[Glice]

The English police are a fucking nightmare. Unfortunately, most normal, upstanding, rational and law abiding people don't want to become police. It's a generalisation, but the general conception of police here is that you only join the police if you want to bully people.

There's a huge issue here at the moment with recruiting non-white police officers. Very rarely do non-white English people want to become police officers. We've got a lot more Black officers now, but there is an incredible dearth of representation for the other minorities in Britain. Ideal-world scenario, the police could be anyone. However, not living in an ideal world, I think the police should represent the cultures they're 'protecting'. Don't get me wrong, there're a lot of good eggs in the Police (I worked for the police for ages, should that statement need qualification - I wasn't an officer though, 'twas an administrative role). However, there are an awful lot bigoted knobbers. More of them than is possibly healthy think nothing of using terms like 'raghead' and that kind of thing. I'm sure the Brits on the board have seen the numerous reports in the wake of the Steven Lawrence case regarding the 'institutional racism' of the police here. It's revolting.

This might seem tangental, but unfortunately, the sort of thugs out there kicking the shit out of Fritz aren't getting caught on the streets here because a lot of the thugs are pretty much the same people as the police. Again, it's a generalisation, but police victimisation is directed towards hooligan twats too rarely (ie, not all the time and consistently).

Regarding our thugs, I think we have got a lot better over here. One thing I'm most impressed with is the organisation of hoodlums in local derbies. Generally the people who want to go and have a ruckus with the other side are now in touch with the heads of the other team's thuggish supporters - I've lived in various heavily football oriented areas, and there've been several ocassions where I've been ushered out of a pub because it's where two teams of hooligans are planning to meet. That is to say, they want to fight, which is fair enough, but they don't want people who haven't decided to enter into the fight to get caught in the crossfire. Honour amongst theives, maybe, but I thoroughly applaud the thugs who are clever enough to realise that they won't get arrested if they keep their fights inandamongst themselves.