From where Great Britain used to be, let's start with a truly dumbass cop

shooting someone in a classroom demonstration:
PC David Micklethwaite, 52, blasted telephone operator Keith Tilbury at point blank range after mistakenly loading a live round into a 'Dirty Harry' style .44 Magnum revolver.
They had a Model 29?
He shot Mr Tilbury while attempting to show civilian recruits how the chamber spins in a Magnum made famous by Clint Eastwood.
Because he was the Only One in the room qualified...
When he reached into a Quality Street tin Thames Valley's armourers used to keep assorted ammunition,(a lot of you are cringing at this point) he grabbed a live round.
He then took the Magnum .44 out of a holdall in order to demonstrate the difference between a revolver and a pistol, loading what he thought was a dummy round into the chamber.

Mr Tilbury, a former electronic defence industry worker who had shot in the Berkshire County rifle team, later told investigators he saw Micklethwaite aiming the weapon at him(Good grief!).
'I was getting up to move from my chair to move when I heard two clicks and then a loud bang.' As Mr Tilbury's classmates looked on in horror, he was thrown back onto the chair and collapsed to the floor.


Leaving behind this example of Prime, Grade A idiocy, we move on to
A mother and her disabled daughter died in a blazing car after police decided a campaign of terror against them by local yobs was not worth prosecuting, an inquest heard yesterday.

Fiona Pilkington, her family and neighbours asked for help more than 30 times but she was accused of 'overreacting'.
And just what, in their wisdom, was not worth prosecuting?
The yobs, some as young as ten, threw stones and eggs at her home in Barwell, Leicestershire, urinated on a wall, invaded the garden and pushed fireworks through the letter box, leaving the family 'under siege'.

Anthony was beaten up in the street and locked in a shed at knifepoint.

The final call to police came on the day of Miss Pilkington's death in October 2007, when she was told to 'ignore' girls trampling over her hedge and mocking Francecca, who had developmental delay and a mental age of four.
Whiskey Tango Bleepin' Foxtrot?
Yesterday coroner Olivia Davison put a series of searching questions to Chris Tew, who was then assistant chief constable of Leicestershire Police.

She said it must have been 'common sense' to want to help a family who were feeling 'victimised'.

Mr Tew, now retired, said: 'Anti-social behaviour often occurs in residential areas when no actual crime is being committed. There's no damage or assault and it doesn't pass the threshold for a crime.'
So. Really. So in (fG)Britain nowadays, trespassing and property damage being beaten and assault with a deadly weapon(let me note, I think that over here in Dodge City Land forcing someone to go somewhere at knifepoint could be considered kidnapping, for that matter) and so forth don't count as 'damage or assault' and 'don't pass the threshold for a crime'.

Shit.

'It must be a motivating factor in being a police officer to stop a situation like this...So I wonder why someone did not decide this needed to be stopped?'

Mr Tew replied: 'I cannot answer that, sorry.' He said it was ' unfortunate' police had not linked Miss Pilkington's calls. An investigation had found 'too many cases were closed without further contact or additional resources offered'.
'Unfortunate'. Yeah, that's the word.
The inquest heard that none of the 16-strong gang was ever prosecuted. At one point one told Miss Pilkington: 'We can do anything we like to you and you can't do anything about it'.
Because the British government and police are apparently not worth shit in the case of plain citiz- excuse me, subjects of the Crown being threatened and attacked and having their homes damaged.


And finally, to some more of that wonderful National Health Service:
Two care workers who covered a dementia sufferer’s mouth with sticky tape to keep him quiet were convicted of assault yesterday.

Derek Maynard, 89, had a three-inch piece of Sellotape placed over his mouth because he had made a fuss about wanting to go to bed.

And, for my conclusion,
A young woman died in hospital after waiting almost two hours for a blood transfusion that could have saved her.

Sally Thompson, 20, bled to death after a doctor accidentally punctured her jugular vein during a bungled procedure.

Despite an urgent request to the blood bank at Manchester Royal Infirmary, she died one hour and 45 minutes later, before any arrived.
...
they sent an order down for blood but the bank said they were having trouble finding any crossmatched blood because of her disorder.'
I'm going to go into a bit of bitching here. 'Way back in the Cretaceous when I worked at the blood bank in Lawton, I was on call every other week. One of the hospitals in town needed blood, they'd call and I'd be paged. We kept a list of our own inventory plus what the hospitals had, so I'd go wherever and get it and take it over. In an emergency- for instance, someone bleeding out and needing desperately blood we didn't have, I'd call the nearest places that might have it, find it, and if I couldn't get it in time, or it was too far away, we called the Highway Patrol for an emergency pickup and delivery; they'd call the nearest trooper, by the time he got to the hospital or blood bank office it'd be packed and ready, and they went. If it crossed county or district lines, another trooper would be waiting, they'd move it over and blow. If no trooper available for a stretch, they could usually get the local sheriff's office to relay it. They'd hit the ER door and run it to the lab, where a quick & dirty check was done to make sure it could be used and in it went.

That was in the 1970's, in southwest Oklahoma; we got it done. And yet the National Health Service couldn't manage to.
'No crossmatched or uncrossmatched O-negative blood was supplied, despite it being requested during the resuscitation, and this was a significant failure,' Mr Meadows said.
No SHIT?

I've got a friend who accuses me of cherrypicking bad stories about health care in Britan(he loves the idea of socialized medicine); I keep telling him all I have to do is pull up the British news sites and the stuff is there. All the damn time. Jeez, what a mess.