Why I Set Up This Blog
I have always been a civil libertarian. However, this was usually in a knee-jerk rather than thoughtful in form. My civil libertarianism became more serious and methodical during the COVID-19 pandemic – particularly in response to the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by the then serving Metropolitan Police officer, Wayne Couzens.
Following this, I started to plough through the scholarly sociological literature on policing, as well as histories of the development of policing as a technique.
Alongside this, the UK in the past five years has descended further into authoritarianism: absurd restrictions on protest; the expansion of facial recognition technology; mutterings about abandoning jury trial; the constantly lurking threat of the Conservatives (though out of power at the moment, granted) to abolish the Human Rights Act.
These factors considered together are why I have set up this blog. I want to document this decline as well as explain to the disorientated reader why what’s happening is even occurring.
State Power 