Wednesday 31 December 2014

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!

11 comments:

  1. At the time of the Scottish referendum, there were many anti - English ruderies on Twitter , none of which triggered police action as far as I'm aware.

    For example, when JK Rowling lent her support to the No campaign someone called her an interfering English bitch on Twitter. Another commentator remonstrated with the poster as follows :

    "Hold on now, how do you know Rowling's actually English - she's not even Black?"

    Britain needs a root - and - branch reform of its "hate - speech" and "racism" laws as well as a public burning of the Macpherson Report, a critique of which may be viewed here :

    http://drfrankellis.blogspot.com/2012/04/macpherson-report-anti-racist-hysteria_15.html

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    1. The problem is that once this sort of daft illiberal nanny state legislation has been introduced, it seems impossible to get rid of, partly, I suspect, because so many people - the police, lawyers, broadcasters, pessure groups, charities, activists and "spokesmen" - make such a good living out of it.

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  2. And this is why I cited Blair as being the most deserving of the 'head on a pike on London Bridge' treatment when sanity is restored to this blessed land. Without his junta's imposition of legalised nannying, none of this crap would be possible.

    Two thoughts occur. The first is that surely some of this nonsense is open to legal challenge? On the sauce for the goose principle, if the Human Rights Act can be used by every Tom, Dick and Harry to create mayhem, why can it and other legislation not be turned back on the bastards?

    What we need is a latterday A.P. Herbert (or, more likely the Koch Brothers) to vigorously turn the tables using oppressive 'hate speech' laws against those who use them to enforce their political will on the rest of us.

    The second, pace your understandable support for the old bill, is that the police need to be challenged and fought over this sort of oppressive behaviour. While once they might have been regarded as the bastions of conservative society, entryism by Common Purpose types has led to a force that is now run by SJWs, who use the unthinking, bovine ranks to blindly enforce whatever they are told to in their endless 'training' sessions.

    In short, we need to fight back, using their own weapons.





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    1. No need to worry - we've had a Conservative prime minister for four and a half years, so obviously he's created a bonfire of all these silly left-liberal laws... oh, hang on...

      Your suggestion that the right should fight back is an intriguing and welcome one. I wonder why it doesn't.

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    2. I have no answer to this and it troubles me. Presumably there still are at least a few members of the legal profession who aren't connected to the last Labour gummint? And, if not, some wealthy wingnuts who might finance cases against the oppressors?

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  3. I think this lady is mainly guilty of using the wrong phrase. The term "sweaty sock" is Cockney rhyming slang for a Scotsman. "Sweaty Jock" does sound a tad more offensive, but even so, it hardly requires the attention of the police. Blimey what happened to stick and stones?...

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    1. I'm pretty sure "sweaty sock" now counts as hate speech and that its use entails an automatic 10-year prison term. You have been warned, Jeff JeffreyM.

      The one exception to the prevailing madness happened last June when the Metropolitain Police - in the face of widespread ridicule - decided they would no longer arrest Spurs fans (many of whom are Jewish) for referring to themselves as "The Yid Army" (they also use the phrase "Super Jews"). Shame in a way, because the idea of a Jew being prosecuted for hate speech for proudly using the term "yid" about themselves so perfectly illustrates the lunacy created by left-liberal orthodoxy.

      The sticks and stones were all used up in the left-wing riots of 2011.

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  4. A visitor from another planet might think this was Salem in 1692.The once wonderful British Police are in danger of becoming the world's laughing stock if they are'nt so already.Get a grip.

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    1. It's a shame that Inspector Gadget - the serving Thames Valley police officer who blogged and tweeted for seven years, fell silent in 2013, presumably as the result of pressure from his superiors. He provided a fascinating insight into the contempt with which real policemen view the politically correct, multicultural brainswashing they're forced to endure. Heartbreaking.

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  5. It's made worse by the announcement yesterday that police numbers will continue to be reduced and that they will no longer be responding to crimes such as shop lifting.

    Presumably, this is to give them more time on Twitter.

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    1. To be honest, I was under the impression they gave up investigating shop-lifting incidents years ago - unless, of course, a shopkeeper is foolish enought to interfere with the thief's human rights by making a citizen's arrest, in which case they'll turn out in force to arrest the shopkeeper. It must be dispiriting to be be a proper copper these days.

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