By Simon Heffer
Can you imagine the shamelessness and moral depravity of someone who is paid a huge sum of money to do a job, singularly fails to do it, is rebuked by those to whom he is accountable for this failure, yet refuses absolutely to acknowledge any wrong on his part, and to dismiss any notion that he should resign from his post? Well, of course, you don’t have to imagine such a situation. You just need to observe the conduct this week of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair.
In the past 10 days, the Met has been found guilty of breaking health and safety laws by killing Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005 when he was mistaken for a terrorist. This may be an absurd conviction to result from such an appalling act: but it is a conviction none the less, and it reflects on the failings of the command structure at the head of which sits Sir Ian.
Then, this week, the London Assembly passed a vote of no confidence in him, and the Metropolitan Police Authority has signalled that it will hold one on November 22.
Finally, the Independent Police Complaints Commission published a report into the Stockwell shooting that accused Sir Ian of obstructing its inquiries. He would seem, as they used to say in The Sweeney, to be bang to rights.
However, as I write, this preposterous man is still in his job. His complete ignorance of his own inadequacy is symbolised by the fact that he seeks a £25,000 performance bonus, something his blameless deputy has declined. Frankly, the way Sir Ian is carrying on, he should be paying the Government, rather than the other way round.
For the moment, he appears safe because the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has pledged support for him. Why? Is it because this has become the rule among our governing class – to support each other in clinging on to office even in the face of proven and spectacular uselessness, on the grounds that they may need the same service one day? Or is it that determination, which John Major so repulsively instigated and which has since become a habit in our establishment, of being determined to ensure that “the media” do not claim a scalp? Certainly, it is perceived that the press do not much rate Sir Ian, or think he should be in his post: but what, for heaven’s sake, can be said to be unfair about that? If the Beano had a leader column, it, too, would be calling for Sir Ian’s sacking, on the grounds that he is a disgrace to his uniform and to the once good name of our police.
The establishment has always closed ranks: but it used to do so on the basis that those who were really toast owned up to the fact and walked the plank. Those days are gone.
Manipulative as ever, Sir Ian has gratefully received the backing of an inexperienced and over-promoted Home Secretary, and is now milking it for all it is worth. Never mind what this does to his own, wrecked reputation: it is a nail or three in Ms Smith’s coffin as well, and highlights once more the dismally low calibre of those who now govern us.
Above all, it is the public and their welfare that are forgotten in this disgusting series of events. The police force – or service, as Sir Ian saponaceously refers to it – is crucial in a civilised society. It is the means of protecting the law-abiding majority against the malevolent minority. Sir Ian absurdly said he would go if he felt he had lost the confidence of his officers. He lost that long ago: he should see some of the emails they send me.
They regard him as not being a proper policeman (he has spent the past 20 years sitting mostly behind a desk or on committees) and being obsessed with ingratiating himself with his political masters. You don’t stop much crime doing that.
But the worst crime of all is that this shocking man is still in his job. It is one the Home Secretary should solve without further delay.
Treasury is growing fat on oil price rises
With petrol prices now over £1 a litre – or getting on for £5 a gallon – the Treasury has reaped a huge pay-day from the taxes it levies on the sky-high price of oil.
When a private enterprise has such good fortune there are calls from rapacious Leftists for a windfall tax to be levied – the banks have experienced this, for one – and for the money to be spread around the undeserving poor. By that logic, the reverse should now happen.
Given that the Treasury is awash with funds it wasn’t expecting, it should cancel the recent rise in excise duty on petrol and diesel, and forswear any further rises until and unless the price of oil falls substantially.
In truth, there is no need for us to be so viciously taxed on fuel.
Other countries don’t do it – I was in Australia last week where petrol is around 65p a litre, and their public services hardly seem to be going under as a result. It is all about the motorist being screwed yet again by the Government to pay for the Brown terror, and it is time we protested.
70mph motorway limit is now a nonsense
And, on the matter of persecuting the motorist, what on earth is the point of this suggestion that the penalties for speeding drivers should be increased?
