Avoiding Responsibility

I know I wrote about something similar earlier, but this came into my mind this morning, and this is the most convenient outlet for it.

As was my thesis before, travelling to foreign countries is great because you get to see how different people deal with the same issues in different ways. When the differences are big, its pretty easy to accept; thats just the way they decided to do it.

It's the really small things that you notice that really make me stop and think, and particularly here in the UK, where my ancestors (both literally and figuratively, in ie the people who set up my country) came from here. I think part of the problem is that we have so much in common, its only really small details that stand out. Oh, and the constant rain.

But to my point - today was an interesting day. I was walking across campus to get to work, when I inadvertantly walked through the middle of a film set. I was still asleep (it was 10:30am, so it is understandable) and just wandered it, thankfully I didn't actually walk into camera line before I noticed the cranky looking woman waving her arms at me. So that's what all those police were doing everywhere - supposedly telling people where they could and couldn't walk. So I avoided an angry confrontation with a director for ruining what would inevitably be the perfect take that I had ruined, and continued onto work. At the entrance to my building were two more cops, one a general duties bobby, the other one of the 'armed response teams'.

For those that don't know, the vast majority of cops in the UK are armed only with their rapier-like wit and assorted bad language. Oh, they have those great hats, but there is no firepower hidden underneath them (in both senses). With the rise in gun violence in the UK over the past twenty years, the government created 'armed response teams'; specially trained police with guns.

Now in Australia, it is not unusual to see a police officer with a gun. As far as I am aware all police in Australia are required to be carrying their firearm whilst on duty. And it was only a few years ago that in my home state of New South Wales that the standard issue weapon was changed from a 6-shot revolver to a Glock 9mm semi-automatic. I remember being in the Cub Scouts as a wee lad, having a demonstration from one of the local policeman of his revolver. Police with guns is not so strange for me. Police without guns is strange.

But the police without the guns isn't the thing that stuck in my head today. What stuck in my head was the police over here that do have guns. When the government decided that they needed armed police, they didn't follow the path that they normally do here and make a half-hearted attempt (cf. the introduction of the 'smoking ban' in England). No, on this issue, they weren't f**king around. They laughed at the revolvers, skipped over the semi-automatic handguns and went straight for the Rolls Royce of submachine guns, the Heckler & Kock MP5:

Add to that the flack jacket, and the guys and girls ending up looking like this:

Now, I've never fired a real MP5, but I have used it extensively whilst playing Counter Strike, and it really isn't the most accurate weapon. Why they are issuing undertrained, nervous teenagers these weapons to patrol the streets with - yeah, I don't feel particularly safe.

The most interesting aspect is that one of my mates from uni, from Southern Greece with dark hair and dark skin, said that the International Office at his university back home was telling people not to run to catch public transport of any type. Yeah, feeling really safe now!!!