Police

The Police Federation is in the firing line this morning, and not before time. The federation sounds like something out of Rebus. The allegations of ‘endemic’ bullying and ‘cruel and gratuitous’ acts contained in Sir David Norrington’s report, and the subsequent parliamentary inquiries, date back over at least 8 years. With delicious irony, some of those allegations have been made against the federation’s equality and anti-bullying officers. The officers dispute the claims and say that the complaints were resolved on an informal basis some years ago; but you wouldn’t bet against further investigation in this atmosphere. The central finding of these reports is that the rank and file of the

In one sense the arrest of Gerry Adams for questioning in relation to the murder of Jean McConville is not a surprise. On the other hand it is astonishing. I cannot think how many times over the years the connection between Adams and the McConville case – appalling even by the standards trawled during the Troubles – has been raised. Yet, as the years have gone on, the possibility that Adams would ever actually answer questions on the murder seemed ever more remote. Adams has always denied any involvement in this crime, and has offered the police his assistance in their inquiries. Adams presented himself at a police station yesterday

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_20_February_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Julie Burchill debates Paris Lees on intersectionality”] Listen [/audioplayer]On Saturday morning, when the body of the beautiful Antipodean model and television personality Charlotte Dawson was being taken from her home in Sydney, I was back in Blighty rolling up my sleeves and getting stuck in for yet another happy hour in the gladiatorial arena that is the Spectator online comments section. Wherein, amongst other things, an angry trans-person had threatened me with the Police, for committing Hate Crimes (note the use of Krazy Kapitals) and a Beating from her Hells Angel Husband. These two things might seem completely random were it not for the fact that in 2012

Wouldn’t it be boring if everyone behaved much as you behave? If everyone expressed themselves similarly? Let a thousand flowers bloom, I say. Take the case of Torz Reynolds. You are almost certainly not called Torz and I would guess, too, that you count few people within your circle of friends who abide under that name. I don’t know where it comes from, Torz. A shortening of Victoria, I would guess, although it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that she was actually christened Torz, much as people these days are christened Jayden. Anyway, that’s not the point. Torz, who is 26 and lives in London, decided that she

West Midlands Police’s announcement that it had ordered the closure of the blog and Twitter account of Inspector Michael Brown – ‘the mental health cop’ – has caused astonishment and anger in equal measure. Thousands of grateful patients, police officers and doctors have followed Brown online ever since he realised that he had had only two hours of mental health training. He decided to remedy his ignorance in 2011. He went about finding ways to cut deaths in custody by ‘providing officers with information about how to handle mental health calls and to manage clinical risks’. Numerous prizes, including the Mind Digital Media award, followed. Everyone loved him apart from the

If you want to picture Rupert Murdoch imagine an old man on a tight rope. On the one hand, his newspapers must pursue his interests – say that everyone but the rich must pay the price of austerity, for instance. But as he wobbles over the void, Murdoch must also balance his rather brutal class interest with populist attacks on ‘the elite’ to assure readers of modest means that he is, despite everything, ‘on their side’. Normally the Murdoch press can stay upright by confining itself to savaging the liberal elite, which to be fair, never fails to provide him with a rich choice of targets. But every now again

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that English local authorities would be allowed to receive all the business rates collected from shale gas schemes, not just the 50 per cent they’d expect. Total, a French company, said it would invest about £30 million in drilling two exploratory wells in Lincolnshire. To head off higher borrowing rates, the government announced that ‘in the event of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, the continuing UK government would in all circumstances honour the contractual terms of the debt issued by the UK government’. The annual rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, met the target set by the government for

Are the police wasting too much time on Twitter instead of catching criminals? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Nick Cohen looks at what Britain’s fall in crime has done to policing methods. Is the fall responsible for the police’s heightened in what people say on social media? What does this mean for our civil liberties and freedom of speech? Consultant NHS surgeon J. Meirion Thomas also joins to explain how The Spectator helped blow the whistle on health tourism abuses. Will the government’s plans to tackle systematic abuses by migrants work? How much effect will the levy on students and temporary visitors have? Are the figures quoted by the Department of