I wonder how this will conflict with medical confidentiality in the case of doctors, and do the police really need yet more paperwork to wade through on potential suspects of potential crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth Making it a legal requirement to report someone, that you suspect may potentially commit a crime, will result in a mountain of paperwork. People who genuinely believe that someone is an imminent danger are more than likely to report them anyway. By making it a requirement, anyone acting out of character will raise suspicion, you will just end up with so many false positives. I want to live in a safe society, just not this safe.
Highly unrealistic and utter crap, TBH. It takes quite some training and clinical experience to be able to do a reliable risk assessment. Council staff, charity workers and even most health service staff do not possess such expertise. Neither did whoever came up with this bright idea, apparenty. "Heavy drinking, mental health problems or a violent family background" do not necessarily an aggressive person make. Unless the police wants to open files on half the population living on any estate in the UK.
we really are on that long dark path towards a police state aren't we? This on top of biometric id cards (without which you won't be able to get a passport) and all the other big brother activities is getting beyond the joke so much for the freedoms our grandparents fought for
I believe some within the British armed forces are already given the task of conducting some form of basic assessment as to whether an individual under their command is 'fit for deployment' (specifically in terms of mental as well as physical well being). Legal mindfield for the blokes given the task of signing to approve, who are asked (nay, ordered) to fill out the appropriate paperwork and make a judgement without any formal training and only a basic written guide as to what their assessment should entail
This comes of hindsight being 20/20. Whatever the incident, from child abuse to the VA shootings, someone will bring up 'previous incidents' as evidence, as 'warning signs', that the perpetrator was a threat, and point to "failures" by social workers, teachers, police, hospitals, everybody bar themselves. **** happens. And will continue to happen.
I really think this country is laying the foundations to some really scary things and personaly if i was in a better position i would be looking at moving away from here because it isnt going to end. Politics scares me at the moment in the UK because slowly even the population are coming round to ideas which infringe on our human rights because of the constant drip drip approach behind legislation like this and people are being worn down to going along with this. I think if you couple with with the proposed database and ID card scheme with the focus on more CCTV camera's, despite our country having 27% of the world CCTV cameras which is one camera for 14 people, and of course taking DNA samples of new born babies and people who are arrested to go on a national database - Gattaca anyone! - im shocked and think we are sleepwalking into some real problems in the future. Of course im sure politicians will legislate to make themselves exempt, such as the Freedom of information act which they have managed to win the vote on in the house of commons, and the day after it was discovered that one mp had spent £3000 on a quad bike at the cost of the tax payers. I feel like im going insane because most people i meet dont seem to be aware of what is happening in this country now adays and dont understand what the potential of laying this groundwork could do in the future.
And all the government does is set itself up for failure. First the police would have to marshall a massive load of resources to keep track of all these people. Of course it can't do that. Inevitably, on statistical chance alone someone on file will commit a violent crime and then everyone will turn around and blame the police, because didn't they know about this guy? Alternatively, if the person is not on file (yet) the blame is shifted downwards to other professionals and charity workers for not "spotting" this person in time. Moreover, once you have these people on file, what are you going to do with them? Right. Exactly nothing. It is like Cthippo says: nobody is 100% safe. But nobody wants to acknowledge this fact and just deal with it like an adult. So government ministers who can't find their own arse with both hands pander to the public's immature anxieties by concocting these moronic schemes.
thats what my grandfather said when I talked to him. (he was an Artilleryman in North Africa during WWII)
Nonsense! All good citizens should be able to do there duty for the state. If your customer chunters to himself, is unshaven and looks like he's fond of a tipple, it is your duty to The Party to report him. We have Big Brother, the government talks in doublespeak, thinkpol (Thought Police) and their many cameras, goverments engineering wars (in Eurasia of all places)... why shouldn't we grass on our comrade and have them carted off to Room 101??
Comrade, patriot, you have opened my eyes. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! But it is all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished. I have won the victory over myself. I love Big Brother.
this kind of remembers me the dictatorship we had in Portugal that ended some 33 years ago with a bloodless revolution....... but meh a dictatorship would be impossible in England or the US.
Notice that i was being sarcastic, and that the only people that believe that the USA or the UK can become anything other than a Democracy (TM) are terrorists (R), communists (R) or conspiracy theorists (R) because they are in the path of the New World Order (TM). /sarcasm sorry, had to get that out.
