I am a natural supporter of the police – but their hounding of people like Katie Hopkins is testing my patience

As an old-fashioned right-wing law-and-order Tory, my eyes tend to mist up in gratitude and admiration at the very mention of the word “police” – and the word “bobby” positively makes me blub. When some blighter waving a toy gun or even a chair leg that could possibly be mistaken for a gun gets themselves killed by police marksmen, I have little sympathy for them or their relatives. When drug-dealing gangsters who might be carrying a gun – because that’s the sort of thing they tend to do – get mown down by a copper, I am not minded to attend candlelit vigils on their behalf when it’s discovered they weren’t actually armed. Tough – comes with the territory. And when anarchist groups of whatever stripe whine about being penetrated (in whichever sense of the world) by undercover police agents, I couldn't care less. Boo bloody hoo.

My natural tendency to cheer for the forces of law and order has even survived their intransigence when it comes to repeated requests by the public which pays their wages to patrol our streets on foot. Despite a succession of home secretaries and police chiefs assuring us for at least a decade that that’s all about to change, it never does. (Presumably the reason it doesn’t change is because police officers don’t want it to.)
It has even survived the constabulary’s bizarre obsession with hounding speeding motorists (rather than, say, middle-lane hoggers, lorries clogging up the motorways by overtaking each other at 53 miles an hour, and idiot tailgaters – all more likely to cause accidents than a bloke in a Merc doing 98mph in the fast lane).

But what might finally put paid to my admiration for the boys in blue is their wanky, limp-wristed, mean-spirited, politically correct persecution of commenters who make off-colour remarks on social media. Now, I’m willing to concede that libel is libel wherever it's committed, and that people posting serious lies on any public platform should face the same penalties as someone making similar statements in a newspaper or on radio ot TV. And I dare say there are (rare) instances where moronic knuckle-draggers tweeting death threats should to be taken seriously and have their collar felt. But for the life of me I can’t see what’s wrong with anyone using the phrase “sweaty jocks” in public.

The stridently right-wing self-publicist Katie Hopkins has form when it comes to ribbing the Scots, including a decidedly off-colour (and rather funny) joke in the wake of last year’s Glasgow helicopter crash. This time, commenting on a nurse with ebola being brought from Glasgow to London for treatment, she tweeted the following remarks:

"Sending us Ebola bombs in the form of sweaty Glaswegians just isn't cricket."

"Glaswegian ebola patient moved to London's Royal Free Hospital. Not so independent when it matters most are we jocksville?"

If I were a humourless, sour-faced, left-wing whinger, I imagine I could find these remarks mildly offensive. But as I’m not, they strike me as (a) vaguely amusing, and (b) in the great tradition of one part of the British Isles joshing another. Is this any worse than the sort of remarks we soft southern poofs have been making about tedious, loud-mouthed Yorkshiremen - and vice-versa - for countless years? Or what various English celebrities have said about the Welsh – in newspapers and on television – during the past several decades? Since when did we regard someone calling a Glaswegian ”sweaty” as a potentially criminal act? And, in any case, why did the Scottish authorities think it necessary to move someone with a dangerous infectious disease from their biggest town the most densely populated city in Europe – I mean, is Glasgow now considered part of the Third World when it comes to medical treatment?

Police Scotland (as they appear to be called) haven’t charged Ms Hopkins with anything yet. But they’re keen to let us know how incredibly seriously they’re treating the matter. Det Insp Glyn Roberts stated: “We have received a number of complaints regarding remarks made on Twitter. Inquiries are ongoing into the nature of these tweets and to establish any potential criminality. Police Scotland will thoroughly investigate any reports of offensive or criminal behaviour online and anyone found to be responsible will be robustly dealt with."

Well, I also have a complaint, DI Roberts. As far as I’m concerned, each and every one of the pathetic wankers who has complained to you about Katie Hopkins’s tweets is guilty of diverting police resources from the investigation of genuine crimes – you know, the kind which leave people physically hurt or out of pocket or dead. The complainants could have chosen not to follow Katie Hopkins on Twitter, just as I choose not to read anything written by anyone who works for the Guardian, because I know its irrationality and mendacity will annoy me.

Furthermore, the complainants – even after they had deliberately chosen to read Ms Hopkins’s remarks – could simply have tutted disapprovingly before turning to something that wouldn’t upset their fragile left-liberal sensibilities: say an article by Owen Jones or Polly Toynbee slandering middle class English tax-payers as cruel racists. Instead, they decided to waste police time by reporting the matter – and I’m pretty sure that wasting police time is still considered a serious matter (if only by conservatives). By the same token, I can assure you that the vast majority of British taxpayers, i.e. the people who fund the police, will be thoroughly annoyed to learn that you lot have decided to waste our money on such piffling, inconsequential nonsense.

Get a grip, Plod! Arrest the time-wasters!