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For years I have feared that the police have become too powerful and dismissive of the public they are supposed to serve. As they have become more political, more left-wing, and less interested in preventing or prosecuting crime and disorder, they have also become bossier and more remote.
This week I have strong evidence that this is so. It comes from the police themselves. Because I dared to disagree with their point of view, these people have responded like a Victorian maiden aunt to the sight of a bare piano leg.
The cries of indignation and the squeaking of pearls as you grab them can probably be heard as far away as Belgium.
You see, they would have been better off smelling their smelling salts, lying down in a dark room for a while, and listening to whale music. But, as a beautiful Irish phrase puts it, they “lost control” and went a little crazy.
Some of what they did must remain confidential to protect my sources. But trust me, this is a pretty soft version of the story.
The problem was a briefing that Cheshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service held for the media just before the trial of
Lucia Letby. If this was just an unbiased factual discussion of technicalities, why didn’t they also invite Ms. Letby’s defense team? Well, they didn’t. They argued that because I didn’t accept their justification for holding this event (and I absolutely don’t), it meant I didn’t understand what they had told me, presumably because I’m stupid.
I understand it very well. I just don’t agree with it, although I explained their position in my column and accurately quoted what they had said.
They accused me of “carelessness.” It’s not like that. I spent several days exchanging emails with them about this topic.
The issue was a briefing Cheshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service held for the media just before Lucy Letby’s trial.
The idea that people could have different points of view on such a topic seems like a shocking mystery to them. I think the police – like most public and powerful bodies – seek cozy relationships with the media in order to keep them on their side. In my opinion, I am very encouraged by your current offended petulance.
Cheshire Police wrote to The Mail on Sunday, implying that we should not have published my column.
Shortly afterwards, we received a letter from several figures from the Faculty of Police, the Council of National Police Chiefs and the Crown Prosecution Service suggesting that this newspaper publish an article “that seeks to provide clarity to its readers” (i.e. That is, he takes a different view than mine).
Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that a society in which the police seek to influence what newspapers publish, whether facts or opinions, would be a society that would have gone very wrong. There is a name for countries like that that I have forgotten.
Then, on Friday, The Mail on Sunday received a brusque email stating that our behavior was causing “disgust and dismay” among police forces in England and Wales. Remember that this overheated performance followed my publication of an indisputable fact and an informed expression of my opinion about it.
If this is how they behave with Britain’s biggest Sunday newspaper, what should they be like?
Like when it comes to a powerless citizen who has the nerve to disagree with his opinions?
Why is the BBC so interested in the Syrian rebels?
The BBC and the “retired” spies they love to interview are enormously excited about developments in Syria. Because?
Everyone knows that the “rebels” who are now rampaging through that unfortunate country are ferocious Islamist militants.
the kind we generally fear and dislike. The Assad regime in Damascus is terrible (although the Foreign Office, that nest of cynics, organized a tea party with the late Queen in December 2002). But do we really want Al Qaeda veterans to replace him?
In fact, we have no principles about torture chambers and massacres and are friendly to very unpleasant regimes in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
All this reminds me of our mad enthusiasm to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, a madness that created endless chaos and began the era of uncontrolled migration across the Mediterranean, which has changed the destiny of Europe forever. Do these people have any idea what they are doing?
Ralph’s movie commits a cardinal sin
Why all the fuss about Conclave, a new movie starring Ralph Fiennes, above, about lots of cardinals electing a new pope?
The whole thing appears to have been filmed during a power outage. It is so dark that Mrs. Hitchens, sitting next to me, thought night had fallen and fell asleep.
A key conversation takes place while helicopters fly overhead, making it difficult to make out.
The main conservative character is, of course, stupid and rude.
And we are invited to think that traditional prayers and large families are bad things.
I am one of the last English Protestants, for whom the Roman Catholic Church will always be another country. But my sword jumps out of its sheath to defend it against this liberal bilge.
We are in a land beyond satire
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, genius Lewis Carroll described royal gardeners forced to paint white roses red by a mad monarch. He also portrayed a trial in which the sentence came first and then the verdict.
In Gulliver’s Travels, another genius, Jonathan Swift, described a man who had “been eight years on a project to extract sunlight from cucumbers, which were to be placed in vials, hermetically sealed, and let out to heat the raw air.” and merciless.” summers’.
I’m afraid that almost no one reads these great English classics now. If they had, would feed manufacturers have been able to drug their livestock to make them less flatulent, as they are doing?
Without satire, societies go crazy, as ours is now.
- There is no point in renationalizing the railways little by little, on paper. Everything has to be in a coordinated organization, from the signs to the sandwiches (they weren’t that bad). And until it is, don’t expect any improvements.