I will get to the subject of Hertfordshire Police in 2025 in due course. First, answer me this: “Why didn’t anyone speak out during the Salem witch trials, given how incredibly fake they were?”
I came across this question in a tweet from someone calling themselves “Science Banana”. Mr or Ms Banana goes on to describe how the Salem accusers started off by denouncing easy targets – two women of questionable repute and a slave. But they did not stop there.
Their next choice was very shrewd. The fourth person the “afflicted girls” accused was a highly religious and respectable woman who had publicly expressed skepticism of their ridiculous bullshit. She was immediately arrested and imprisoned.
Genuine belief would do for most; preference falsification would keep the rest quiet.
After the skeptic, the next “witch” accused and imprisoned was an elderly church lady of spotless reputation. And the same day, a four-year-old girl. She went to prison too. At that point, the accusers knew they could get away with anything.
The Salem Witch trials are usually cited “as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolation, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.” The evil consequences of all these things were indeed made clear in the witch hunt, which cost at least twenty-five innocent people their lives. But the affair was also a tale of boiling the frog.
Now I’ll talk about what Hertfordshire Police were up to last week. Frederick Attenborough of the Free Speech Union tells the increasingly odd story of Hertfordshire Police vs two primary school parents:
A story that seemed troubling enough when it emerged over the weekend is turning out to be even worse than it first appeared, with the strange willingness of Hertfordshire Police to intervene in a debate at a primary school proving ever stranger.
On Saturday, the Times reported that in late January six uniformed officers in three marked cars and a van had been sent to arrest Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine after their child’s school, Cowley Hill Primary, objected to a series of emails and “disparaging” comments in a parents’ WhatsApp group. As the police carried out a search of the house, the couple were detained in front of their three year-old daughter, before being held in cells for eight hours. And all this for querying the recruitment process for a new headteacher.
Accused of “casting aspersions” on the chair of governors in an “upsetting” way, they were then questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property.
Following a five-week investigation the police concluded there was insufficient evidence and took no further action – although the knock at the door, the squad vehicles and the highly public arrest by half a dozen officers must have felt like quite a punishment already.
No wonder that Mr Allen, a producer at Times Radio, said the couple’s treatment represented “massive overreach” by Hertfordshire Police. He told the Times: “It was absolutely nightmarish. I couldn’t believe this was happening, that a public authority could use the police to close down a legitimate inquiry. Yet we have never even been told what these communications were that were supposedly criminal, which is completely Kafkaesque.”
But it now transpires that the force’s intervention wasn’t restricted to Mr Allen and Ms Levine. Hertfordshire Police also warned Michelle Vince, a local county councillor, to stop helping the family by sending emails to the school on their behalf – or risk being investigated herself.
On this occasion, the police attempt at intimidation backfired because Mr Allen is a producer at Times Radio and therefore had instant access to the national press. You can listen to him talk about what happened here. The fact that the police felt confident to proceed as they did strongly suggests that they have done this before to less well-connected people and it worked.
As the article says, it gets worse.
And still there’s more. The email to Ms Vince asked her to forward the warning to anyone she’d cc’ed when contacting the school. This included the local Conservative MP, and former Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Oliver Dowden.
Ms Vince said she felt “uncomfortable” passing on the warning to Sir Oliver. For his part, he was “astonished that a situation could have arisen where any police officer could think it would be remotely acceptable to suggest that an MP should be curtailed in carrying out their democratic duties”.
First a local councillor, then an MP. Note that when the police tried to intimidate a bunch of stroppy parents they did not know that one of them had a job with a national newspaper, but when they tried to frighten Councillor Michelle Vince and Sir Oliver Dowden MP (not just a Knight of the Realm and an MP, but a former Deputy Prime Minister – think about that) into ceasing to represent their constituents, the police knew exactly what these people’s roles were. To stop Councillor Vince and Sir Oliver performing the duties of their elected positions was the point. I rather think that the eminence of Sir Oliver was part of the point, too. They thought they could get away with anything.
The police probably thought of themselves as fearlessly taking on the powerful, a motive which has also been ascribed to those young girls in seventeenth century Salem. But if they really wanted to fearlessly show that no one is above the law, they could have directed the six uniformed officers in three marked cars and a van to arrest someone who might fight back.
I noted in pictures of the police that one was standing around with his hands in his pockets.
And Prime Minister Starmer (a lawyer – he knows the vile mess the law, and the “Justice system”, is in) says, with a straight face, that we have Freedom of Speech in Britain.
