Hi guys/gals, it has been a while but something happened to me today, and I thought that this was as good a time as any to start posting again.
So, lets start with then end of April, last time I posted. Well, had a few exams, and on the whole, they went pretty well, no surprises. Results came through and it wasn't bad, not as good as last year, but then there were a few stumbling blocks last semester.
Next stop, summer job. I decided to apply for work inside the university, something involving research, and I got it which was good. Then, I also managed to get another placement in the same place, but this time working on behalf of some other place, double wow
. I jumped ship and went for it.
Started working on Monday, the project is super cool but right now lots to read and loads of my mates are working there too - not on the same stuff
Ahh, but what made me write today. I'm sure you know about the incident at Glasgow Airport this weekend past. Everywhere security is heightened
Earlier on, I felt the results. Coming in to work through Glasgow Central train station, a brightly jacketed police officer, pulled me to one side, and proceeded to apply Section 44 - Stop and search, on me. He wasn't rude, he wasn't obnoxious, but then why was I stopped? Must have looked suspicious, 'probably my large rucksack' but alas, it seemed I was the first person to be searched by that police officer
He let me go and i gave him a cheery smile - I wasn't smiling inside, got soaked because of him delaying me.
Nearly happened again when I went home, I was with one of my friends too, A different officer took us both to one side to search us. Once he found that I'd been searched earlier on, he let 'us' go ... which leads me to believe we were stopped because of me. The cynic in me thinks that we were let go, because it would be bad PR for a person to be searched twice in one day in the same place.
lol, sorry for the long entry.
P.S. For perspective, I'm Scottish Asian. Glasgow born and bred
Comments (5)
I tend to think that stop and search inherently leads to this sort of thing. It's so arbitrary and discretionary on the part of police officers that there's always an inherent ethnic bias, even if that defies the fact that 'new' terrorism of the kind we have seen is by its nature unpredictable and un-profileable (doctors trying to blow people up - Hippocratic oath anyone?).
I'm sorry it happened to you, O. What liberties one loses, we all lose in the end.