Talk It Out

Pinheaded excuse for badgeless police

An internal investigation cleared police officers who failed to wear name badges while policing APEC protests. The excuse? Pins on badges could be used as "weapons" against the officers. Naturally it is important to guard against the danger of police officers being pin-pricked to death. But don't cops usually wear Velcro badges in these sorts of circumstances?

Lets take a look at the photos of cops at APEC (source: ABC):

Here's a pic of a number of cops 

  See those little black rectangles on the uniforms? How about a closer look:

Yep, that's a Velcro strip for attaching one's name badge. No need for pin backed badges, no threat of death by pinpricks, just a bit of accountability and transparency. Such as maybe knowing the name of the officer who beats you up.

But even the pinheaded excuse about the dangers of wearing badges looks better than the likely real reason for the practice of officers not wearing identification. 

September 18th, 2007 Posted by Unsilenced | Human rights, Police | one comment

Workchoices counter-advertising

Watching TV is becoming increasingly more unpleasant - those incessant WorkChoices ads are very annoying. The nonsense about employees having “even more protection” from an ambiguous and unenforceable, backpacker administered fairness test, the smug looking actors trying to convince us that employers would never sack anyone unfairly, the self-serving big business ads…

So I decided that every time those ads become particularly annoying, I’ll be running a counter-advertising campaign on this blog.

Here’s the latest anti-Workchoices advertisement:

September 18th, 2007 Posted by Unsilenced | Industrial relations, Political advertising | no comments