On the police – this is where the “training” and “policies”, and the forcing out of officers who reject the collectivist indoctrination, has led the United Kingdom.
As for the Salem Witch Trials – I can think of only one good thing that came out of the horror, one of the people involved, Judge Sewall, came to doubt, and be ashamed of, his assumptions – how he had gone along with the mob. Not just about claims that people were witches – but also about other things.
In 1700 he wrote “Selling Joseph” the first condemnation of slavery to be written in the American colonies.
Until people lose their jobs, pensions, and liberty for acting like this, nothing changes.
We need some kind of Morality DOGE with the competence to expose such shocking behaviour by the police and to remove/shut-down entire sections involved. But first we need a political party to take this on, and be elected to do so.
This is what happens when your government has no fear of you.
So, everyone agrees that ACAB, then?
(I can’t get any sense whatsoever of what the, uh, “suspect” actually did from the post itself, I’m afraid, without following a multitude of links. I’ve an idea from one of them that he was opposed to the school appointing the deputy to act as an interim head whilst they recruited or something?)
I’d go so far as to say that the percentage of cops who are bastards is slightly higher than the percentage of the general population that are bastards, but only because cop jobs probably appeal to bastards.
But cops are just social workers and guards with a phyical authority that derives down from their bosses, and they value their jobs and their pensions just like the rest of us do, and so when their bosses structure their new job paradigm, most cops will go along to get along.
I’d shoot the bosses – the politicians making the laws and rules and expectations – before I shot the cops.
“I can’t get any sense whatsoever of what the, uh, “suspect” actually did from the post itself . . . “
I noticed that too. Seems to be the norm in a lot of stories – the actual outrage is only referred to as “the outrage” without a definition that lets us decide..
I’m pretty sure that the guy is objectively incorrect.
There’s a whole thing to be discussed about how this could have been handled differently without getting the popo involved, which is being missed.
A simple “mate, calm yourself down” should have been enough, but no, he needed to get the cops involved.
There are far too many people who had their pigtails pulled when they were 4 years old or whatever, and are too comfortable with calling the cops now.
Honestly, grow the utter fuck up, and learn to rely on your mates if you’re not hard enough to fight back.
One of the principle problems in Salem was the acceptance of “spectral evidence”, which effectively meant that the court could largely take anything and, at their discretion, declare it incriminating evidence. Today “spectral evidence” has a new name. It is called “hate speech” and the authorities can largely declare anything hate speech. Which is to say freedom of speech has been extinguished in Britain, and the due process of law has mostly gone — the police can get anyone who is inconvenient or troublesome.
Needless to say just as standing up against the witchcraft trials was evidence you were one of them, so too, standing up against this British tyranny is almost a guarantee you’ll be hearing from the British Stasi. It is a self reinforcing system.
Seriously, if you want to live in Britain today you have to live as if you were living in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. At least you Brits still have the right to move out of that tyranny into a safer place.
People are moving out of the UK, in droves, starting from the top.
The UK is in the midst of Weimar Republic level of political and economic failure, and all of the elite mediocracy are smugly proud of themselves.
You are too kind, Perry.
Bring back cruel and unusual punishment!
Perry – people lose their jobs, pensions, and liberty for OPPOSING this.
Police officers who refused to act like this would be out on their ear. And, more and more, dissent is being treated as a crime – indeed under various laws dissent is a crime.
Remember the old assumptions of the Common Law (the non aggression principle) have long been rejected – today the law is whatever the state (the officials and so on) believes will promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number, there is no right of resistance.
Britain is now the land of Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and Jeremy Bentham – in their own time they were considered freaks, but now they are the mainstream orthodoxy.
That is exactly why I said what I said.
The police told Cllr Vince to stop helping them. But That’s. Her. Job.
Remember that Plod is only doing its job. The issue is that we think it is to catch criminals. The reality is it is to enforce the will of the state.
This plan and its execution has been building up for 100+ years. The state doesn’t like us. We should just be serfs and pay over the money that they want without any arguments so they can enrich themselves. They don’t want to risk anything so they disarm us and make laws that restrict protest. Then when we cause any issues they then come down on us to make an example of us where the punishment is the process of being investigated, named, shamed and after they have searched your house for anything at all that can be made to put you in a negative like, PDF of Mein Kampf, subscribed to Tommy Robinson on YT, decorative samurai swords (I’m not even sure what is banned here as Samurai swords are different from Ninja swords but our useless government don’t care. Oh. pointy, might have someones eye out)
Of course reserved for the bad ones that really upset them you have child porn found on their phones or in their emails.
