else ID, having someone else's bank details etc etc. Of course there does need to be common sense applied, unlike Ken and his mates in London where people in Cheshire get a congestion charge ticket for a vehicle that does not match the photo (which usally seems to get lost in such circumstances). Indeed, that is when the camears based systems could come to the fore - someone in Cheshire cannot be in two places at one time.

Richard

That would be absurd, large sentences for faking a numberplate and small sentences for killing a person, it wouldn't stack up.

I'm sure this'll bring out comments of "large sentences for killing should be automatic", plenty of reasons why that shouldn't be the case and why no civilised country takes that approach.

Locking people up because they might be going to commit a crime of a type you don't know? Now you're *really* talking about a police state!

Hmm, people wanting to avoid being identified could include someone who isn't trying to hide from the law, just from the wife or husband while out on a dogging jaunt or somesuch. Or people who strongly object to being tagged and tracked by corporations and governments, despite not doing anything unlawful (I'd put myself in this category). I don't live in a glass house, I wear clothes rather than walk naked and if some random person wanted me to empty my pockets I'd tell them to sod off, however I don't have anything to hide.

The more that we're tagged and identifed, the more people are going to want to fake plates, e.g. someone out in the country with no public transport who's skint but has to drive down toll roads charged on license plates could well find themselves in the situation where they have to work but can't afford to pay the congestion charges that are likely to spring up all over the shop charged on your license plate. If they can travel for little cost in their car then rather than use expensive public transport and pay expensive congestion charges then they may well decide to fake their plates at least for a while in order to get back on financial track. 10 years punishment for that. It'll hit the poor most of all.

This is just one simple example, the more charges and bureaucracy that are foisted on us, the more ordinary people are going to want to wriggle. Slapping a 10-year sentence on a wriggle is a little OTT. Can you predict what amazing schemes various mayors and councils will scheme up in their idle hours once they have access to a means to automatically approximately identify citizens as they move around in their area? If you strongly object to some stupid scheme that some moron has dreamed up but the normal channels don't result in any changes (e.g try protesting against London Congestion Charge or most planning applications) then what do you do? How about a mass protest where people swap plates, 10 years jail term for all!

"Common sense" is one of those wonderful subjective things that people bandy about that mean one thing to them and the opposite to others. I'd say you've shown none on this subject but plenty on others. Remember that common sense dictated that the earth was flat and the stars and sun went around the earth.

So, Big Brother comes to life.... Erik-Jan.

no-quibble

offence

So what happens if in all innocence you buy a car with the wrong plates on it - should you go away for 10 years? This happened to one of my staff and it was only when he noticed that the security etching on the glass had two numbers reversed compared to the plates that it came to light. Garage (main dealer) had made new plates so it looked smarter to sell but the opperator who did it made an error.

AWEM

The size of sentances for murder/manslaugheter is another issue altogether.

No - they *have* comitted a crime - faking. Why should they do that, if not to cover another crime?

I can't see what your point is. It is already the case that if you can't afford, for example, to insure your car you shouldn't drive it and doing so is a offence. Nothing new there. If you want to cheat on your partner that is your problem.

And I would say exactly the same to you, so we'll just have to agree to disagree. You should try living on an "estate" as I do to see what the real world is like, it was a huge shock getting there after the "nice", "comfortable" world that those who bang on about civil liberties seem to live in, and I used to.

Richard

The matter gets investigated, as it obviously was, and resolved, as it obvioulsy was - there is no change there excpet the ease of detecting the error.

Richard

So you're going to go by numbers to judge an officer's performance. Perhaps some officers are better at their jobs than others and can integrate, talk to the public in a polite and civil manner and help avoid arrests. But you're going to stop that because their heavy handed pals are locking up groups of protestors by the dozen therefore making their arrest record look, those officers who are good at their jobs are going to be pulled up because they managed to get the ringleader. Man, someone's thought this through well. Machines are soo good at sorting these situations out, aren't they?

Spoken like a man that's never been wrongfully accused and treated by police officers in a way that I wouldn't treat a dog. Not me, someone I know well. It really scares me to think that a serving police officer would take such a light view of arrests. I know we're pretty much in the EU already with all the nastiness therein (and the day we join the EU, goodbye to uk members in alt.fan.landrover) please remember two words next time you think about arresting someone - "habeas corpus"

Tell the serfs to focus on the right people, not numbers!

Regards

William MacLeod

snipped-for-privacy@macleod-group.com uttered summat worrerz funny about:

In part yes, numbers are easy to qualntify but only a small part of the big picture.

Indeed, but 90 of them?

No, personally I've never locked up a protestor, In 12 Years I've never been accused of assaulting a person during arrest either. Your making an assumption that theres a natural attraction to locking up protestors to bump up numbers I think. I said in the origional reply my arrests in the period measured were in the main "Priority" crime suspects.Protestors aren't a priority for the Public at large, Indeed I spent 5 days away from home last year ensuring Protestors could exercise their right to protest in a different country. Hope that clarifies that at least.

No officers I'm aware of get paid per item. What would be an issue would be if one officer is making 10 arrests and the rest of the shift 100 in a year. That would lead me to examine why.. though normally I'm pleased to say it's because they have been office bound for a period of that year, or sick, or on maternity leave for example. Some are less confrontational which can lead to them not being ascertive enough to perform their appointment, this is an issue.

Wrong, (in fact add another to the list)

I love this bit, it's so predictable.....

Now I'm disappointed, no war story!

Arrests are part of a bigger picture. My view is that the figures in the site provided are either from a small island fortunate enough to have very few criminals, perhaphs Balamory, or seriously made up. They could be an average of arrests against a police forces establishment , that should be stated in the quote though as it's very misleading to suggest that any device would increase the average across the establishment to 100 if that is the case.

I'll ignore the politics completely as I don't do politics.

I admit I had to look this up... it's big words you see and I'm only a bobby.

Now there are some big words in there but I think I understand that. And your point is?

Is that like Priority Criminals? where the Priority is decided by the people not the police? How do the people monitor if the Serfs are focusing on the right people without numbers? Sticking a finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing is only as good as the persons it's attached to and their Opinion. I personally as a recent victim of crime as well as a serving officer would not care for opinions, I like to see facts.

Now I'll comment no more in this thread but am happy to continue by email, which I'll gladly copy and paste to web space for those who feel the need. This is after all AFL and not death.by.opinion.

Lee