Chasing the embers – Met under fire

Chasing the embers – Met under fire

I came across an editorial review by Daniel Trilling recently. Daniel Trilling is the author of Lights in the Distance, about refugees in Europe and in his article “Not Much like Consent: Crisis at the Met” published in London review of books Vol 45, No7 he reviews Broken Yard: The Fall of the Metropolitan Police by  Tom Harper.Biteback, 446 pp., £20, October 2022, 978 1 78590 768 5 and Tango Juliet Foxtrot: How Did It All Go Wrong for British Policing? by  Iain Donnelly.Biteback, 341 pp., £20, November 2021, 978 1 78590 716 6 it’s an interesting book review, although I don’t end up with what I hoped. I hoped to learn more about the two reviewed books but got a summary presented much like an opinion paper. On the face of it I agree with a lot of the content but have an aside to some. Overall, the review has limited criticality and lacks the anchoring in peer reviewed academic research and literature that I am used to, but, it was readable and understandable. Firstly, the only thing we...
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Re-enacting Raoul Moat , poor taste or necessary reminder?

Re-enacting Raoul Moat , poor taste or necessary reminder?

Raoul Moat…2010, his frenzy left his ex girlfriend seriously wounded, her boyfriend dead and a policeman disabled ( he later took his own life) all within a week of being released from a light sentence for assaulting his 9 year old child. This reenactment on ITV this weekend invokes mixed feelings. There’s the confusion those who celebrated and continue to celebrate this man invoke. Their parlay is that he is a hero because he announced his intention was to execute police officers ( he indicated he had chosen to kill because he thought his ex girlfriend was dating a policeman). Then there’s the reopening and reawakening of old wounds and trauma for the family of Samantha Stobbart - his ex girlfriend, Chris Brown’s family - Chris was Raoul’s his first target and he was executed in cold blood and PC David Rathband was an opportunistic tager who was disabled after being shot point blank by Moat ( Rathband commited suicide 20 months later) But...
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Digital discourse, Nigerian elections and  tribal affairs- Who are you and Why are you?

Digital discourse, Nigerian elections and tribal affairs- Who are you and Why are you?

In recent months, Great Britain has had a rather tumultuous time. For me the biggest surprise was the resignation of the Scottish prime minister Nicola Sturgeon before I acclimatised to the resignation of the New zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern Politics has never ever been my strongest point, but I felt these two women were representative of the need for women to have meaningful seats in places where it matters. In other british politics, It has felt like there is hope for meaningful intersectionality in leadership of Britain, although I suspect that if anything goes awry with the current PM’s tenure, the brays will inevitably become racial and everything will be reduced to heritage. That said, I am British, as much as I am permitted to be given the persistence of questions like “ but where are you originally from” and the old age “where did your people come from” , which we know are not politically correct but then again, why rob...
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Bricks, streets, and the beat- what do they do in police stations?

Bricks, streets, and the beat- what do they do in police stations?

What do they really do in those great big buildings?…… “they should be able to catch local louts and criminals faster, my daughter can find them on social media without looking, theyre online showing off while committing offences….” . As I trawl through hansard reading elaborate protestations and propositions interspersed with assertions of the kind of capabilities and capacities police forces should have I am intrigued and thrown into thought. Something also grabs my attention.  A large volume of political and apolitical discussions are postured on the assumptions that police forces are ably funded, remarkably well equipped and serviced with state of the art technologies and tools. Besides this the questions, demands and requests all motivate arguments for efficacious use of the extensive innovative tools and methods of surveillance and capture police forces have. Are they perhaps referring to tools and equipment never mind capacities that I missed out on seeing somewhere or perhaps what is being asserted exists in a parallel...
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To precis or not, review you must

To precis or not, review you must

A lot of students often have to do essays just like in academia, writing a paper for a conference or for journal publication is run of the mill. One of the things I did not have when I did my undergraduate was a specific course devoted to research methods, but my MSc modules were all research and theory hybrids which threw me into a space that pushed me to learn and adapt quickly. I lost a lot of my undergraduate portfolio to a strange and sudden computer crash right after I finished my first degree which took all of my work and left me with nothing when I was asked for examples of my work, not even a copy of my thesis was spared, but through my MSc I kept things in different places so that when I transitioned and again with another IT woe, my laptop needing a replacement was not as painful and data loss was not as bad. So...
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