I KNOW WHO I’D POUR A BUCKET OF DIRTY WATER ON
TOBY SAWYER is the homeless man who was filmed having a bucket of dirty water poured around him by a railway worker.
Southern Rail has apologised and suspended three members of staff over the ugly incident at Sutton station in Surrey. Now it has emerged that Sawyer is a convicted killer with a long criminal record, a man who has spent much of his life behind bars.
Is this supposed to make the transgression against him more or less reprehensible? Sawyer has done terrible things, and he is probably a right pest, especially if he was hanging around your home or your business.
Yet he has been punished for his crime and paid his debt to society. Today, he is sleeping on the ground. He has nothing and no prospects; a life ruined and a brain pickled by alcohol. The railway workers he annoys every day probably have little sympathy with his plight, yet nothing excuses them swilling him with dirty water, trying to wash him away like dog mess.
I hope I still live in a country where that will never be acceptable. Or excusable.