[DemolitionRed]

I imagine its much nicer being ten miles off the Gulf of Mexican than ten miles out in the North Sea!!

First of all, let me just say that its great to have someone with so much experience on this particular debate. I apologies if my statements seemed extreme, I tend to stay away from conspiracies and stick with main media stories. Unfortunately, we get lots of bad news regarding how American cops treat people and because we live on an island where the law of the land is run directly from one government, its easy to think it’s the same the world over, regardless of a countries size.

I do have a tendency to click on videos that have been linked to me on social media and a lot of them are about police brutality in the U.S.

My best friend lives on a marina in Baltimore for 6 months of the year and she doesn’t have a bad word to say about it. I however, watched ‘The Wire’ just after she left for her first summer and spent months worrying about her safety. I know, The Wire wasn’t real but it still influenced my thoughts on Baltimore.

The only thing she slates is the medical system but that’s because when her sister, who lives in NY, got cancer of the throat last year, her medical insurance, of which she’d paid for years tried everything to stop her being able to make a claim.

I too have a family member who suffers from mental illness and my grandpa, who died three years ago, like your mum had Parkinsons. My dad is a consultant psychiatrist and raised me to better understand mental illness and to be pro-active when it comes to fighting their corner. The trigger for me writing this thread was after watching that video of a mentally disturbed man being gunned down by a bunch of cops. It just made my blood boil.

I’m not going to go looking for links to send you because after listening to you, I don’t know which American papers are likely to conspire and exaggerate things and I don’t know if the English papers have done any homework with due diligence. Trump made **** up about England having ‘no go cities’ and I’ve been in a few discussion groups where Americans have brought this subject up. Sometimes, when we hear something often enough it starts to stick and becomes part of our belief system.

We also have problems with homelessness and we also try and help these people but inevitably, some slip through the net whilst others don’t want to be helped. Whilst you won’t find rough sleepers in Knightsbridge and Chelsea (expensive areas) because the police hassle them too much, you will see plenty in the poorer boroughs of London.
Unlike the U.S. we have an NHS but our care for the mentally ill is hugely reliant on friends and relatives. Care in the community hasn’t worked for those who have no family and a lot of these people are sleeping on park benches or shop doorways because their illness doesn’t allow them to function in society like you or I. When I said it’s a shame that these people prefer prison to being on the street, what I meant is, they should be able to get a structured environment in the outside world and not behind locked doors. I don’t think institutions are the answer but we, the human race should be able to help these people more than we do and when I say ‘we’ I mean the government. I’m pleased to hear that America is starting to follow the right model; the UK certainly isn’t.