Across the pond

Thanks to Tony Blair’s crafty theft of the Tory law and order vote, they are very well paid. They still mostly have the love of most of the British public, or at least that part of it which is white and not drunk on the streets. And not out on the streets protesting.

And they still have much to commend them. The men in uniform are mostly a friendly presence on the streets, and the height of good manners and sound advice, when it comes to Neighbourhood watch and teaching the kids to ride their bikes sensibly.

I would never want to change them for the gendarmes in Paris, the Germans or the New York cops.

But I get worried about some of the higher echelons, like the Nottighamshire police chief who tried to get out of her speeding offence. By leaning on the man on the beat who stopped her, and alleging that the speed camera was faulty. When her case was eventually reported to the Crown Prosecution Service, she did end up in court. Her defence was that she did not realise she was so going so fast.

I know how she feels, because I have nipped three times in the last three years, for going at 38 mph, 36 mph and 38 mph in 30 mph zones. But when I got beyond the headline I discovered she was going at 79 mph in a 50 mph zone. Even in my Prius, where 30 mph seems like walking, you not when you hit the seventies that you are going too fast for anything but a motorway.

This issue is trivial.

But what is happening at the top is not so trivial.

The cosy relationship between the Met Police and the Murdoch press has helped to swell the Murdoch gold chest. The police are only too ready to help Murdoch to sell his newspapers, and catch out whoever Murdoch wants to catch out. Which includes the Duchess of York as well as footballers who take bribes. And the Met is only too happy to leak the news of those dawn arrests, so that the media cameras can be on the doorstep whenever a newsworthy ‘alleged’ criminal is targeted in his, or her, pyjamas

This afternoon the Met has announced that there is ‘insufficient’ evidence to warrant an arrest of Andy Coulson, or anyone else in the famed News of the World scam, which happened while he was editor, and involved the tapping of Prince Charles’ telephone.

Andy proclaimed that he knew nothing of what was happening in his own newsroom!

Yesterday, as it happens, he had to go to court, to give evidence in a crown court case in Scotland, where a maverick Scottish left-wing politician is accused of lying in court. That was in his civil case, when he sued the News of the World for libel after it had run a long campaign, accusing him of all sorts of sexual high jinks.

Sheridan who is such a maverick that he has fallen out with his lawyers and is conducting his own defence, gave Coulson a grilling, when he once again proclaimed that his men followed the Press Code of Conduct, and did nothing illegal like phone hacking.

Despite his lack of a lawyer, he Is not doing too badly and the Crown has already dropped some of the charges against him.

But in Coulson he met his match. Coulson insisted he was speaking truth.

So on his own evidence he stands convicted of the being a terrible editor, who has no idea what his own staff is doing.

Such a person, is of course, quite unfit to be the Prime Minister’s press story. (If he were a good liar, that might be an advantage in the job, as Alastair Campbell might agree, in the bar, but not necessarily in court.

Meanwhile the Met is fuelling the flames of media stories about ‘violent’ demonstrators.

It might have ended with a gun battle on our streets.

But not because any of the protesters were carrying fire arms or petrol bombs or plastic explosives. But because, and I speak with the authority of the Daily Mail report, the police were seconds away of opening fire on the protesters, one of whom is ‘alleeged’ to have poked a stick through the open window of the Royal car.

The British bobbies are alive and well and are mostly a credit to the nation. But currently they are led by not a few donkeys in the higher echelons.