Sunday, August 26, 2007

CARNIVALS AND CAPITALISM

There is a common view supported by the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and other newspapers that men and women of the working class cannot enjoy themselves without the constant monitoring of the owning class police forces. Here is an example. "A massive police operation is under way for the two-day event with officers serving an estimated 11,000 shifts throughout the (Notting Hill) carnival. The event is the world's second largest street party, after the Rio Carnival held in Brazil. ..Ross Bacon, a 54-year-old Londoner said: "I have never been before. I was scared because of the bad publicity but my friend's son is a DJ and he is here, so she convinced me to come. ..Finnish tourist Jukka Myllyniemi said: "I had heard lots of bad stories about it before but I think it's a very positive carnival, with so many people from different cultures." (BBC News, 26 August) Men and women of the working class can enjoy themselves without the assistance of the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph or the police force. Amazing, isn't it. RD
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1 comment:

Charlie Marks said...

There's two sides to this though isn't there? I mean, a lot of co-ordination to allow the carnival to take place smoothly (closing roads, redirecting traffic, etc) will be done by the police.

Now, I don't know how much I'd agree with the suggestion that the police are merely workers in uniform, but PCSOs certainly seem to be.

In my encounters with the police, they don't seem to have a grasp on the law (though they do know that its on their side) wheras PSCOs appear to know nothing about the law (well, they are powerless to arrest anyone, so why remember it all?) yet are the most visible expression of it.

Pay and conditions are less than that of the police, and the job is considerably harder as PSCOs are the ones doing beat work nowadays - half are unionised (Unison, not the Police Federation) so do we count PSCOs as workers or not?

12:16 am

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