A Nanny-state roundup

A gaggle of random tidbits from the formerly mighty British Empire, now sadly transformed into a faded laughingstock of a Nanny state:

1.  Two Australian feral youths attacked a police officer and continued to punch and kick him while the cop was unconscious even after his partner, apparently conditioned by that PC society to be afraid of his own service firearm, drew down on the thugs and unsuccessfully ordered begged the teens to stop bashing his coworker:

"Police prosecutor Kieren Self said Constable Chris Shanco drew his firearm while his colleague Constable Karl Ah Shay was being bashed at Innisfail on Saturday, only to be goaded by one of the attackers who asked him: 'Are you going to shoot us?'."

Seems like a completely justified use of deadly force to us.  Feel free to come to your partner's defense at any time, Constable Shanco.  Any time indeed.

One wonders what would happen if the victim hadn't been a "special person" - would Shanco have simply run away in tears?

Sadly, the story gets even more pathetic.  The article reports that the attack continued until innocent bystanders stopped it.

Don't count on being protected by the police Down Under.  It says a lot for the law-abiding population there that even after their government has completely disarmed them, effectively preventing them from defending themselves, they're still willing to bail out the cops who apparently won't even help themselves. 


2.  Several hundred cops in Nottingham, England hit the city streets on a recent Saturday night to unlawfully detain, search, metal detect, drug test (!) and otherwise completely violate the civil rights of a large number of law-abiding teens who were engaged in nothing more sinister than riding the local buses, all in the name of knife control:

"The major operation involved 200 officers as part of a Home Office project targeting 13 to 24-year-olds.
Officers and a specially-trained dog met young people coming off a number of bus routes. 

Metal detectors were used in an effort to find concealed weapons while drug testing was also carried out."

Perhaps most tellingly, the article fails to inform the reader just how many evil, banned knives were recovered during this overkill of an operation, which leads us to believe that none were found - which renders this "Checkpoint Charlie" approach to crime-fighting a complete waste of public resources, not to mention an appalling abuse of authority. 


3.  Teachers at a school in Wiltshire, England left a five-year-old boy stranded alone in a 20-foot-tall tree after he climbed it during a recess period because those pesky "health and safety" regulations that seemingly rule every facet of life over there apparently expressly forbid them from helping kids out of such a predicament.

Incredibly, the supposed "adults" left the kid alone and returned to class:

"But instead of helping him, staff followed guidelines and retreated inside the school building to ‘observe from a distance’ so the child would not get ‘distracted and fall’."

This "observation" went on for forty-five minutes.

Finally, a 38-year-old woman (and mother of a six-year-old herself) with an ounce of common sense named Kim Barrett happened along the street beside the deserted schoolyard and helped the poor tot down, returning him to the building.  Was the staff thankful? Yeah, right.  They had Ms. Barrett arrested for trespassing:

"Miss Barrett, a part-time cleaner, said: ‘I felt really angry because I felt I had saved the school and this boy from something that could have been far worse, and that instead of thanking me I was under investigation.

‘It was ridiculous. He was all on his own, there was no one near him and you couldn't see the school buildings from where he was.

‘Not only was he at least 6ft off the ground, but someone taller than me could easily have reached in from the pavement and plucked him off the branch.

"The school say he was being watched but that's impossible because there is no line of sight from the school building to the tree. 

'I am a mother myself and I find it a bit ridiculous that the school's policy is to leave a child up a tree. I would be very angry if this happened to my child.

'I think this is a big cover up and that the school obviously had no idea he was there. When I took him in they had no idea he was missing.'"

Undoubtedly.  We think that Ms. Barrett could run that school a whole lot better than the buffoons who are currently in charge. 


4.  Sal Miah, who owns a curry restaurant in East Sussex, England, caught two teen hoodlums red-handed smashing into his beer cooler.  He stopped them, sat them down by the bar in his place and called the cops, who promptly showed up and arrested... Mr. Miah, for assault and battery:

"The married father-of-five spent five hours in a police cell and had his DNA, fingerprints and police mugshot taken.

Mr Miah, who has run the Raj Poot restaurant in Crowborough, East Sussex, for 14 years, was finally released at 4am after receiving a caution for assault and battery, which will stay on his record for five years."

Insanity.

"As officers put him in the back of a patrol car, he said the laughing yobs (a large gang of the youths' friends, who showed up and tried to kick in the door of the restaurant in order to free their buddies) hurled abuse and mocked him with shouts of 'You're nicked'."

Mr. Miah sounds like a sensible, upstanding citizen.  It's a real shame we're seemingly never again going to travel to England due to just this type of out-of-control youth violence.  We would otherwise gladly patronize his establishment. 


5.  A South Shropshire, England woman has been prosecuted by the Crown for failing to turn in to the government an old coin she found in her own garden when she was a little girl:

"A court heard the silver piedfort marking Charles IV's ascension to the French throne in 1322 was discovered by Miss Harding 14 years ago as she worked in the garden with her mother.
Following her mother's death a short time later, Miss Harding kept the 1.4g item as a memento until she eventually approached museum experts with it last year who identified it as a piedfort, but she did not inform the coroner...

...Under the Treasure Act 1996, treasure is defined as any single object at least 300 years old which is not a coin but has a precious metal content of at least 10 per cent. 

The Act gives a finder 14 days to inform the local coroner of potential treasure and creates an offence of failing to carry out that duty where this is not followed."

It seems that there no longer is such a thing as private property rights in England, and the government can just come in willy-nilly and take anything they wish simply because they can.

"Treasure Act", indeed.  Let's not give our Congress any ideas.  The Antiques Roadshow folks must be sweating bullets right about now.


This is the model society that our dear President would have us emulate.  Please help stop him.