The triumph of common-sense: "You Do Not Ask The Police How To Run Society, and expect it to Make People Happy" - [Or, Simon Spurrier is a Genius.]

Simon Spurrier: TIME TO GO:

"...The real kicker arrived only recently. It came in the shape of a series of posters – THIS ONE and THIS ONE, in fact – which illustrated, in 12-foot-high horror, something which had been on the tips of our psyches for all too long. London has become a place where The Security To Remain Alive threatens to outweigh The Point Of Being Alive.

...Politicians make a big fuss these days about including the police in their consultations on security. Let me be nice and clear about this: If you ask a Removal Man to legislate on how Normal People live their lives, all heavy furniture would be illegal and we’d all live on the ground floor. Right? If you ask a postman for advice on National Regulations all letterboxes would be within easy reach of the kerb, all envelopes would be transparent (with special flashing LEDs on letters containing money), and all dogs over the size of a gerbil would be culled.

People want their jobs to be easier. Yes?

You Do Not Ask The Police How To Run Society, and expect it to Make People Happy. IT’S OBVIOUS, PEOPLE.

Look: the cops exist because we, the people, want them there. We have collectively agreed that we want to live in an ordered society, in which we can all get along without fear or persecution, and we have agreed that the price for doing so is to empower certain people with the right to prevent injustice and repress Fear.

"Repress" yes? They aren’t supposed to make me afraid. They aren’t supposed to make my palms go sweaty every time I pass one in the street. They aren’t supposed to send me into a crazed fit of “should I make eye contact, oh god I made eye contact, oh god now I look suspicious, oh fuck I looked away now he KNOWS I’ve got something to hide oh god oh god oh god” every time I go through the barriers on the tube. (Even though, honestly, really, truly: I have nothing to hide.)

...we’ve all had a run-in with some dickwit in a blue uniform, who honestly and truly believes that his shiny little badge not only permits him to a sense of entitlement the size of Nicaragua, but Actually Truly Honestly makes him More Important Than You.

They don’t just arrest you, they make bad jokes about it.

This is not the attitude I want in someone who has the right to hit me with a stick. This is not the attitude I want from an institution which can shoot me seven times in the head because my skin’s the wrong colour and I Might Maybe Possibly Oops No Not At All be a terrorist. And this is definitely not the attitude I want from the city which, most of the time, I love..."