“ Policemen have started carrying guns – big, visible, frightening guns – quite widely. And I don’t remember us discussing that. Did I miss a meeting? The last conversation I remember was all about the pride we take in our unarmed British force. You know, the ones whose weapons (a truncheon, a whistle, who knows?) are tucked discreetly on to their belts, under their long jackets, beneath those slightly silly hats that make them taller than everyone else, because they are supposed to be reassuring figures, easily identifiable in a crowd, representing more of a help than a threat.
Somehow, they have been reborn as a tooled-up army of Schwarzeneggers. And I don’t think we did discuss it. I think we gradually noticed it happen and we subconsciously thought: “Well, yes, terrorist threat, 9/11, 7/7, WMD, homegrown assassins in our midst, few more armed police about, hope I get to Tesco before the semi-skimmed milk runs out.”
But that’s not a reason. Even if you believe the country is riddled with terrorists waiting to explode, that shouldn’t spell official, widespread guns. When I was a kid, the newspapers fuelled our fear of IRA bombs. The impression was, you could hardly walk down Oxford Street without getting blown up. But I remember, I remember, how proudly people spoke about our unaffected lives. We shopped there anyway. We carried on as normal, assuming we wouldn’t get unlucky.
Not now. We accept, somehow, even though we must understand how vast are the statistics against our being at a bomb scene, that we will queue for three hours at the airport, won’t carry water, won’t carry toothpaste; we will fill in extra forms and hand out extra personal information whenever we hear the words “heightened security”; and we will see armed police on the street. Why? How will that help? Unless we put 20 armed police on every street, they’re never going to be in the right place at the right time – and if the right place at the right time is an underground train carriage where a man unexpectedly blows himself up, a gun wouldn’t stop him anyway. That’s just firing bullets into the stable door after the horse has detonated.
And he stood there, Tony Blair, he stood there, well, he sat there, and he made that little church-and-steeple out of his fingers and he said the Iraq war had “made the world a safer place”. Really? Really? If it’s so much safer, how come we need all these hired gunmen that we didn’t need before? ”
Victoria Coren: He stepped out of the dark with a gun… | The Observer
Wow. Brilliant writing from Coren. The last paragraph is fantastic.
I could not agree more with the article, and with penllawen’s assessment of it.
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I could not agree more with the article, and with penllawen’s assessment of it.
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Holy crap. Perfect paragraph.
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