Somewhere There Is A Crime Happening

Recently leaked documents pertaining to upcoming privatisation of West Midlands and Surrey police forces have shown that the British Government plans to give over the investigation of crimes and detention of suspects to private companies. In other news they also plan to clone dinosaurs for an elaborate theme-park, televise blood-sports involving wrongly convicted felons and give control of the nations military to an experimental artificial intelligence. Yes that's right ladies and gentlemen the Tory's have finally proved that they do indeed have a vision for the future of Britain, a nightmarish dystopian vision of the future. Has anyone ever read a book or seen a film or played a game where having a private company run the police force was anything approaching a good idea. It's the plot of freakin' Robocop. The conservatives clearly never watched a single film ever.

Ladies and Gentlemen... The future of Britain!

Leaving aside the fact that the economy, which is entirely privatised, recently proved that private companies either don't have a clue what they are doing or are inherently evil. There's the much more important fact that private companies sometimes need to be investigated for crimes. Letting them run the police will somewhat hinder this. You're also giving the board of that company control of what is essentially they're own private army. Hey don't worry at least you can go out and protest against this ridiculous idea, that's your right as a citizen, it's not as if the private corporations have the power to stop you from protesting... it's not like they run the police or anything. You see there is a reason that a privately owned police force is a such a common plot device in fiction, it's for the same reason that evil alien flesh-eaters are so popular, it's because the idea is, rightly, terrifying.

The ED-209 will actually be Chancellor of the Exchequer

I'm not going to even remotely pretend that the police force in it's current independent form is perfect. However it is not answerable to the whims of profitability and the marketplace and that's a good thing for society. I know that a situation in which a CEO simultaneously runs both a cities security forces and it's criminal gangs thus benefiting from two revenue streams and slowly increasing his power through careful double play is incredibly unlikely, but it isn't impossible under this scenario. I don't know if anyone watched 'The Cape'... who am I kidding I know no-one watched 'The Cape' it was terrible to watch and it'll be worse to live... but even the outside possibility that a framed cop will fake his own death and team up with a gang of circus performing thieves to bring down the system is not enough of an upside to make me embrace the idea.

Especially when Vinnie Jones is part of the deal.

Private Corporations are answerable only to their share-holders as such the only thing that a private company cares about when operating the police force is going to be profits, especially when all of the share-holders will have there own personal security supplied by the police. This entire scheme opens the door for multiple competing police forces not sharing crucial information, to the wealthy being able to privately employ the police and to the possibility of a multi-tiered policing system based on independent fees a multi-level billing system. Also Robocop.

"My friends call me Murphy... you can call me Robocop"

Don't get me wrong I love the concept of living in a world with a Robocop in it, I'm just not keen on living in a world that requires a Robocop in it. Unless the Robocop thing is exactly what Theresa May is aiming for on this, and then she can have an army of cyborgs she can program to not think she's a complete insanonaught.

eddie <I'd buy that for a dollar>