Dear Mr Straw - Police Bias
December 1999
Dear SUN,
I have sent the following letter to the Home Secretary, Jack Straw in the
hope that by referring to the "police image" there might at least be
an enquiry as to what it is all about which might discomfort Downer & Co.
When two or three (letters) are gathered together... maybe another might help?
Ron Kermode
Dear Mr Straw
POLICE BIAS
The esteem in which the police are held has diminished greatly since we
were young, owing to failure to control the bad apples so the whole force has
been tarnished. It is therefore important that current behaviour is beyond
reproach.
There is a dispute at Studland where the National Trust is moving to
ban nudists from an area they have used for 75 years. Police are involved in
patrolling to prevent breaches of law, and should not be involved in acting as
National Trust agents.
However, I hear that, while the residents of Swanage have to suffer fly
posters on empty shops, police officers have been engaged in removing such
posters from "marker posts" at Studland Beach, presumably at the
behest of the National Trust. It was the National Trust who installed the posts as part of its drive to
get rid of nudists by harassment, and by deliberately fomenting complaints by
routing non-nudists near and through the area which nudists have long used
(without serious complaint, until the National Trust intervened).
If this is true then it makes a mockery of Inspector Downers claim of
even-handedness and if the local police are not in the National Trust's pocket this is
nevertheless the impression given.
Ron Kermode
Well done Ron! In another letter, parts of which appear
elsewhere in this issue, Ron tells me that he will forward any reply he gets
from the Home Secretary. He wrote his letter in August, but at the time of
writing (late November) he had not yet heard.
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