Standing up for the police

I’m going to stand up for the police. (I heard a gasp then. ‘Has he lost the plot’?) To heave insults at anyone who gets things wrong is called free speech but they are not there to have bricks and other missiles thrown at them by criminals who think it’s appropriate behaviour to riot.

This is not Beirut. Police are there to do verbal battle with motorists. Taking the Mick out of them is one thing because quite frankly they (and anyone else in charge of anything in this country) deserve it, but premeditated violence is another.

Police numbers were going to be cut (not by attempted murder) but what will happen when the post mortem on events has been carried out.

There could be far more on the streets, not less, which is a little unfair on decent honest criminals and car drivers.

We will have committee after committee, enquiry after enquiry on what to do next. Many people will make good money from conducting investigations. Never mind committees, we need a set of gallows.

We should have sent the army in with tanks and real bullets to quash the treasonous thugs because that’s what they are. The only problem is that our soldiers are in far-flung places teaching uncivilised societies how to have peace on the streets, like we do.

We should send videos of our cities in flames to Afghanistan and the other war zone countries as deterrents. ‘Behave yourselves or we’ll send our street fighters over.’ Not such a bad idea.

Now we have every Tom, Dick and Harry appearing on TV shows forensically analysing every second of the warfare on our streets.

Social workers, councillors, politicians, police, psychiatrists, psychologists, fortunetellers, soothsayers, TV reporters, radio reporters, the paparazzi, Doctor Who, Doctor No, Doctor Strangelove, anyone who was within the area in the past 12 months, teachers who taught one of the morons and the church will all have something to say.

The do-gooders will beg us to understand the perpetrators. Not one person I have spoken to thinks differently to me. ‘Lock them up and throw away the key’.

But let’s face it our legal system will let us down.

It will be ASBOs, fines and suspended sentences, warnings or ‘let offs’ for the very young. Anyone who does get sent down won’t stay long in prison and if they do, they’ll have rights.

Shopkeepers have rights. Property owners have rights. Drunks stumbling happily on the street have rights. They have no chance against a marauding crowd chucking bottles at them and what if they catch one? Bottles of petrol don’t taste quite the same as whisky. Just as they nod off someone sets fire to their cardboard beds.

The shops were all open. Insurance companies will put our premiums up so we’ll have to pay as usual.

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