Bow down before me, insect!

As Britain falls ever more precipitously into the clutches of a Mugabe-esque police state, we saw a little picture of what that might be like recently, when a policeman in Liverpool arrested a man for laughing.

Just like in Germany, where humour is a serious business, this really is no laughing matter, but is symptomatic of the dreadful state of the tax-subsidised police here in Britain.

Liverpool itself is blessed with one of the highest violent crime rates in the United Kingdom, and yet one of the city's 'hard-working' police officers found it necessary to harass a law-abiding man, for over half an hour, for laughing, sending him on his way with a further requirement to check in at a police station.

When Britain's police were founded by Sir Robert Peel, this was against an angry background of public opposition. The public were afraid that they were going to be forced to support an organised gang of former criminals and other malcontents, and they didn't want them. To assuage this opposition, Peel proposed nine principles of policing.

Let's see how our Gestapoid Nerk in Liverpool fares against these principles:

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

FAIL. This state drone obviously sees his role as harassing the proles.

2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.

FAIL. There is not a single ordinary person in this country who approves of this petty and vindictive action.

3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

FAIL. I wonder how the victim of this harassment feels about his own levels of respect for the police?

4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

FAIL. Most police in this country walk around the place like medieval army soldiers occupying an enemy city. They clank from one police station to another, covered in all sorts of restraints and other coercive equipment, many of them also now openly bearing firearms. Sir Robert Peel wanted his policemen to look like ordinary citizens. Now they look more like sci-fi combat soldiers. They obviously feel that the degree of co-operation they are getting from the public has severely diminished over the last few years. They are right. Due to their continual harassment of virtually everybody, from drivers on down, the police in this country are beginning to be hated.

5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

FAIL. The police don't care about public opinion any more, as this case clearly demonstrates. All they care about is pleasing their political masters, to secure more goodies for themselves.

6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.

FAIL. Whenever you deal with the police you know that behind the aggression and the impoliteness is the very real threat that if you resist them enough, the guns will be coming out. Stopping someone for half an hour and then ordering them to attend a police station, via the threat of physical force, for the 'offence' of laughing, is laughable. Except, of course, that if you do laugh, you will be arrested.

7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

FAIL. The police are now a special class in every way superior to the public. They can arm themselves, order everyone else around, take papers from the House of Commons, help themselves to taxes, and never be prosecuted for anything themselves, from murder all the way down to theft. The sooner we get rid of them and replace them with private police, as already found on gated estates and in shopping malls, the better.

8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

FAIL. This state drone is obviously under the impression that he is Judge Dredd in everything but name.

9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

FAIL. Crime levels in this country are horrible, particularly when it comes to violent crime, which is particularly high on Merseyside. No amount of tinkering with the figures can hide the fact that most people in Britain avoid certain places at certain times, and avoid many places at all times.

So that's nine failures out of nine. And I'll bet we can add a tenth failure to that list. Because it's an absolute certainty that the non-laughing policeman involved will almost certainly fail to apologise for his act of arrogance and stupidity.

But he's not alone. The police in this country as a whole have failed. It is therefore time we ended this one hundred and fifty year experiment of Sir Robert Peel's, and replaced it with something better. State police are not 'inevitable'. There was a time before them, not really that long ago, and there will be a time after them. Let us get to that point as soon as possible and the provision of private police services.

Come on, I'm an anarchist, what do you expect? :-)