I visited the UK in 2005. While there, I learned that there was, at that time, a widespread belief that UK police were, in general, completely nuts. (This was after the incident where the surveillance team watching a building suspected to have terrorists living in it screwed up, panicked, murdered a random foreigner, then tried to cover it up, and thus completely blew the entire operation, which seems to have ultimately resulted in the Met being convicted of not having a work environment safe for visitors, specifically the random foreigner they killed.) I also learned that members of other police forced in the UK think the members of the Metropolitan London Police are nuts.
While in Glasgow, I did see a police officer intimidating a group of tourists for taking his picture on a public street.
While in Birmingham the following week I saw the following bumper sticker for sale: New is to Labour as National is to Socialism.
(Incidentally, some of you should have figured out precisely what I was doing on that trip from those last two sentences.)
For those who were otherwise occupied at the time, this was the era of Tony Blair's 'New Labour' government, which had previously carried out such changes as eliminating the right to silence, and attempting to make the evidenciary threshold for convicting someone of terrorism charges that a police officer had accused them.
