Following LBC’s successful people-smuggling investigation last October, and the station’s subsequent profiling of their Time for Tasers campaign which precipitated a change in police funding and policy, Nick Ferrari starts 2020 saying Enough is Enough.
The award-winning host of LBC’s Nick Ferrari at Breakfast is launching his new campaign to give police greater powers when dealing with protests which cause serious public disorder, such as the Extinction Rebellion (XR) disruptions which took place last year.
The XR protests cost the Metropolitan Police more than £40million, which included overtime for officers and mutual aid to move police across the country to support their efforts in London. Speaking on LBC in January this year, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick also revealed the strain put on police from these large scale protests and said more needed to be done:
“I think there should be a greater deterrent, absolutely, and there should be a way in which we can stop people simply bringing our city to a halt and causing such serious disruption.”
Funds that went towards policing the XR protests last year could have been spent on paying for the Met’s Violent Crime Taskforce for almost three years.
Today, LBC reveals the results of an exclusive poll with Deltapoll*, which kickstarts Nick Ferrari’s campaign Enough is Enough. The poll shows that 60% of adults believe that police need greater powers, whilst a majority (53%) think there should be restrictions on people being able to return to protests after being arrested.
In terms of measures available to the police, the LBC poll shows that two thirds (67%) of the public think that mounted police should be able to be used. In addition, riot police (63%), water cannon (58%) and tasers (57%) all have majority support from British adults.
Furthermore, in a provocative narrative captured on video which will be discussed throughout the week on LBC, XR’s co-founder Simon Bramwell, endorsed “direct sabotage” whilst calling to “take down civilisation”, taking future generations into a “feral consciousness”. He was speaking at an event organised by the radical environmentalist group Deep Green Resistance UK in November last year.
When asked to comment on Simon Bramwell’s remarks, a spokesperson from XR told LBC, “Extinction Rebellion is a broad church of people – including lawyers, doctors, electricians, nurses, farmers and teachers – who have come together to ask our government to act to avert the worst effects of climate change. Simon’s views as expressed in this video do not represent the position of Extinction Rebellion as a whole.”
With XR announcing on social media that it’s “next UK Rebellion” will begin on 23rd May, LBC’s Nick Ferrari is saying Enough is Enough and calling for the government to give officers greater powers so they can do their job more effectively.
“Surveys show the public’s fear of crime and desire to take action against prolonged protests is at a record high. When you hear the chilling, anarchic sentiments from one of Extinction Rebellion’s founders, the picture gets bleaker. That is why, starting today, I am launching the Enough is Enough campaign as it is highly likely our streets face a lockdown in the next 100 days.”
Nick Ferrari, host of LBC’s Nick Ferrari At Breakfast
To hear more about Nick Ferrari’s campaign Enough is Enough, tune into Nick Ferrari at Breakfast (weekdays from 7am to 10am) on LBC, available across the UK on DAB digital radio, LBC.co.uk on the LBC and Global Player apps, and in London on 97.3FM.
