EVERYBODYseems to have ever so slightly lost the plot this
past week.
If it hasn’t been wedge-headed MP’s it was the police. And
if it wasn’t the gavers booking said MP it was it was Sussex Police, who were looking
through pencil cases for a lustful student who fancied a bit of extra
curricula.
Even I, with the patience of a stone, got involved with all
this anger malarkey when South West Trains decided to dump me off at
Southampton Central for a couple of hours after a “tractor carrying a trailer” careened
into a bridge somewhere.
So add to that list one cantankerous county bumpkin, too.
I’m not here to offer any remedies for this rage but I can
offer perspective.
Firstly to the case of Andrew Mitchell, who last week swore
at a couple of police officers who denied him the right to cycle through the Number
10 gates.
Not only did he swear at her majesties’ constabulary but he
also, allegedly, called them “plebs”. And I can see both sides of the ensuing
debate.
Yes, the mop-haired Mitchell should have refrained from
swearing at the police and he certainly may have wanted to button it with his “know
your place” spiel.
But, really? Plebs? Don’t we all sometimes unleash on the
nearest, person, pet or, in this case, policeman?
And talking of policeman, did those Met officers really need
to record the exchange? I mean, far from being a bully, but, even when I used
to bully people at school they didn’t tell on me.
Are we really that much of a nanny state now that even the
police tell Daddy on the naughty man?
This is how the fuzz could have resolved the situation,
without looking like plebs.
Officer 1: “Andy, sorry pal, but I’m going to have to ask
you to climb down from you bicycle.”
Mitchell: “Oh, I say, old chap, what seems to be the bother?”
Officer 1: “Well, it’s just that...”
Officer 2: “Look, Andy. You’re a greeno. I get that, Dave
gets that. We all think it’s wonderful you’re riding a bike to a meeting. But,
on your way, did you see yourself in the bus shelter’s reflection?”
Mitchell: “What’s a bus shel...”
Officer 1: “Mitch, things is mate we can’t have you rolling
into Downing Street on that, after you paid
someone to cut that on your head with a bank account your size. PR, hello?”
I think the quasi camp “hello” would have sealed it with
Mitchell toodling into Number 10, cap in hand, bread in basket and looking
every part the wartime housewife (a key demographic, incidentally).
Then there was also Sussex Police (not a good week for the
boys in blue) who are conducting a search for the missing school girl Megan
Stammers.
Megan, 15, is said to
have caught a ferry with her 30 year-old Maths teacher, Jeremy Forrest, to
France.
Heaven knows why France but one suspects, looking at
Forrest, that he is a James Bond fan and wanted to show Megan where Grace Jones
impregnated the screen in A View to a Kill.
The more logical explanation, of course, is that Forrest picked
up a copy of Saturday’s Times and saw the headline: “Stay on at school if you
want pay rise, teachers told” and, liberal sort that he is, thought he’d take
it one step further and not only teach Megan an additional subject (which he
may or may not even know – so he had to learn it himself! Talk about beyond the
call of duty!) but also take her to its birthplace to enhance the learning experience.
Bon voyage, I say.
