London, Each time you walk across any of the bridges over Thames in the touristy central part of London, you can’t help but watch out for the cars and vans — any chance one of them could speed into the sidewalk? This is the effect of this peculiar method of terrorism that has been used in London twice in less than three months.
But only occasionally does one come across cops here, though they’ve installed iron and concrete barriers at London Bridge and a few other bridges. A few cops are spotted at Westminster and the in the vicinity of the headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service on the edge of the Thames near Vauxhall Bridge.
Visitors from India marvel at the very unobtrusive security arrangements. ‘There’s hardly any security, it’s quite amazing,” says a tourist from Mumbai. “In India, if there had been such an attack in, say, Delhi or Mumbai, there would have been thousands of policemen on the streets, armed.”
At the Oval ground, a 10-minute walk away from Vauxhall Bridge, we spot one cop with a sophisticated automatic gun. Walking around the stadium, we find a few more gunmen stationed close to the gates.
The methods employed by London’s (and England’s) police are very different from those used by cops in India. In India, they put boots on the ground in big numbers, here they rely more on intelligence and surveillance.
There’s a great dearth of police personnel in the UK, and that’s the reason UK has a huge net of surveillance cameras installed all over. It’s estimated that in Greater London, there are around 50,000 public surveillance cameras in use. In the run-up to today’s General Election, job cuts in police have been a hotly-contested issue.
Voting in Southall
Visiting a couple of polling stations in the Ealing Southall constituency early this morning, we spotted a few desis going into the polling stations — schools on other days — to cast their votes. Voting opened at 7 am and would continue until 10 pm, ie 15 hours for people to cast their vote. They can also vote through mail, or nominate someone else to vote for them. Maybe that’s the reason there was no rush at all at the polling stations.
There was practically no security at the two polling stations — this is an election for the Parliament, for God’s sake! Back in India, the local municipal committee election in a small city would have more hustle and bustle and security.
Virendra Sharma, the Labour MP from Ealing Southall, happened to be visiting one of the polling stations near the Southall Railway Station. Not one to miss an opportunity, Sharma directed a charming, vote-soliciting smile and wave towards us.
Sharma, who’s represented Ealing Southall since 2007, could be evicted this time. This area has very large number of people with South Asian roots, and they traditionally vote Labour. This time, though, Pakistani heritage people have decided to en mass vote against him because in January, he’d made some comments about terrorism originating from Pakistan.