Hey, I’m as happy to criticise Blair as the next man, but not over some shock horror over the type of bullets used.
Dum-dum bullets (invented like most good things, by the British (though not concentration camps for which we’re usually blamed, we just invented the name)) were banned from international warfare in 1899 because of the lingering death they caused to soldiers. In war situations, it is sometimes not possible to treat someone suffering from bullet wounds. Clean, ‘full metal jackets’ give a chance of clean wounds. Dum dum bulllets don’t. The associated notion was that armies would deliberately seek to maim rather than kill because of the drag on resources this would cause. At the time, this was reprehensible and the bullets were banned. Now, of course, it’s standard policy by most post_Cold War armies (and much Cold War strategy on both sides was based on causing woulnds to slow the other side down, rather than deaths which wouldn’t).
The same issues don’t apply with the Police. They use dum-dum bullets because there is less risk of hitting by-standers, because the bullets will slow down and disintegrate on contact with a target, rather than going through and potentially hitting someone else. And there isn’t the ethical issue, because in any Police situation, the victim/perp can be delivered to hospital tout de suite.
Fake outrage doesn’t make a story.