High street store Lush brands the police "liars"

All Jalima said, above. Lush doesn't seem to have much of a conscience about smearing the name of the entire police force. Any PR person with working brain cells would not have taken the political stance Lush did and expect there to be no backlash. More shame on the firm if the whole nasty debacle was a publicity stunt.

which just makes it look more and more like a PR stunt to me...
there's no such thing as bad publicity!

Lush is one of those rare companies that has a social conscience.
Firms can have 'a social conscience' and behave in an ethical way without behaving in the way that Lush has done, trying to influence young minds against the police in general (if that is indeed the demographic that purchases their products) without telling the whole story and making them suspicious of the police in general if they should ever need their help.

Those officers who behaved in such a way may have been wrong, those who instructed them to do so perhaps did wrong, but they are not representative of the police as a whole.

Lush is left of centre? It’s a soap shop.


and an extremely smelly one too.

I've seen that lush have taken down the ads due to "fear for staff safety" with no reference at all to any actual threats....
....which just makes it look more and more like a PR stunt to me...

Yes, best ignored.

I agree lemon, I wonder the same - perhaps best ignored? It's certainly very trying though?

Bloody hell lemon you really never cease to amaze with your utter chutzpah.

I sometimes wonder how old you are Maryeliza because your responses are very like those of a teenager.

It doesn’t matter if our demographic doesn’t buy anything from Lush, that has nothing to do with the case.
Lush is left of centre? It’s a soap shop.
Having walked past there this week, all the window display looks like is an open attack on the police calling them liars.
There are a lot of police officers who have families and friends who will now be boycotting this daft shop.

You are a broken record lemon and getting more boring by the minute. Yawn

What on earth is OldMeg going on about?
What ‘ranting and raving’ ? Show me a post where I have targeted attacks on you, or for that matter MaggieMaybe
I think you will find that neither of us has! Perhaps you are having a bad day.
MaryEliza...... you are outraged by just about anything.

I never believe these boycotts - most of the right wing 'the police can do no wrong' brigade are probably not buying Lush at all. Its just not the demographic. What I think is really chilling in terms of our society is that supporting any institution uncritically is incredibly dangerous and particularly as we saw on here supporting them without having any knowledge about the issues - not even knowing that the enquiry had been set up. I mean really? I'm still waiting for all the huffers and puffers o say what should be done about the disgraceful way this enquiry is going - but they won't because they actually couldn't care less - would even one of them bother to write to their MP even? As if - Lush is left of centre =bad. Simples.

Given that it has caused such an uproar and many people, including people on here, have said they will never buy Lush products again, it seems that it has not discredited individual police officers at all - in fact it seems to have raised respect for police officers generally.

These particular police officers were "paid to lie" and it is difficult to believe that nobody at senior level had any inkling about the level of deception and total lack of integrity involved.

I think we all understand "the aim was not to tarnish the reputation of the police force as a whole but to highlight the fact that the people who have been the victims of these undercover operations are very unhappy at the speed at which this inquiry is proceeding and the way it has been constructed" Eloethan.

However, the fact remains that the campaign "Paid to lie" written on windows depicting a police officer - shown as two-faced - and used with police tape, means absolutely nothing. It is telling us police officers are paid to lie. There was no context.

by

Whether the police were right or wrong in these instances could be the subject of campaigning of the owners of such firms as Lush, but not in this way.

As for intimidation, a member of my family recently had acid thrown in his face while arresting a person you really wouldn't want in your neighbourhood

Yes, Maggiemaybe I imagine anyone related to a police officer could tell tales of what they have to endure in carrying out their day to day work.

A police sergeant cousin of mine, a real genial giant, has regularly been sworn at, spat at, yelled at, kicked and had stones and other missiles thrown at him when he's been on duty. Much of his work involves dealing with law breaking people who are not happy when the police turn up - the sort of people he describes would not make good neighbours. Many are without scruples, very violent and make victims of the innocent. I am in awe of people who face this sort of stressful involvement, and danger day after day.

Lush may have had noble motives but their window displays depicted all police officers as paid liars. An apology should be forthcoming, imo.

There are other companies with a social conscience but they carry out their good works in a more unobstrusive way and without trying to influence the minds of children.

Lush is one of those rare companies that has a social conscience.

Having read more about the inquiry and the issues that several of the women involved are complaining about (which include the wives of the officers in question), whilst I initially had concerns about the way the campaign was mounted, I now believe Lush was right to significantly raise the profile of this campaign.

The aim was not to tarnish the reputation of the police force as a whole but to highlight the fact that the people who have been the victims of these undercover operations are very unhappy at the speed at which this inquiry is proceeding and the way it has been constructed.

They have pointed out that, as the police officers involved have been granted anonymity (despite what has been publicly acknowledged to be a serious abuse of human rights), no other witnesses can come forward with new evidence. For that reason, they feel that anonymity should not have been granted.

They request that the inquiry should be extended to Scotland, which seems reasonable to me.

It appears that the inquiry is, in their opinion, too narrow and focuses on the actions of the individual officers. It is also important for the inquiry to investigate fully whether senior police officers or even the Home Secretary were aware of the degree to which these women's lives had been infiltrated and the degree of the deception that was occurring.

The degree of deception and infiltration into these women's lives was so unethical - and possibly unlawful - that it is felt that the prevarication and secretiveness of this inquiry should be exposed and addressed. I think Lush was quite courageous to mount this campaign and it appears that the Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner Martyn Underhill agrees. He described infiltration of animal rights activists as "disproportionate and distasteful" and expressed his support for Lush in exposing the issues in contention.

Whatevs. as my DGS would say.

Maggie nice outburst of righteous indignation there- yet another ?

OldMeg, your post is completely out of order. I have considered reporting it to Gransnet, but what the heck, in your own charming words I CBA.

Whether you read this or not is of no concern to me whatsoever. But I am sure other posters on this thread would agree that I have neither ranted or raved, nor have I targeted any attacks on you or anyone else.

As for what is "rattling my cage", I have no idea what you are implying and I probably would not want to know. And finally, how dare you complain about how my behaviour makes other people feel after that outburst?

during the Brexit vote lush said they were going to move all admin/HQ/etc out of the UK if the vote was yes

As far as I know that hasnt happened

One wonders if it might happen now, notanan2

I shan't miss that particular store.

Though I’m sorry they didn’t cancel it because it was unfair to the vast majority of police officers

Exactly Maggiemaybe

It was OK to smear all police officers, to insinuate they were liars?

I will never shop there again. They'd have earned my respect if they'd issued a notice with words to the effect that the campaign was ill-conceived. And an apology to all serving police officers would have been a decent gesture too.

Public protest does bear fruit, when an institution we rely on has been unfairly tarnished. I know so many people deeply offended by the dreadful political stance taken by Lush..