I know there are too many people on the roads, but is disqualifying half the population really the way to rectify the problem?
I am well aware that on single carriageway roads it is mad to drive fast, and those who do so should be severely dealt with. But does anybody seriously think that the 70mph limit on motorways is sensible?
It dates from a time when cars had a job stopping, or even staying in one piece, if the speedo went over 65mph.
Our cars, and our motorways, are capable of much more now: and the fact that the speed limit is widely ignored is testament to that.
Even with the most rigorously enforced limits, idiots will still kill people on the roads. Most people who drive at 80 or even 90mph on the open road do so perfectly safely.
Raise the limit to 80mph, and disqualify those driving over 100mph: and stop looking for ways to bleed the motorist white.
Put out more flags? I think not
What is all this nonsense about flying the Union flag on public buildings every day, as if we were some drivelling banana republic?
It is, as any fule kno, about our Scottish Prime Minister desperately looking for ways to legitimate himself as “British”, and therefore having a claim to be Prime Minister of England.
He should be in no doubt we have him, and other members of the Scottish Raj, ruling us under sufferance. We wouldn’t have minded before devolution, but since Scotland told us to sling our hook the relationship has changed.
If the Government insists that the Union flag be flown on our public buildings all the time, I trust there will be acts of rebellion in which, in England, the Cross of St George is flown instead.
Most of us in England, according to polls, now feel English first and British second, thanks to Labour’s policies. If the Scots are allowed their identity, we want to have one too – as English, not British.
Why should bald guys be the butt of jokes?
It is shortly to be an offence to make jokes about homosexuals. This may, perversely, result in homosexuals being prosecuted for laughing at themselves: the late Kenneth Williams would never have been out of jail, nor John Inman, nor Larry Grayson.
What will become of Matt Lucas, whose hideous persona as “the only gay in the village” is hardly favourable to his fellow homosexuals?
When can we expect laws to protect the sensibilities of the elderly, the short, the fat, the disabled, the bald, the spotty and indeed – and I feel especially strongly about this – people with red hair and/or spectacles? Where is the logical end to this insanity?
Presumably, denying all freedom of speech: which we all know, of course, is the hidden agenda of the Brown terror.
Radio 3 deserves a fanfare of trumpets
There is so much to attack the BBC for, with its legions of ghastly, overpaid “stars”, militant Leftist editorialists and passion for vote-rigging. But when it does well, we should all say so.
Almost the only part of the enterprise I am happy to pay my licence fee for – and I would happily pay even more – is Radio 3, which is almost the last manifestation of public high culture in these islands. And tomorrow night, thanks to a bold initiative by the network’s controller, Roger Wright, the BBC is mounting the first performance for 81 years of John Foulds’s massive World Requiem – written to honour the dead of the Great War – in the Albert Hall, on Armistice night.
Foulds was a genius whose works were all but forgotten until a few years ago, as is so often the case with British composers: barely anyone alive has heard World Requiem.
Radio 3 has played a big part in his rediscovery and in doing so has advanced our cultural life. If ever there were proof it deserves a bigger slice of cake, to promote more such great events and our heritage, this is it.
Sarkozy has a lot to learn about money
How amusing it was to see President Sarkozy in the White House this week and, after years of France treating America much as a dog treats a lamppost, instigating a romance again.
Sarko daren’t be honest with his own lazy, sluggish and welfare-obsessed people, but he adores the cut and thrust of American economic life, where the strong survive and the devil takes the hindmost.
There would be another French revolution if he tried that at home. However, Sarko has still to learn a basic lesson about free markets, which is that the value of the currencies within them can rise and fall according to the laws of supply and demand.
America is perceived as a weak economy beset by a credit crisis and run by a clown of a president. As a result the value of its currency is in the tank.
Sarko wants Mr Bush to change that, because it is making life rough for his and other European countries’ exporters. Sadly, only restoring the world’s confidence in the US will make that difference, and that, I fear, is still some way off.