The week so far: Plebs

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.