I too attended the games briefly as my daughter was to receive a prize there for some artwork she'd done.

I'd taken along my D50 kit on the off-chance of finding some interesting (i.e. saleable) shots... There were plenty of folk there with SLRs but I too was made to feel very uncomfortable by the police. In fact I'm fairly sure the female officer shown here (for all we can only see the back of her head) is one who basically followed me around at close quarters for 15 minutes until I was joined by my 11-year old, her Mother and three ice-cream cones...

We didn't stay long.... The prize giving was badly signposted and though my daughter got her prize she missed the 'ceremony'. The ice cream was horrendously expensive and vile tasting, and between the NEDS running around eyeing up my camera bag with a view to nickin' it and the Polis [sic] eyeing up my camera bag with a view to nickin' me....

I recall well the police van sitting to the left of the doughnut stand. As we were leaving we approached from the right of the doughnut van such that all I saw was the front of what I first thought was a ice-cream van. There was another (dark haired)female officer standing at its doors who drew me the filthiest of filthy looks as I passed it. I simply looked blankly back at her (I was in the process of putting the camera back in its bag) and waited for my Daughter and her mum to catch up with me....

For a moment I did actually consider writing in with a complaint to L&B police at Livingston.

But basically I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. The games was an absolute zoo with drunken neds running wild all over the place. MANY of them OBVIOUSLY under-age and drunk. NOT a safe event to take your family to!

And no wonder they were getting away with it if the Polis [sic] were too busy harassing everyone and anyone who was carrying a half-decent camera rather than stewarding the event properly!

As a professional television cameraman/producer I'm rather used to being afforded a certain level of 'access' to events. But it's not all-that-many years since I was a youngster snapping away at events learning the basics of my trade and starting off my portfolio. Likewise I know of many amateurs and semi-pros who derived a lot of pleasure and created a lot of documented social history through simply attending such events and making a decent record of them...

It's as Ironic as it is disturbing that whilst chaos reigned. And I was made, by the disorderly and the anti social to feel intimidated through the fear that I might be robbed or assaulted. The very people who's purpose should have been to protect me instead brought another level of fear and intimidation.

Its funny, perhaps they're concerned about continuity of supply of doNUTs!

All joking aside I took some shots of a Police/Fire display on the IoW recently, the one with the biggest concern was a local councillor, the Police officer (an old hand) and his 'plastic' mate were quite happy. The councillor seemed quite hyped up about the size of my kit, Nikon D1 and pro-glass, his agenda seemed to be very anti photography, at the time I wondered just why, perhaps it'll come out one day...

Had it been me I'd have been tempted to start taking loadsa pics of the police and army thereafter.

This whole situation's getting quite ridiculous.