I heard the self-important whine of a police siren so pulled back the curtains a little to see what was happening. I was in a bed and breakfast in Royston, Herts, so I assumed the rozzers were on their way to handcuff someone who had been mildly disobliging about their child’s school on a social media site. But there, just down the high street, the coppers had pulled up outside a pub. They got out of their car and stood about a bit. Then another police car pulled up and then another. Coppers got out of them too, and stood about a bit outside the pub.
There were a few drinkers also outside the pub and one bloke seemed to have fallen over. There was, so far as I could see, no trouble. Certainly not the sort of trouble that would demand three police cars and six coppers. No, sorry – make that five police cars and ten coppers, because two more cars swung by the pub and disgorged officers of the law, who also proceeded to stand about a bit, outside the pub. This all lasted for about 20 minutes, then everybody went home. No arrests, nobody hurt, so far as I could see.
So I suppose just six plod marching up the drive in their stupid yellow waistcoats to arrest a middle-aged couple for being a bit arsey about their daughter’s school was an expression of restraint by the Herts old bill, or maybe they were just understaffed that day. The coppers said later that six officers were needed in order to sequester ‘electronic devices’ and also to look after the children.
I had always believed the police when they insisted how chronically short-staffed they are these days – after all those Tory cuts – but then it seems that the likes of Hertfordshire bizzies can’t attend any crime, no matter how insignificant, unless it’s in a kind of battalion. I daresay health and safety guidelines are in there somewhere and they, of course, take precedence over every other consideration, including common sense. But then I suppose if you relax the recruitment guidelines so that you can be a bit more DEI and end up hiring lots of dwarfs, weaklings and overweight women, then you must recourse to strength in numbers.
The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, responded to the arrest of those parents by saying that the police should focus on cutting serious crime, such as violence against women and girls and knife offences, as well as shoplifting and antisocial behaviour. Of course, she is right and it is refreshing to hear a member of this mercifully reborn government say as much. But she is the Home Secretary, so one supposes that if she really wanted police to focus upon real crime, instead of more congenial imaginary crimes, she could kind of make it happen.
Except that she can’t – and this is the point of this article. There is seemingly nothing anybody in power can do about anything. These progressive idiocies have rooted themselves so firmly within the guts of all of our institutions that there is seemingly no way of gainsaying them. Even after Cooper had made her observations, for example, the morons at Hertfordshire Police were lecturing MPs, telling them that they too could be investigated by the force if they dared to help the parents, or advocate for them – a frankly outrageous abuse of power.
Progressive idiocies have rooted themselves so firmly that there seems no way of gainsaying them
You see? It doesn’t matter what the elected government says, or indeed the views of Hertfordshire constabulary’s ultimate boss, the Home Secretary – this poison is ingrained and there is seemingly no viable antidote.
The problem stretches well beyond the plod, of course. It is everywhere in our society. It does not matter that the last government insisted that trans women should be banned from being treated in women’s wards in our hospitals: the NHS effectively said that it would completely ignore this ruling, so suck it up. Meanwhile it has been left to a bunch of five nurses in Darlington to take their local NHS trust to court after they were compelled to share a changing room with a trans woman who, according to the nurses, was hung like a priapic rhino and had a girlfriend. They have faced vilification from their employer.
Similarly, the Prime Minister has expressed disquiet over the fact that a three-year-old kid was suspended from his kindergarten for the crime of being ‘transphobic’. Like most people – including, one suspects, Sir Keir – I find it a challenge to the imagination that a three-year-old child could express transphobic statements. Did he stand up from his Play-Doh and say: ‘You know, having given the matter considerable thought, I have decided that I stand with Kathleen Stock and J.K. Rowling on the point of principle that sex is determined at birth and that there are two genders. I’m sorry, classmates, but that is how it is. Now let’s go watch Balamory.’
But Sir Keir’s views count for nothing when put up against the guidelines insisted on by such toxic – and ridiculous – organisations such as Stonewall. Starmer may also be alarmed to discover that 94 primary school children under the age of eight were suspended from schools last year for having shown a bit of premature terfism. But it seems there is nothing he can do about it, any more than Rishi Sunak could.
If there is hope, then I suppose one might find it buried in the row over the odious sentencing guidelines put before judges which would mean offenders from ethnic minorities would be treated differently to those who were white. To her immense credit, the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood immediately pronounced this unacceptable. ‘These guidelines create a justice system where outcomes could be influenced by race, culture or religion,’ she said. ‘This differential treatment is unacceptable – equality before the law is the backbone of public confidence in our justice system. I will change the law to ensure fairness for all in our courts.’ The Sentencing Council having first been minded to ignore the government, it now seems that this stricture will be put on hold. A small but glimmering victory for rectitude.
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