Stalin would have loved this but just didn’t have the technology. Two Tier has and you can see it being used to clamp down on us.
FFS. These Captchas…… I’m done.
Lord T – sort of correct, but the officials of the state sincerely believe they are doing what is best for most people. Remember they do not believe in natural law, in the non aggression principle, in the basic assumptions of the old Common Law – even judges as far back as Lord Denning (very popular among Conservatives who did NOT pay close attention to his words and actions) rejected the old jurisprudence as a bore.
Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and Jeremy Bentham are now the norm – their view that there is no right of resistance (indeed no rights, in opposition to the state) and even their view of what a human is.
None of these three thinkers really believed in the human person – in the “I”.
They all thought that humans do not have souls – either in the religious or the Aristotelian sense.
Imagine a state that believed that humans have no souls – that humans are not human beings, are not persons.
Well you do not have to imagine it – just look around.
That does not mean that the state does not want to make these “people” happy – no the truly terrible thing is that it does.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s closer to early 30’s Germany than 70’s USSR.
jdh.
No – the modern view of a councillor is that they are there to promote state policies, such as Diversity and Inclusion (see, for example, the Equality Act 2010 – and the duties it lays down).
A councillor, or even a Member of Parliament, is not there, according to the modern view, to represent “reactionary” residents or constituents – not AGAINST the state, but rather the elected representative is there to help the resident or constituent get benefits or services from the state. And to promote Progressive attitudes and behaviour.
I am not saying I agree with the modern view – I am just explaining what it is.
After all supporting “reactionary” residents might imply that one shared their opinions and, therefore (according to the modern view – of the training colleges and so on) deserved to share their punishment.
@neonsnake
I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s closer to early 30’s Germany than 70’s USSR.
I don’t wish to belabor the point, but I actually disagree, and I think the difference is worth mentioning. There is no rising Hitler in Britain, there is no nationalistic fascism. The roots of fascism is the idea of a bunch of sticks bound together to make the whole stronger than the individual. Fascism is a terrible ideology but it is not a weak, self hating, hopeless ideology. It is an idea of striving together to achieve greatness, of a hopeful future, of believing in themselves, of purifying the heretics. Of course the thing they strive for and the future they hope for is repugnant to all decent people.
However, when compared with life under the Soviets it is really quite different. The Soviet system was one of hopelessness, powerlessness, muddling by against impossible forces. There was no striving together for something new and better. No charismatic leader calling the people to overthrow their oppressors and move into the lebensraum. What that Nazis did was horrible, nonetheless it was done with energy, self confidence and enthusiasm. What happened in the Soviet union was one of capitulation and hopelessness. Not of growth but of managed decline.
And that is Britain today. Not hopeful of a great and better future (as was the case, for example, in Britain through the 19th century). No striving for greatness. No desire to make Britain great again. Rather, it is managed decline. Capitulation to forces beyond their control. The idea of Net Zero is: “sure your life is going to suck a lot more, but at least the earth won’t be burned to a crisp, and that would really suck.” Of course the second part is not true. But the self righteous preening of the bein pesants leads to a bleak hopelessness, devoid of energy and passion.
Those who strive for success, growth and a better life are definitely swimming against the tide in Blighty. This home of the industrial revolution, this empire that educated and brought democracy to the world, this home of capitalism, this mother of of civil rights is brought to ruin through self loathing and socialism. It is one of the great tragedies of history really.
I think that some of the environmentalists are very passionate about their cause. The problem of course being that they are profoundly ignorant and hopelessly misguided.
Stonyground – one should make a distinction between rational and irrational environmentalists.
For example, a rational environmentalist, who believed (rightly or wrongly) that carbon dioxide emissions produce dangerous global warming, would support a massive expansion of nuclear power – perhaps by lots of simple (and rather small) modular reactors (now that the technology is no longer restricted).
An irrational one would, at the same time, denounce carbon dioxide emissions – AND oppose the expansion of nuclear power.
I’m simplifying massively, but the main reasons for people feeling hopeless in the UK today are pretty simple – our wages aren’t keeping up with inflation.
Young people today are saddled with enormous student debt, having been told that “they need to go to university if you want to get a decent job”, at the same time as house pricing has gone through the roof.
