Britain Sucks

Who thought this would be a good idea? Now instead of big brother, it’s … big brothers. Or neighbors. Or something. That country is so bat shit insane about stopping crime, they don’t seem to be paying any attention towards ways to prevent it.

They’ve decided to enlist the help of ordinary citizens who have nothing better to do, by launching a flash “game” which involves watching CCTV footage for criminal activity. Then they will hand out prizes to whoever gets the most crimes or something. This tells me a few things:

1. They don’t have enough police.
2. They have too many cameras.
3. They are stupid.
4. There are going to be people gaming the system just to win.

One through three doesn’t surprise me, it isn’t all that newsworthy. However, four brings up a interesting point.

If they have to hand out prizes to get people to care about crime, then either the people their either have no problems with crime, or crime is such a problem everyone has given up hope. I’m going to lean towards the latter.

Now, if they hand out prizes, there are going to be hundreds of people just submitting crap reports or whatever it is that you submit just to win. Surely some actual official has to look over these submissions. So, now you have some lowly police employee wasting taxpayer money to go over idiotic submissions.

Meanwhile, the criminals are avoiding cameras. Or, they have their associates flood the submissions before they stab someone on camera.