All Must Worship The State And Its Minions...

A pregnant woman, her husband and their three-year-old son were killed in a house fire early yesterday as police who arrived before the fire brigade prevented neighbours from trying to save them.

And all because of ‘health and safety’ and not getting sued…

Davey Davis, 38, a friend of the family, said: “It was the most harrowing thing I have ever witnessed. Michelle was at the bedroom window yelling, ‘Please save my kids’ and we wanted to help but the police were pushing us back and not allowing us near. We were willing to risk our lives to save those kiddies but the police wouldn’t let us.

“Tempers were running very high, particularly with the women who were there, but the police were just saying we have to wait for the fire brigade because of health and safety.

“There were four or five police officers. They were here before the fire brigade.

We heard the sirens and we came across to help but they wouldn’t let us.

“I thought the police were there to protect lives. At one time they would have have gone inside themselves to try and rescue them.

“When a family is burning to death in front of your eyes, rules should go out of the window – especially with kids. Everybody wanted to try and help.”

Hard to argue with that. Who could stand by and do nothing?

Even worse, who could prevent other people from doing what your ‘rules’ don’t allow you to do yourself?

A South Yorkshire Police spokeswoman said: “The senior officer in charge is confident we handled this incident as professionally as possible. In a situation like that you could end up with more deceased bodies than you had in the first place.”

You could, indeed. And you could end up with less. But I guess we’ll never know now, will we?

And I seem to recall a hell of a lot of opprobrium being hurled at the Saudi religious police for failing to rescue schoolgirls ‘immodestly attired’ from a burning building. Is it expecting too much for our own media to similarly criticise police who worship not at the altar of Islam, but at the altar of ‘elf and safety?

Meanwhile, forget all that rubbish about ‘helping police with their enquiries’, they’d rather you didn’t publicise information to catch criminals.

Presumably in case it cuts into their future appearances on ‘Crimewatch’:

Police have warned the fiancé of a rape victim to shut down a Facebook site he set up to catch the attacker in case it 'victimises' the criminal, it has been claimed.

Yes, amazingly, it’s ok to publicise a suspect’s picture on a hardly-ever-viewed police website, but if you actually put it where people might see it, why, anything could happen…

The police had published a CCTV image of the suspect on their website but took it down after just 10 days.

No explanation was given for the length of time – perhaps that’s all they do allow for this in any case?

But when the fiancé set up his Facebook page, suddenly, information flooded in:

Greater Manchester Police are said to be taking seriously a name suggested by one contributor.

But the distraught fiancé, who is in his 20s, has been warned to remove the site out of fear the rapist will become a 'victim' of vigilante attacks.

So once again, ultra-caution is the watchword here, in case ‘something happens’.

But the message being sent by these two episodes is a subtle one: ‘Don’t do things for yourselves. We want no independent thought or action. Only the servants of the state are skilled and empowered to act. Leave it to them...’

We used to give medals for acts of bravery and community service. Now, we give lectures instead, about ‘what could have happened’ and how ‘the experts are best placed to deal with this situation’. We’ve lost our country, haven’t we? All without a shot being fired.

It’s enough to make you weep...