Well, that's classic "this is why we can't have nice things": there are some people who have to be made to comply as they won't otherwise do so voluntarily. It's always a fine balance because excessive application of the rules infantilises a lot of people and generally pisses them off, and it pisses me off when I see someone pedantically going on about "but it's the rules, it's the ruuuuuules" as if that's all that matters. But sometimes they're important and have to be followed.
Personally I don't have a problem with seeing soldiers on the street and in some regards prefer them to the police as they're more independent-thinkers. They're still selected to a high standard and the "problem" ones weeded out during selection and basic-training. That's not to say you don't get the odd one but overall it's not as if they're just thugs. If anything, the UK is a bit of an oddity in the way it polices, a lot of countries have a similar arrangement to France where the everyday policing is done by the military police, the gendarmes being technically soldiers IIRC (and similarly armed) and the "civil police" being analogous to our CID.
Speed cameras I have a special hatred of because speeding is only a very small part of dangerous driving and often not even a factor, and IME the standard of driving has reduced significantly since most traffic policing is now automated: it makes it much less likely that people get pulled over for actually dangerous driving e.g. tailgating, failing to observe give-way signs etc, drunk driving and generally being arseholes. They had an experiment locally where they turned off the cameras for a short period of time and put patrol cars back on the streets; it made such a difference even just audibly in that the very obvious road-racing that's long been a problem stopped. But being idiots they went back to speed cameras and the problems returned.
