Walk through one of these.....
tinyurl.com/43njhx5
After all, it is not an airport. You have finished your journey and it is not a condition of entry to a railway etc.
I get really hacked off by the "Well if you have nothing to hide brigade" because I don't see them opening their homes for random inspections.
What happens if you refuse. You surely cannot be arrested on suspicion of anything just because of refusal or can you?
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My take on it is "they" only use them when and where there is a problem. If you are subjected to this type of search might you be part of the problem? I have not been required to use one outside an airport.
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If I'd just arrived at the station from elsewhere to visit the city or someone there, and was asked to go through one, I'd refuse. It's not just you that is opposed to the guilty-until-proven-innocent trend we now have in policing.
If they want to search me, they can do it at their own leisure at the police station. Having said that, if they decided they were going to arrest me to get me down there, I'd go through the scanner.
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Just because someone is in a particular place at a particular time should not make them part of the problem! I don't get drunk and start fights and I don't do drugs but I do object to being held up because policing is not done properly.
Why should arriving anywhere by train late at night make you subject to random police searches?
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Speaking to my son he tells me that these, or a similar type of thing, have been used on random occasions at a number of night clubs in Southend to scan clubbers before they are allowed into the club. Apparently the police have also been using some sort of analyser involving some form of patch or swab which detects the recent use of some drugs on clubbers waiting in the queues, anyone refusing is refused entry to the club and also 'invited' to visit the local police station.....
Big Brother or hunting in a target rich environment? I would think that if the police didn't get any results they would be looking elsewhere.
Personally if I was in a nightclub and someone started getting a bit out of order I think I would find it a little bit reassuring to know that he couldn't be carrying anything too metallic, sharp and pointy.....
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I have not got a problem with it being a condition of entry but why should refusal make someone a suspect of a crime?
What suspicion is there that because you refuse a drugs test then you are guilty of the crime.
For one, I would be worried about what is contained within the swab!?
Extend this further. Imagine you were about to open your front door and the police asked to search it, without warrant. If you said no, is it OK that they arrest you on suspicion of something being in the house that should not be there. If you have nothing to hide then of course it is not a problem - which of course is rubbish. My home is my private affair, I want no one save for invited visitors to pass the threshold.
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This has become the situation because of Political Correctness.
This type of guilty until proven innocent reversal has for example seen us not fly unless absolutely vital for years, we may never do so again.
I am not a criminal, i refuse to buy into the farce, they can stick it.
Drugs and knives wouldn't be the problem they are if proper escallating punishments were dished out, same as most crimes.
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I am more concerned about the blanket surveillance in the UK (fixed ANPR cameras, CCTV, mobile phone tracking, credit and debit card location records, and who knows what else GCHQ gets up to, etc) than spot checks in problem areas.
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>> My home is my private affair, I want no one save for invited visitors to pass the threshold.
Unfortunately, there are myriad ways for the authorities to enter and search your home if they so wish. All it takes is a malicious accusation to the police of something unfounded, and you could find every nook and cranny of your home and your person being investigated...
I subscribe to the "If you've done nothing wrong..." view. I used to work for a company driving a fairly scruffy Transit van setting off at strange hours of the night and I could rarely make it to the motorway without getting a tug from the local plod to check everything was in order. Comforting to know that if the van ever got stolen it had a fair chance of being found quickly.
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I could rarely make it to the motorway without getting a tug from
>> the local plod to check everything was in order.
That's different though Dave, proper policing and it takes them seconds.
I got pulled up in my Landcruiser early hours on the way home from work by the old bill, jusy checking i was who was supposed to be seeing as i was in the vicinity of an itinerants site in a likely vehicle for them to have pilfered.
Proper non PC officers checking that a likely candidate wasn't a wrong 'un, they didn't even check the vehicle or insurance, anything like (might have already done so via ANPR i s'pose), just made sure i was me and bade me a cheery goodnight.
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I used to own a flat in Bath. Right in the centre, more or less directly behind the Royal Crescent. Lovely building and outwardly pleasant area. Lived there for a couple of years 20 years ago. I had a then new Golf Gti at the time. In the time I was there the car was broken into 4 times and stolen once from right outside my flat. The flat itself was burgled once. For such a pretty and allegedly desirable city Bath has a lot of crime problems. The car and I moved away and perhaps coincidentally it was never touched again.
Around the same time a friend of mine was a trainee manager at Gleneagles in Perthshire but he lived in Edinburgh. This meant that he was often driving home across country at Stupid O'Clock after a function and still wearing a dinner suit. The local Plod loved to stop him. I suppose a young guy late at night driving in a DJ looked a likely suspect to them. He had of course never had more than a cup of tea.
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I keep bees in my garden. The Bee Inspector (! yes there is such a person) has the right to enter my garden, inspect my hives - even if I am absent.. IF he suspects disease.
If he finds disease, he can order the hives burned (with no compensation).
Ditto Foot and Mouth, swine disease etc...
Last edited by: madf on Sun 25 Sep 11 at 18:05
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Practically all of us keep bees, madf. But unlike you, mostly in our bonnets.
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funny things bees, we were working on an old peoples home doin a referf and we discovered a bees colony under the kitckens floor,
we called the chap out from the enviroment dept at the council and he came and had a look
all work on the kitchens was halted
any way he arrived took one look and said, oh they arent honey bees il get the gassing equipment out of the van
and he did, it was all over in half an hour.... poor bees
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After all, it is not an airport. You have finished your journey and it is not a condition of entry to a railway etc.
They set one up at Leeds Railway Station now and again and it's very succesfull it catches many with knives & they have the sniffer dogs doing the drugs, shame it's not a permanant feature i walked through the metal detector with my big shears and screwdrivers ho it went off.!
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I often have a penknife in my pocket for totally non-violent and practical reasons to do with work. It's something I use regularly in my daily life. I used to have a small "Swiss Army" one which went everywhere with me for 25 years until one day I forgot it was in my coat pocket as I went through an airport and they confiscated it. I know there are sound reasons for these things but it is once again the many being inconvenienced for the wrongdoings of the few. Sometimes I'm glad I'm not young anymore. Not sure this next generation are going to enjoy it all nearly as much. Too many rules.
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>> Practically all of us keep bees, madf. But unlike you, mostly in our bonnets.
>>
may bee it's because your a Londoner?
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>> I keep bees in my garden. The Bee Inspector (! yes there is such a
>> person) has the right to enter my garden, inspect my hives - even if I
>> am absent.. IF he suspects disease.
>> If he finds disease, he can order the hives burned (with no compensation).
>>
>> Ditto Foot and Mouth, swine disease etc...
I know keeping bees can be a bit tricky, but calling them swine is a bit far.
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For right of entry and search HMRC take some beating.
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>> For right of entry and search HMRC take some beating.
Stems from the days of HM customs and excise - the revenue men, needed no warrant because they have an open one from the monarch.
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Every time I read that "an overwhelming majority approved" something, I remember Revd. Sidney Smith's words, that the majority is nearly always in the wrong.
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Can they make you? No in my opinion if you don't want to be searched don't go in the place.
If they lose customers so be it.
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The point here is that the testing is done to people arriving at a station so it was a surprise to them as they had already made the journey!
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The point presumably is to catch people arriving at the city centre who might be carrying weapons, rather than someone planning to plant a bomb on the train itself.
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Can they make you - Old Navy
