Police

Freedom of speech is alive and well in Scotland, then. Pastor Josh Williamson took the Christian gospel to the streets of Perth last week, before he was arrested by the old bill for a ‘breach of the peace’. Asked why he was being arrested, Plod No 1 said because you’re too loud, pointing to the electrical device the clergyman was carrying. That’s an MP3 recorder, he replied, it’s not an amplifier. Then Plod No 2 claimed it was the content of his sermon, although he could not put his finger on what it was exactly. Hauled down the nick, refused the right of a lawyer, Williamson was eventually released with a verbal caution and the comment from another copper: ‘You seem like a reasonable man, why not just stop preaching?

It is a tragedy that some of us are born in the wrong times. According to that increasingly gobby conduit of right-on morality, the NSPCC, girls these days feel compelled to act like porn stars in order to ingratiate themselves with boys. I am not sure quite what, in day to day life, this involves. I only know that they made no similar attempts during my adolescence, or if they did I didn’t notice. I vaguely recall one young lady in my school class telling me, when I was 14, that she had engaged in sexual intercourse the previous night with a boy from a neighbouring town. ‘What was it like, Debs?’ I asked, wide-eyed. ‘Didn’t touch the fucking sides,’ Debs spat with all the contempt she could muster.

Another of this blog's occasional hobby-horses is the increasing use by police of Tasers (see here, here and here, for instance). It is remarkable how often these "non-lethal" weapons turn out to be pretty damn lethal. Last week Jordan Begley, a 23 year old with a heart condition, died after being tasered by Greater Manchester Police. As a senior police officer described the incident in which police were called to a domestic dispute between neighbours, "it is unclear what happened but the man suffered a medical episode". Sir Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police added delicately: "Our sympathies are with the family and friends of the man who are going through a traumatic time." I suppose they are!

Caroline and I were watching The Fall in our front room when the intruder entered our house. Not great timing on his part, considering The Fall is a BBC drama series about a serial killer who breaks into people’s homes, then tortures and murders them. Thankfully, we never actually set eyes on him. We only discovered we’d been burgled when we returned to the kitchen to load the dishwasher and found various items missing. But still. Caroline was probably more upset than she would have been if we’d been watching Eat, Pray, Love — which we wouldn’t have been, obviously, because it’s complete drek. I was up most of the night trying to catch the bugger.

Compare a democracy to a dictatorship and world-weary chuckles follow. The last thing a citizen can do in true tyrannies is call them tyrannies. He or she has to pretend that the glorious socialist motherland or virtuous Islamic republic is not only as free as democracies but has a level of freedom that those who rely on universal suffrage and human rights cannot attain. If you are free to call your country a tyranny, then it is almost certainly is not. In the United States, the politically sophisticated are enjoying themselves immensely as they tear into leftish claims that America is now George Orwell’s all-seeing totalitarian state.

I was in my garden office on Monday afternoon when I heard a loud noise behind me, as if someone had jumped over the back fence. Seconds later, a strange man walked past the window. I emerged gingerly from my office and found myself face to face with a giant. At first glance, he looked like a basketball player: mixed race, about 6ft 5, in his mid-twenties and built like an athlete. ‘Can I help you?’ I asked. Instead of replying, he vaulted on to the roof of my tool shed and dropped down into my neighbour’s garden. I ran up to the house, told my wife to call the police and then went out on to the street to see if I could spot him.

I always thought there was something a little bit sinister about that Jake The Peg character. With what he refers to as his 'extra leg', m’lud. And then, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I would draw your attention to the follow up hit which was entitled, signally, 'Two Little Boys'………… So, now it’s Rolf Harris - and Channel Five has been forced to pull its scheduled transmission of 'Olive The Ostrich', in case Rolf’s alleged guilt somehow seeps out of the television screen and into the innocent and vulnerable ears of toddlers. But guilt of what?

Lord Denning was perhaps the most beloved judge of the 20th century. He even inspired a Lord Denning Appreciation Society. But I and many others found something sinister behind his charming Hampshire accent. We noticed that his professed concern for the victims of injustice never extended to the victims of police fit-ups. In 1980, he heard an appeal by the Birmingham Six, the men falsely convicted for the IRA’s massacre of drinkers in two Birmingham pubs in November 1974. The six were suing the police for damages for the beatings they said they had received. Although it was not a full appeal, Denning understood the implications, and rejected the claim: 'Just consider the course of events if their action were to proceed to trial ...

In a dawn raid today police swooped on children’s legend This Old Man for alleged sexual assault against countless toddlers and took him to a police station. “We have several thousand allegations that Mr This Old Man repeatedly abused children under the guise of a sort of sinister numbers game.  We can only praise those who have had the bravery to come forward to report these crimes. These are people who have been traumatised, in their infancy, by a trusted entertainer who proceeded to touch them inappropriately – or ‘playing nick-nack’, as the depraved old paedo put it.” The leader of an anti-child abuse charity, Ms Jan Cosworth-Harridan, said: “Let us be clear.