Authoritarianism in action?

Dickly Dirk

I see why you think it is an absurd course of action but, keep in mind, this was a highly volatile situation. Just say the police had allowed Man Utd supporters to wear the masks and large scale fighting had broken out either near or in the ground. It would have been the police who would have been charged with not keeping the peace well enough, so I sympathise with them doing all they could to defuse the situation.

fergus pickering

I don't know. I haven't been to a football match since the 1950s when the crowds were quite feral. Mind you. this was Easter Road in Edinburgh, a rough old place. The Scottish working class was a fearsome thing then. No doubt they are pussycats now.

Don Benson

Personally, Rod, I couldn’t care less what footballers or their fans call each other, whether on or off the field. I do, however, care that the police seem to be going down the authoritarian route with such obvious relish. It’s very dangerous for all of us.

Colin

"Thoughts?" Are they still legal?

I'm not surprised, really. The Police have been getting away with stuff like this for years now. Who remembers the state visit of that animal jiang zemin ? Innocent people taken off the street and bundled into police vans, for having the temerity to protest his visit. Or, the woman arrested and detained for daring to read out the names of our war dead at the Cenotaph?

I blame new labour - nasty, vile, authoritarian. In other words, a proper, full on, left wing regime.

Jeremy

As both clubs are now owned by the Americans, it is a complete mystery to me why the fans are still bothering to turn up and give them their money.

Surely any association of club and players to locality is now a dying - if not already dead - anachronism?

robbo

Don't worry, the "sponsors" have stepped in and the "problem" will shortly be "solved"

David Ford

I don't think the police were trying to protect Luis. I feel sure that they were trying to protect Liverpool FC.

After all, it would be unreasonable to lampoon an organisation with an unblemished track record of promoting the interests of BEMs.

Even worse to lampoon their public face, "King Kenny", his cool analysis and deft handling of the media is often exemplary.

Robert Taggart

Begs the question...
Will all these soon to be elected Police commissioners keep the Pigs in line ?
Not sure whether to vote for such as yet.

In2minds

Rod Liddle asks for our thoughts on authoritarianism in action. Well I don't do football but it is, so I'm told, clear what's going on, there are the rules of the game.

What is unfathomable with modern policing, at all levels and not just related to their approach to football, is the mad 'make it up a you go along' approach. It is authoritarian and gets everybody against them. It is unclear what they hope to have as a working relationship with the public for they loathe the public with a passion that must be part of the training.

They cannot seem to act rationally on any subject and they appear to like being this way. They wallow in the role of the victim, the misunderstood public servant, pathetic.

Ashley

I agree, Rod. The definition of "racism" has changed markedly in the last 30 years. Back then you had to be violently abusive to be deemed racist, now you can get banged up for something construed as racist by someone not even present when the supposed crime occurred - and that someone is usually a white person taking proxy offence. Where will it end?

AGS

Secular liberalism is the worst form of totalitarianism because, not possessing a standard by which it knows when to draw the line, it chooses to either draw no lines at all or purely arbitrary, ever-diminishing ones.
We need to get back to basics and always ask the question: is what we are proposing to do unto others what we would have others do unto us? If the answer is no, then lets get authoritarian and burn those who would transgress. This will work, honest.

andrew kerins

Fergus Pickering

I doubt very much that the crowds at Easter Road in the 1950s were 'feral.' Similarly, there was a strong sense of aspiring to be respectable among the Scottish working class at that time.

arnoldo87

@ Colin

Spot on - it's all New Labour's fault. Makes you yearn for the good old days of Maggie and the Miner's strike.

Now that's when the police knew how to be neutral and treat people with respect.

Herbert Thornton

I think that Rod is really asking a question about the right to own property. That right is deeply resented by the left.

The people who have these masks presumably own them. The masks are are part of the owners' property just as much as is the money in their wallets.

So what can we expect next? That the police will take to confiscating the cash in our pockets too if they feel like it?

