Shameless Opportunism...

So, barely are the stitches put in and the blood mopped up from the street than some are calling for yesterday's awful events in Kingsbury are calling for this to be the catalyst that sees all frontline officers equipped with taser.

This is not, you should understand, shameless opportunism.

Questioning it, however, is, as is pointing out where the police have slipped up, a very unfair tactic of me, it seems; Mops (to use some of Gadget's readers most polite term for 'us', members of the public) should just shut up, accept that the face of policing has changed and get out of the way of the police as they attempt to keep us ungrateful swines safe from each other.

Which is rather peculiar logic given that incidents like this are, thankfully, rare (a phrase that seems to be in fashion with police departments on some crimes, yet doesn't soothe the officers as it is meant to soothe us).

In fact, when lunatics off their medication run amok with knives it tends to be us, the public, who are most often in the firing line.

Yey I don't see anyone calling for us to be given the means and the right to self defence, do you?

And so I find myself rather less sympathetic to the idea that all frontline cops should be armed - something that would change the face of policing in the country forever - than I am to those officers in hospital, for whom I wish a speedy recovery.

We now return you to our regular scheduled posts...