Vigil & Questions

So a police inquiry into the actions of the police in respect of the Sarah Everard vigil has found the police acted appropriately. 

The word police appears rather a lot in the previous sentence, although is Her Majesty's Inspectorate comprised of police? If it's anything like the Press Complaints Commission, I'm not sure I'd have much faith in the report. As for Priti Patel, I'm afraid I find it impossible to believe a word that comes out of her mouth. It's not as if the HMICRFS is a stranger to controversy and past accusations of whitewashing.

I wonder whether Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services spoke to any of the protesters or any of the press who were present.

What I find strange is that the women weren't doing any damage and were merely holding a vigil on Clapham Common, which is a wide-open area that I'm familiar with, having lived in Clapham in the 90s, so why on earth was there an imperative to disperse them? Had they been left alone, I don't doubt they would have gradually drifted away, or at least been reduced to a mere handful. Any damage done by not socially distancing had already been done anyway. Perhaps there was a limit on police overtime...

Granted they were pressing forward toward the bandstand at the time, straining to hear a series of speeches, but there were surely better ways of handling the situation than wading in, perhaps such as giving the speaker a megaphone and asking the crowd to move back?

It's interesting to note that press footage shows that the three incidences of violence or damage that did occur were not perpetrated by women, but a small group of men.

I didn't watch the Scottish elections debate on TV, but perhaps someone who did could tell me whether the question was asked as to why the Scottish Conservatives and Labour parties are against a democratic referendum on independence, and whether there was a logical reply, if that question was indeed asked. There can be only one answer - they're afraid of losing and want to head it off at the pass. However, voting for either the Conservatives or Labour would split the potential No vote and be self defeating, unless Labour and the Conservatives joined in a pact but, given the support for the SNP and independence is marginally above 50%, even that would be a very long shot.

I do know the Labour candidate was astonished that the SNP is focused on independence during a pandemic, but Boris was so myopically focused on Brexit that he totally ignored the pandemic at a time infections were doubling every 2 or 3 days. At least now the infections are falling dramatically, so that argument is irrelevant and clutching at straws, especially when IndyRef2 has no particular date set in stone. 

The other answer, of course, is that they're focusing on it for the same reason as there's an election in the middle of a pandemic, one that all parties are willingly participating in; democracy doesn't simply stand still in a pandemic.

Like Brexit, IndyRef2 is a visceral, emotive issue and hence immune to facts and susceptible to the Project Fear mantra. Only a campaign based on emotions can combat it, but truth has to suffer, on both sides of the debate.