The Judge RANTS!
Date: 25/03/09
Ominous Signs
On the way home today, I saw this poster on a bus shelter:
A bit rich, I thought, particularly when you consider that we lost the right to be silent under the rule of that oily little twunt Michael Howard a decade and a half ago.
Sure enough, this is one of three posters currently being plastered around the place to 'reassure' us that the police are constantly watching over us (although I don't feel remotely reassured by the thought). The others are:
and:
The real sick joke about the last one is that the wording of the police caution (the equivalent of the 'Miranda' warning in the US) was changed from this in 1994. It now reads:
"You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."
However, it is somehow highly appropriate that the police don't seem to know this. Nor do the Home Office, upon whose website the posters currently appear in perpetual animation.
Finding all of this depressingly sinister, in that it reminded me of the legendary TV mini-series V, and the posters the aliens and their collaborators put up everywhere to tell us that they were our friends (frustratingly, I can't find an on-line image of the one I want to show you to illustrate the effrontery of it all), I decided that the whole thing deserves some subversive ass-whooping, so here's what I think the underlying message really is:
And seeing as the official version is animated, I thought I'd do one as well. You can see it here.
