Police State

In the Peak District over-zealous police officers reacted to new powers like Tigger with a new toy. They poured foul black dye into a picturesque lake to discourage tourists. The likely effects on wildlife and the environment were less important than being tough. 

Even the rightwing journalists of the Spectator have been constrained to criticise the police for the ludicrous overreaction to gaining new powers in the C-virus crisis.

This is the article

" 'A hysterical slide into a police state. A shameful police force intruding with scant regard to common sense or tradition. An irrational overreaction driven by fear.' These are not the accusations of wild-eyed campaigners, they come from the lips of one our most eminent jurists Lord Sumption, former Justice of the Supreme Court."
 

Giving the police extra powers under any pretext is a stupid move. It is a knee-jerk reaction to the government's previous refusal to take the C-virus seriously and their continued failure to protect key workers from the virus.

The police themselves have suffered from Tory cuts and they have had many officers taken out of the equation by self-isolation. However, there are some police officers for whom brute force and ignorance is the only solution for any problem.

To give Boris Badenough (and therefore his puppet master Dominic C) dictatorial powers for an unlimited period will be an example of a cure being worse than the disease.

The working class (mainly the trade union and political activists) will draw the appropriate conclusions from the abject and pathetic failure of capitalism to cope with the C-virus.

It is a good thing, for example, that NHS staff are no longer being charged for parking at NHS hospitals. The scandal is that they were ever charged in the first place. And Boris Badenough supported every austerity measure which made such penny-pinching inevitable.

Capitalism is incapable of dealing with this crisis. The profits of billionaires like Branson are more important than the lives of key workers. Socialism could be the only way out of this situation. Listen to how people are talking in the street. This system has let them down catastrophically and the Labour movement needs to provide answers.