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The Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club has issued a hurried retraction of a request by Westminster police to report "any information relating to anarchists". Scotland Yard spent twenty-four hours trying to discover why City of Westminster police had been sending out leaflets equating followers of a particular political philosophy with asylum seekers, benefit scroungers, students and Muslims, but it appears that no information was forthcoming. Let us hope that the interrogation techniques were not excessively unkind. "We appreciate that the leaflet could have been worded better," said the retraction diplomatically. The intended message was "to gather information on criminal acts to help us prevent crime and bring offenders to justice", which evidently translates into Shop an anarchist and win brownie points much as "keeping the streets safe" nowadays translates into cavalry charges, tipping people out of their wheelchairs and shooting with dumdum bullets.