{"id":510,"date":"2003-03-10T00:35:00","date_gmt":"2003-03-10T00:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tashuk.wordpress.com\/2003\/03\/10\/510\/"},"modified":"2003-03-10T00:35:00","modified_gmt":"2003-03-10T00:35:00","slug":"510","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/510","title":{"rendered":"Just another ‘Stop and Search, in Nottingham."},"content":{"rendered":"

Was sitting in my car in the Mansfield Road, last week, when a typical scene unfolded before me. A couple of black youths, in a car pulled over, right next to me. No offences commited that I could see. Wound down the window to take these piccys, [well, I couldn’t help it!] over heard the initial conversation. “Is this your car sir …… ”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Benjamin Zephaniah:<\/p>\n

The Metropolitan Police wanted to use a couple of lines of his poetry (‘I love this concrete jungle still with all its sirens and its speed\/ the people here united will create a kind of London breed’) for a recruitment campaign.<\/p>\n

Zephaniah would not play.<\/p>\n

He complained that he was still stopped by the police, simply because of his appearance. Now he is less vociferous: ‘I would love to see a day when I am able to work for the police. I’d be happy, because they pay well, I’m told.’ He is never short of a joke. But he won’t ‘unite’ with anyone unless his heart is in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Was sitting in my car in the Mansfield Road, last week, when a typical scene unfolded before me. A couple of black youths, in a car pulled over, right next to me. No offences commited that I could see. Wound … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}