The bit that really got me was talking a member of my team, who had £60k of student debt. That’s a bit higher than average, because she didn’t come from a wealthy family, but the average in 2023 (at the time I spoke to her), was roughly £44k. At the same time, housing is now massively out of reach – the 3-bed house I bought for £60K in 1999 (with a 6k deposit), I sold for £194k in 2008 and last changed hands for £350k in 2017.
I finished university in 1998 with zero debt. Did I work very hard? I mean, sure. Working six hours on a Sunday at 20 years old was *painful*, what with the hangovers that one would expect a 20 year old lad to be rocking on a Sunday. But, I was on 1.99 per hour. Still managed to pay my rent, food (inc. beer, etc) and come out with no debt – with six hours work on a Sunday. That’s simply not possible anymore.
Yeah, they’ve lost hope. I don’t blame them, that hope has been taken away – they’re massively in debt, and pricing is through the roof.
Every year, they get poorer – I got a 4% pay rise this year (not bad!), but my council tax is 5% higher, my water bill is 14% higher, my broadband is 8% higher.
I keep track of groceries as best I can (I run a quiet food business on the agora/grey markets, so it’s important to me to keep track), and my groceries are roughly 14% higher than last year, on a Like For Like basis.
It ain’t “socialism” that’s pushed those prices up. It’s whatever bastard phrase you want to use to describe our current capitalist system. I use “actually existing capitalism” to differentiate it from “freed markets”, because that seems to me to be the most accurate.
Whatever hope there is, it’s not coming from charismatic leaders. Not to be 1984 about it, but it comes from people on the grey markets (or maybe black), with people embracing the mutual aid principles that sometimes come up (eg. during Covid times), and with ignoring the bloody regulations that stop us from doing stuff as a community. It’s about people removing themselves from their reliance on wage labour, to the extent that they can (never 100%, but whatever extent is better than nothing), and *doing stuff for themselves*.
@neonsnake
I’m simplifying massively, but the main reasons for people feeling hopeless in the UK today are pretty simple – our wages aren’t keeping up with inflation.
I wish people understood that “inflation” is another word for “excessive government spending”. I think if they did we would live in a very different world.
Whatever hope there is, it’s not coming from charismatic leaders. Not to be 1984 about it, but it comes from people on the grey markets (or maybe black), with people embracing the mutual aid principles that sometimes come up (eg. during Covid times), and with ignoring the bloody regulations that stop us from doing stuff as a community. It’s about people removing themselves from their reliance on wage labour, to the extent that they can (never 100%, but whatever extent is better than nothing), and *doing stuff for themselves*.
I’m not sure about the “grey/black” market part, but I agree for sure the way forward for people in Britain and other western countries is to strike out on your own as best you can. To rely on the old employment model is to rely on that which is rotting on the vine and to put yourself at severe AI risk. And, FWIW, I think the food market is a good place to work. It is something that will be little affected by AI, and even as the world is collapsing, people still need to eat. I also think that boutique farming is a massive growth market, and, with some of the stuff going on there, is in many respects a new agricultural revolution. But that is a whole other topic.
And FWIW, I had no idea student debt was that bad in Britain. The numbers you quote mean that it is at the same level as here in the United States. And that is terrible. It is not what it was like when I went to college, that is for sure.
Inflation, increasing the money supply, may be used to finance government spending – or it may go to bankers and other corporate types.
Either way – it is still inflation, still an increase in the money supply.
And very harmful inflation may NOT show up as prices going up in the shops – for example the massive inflation of the late 1920s in the United States had a “stable price level”, this Benjamin Strong New York Federal Reserve inflation still led to the crash of 1929.
Government spending was not high in 1920s America.
These days there is not even the fig leaf of a gold “standard” (how I hate the language, gold “standard” or money “backed by” gold – either the gold is the money, or it is not) – money today is mostly not even paper, it is lights on computer screens, money-from-nothing – to benefit governments and banks and other corporations.
Governments do not even “print and spend” – they go through the bizarre process of, via the government central bank, creating money (from nothing) lending it out to banks and other financial institutions, and then borrowing it back again at a higher rate of interest.
If the process was not so tragic, it would be funny.
