What do the police think they’re doing?
Widdecombe
IT was perfectly reasonable for police to question Eric Bellquist, the wealthy banker wrongly thought to have been the jogger who pushed a woman into the path of a bus. He had been named in a tip-off and was therefore a suspect.
What was absolutely not right was to mount a dawn raid on his house and then lead him away in handcuffs to spend hours in a cell when right from the start his alibi was watertight. He wasn’t even in the country at the time.
What should have happened was for police to have arrived at an appropriate hour and to have quietly questioned him at home. The instant he said he was in the States and could prove it the police should have looked at the documents and then gone away. Nobody would have been any the wiser, sparing him much distress and the police much criticism.
That is what once would have been the norm for policing in this country: investigate as much as possible before arrest. Now people are forcibly arrested at the drop of a hat or at any rate at the drop of an email or telephone call and the line between suspect and perpetrator has become blurred, as any man falsely accused of rape will tell you.
As if that isn’t enough some policemen, whose chiefs are always complaining of a lack of manpower and resources, now think it an appropriate use of time and tax to worry about the signs in supermarkets indicating where women’s sanitary protection is to be found.
Even the usual vocal feminists are bemused by the actions of Sergeant Peter Allan who is supposed to be a hate crime officer in Sussex. He castigated supermarkets for displaying signs for “feminine protection” which in his crazy world are insufficiently gender neutral. Presumably there is no real hate crime in Sussex for him to investigate?
He should get a life and preferably one far removed from the police force, which is supposed to tackle crime, not supermarket signs.
I say again the police have no role in political correctness, enforcing good manners, controlling thought and opinions or settling every private squabble and they certainly have no business interfering with shopping signs. The Home Secretary should tell them so.
WHEN THINGS ARE BUILT TO FAIL IT IS FRUSTRATING, EXPENSIVE AND BAD FOR THE PLANET
MY biggest beef against modern technology is not its complexity but rather its built-in obsolescence. Recently two apps in my decidedly limited store ceased to work. I consulted my technology chap and was told the (very basic) apps were no longer compatible with my iPhone. To obtain them I must trade up my perfectly satisfactory iPhone 4 for an iPhone 7 or if I cared to wait a little the all singing, all dancing iPhone 8.
But, I protested, my current phone is fine. It is just that apps which worked perfectly a few weeks ago no longer do. Change the phone or do without was the essence of his more courteously phrased response. Then the stand for my Tom-Tom broke. I could not find a new one on the net which was compatible with my current, elderly Tom-Tom. So I shall have to find a used one on eBay or upgrade to a new Tom-Tom which I do not need.
It isn’t only technology. People keep telling me how well my 10-year-old Ford Focus is doing yet my first car, a Morris Minor, was still going strong at 23 and had plenty of life left when I finally and reluctantly sold it for six times that which I paid. Individual frustration and expense apart, it doesn’t do much for the planet, does it?