One is amazed at our government’s tireless efforts at impoverishing the people not only financially, but also intellectually and morally.
Coming on stream in May will be an app converting smartphones into dashcams. That will enable drivers to snitch on traffic violations and report them to the police in real time.
At launch, the app will work on 21 different offences, such as running a red light or failing to indicate, but the ability to clock other cars’ speed will also be added shortly. This technological breakthrough goes a long way towards the goal of turning us into a nation of snitches and spies.
We are already encouraged to denounce people suspected of tax evasion and ‘hate crimes’, such as saying it’s women and not men who give birth. Now we’ll be able to get rid of the traffic police, with every driver taking up the slack.
The app will inform the transgressor to the police in under a minute. And it’ll come with features ensuring that the evidence will stand up in court. No need to buy an expensive dashcam. Just put your finger to the touch screen, and another driver gets done.
It’s good to see that enterprising creativity isn’t yet extinct in Britain. One only wishes that talent were applied to a worthier end.
We are steadily moving to a bright future of no real policing. His Majesty’s subjects are already joining the ranks of volunteer informants, and before long they’ll be encouraged to arrest suspects and presumably rough them up if they resist. Yes, I know that the concept of a citizen’s arrest exists, by so far it hasn’t extended to such crimes as changing lanes without indicating.
If our officials believe that the new app will reduce the number of traffic offences, they may be right (although constantly checking other cars’ speed may well reduce the control of one’s own). However, if they think that such DIY policing will foster good community relations, they are grossly, catastrophically wrong.
Britain’s roads are far and away the safest in Europe. Thus, by trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, HMG aggravates one that’s already pernicious: the declining moral health of the nation.
When people begin to treat one another with suspicion, before long they’ll treat one another with hatred. This isn’t a theoretical postulate, but a confident observation by someone who has seen it all before.
For I grew up in a country where citizens were legally required to denounce one another at the slightest suspicion of political crimes. Those they denounced, millions of them, would often vanish without a trace, never to come back.
Hearsay was enough; evidence, hard or even soft, was strictly optional. That provided a perfect stratagem for getting rid of love rivals, neighbours whose room the snitch coveted, other candidates for the same promotion, spouses opposed to a divorce, strict parents and so on.
The scripture Soviet children grew up on was the story of Pavlik Morozov, a 13-year-old peasant who denounced his father to a GPU murder squad and was consequently lynched by his surviving family. The story is largely apocryphal, but that’s not the point.
The point is that all Soviet children were brainwashed to see Pavlik as their role model. Snitching was raised to a civic duty and the highest virtue. In short order, that produced a population of deracinated individuals treating one another with suspicion, often hatred, and with a pandemic lack of trust.
Granted, a Briton caught jumping a red light isn’t going to suffer the same consequences as did a Russian guilty of telling a political joke in mixed company. A stiff fine is as far as we’ll go, at least for the time being. But the real damage will be done not to the finances of the denounced, but to the morality of the denouncers.
It is indeed one’s civic duty to report a felony, planned or committed, especially when people’s property and lives are at stake. Yet most of us go through life without ever getting the chance to do something like that.
Yet every one of Britain’s 30 million drivers witnesses (and, truth to tell, commits) dozens of traffic violations every time he takes to the road. How many drivers stick to the 20 mph limit on some of London’s major roads? I know I don’t.
Suddenly we’re no longer talking about doing one’s civic duty. We are talking about perverse, sanctimonious nastiness encouraged by the government with little regard for the damage done to collective morality.
Such damage is easier done than undone. Give it a generation or two, and it’ll seep into the national DNA, producing a social disaster. And I’ve already lived in a nation of Pavlik Morozovs, thank you very much.
Consequent upon the Criminal Law Act 1967 we no longer have felonies or misdemeanours in the UK. Other than that….I’m with you!
Thank you. Looks like I still haven’t lived down my American past.
Trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist? That seems to be government’s raison d’etre in the 21st century. Imagine Patrick Henry’s response to the federal government acting to protect the rights of men to pretend to give birth!
We already have examples of neighbor-turned-informant from the summer of 2020, thank you very much. It turned ugly quickly. But we’re told it is for our own good. And the elites know better. As for your “lived experience” (as the Catholic hierarchy love to call it), it is only respected when it conforms to the correct world view. Your experience from the Soviet Union is anecdotal at best.
If we can get the general populace to report on traffic infringements and thought crimes we can indeed defund the police. There are no other crimes worth prosecuting. Job done!
However, I will admit that when I see someone doing something stupid or dangerous on the road I have often wished for cameras in my side view mirrors.