Regislea

And we say the Germans don't have a sense of humour!

fergus pickering

Doesn't beg any question, Robert.

godot

Human Rights, Political Correctness, and Multiculturalism have paralyzed society. One of the few subjects it is still safe to comment on is the weather.

Wimpy Wuss

Take care with your words Rod lest the filth send 173 hooficers on a dawn raid to examine your kiddies'
knicker-drawers.

How could you suggest that the police might be authoritarian? You need a control order meladdo.

Lungfish

Has anybody else noticed how utterly dim most coppers are nowadays?

Slim Jim

Unfortunately, this is a result of trying to codify behaviour and change culture with legislation. Oh, but we can't even deport undesirable aliens thanks to the political class and their airhead 'useful idiots'. Do you think it might not be too long before it's a criminal offence not to shake hands at a football match?

Robert Taggart

@ Slim Jim. DESIST.
Do not jest about such things... you will only give 'them' ideas !

Kennybhoy

In2minds on February 13th, 2012 10:18pm and arnoldo87 on February 14th, 2012 12:09am:

Sadly true. The first real instamce of the this "make it up a you go along" approach dates back to the 1980s miner's strikes when they got away with setting up road blocks and preventing travel throughout large large parts of the country.

Kennybhoy

In2minds on February 13th, 2012 10:18pm and arnoldo87 on February 14th, 2012 12:09am:

Sadly true. The first real instamce of the this "make it up a you go along" approach dates back to the 1980s miner's strikes when they got away with setting up road blocks and preventing travel throughout large large parts of the country.

Slim Jim

Robert Taggart - I do apologise! However, we are well on the downward spiral to oblivion, and it's pretty clear that there is no political will amongst the current muppets in power to reverse the situation. Was I jesting?

terence patrick hewett

ugly game: ugly people.

Eddie

I always find it so ironic that the bullying, nasty, spiteful, lynch-mob-stylee persecution and witch-hunts of all those branded 'racist' (whether they are or not, and whether that is a problem if they don't discriminate because of their prejudice, is a whole other issue) - is so very reminiscient of the bullying, nasty, spiteful, lynch-mob-stylee persecution and witch-hunts black and Asian and Jewish people had once to endure as standard.

Oh the sweet bitter bullying irony of it all. The mob is the mob is tyhe mob - if they are racists or anti-racists, it's all the same really: the same instinct causing the same singling out and the same unfair and wrong destruction of the chosen victim.

DougS

Luis Suarez - another 'little scrote'!

Let me guess, Rod believes that all footballers are ('orrible/nasty/rat-faced/whatever) 'little scrotes'!

I think 'rich' ought to sneak in there somewhere as well.

fergus pickering

Well, they bloody terrified me. They pissed in beer bottles and threw them on the pitch. Of course I was only ten or so at the time and, being, English, I found most Scots foul-mouthed and terrifying. Later I learned to be like them and it got much better.

Paul Worthington

Thoughts Rod? Just gives you headaches. Life can be so much easier now, since the PC Plonkers took over PC Plod a while ago, and the Thought Police now do our thinking for us.

Baron

This young man called Luis Suarez may or may not be racist, Baron has no idea, but surely there’s no law compelling him to shake hands with anyone he doesn’t want to even when asked, it’s civility that often requires it, like before a football match, he obviously lacks it.

Confiscating the masks of the Manchester supporters was a pragmatic step, the masks were not to express deeply felt anti-racist feelings, but to enrage the Liverpool supporters, the plod got it right.

James Hodson

I support Liverpool. Because of this, I would rather any Liv players did well. More so, I would rather they both did well and behaved themselves. Suarez is a fool only to himself and his future. Dalglish has managed to screw up his history of excellence.

eyesee

Bear in mind that many of the people attending a football match are just as stupid as senior police officers, so the likelihood of a joke turning into a riot was probably high. It shouldn't be, but it is. That's the result of a decade and more of dedicated immorality from the top, leading to a self-centred 'me' generation.

rod liddle

Baron - I think I agree with that, about the bloke not being required to shake hands. However, his mistake was then telling his manager that he WOULD shake hands.