A couple of unrelated incidents, and a political milestone all in the news today appear to me to sum up the ascendency of the ‘clown class’ in modern Britain, where personal responsibility and personal dignity appear to be outmoded notions.
Firstly, after a bomb scare led to the abandonment of the last football match of the Premier League season between Manchester United and Bournemouth, it appears to have turned out that the realistic but inert suspect device found just before kick-off was in fact a practice bomb left by a company engaged to plant suspect devices as part of a security drill. But this was only found out long after the event and after the Army had carried out a controlled explosion on the device.
What part of counting them all out and counting them all in was too hard to organise? Did no one remember the drill?
Secondly, it appears that a senior woman police officer in Greater Manchester Police has been suspended after attending a conference on Women in Policing.
Assistant Chief Constable Rebekah Sutcliffe has been suspended after the alleged “inappropriate behaviour” following a reported row with Superintendent Sarah Jackson.
The pair are said to have become embroiled in a “loud disagreement” over who had the “best boobs” while attending the Senior Women In Policing conference.
Quite how this would be a breach of police discipline, even if the alleged incident happened, is not immediately clear. However, ACC Sutcliffe has been reported as saying:
“I’ve nothing to say. This is an incredibly stressful time.”
Thereby immediately contradicting herself. And grammarians may ponder if she ought to have said ‘better boobs’ rather than ‘best’ as surely the comparative applies, rather than the superlative?
But if this is a stressful time, what on Earth are you doing in policing? Try something really stressful, like bomb disposal, like Lt-Cdr John Bridge GC GM and bar. He would have come in handy at Old Trafford yesterday.
And finally, Natalie Bennett is not going to stand for re-election as Leader of the Green Party when her term expires. So the party memorably described as ‘Communism for middle-class women’ will have a new leader. So the Schadenfreudefest of Ms Bennett being interviewed (very softly I think) on any topic may no longer be repeated so as to expose the Greens for what they stand for, banning anything that they can think of. This of course may be a negative development in terms of the political landscape, but why didn’t she either resign at the time or stand on her record?
How much talk has there been over there about the incompetence of the cops in failing to find the missing “bomb”?
I’m reminded of when US Vice-President Quayle went to a school and chided a kid for misspelling “potato” without an e on the end. Everybody ignored that he was reading from a card that had obviously been prepared by a teacher who misspelled the word.
It used to be that the idiot of the family would become an Anglican vicar, but nowadays they become a PPS instead.
Hence, Unlike the Germans, we are ruled by idiots because they are the only ones who can be bothered to get involved the political process, people who enjoy committees.
Jeremy Corbyn and Natalie Bennett are prime examples of the consequences of this. Ideology is the result, although quite how you stop people voting for these politically correct bansturbators I have no idea.
John Galt,
Maybe it is the education, we do seem to be overpopulated by the clowns especially politics but in the “experts” who always turn up on TV as well……or is it something in the water?
So why didn’t the Express print more complete photos of the two police officers so we could make our own judgments?
Expert is too often a polite euphemism for ‘crank with a cause’.
Laird,
This is the modern standard of British journalism. Are you suggesting that things are sagging?
It does sound like Laird may have expected a more uplifting experience.
Note how the UK media are all up in this story of 2 lady coppers arguing about something which has no bearing on their work – meanwhile, on page 17, next to the shipping news, is the report of 2 police officers who were finally sacked after a simply-disgraceful episode of organized, institutional negligence that led to a disabled refugee being brutally murdered by his psychotic neighbor.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/03/police-officers-sacked-over-bijan-ebrahimi-case
Reporting priorities maybe slightly-amiss?
llater,
llamas
Like Mr Ed I am not a fan of modern British culture.
Indeed it is often forgotten than a lot of this stuff was exported from Britain to the United States (not the other way round) in the early 1960s.
Even in the late 1940s modern British architecture (and art) was as vile fashionable philosophy and economics.
As for personal behaviour and so on – the Bloomsbury Group (and the Cambridge university “Apostles”) did not need to be taught vileness by the German (not American – German) “Cultural Marxists”, they already knew how to be vile.
The 1960s were when the vileness of the “cultural elite” started to spread to “the masses”.
H.G. Wells and co (from the early 1900s) would have been overjoyed to see the degenerate behaviour of 2016.
llamas,
Thanks for posting that, I am pleased at the outcome, I had missed that when it was news, buried away as if of little note, but at least the outcome was dismissal without notice. At least people are still being held to account. The clown is not always a comic character, but also has a sinister side, as with those four involved in that case.
As my old drill sergeant would say “dumber’n a sack o’ rocks.” Bad enough when a nation goes tits up but to make it a contest…
Forgive me for doubting that this was the real contest. My uneducated guess is that these two police women had some more serious issues between the two of them, but the papers were all too happy to emphasize the woman-bites-dog angle.
Democracy = imbecility gone wild
Mr Ed, far be it from me to suggest that “things are sagging”; I lack the relevant information to make such a judgment. But since the two of them obviously consider this attribute to be professionally relevant, at the very least the general public should be permitted to make its own judgment on the matter. Alas, it clearly is not to be. I’m sure we’re all the poorer for it.
“Uplifting”, Alisa? Nah. This is uplifting.
I am humbled.
So, to sum up …
Some exceptional boobs blew up a fake bomb and a watermelon imploded.
This resulted in a cancelled football game, an upgraded election slate, and drama in the copper (coppette?) shoppe.
Got it.
Alisa,
You over-estimated UK cops. That is exactly the sort of thing they’d argue over.
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/the-naked-civil-servants-1537990
I once temped there. It wasn’t quite that bad then but…
That’s not the same thing at all, Nick.
Yep TFM, just another day on the interwebz.
TFM, I think you broke the code. The common thread of these three stories is that they all involve boobs (in one sense or another).
What i’d like to know is, if it is unprofessional for police officers to argue about boobs, why only one of them got suspended?
Laird is right that we should be able to judge for ourselves, of course; but there is one thing that transpires from what we are allowed to see: the lady who does not smile got suspended. Or have i got it the wrong way around? Maybe she does not smile because she got suspended.
WRT bomb scares, i know of one case where a student left, after working hours, a suspicious-looking PhD thesis by the reception in a distinguished department at a top British university (I shall not go into details, but there were about 8 Fellows of the Royal Society in that department) and next morning it was blown up in a controlled explosion. Maybe it was for the best.
Alisa I was reffing Paul about moral torpitude.
And if that isn’t an example of moral torpitude within the state I’ll be buggered if I can think of a better one.
Mister Ed,
‘This is the modern standard of British journalism’ They have standards?
That’s not necessarily true, is it? I mean, the superlative has to apply to somebody out there.
“I have nothing to say but let me try to sneak the last word in” is just poor form.
Eric, where there are only two, you apply the comparative. However each woman starts off with two, four total, so superlative camparisons are possible.
NickM, the Rural Payments Agency is hardly going to attract the best quality of professional, is it?
I read the blurb Mr. Ed quoted as saying that the two female cops were arguing over which of the other copettes at the convention had the best breasts.
We are talking grammar about breasts? No wonder libertarians have a low birth rate. I personally just like [redacted].