Yes it is – and I’m absolutely not denying that – but what inflation also colloquially just means “how much pricier is stuff?” and not all of that is explained purely by government spending. Some of it is explained by government policies, and some of it is explained by purely other factors (a lot of ours in the UK was due to the Russia-Ukraine war – even trivially, I had a lot of suppliers who had factories in Eastern Ukraine. Pricing went up, very understandably). And the thing is, understanding it is one thing, but it still doesn’t really help Mark from finance and Helen in marketing get through the month. They need actionable things to do to reduce their spending in the cash nexus, given the ever-decreasing value of their pound sterling (in my case)
I mention grey/black markets sort of because of regulations. I mention cooking food for people, and don’t get me wrong, this isn’t my primary income at all, but it’s a slight buffer if the worst comes to worse with my wage-earning job. If I was to do it purely on the up and up, the costs would be extreme, and the time taken to fill out all the right forms would be prohibitive. I did all of that during Covid-times, when regulations were relaxed (no inspections!), but I’d been made redundant so I had the time, and it wasn’t as onerous. Not that I know how much certification is needed to operate (say) a nail-salon from home, but I’m aware it’s quite a lot (and so on). All of these “little” regulations serve to benefit the existing owners of capital to the detriment of the “little guy”. So, I encourage people to ignore them. Not saying I’m 100% supportive, strictly speaking, of black market goods, but grey? Hell yeah.
The other thing is that it trains people to ignore the government, and to understand that it’s not necessary. Like, going back to food – but without regulations, what’s stopping me from adding peanuts into everything???? Well, I don’t actually want to kill people, thanks, I’m trying to feed people that might be struggling. I have a list of all the known allergens, and I make damn sure to highlight them in any dish I make and sell. At scale, it wouldn’t exactly be difficult for people to put together a website or app noting which businesses make clear what allergens are present, which don’t, and – star ratings and reviews not exactly being a wild concept in today’s world – holding them to that. You don’t need “regulations” to achieve the same goals.
These are things that are worth practicing what you preach, in my mind, and I do my best to.
(also, yes to boutique /homegardening. There was an interesting discussion about this a few months ago on here, before I started commenting again, but I’m very much for home gardening of vegetables. It’s a nuanced subject, but one can certainly save money with it; the taste is better, and it’s also damn good fun if you’re a foodie. Not for everyone, but it’s something I’d encourage. Hydroponics are good place to start for the curious, I’ve done exceptionally well with them)
I repeat my previous point that an increase in the money supply, an inflation, need NOT go to government spending (although it often does) – it sometimes goes to the corporate class.
Also inflation can do terrible harm – even if “prices in the shops” are not going up, even if the “price level remains stable”. Witness, for example, the massive inflation of the late 1920s – and the crash of 1929.
Irving Fisher, Benjamin Strong and Milton Friedman (yes even Milton Friedman) were just wrong on all this.
As for people looking after themselves, and looking after each other, post-collapse – even in the United States that would mean terrible suffering, economies of scale (in both farming and in manufacturing) are very real – and if people go back to small scale farming and manufacturing, a lot of people would die.
As for the United Kingdom – a country this densely populated can not go back to small scale farming and manufacturing, most (yes the majority) of people would die.
Still I can understand how people might conclude that the situation is hopeless for the nation, and just try and save themselves, their families and their neighbours .
That is less incredibly difficult in the United States than it would be in a small country like Britain – few places in the United Kingdom are more than a couple of hours drive from a major city.
A major city that, post collapse, would be a city of desperate people – willing to raid for food and other things they needed.
It used to be argued that Britain had one big advantage over the United States in relation to a “system collapse” or “breakdown” – namely that Americans were divided ethnically and might turn on each other on racial/ethnic lines whereas that was not the case on this island. Obviously this situation has dramatically changed over the decades.
And I repeat mine – it needn’t be an increase in money supply that causes pricing to go up over and above someone’s wage increases. And, as I said above, it’s also basically irrelevant to yer Marks and Helens who are struggling to make ends meet on a monthly basis. They’ve got basically zero control over monetary policy, and being aware of what causes it and the technical terminology doesn’t help with their bills.
I prefer to create solutions, and encourage others to do the same, in the here and now. I’m not overly interested in a made-up Mad Max future where Barry from Tuesday-night-badminton is going to form a band of leather-clad mohican-sporting nomads to raid Colchester for their runner beans; neither am I advocating for autarky. I’m advocating for people to be a bit less reliant on their wage-labour and to be a bit more reliant on themselves and their neighbours; this is all perfectly achievable and is, frankly, a more natural way of living than the atomised existence that people are used to.
It’s obvious the police do not fear the people and that needs to change. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was right.
“What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?…..We didn’t love freedom enough….. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” – The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956