Entertainment For Lively Minds
Community Leaders - who are they?
Posted by Uncle Wheaty on 8 August 2011 - 8:08pm.
Whenever the media cover a story like the current riots in London the need for change is put in the hands of so called 'community leaders'. Who are these people and who appointed them community leaders.
I don't know who mine are, assuming we have any.
Perhaps I can become one.
Any thoughts?
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Leicester has Mr Khan as a 'Community Leader"
Radio 5 live
Last night they were talking about whether the Community Leaders could put a stop to the riots. The presenter ? Adil Ray aka Mr Khan.
I think it's a crude and borderline racist euphemism for
"Those within an immigrant community who can speak decent English, understand how we do things in this country and have some sort of control over those that are causing the trouble."
That has clearly failed tonight then,
'Community leader' sounds like a benign phrase...
...but there was a time when the individual below was regarded as a 'community leader' and his leadership did no good to anyone.
I don't say this with any political agenda whatsoever, nor to cast aspersions on individuals doing productive work for the common good on a community level. But I also - as with the OP - sometimes have a faint unease that unelected, unaccountable and perhaps sometimes questionable 'power brokers' are given weight whenever trouble happens in their area.
Didn't Ocean Colour Scene release a tribute album to him?
Mosley Shoals...
Little known fact ...
breakfast cereal was actually invented by Oswald Muesli.
Very...
...good! :-D
The newsreel said they assembled 6000 police for one march
That sounds like more than he Met can now muster for the whole of London to control widespread looting.
Aha! An excuse to post this
Ghosts of Cable Street: The Men They Couldn't Hang
(They were excellent at Wickham festival on Sunday)
Yes, I agree...
...the sense I'm getting from all the coverage is that, in a nutshell - regardless of causes etc - there simply aren't enough police any more. I'd be very surprised if, a little down the line, the govt plan to make further police cuts isn't abandoned. After all, as we keep being told, next year its the Olympics...
numbers mean nothing
You could have 100,000 police officers on the streets, but if they don't have the will to act it means nothing.
It's the type of people attracted to become Police Officers
What does this profession mean? it means having an active desire to spend your working life in a position of authority, and respect. And wearing a uniform (and thats not quite the facile point that it may appear to be)
Its a strange problem really, that those who's job it is to keep peace and diffuse violence where possible, are sometimes intuitively the least qualified to do this. No way round this really. Many young black men are routinely stop searched. Some individuals have reported, accurately or not, being stopped more than 20 times. Incidents like last Thursdays shooting of Mark Duggan are unfortunately just an extension of some of the attitude that prevails. His family apparently waited for 4 hours outside Scotland Yard before it became clear than no one was going to see them, or explain what had happened. There has still been no explanation, or feedback.
While things have openly moved on from the openly racialist force that we had in the 80's, there are still serious issues. But its his very fundamental and serious problem about respect which is, and probably always has, been at its core. And may very well be at the core of what is going on right now on the streets.
Careful with the generalisations...
Police officers you know may have given those reasons for joining the force but others see it differently.
My brother-in-law is a DCI and has always seen the job as being about public service - about protecting the citizens on his patch, whether that was a local estate when he was a beat copper or a wider area now he's more senior.
I strongly suspect that 'being respected' and 'wearing a uniform' had little to do with why he signed up to be a police officer in the first place, and even less to do with why he still remains passionate about the job 20 years on.
EDIT: Mrs Stimpy has just told me an interesting tale. Apparently when her brother was a beat/panda car officer on night duty, he used to say that the biggest buzz was just looking out over his silent patch and thinking that these people are able to sleep soundly in their beds because they know he was there watching over them. That they trusted him and his colleagues to keep them safe. That's almost the ethic of the old 'night watch'
Not necessarily so
My brother is desperate to join the police, but all forces have recruitment freezes in place. He wants to join because he believes he could make a difference, and feels that it would be worthwhile protecting the general public from crime. I don't think a sense of authority comes into it.
At the moment I couldn't have more respect for the police - they have a terrifying job on their hands right now. I never thought I'd say it, but I can't imagine anything that would make me thing the police were too heavy handed at the moment.
And there's the intellectual challenge of crime solving
Maybe modern day policing has become too bogged down in paperwork, but homicide detective is surely one of life's more intriguing and interesting career choices. Plenty of writers and film-makers seem to think so.