With thanks to Asda
Where that “being offensive is a crime” billboard came from:
So apparently they parked outside an Asda with their police state billboard, and had rewarding chats positive discussion with the shoppers – the essential shoppers. I suppose by “essential shoppers” they mean people who were at the shop for essential goods only, not anything frivolous – like having a chat about the illegality of being offensive.
Mostly just women, probably, essential shopping at Asda to pick up the beans on toast, the tea, the chip butties, the Weetabix. That’s good, because women are the people who don’t matter when it comes to being offensive, and the people who need to be punished when anyone says a man is not a woman. Women need the police showing up at their essential shopping, so that they the women can be told how to behave, and the police can feel they’ve made the world less offensive for The Trans Community.
I am reminded of Theresa May’s vans with billboards saying that if you were an illegal immigrant you should turn yourself in. I don’t suppose they did lead to many, or any, such people turning themselves in, but it was a good way of poisoning the social atmosphere, as if it were not poisoned enough already, and making it look as though the authorities were actually doing something for the benefit of the community of xenophobes. So with this van, and its little band of constabular missionaries button-holing ‘essential shoppers’ in ‘our community’ and preaching about ‘hate’ and what a terrible thing it is (I wonder when they are going to get round to the inessential shoppers, of which there must be quite a few). It is a pathetic show, designed to make it appear that the Merseyside police (not, as I recall, greatly noted for their kindness or efficiency) are ‘caring’ creatures. Were in Britain & a crowd of coppers came up to me and started rabbiting on about this sort of thing, I should tell them to bugger off & not waste my time & theirs. Are there no murders, no rapes, no burglaries, no petty crimes like pickpocketing or urinating in public that they might be dealing with?
This is just surreal. Police have moved into advertising and their message is a misquotation of the Equality Act. What is the product?
I have been told that since the last Labour government the Tories have reduced the number of police officers by 21,000 & closed 600 police stations in England & Wales. One supposes they are happy with the remainder being reduced to doing this sort of thing, which is, after all, much the same kind of thing that the present Tory government enjoys doing: lots of effusive and banal ad-executive talk while doing nothing important.