Breaking up Christmas dinner? It’s an unworkable farce
Acouple of months ago, I wrote that it would be impossible for the Government to stop families meeting up for Christmas. But the police, it would seem, have other ideas. This week it was suggested that, if the Government’s “rule of six” still applies, officers really could be sent to break up festive celebrations – including Christmas lunch.
“If we think there are large groups of people gathering where they shouldn’t be, then police will have to intervene,” said David Jamieson, the Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands, in an interview with this newspaper.
It’s an extraordinary notion. But would it actually come to that? Frankly, I don’t see how any selfrespecting officer could possibly face carrying out such bizarre orders.
Imagine it.
Scene: Christmas Day. A sergeant and a constable knock on the front door of a suburban house. A man answers. Man: “Merry Christmas, officers. Can I help you?”
Sergeant: “Good afternoon, sir. We have been issued with a warrant to inspect these premises. We are investigating reports of multiple criminal offences at this address.” Man: “Criminal offences? What criminal offences?”
Constable: “Carol singing without due care and attention. Playing Monopoly in a built-up area. And wassailing without a licence.”
Man: “What? Oh, for pity’s sake. Just come in and get it over with. with.” The two policemen enter the living room. Constable: “Just as s we suspected. This gathering athering has precisely seven n attendees – a clear violation of the lawful maximum. mum. Shall I make an arrest, Sarge?” arge?” Sergeant: “Please do, Constable.” Constable: “Very well, Sarge. Which one?” ?” Sergeant: “What do you mean, which one?” Constable: “Well, Sarge. The maximum attendance at a social gathering is six. Which means that six of the people ple on these premises are acting within the he law. We need to arrest rest the seventh. Only I don’t know which one of them that is.”
You see the problem. It hardly seems worth the grief. If I were a policeman working the Christmas Day shift, I would leave the phone off the hook.
The philosopher John Gray has just published a book called Feline Philosophy: C Cats and the Meaning of Life. I look forward to reading it, because bec it has always seemed t to me that human beings h have a lot to learn from cats.
Put it like this this. Imagine that alien beings were to arrive on Earth, undetected, and carry out covert observ observations of life on our plan planet. Which speci species would the they identify as Ea Earth’s dominant lif life form? Quite obviously, o it w would be the domestic cat. This small, furry quadruped, the aliens would note, is required to do no work. Indeed, it doesn’t even need to provide its own food. It spends 90 per cent of its day in lordly repose, lounging serenely on beds, sofas or wherever else it pleases. If it ventures outdoors at all, it is only to stroll its grounds or to hunt for sport, like some indolent aristocrat.
Meanwhile, its household staff – large, mostly hairless bipeds – wait on their master hand and foot. Like butlers they serve its meals, like footmen they open doors at its command, and like masseurs they caress its back – labours for which they are unpaid and unrewarded. Indeed, the money that pays for their master’s food, accommodation and medical treatment comes directly out of the servants’ own pockets.
Yet these servants never complain. They never go on strike, or organise protest marches to demand improved working conditions. Instead, they unquestioningly accept their inferior status.
Forget “Take me to your leader”. The aliens wouldn’t need to ask. They already know where our leaders are. Curled up asleep, at the foot of our beds.
Jeremy Corbyn may say he’s upset by his suspension from the Labour Party. But in some ways, arguably, it suits him very well.
The suspension has reignited his followers’ passion for him. They believe St Jeremy the Martyr has been grievously wronged by Blairite heathens, and they are determined to avenge his honour. Their donations to a webpage headed “Jeremy’s Legal Fund” have now passed £365,000. After six months out of the spotlight, he is their hero again.
Is it possible that Mr Corbyn actually planned all this? He was suspended after a statement he made on Thursday morning, in which he claimed that anti-semitism in the Labour Party was “dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media”.
These remarks are so provocative, so inflammatory, so defiantly unapologetic that Mr Corbyn should surely have known they would get him into trouble. If he’d secretly wanted to get suspended, thus precipitating a Labour civil war in which he leads the hard Left into battle with Sir Keir Starmer’s heretical Red Tories, this would have been the perfect way to go about it.
Personally, though, I doubt this was his aim. A plot like that would require a high level of strategic intelligence. A talent for processing information, assessing likely outcomes, calculating risk, and judging which course would best serve his own interests.
Does that sound like Mr Corbyn? The other day he was photographed with his nose poking out over the top of his face mask. It’s not easy to see a man as a Machiavellian genius, if he doesn’t even know which part of his body he breathes out of.