UK government 'may sanction nerve-agent use on rioters

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UK government 'may sanction nerve-agent use on rioters'

The government loves you. They are just protecting you from yourself.

doesn't sound good.

When you say "nerve gas", I assume that you mean something like sarin or VX.

I very much doubt if the goverment or the police are going to start using that, it is not suitable for crowd control. Many things about these chemicals make them very unsuitable for dealing with a riot.

1. They tend to kill most people who are exposed.
2. They are going to pose a major threat to the police
3. err there are more reasons but I will not list the others right now

No not war-grade chemicals. Probably something incapacitating but not (usually) lethal. Maybe something causing halucinations or loss of higher cognitive functions or something inducing panic or flight?

Anyway, I wish I could say I'm surprised but I'm not. This is the same country that has talking cameras on every street corner.

Why do people allow to be led by these power hungry vultures?

I don't see why not. It's great from the standpoint of a totalitarian government-it kills your enemies, and crowd control is greatly simplified, just shoot VX cans at the rioters, then scoop up and burn all the bodies a couple hours later. Most dictators want their people dead anyway. It's the abusive husband syndrome-if he can't have you, nobody will.

You clearly haven't spent much time in the UK then.

Yes, a couple of town centres in the UK have talking CCTV cameras but they are largely restricted to urban areas. But I suspect they are only used in about ten or so towns. Some places also record voices on CCTV but again, I doubt it's really that many.

That said, though, the UK certainly is a CCTV-obsessed society. To be honest, there is so much footage that is collected that it is often not looked at and therefore becomes useless. This country often has more footage than it knows what to do with.

Yes indeed, and the stuff that might have actually been useful gets trashed by MI5 anyway:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/2 ... 7-bombings
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... 7-bombers#

There are several street corners near me but they don't even have cameras, never mind chatty ones.
That's the case for most of the UK, in fact.

No they don't. I've never even encountered one.

VX and sarin still sound very bad riot control agents to me,

Sarin and VX are normally spread in the form of aerosol droplets which can travel a long way. While sarin is quite shortlived by military standards it can contaminate a location for days while VX is very long lived (weeks). So the riot scene will stay hazardous for a long time.

I doubt if the goverment will want to use things like BZ on rioters, people who have been dosed with small amounts of BZ will take quite a while to start to suffer the effects. They may have wandered off by the time it starts to act, also the symptoms of BZ may cause a lot of trouble. LSD is a bad idea it is likely to make people more violent when they respond to the gaint snake or overgrown spider which is trying to attack them.

I think that they idea of mind altering chemicals for riot control is a poor idea.