07 April, 2012

 

Desperate business

(With apologies to the Private Eye cartoon of that name, but the desperation in what follows is surely commensurate.)

All those racist coppers who've mysteriously emerged en masse out of the woodwork. Did you know that they are all mates of Anders Breivik? And BNP sympathizers too? Bastards!

It says so in the Currant Bun, you see.

Cop's BNP shame is new blow to racism row
Met Squad buy badges from right-wing activist

If you follow the link you will see that the article comprises two separate items linked by little more than the insinuation of juxtaposition.

Let's look at the second, almost incidental, item first.

Complaints upheld over 120 officers

Around 120 Met officers faced disciplinary action for racist behaviour since the Macpherson report following Stephen Lawrence’s murder.

Six were forced to resign and one was dismissed.

Gosh, that's a lot.

Hang on, headings are written by sub-editors, not journalists. Does the "faced disciplinary action" of the body text actually mean "accused" or "convicted"? Well, let's give it the benefit of the doubt, shall we? 120 coppers in the Met were found guilty of racism, then. And when was Macpherson published? February 1999. So that's about nine a year.

Of these 120, seven were given the push. What happened to the other 110+, then? "Look, laddie. We don't mind you calling the coons 'coloured people', but don't do it within earshot, eh? Bleeding jungle bunnies are all wired for sound these days, and they're all as touchy as fuck. Now bugger off and don't let me see you up before me again."

Not very nice if it does go on, to be sure, but then again not exactly indicative of a plague of misconduct requiring a Stalinesque purge either, is it?

Then we are treated to an edited transcript of Mauro Demetrio's clandestine recording, the one that was on the telly. I'm not sure what to make of this, to be honest. I've heard the broadcasts of this on TV news, and it sounds to me as if he's winding the policemen up deliberately in the hope of getting some juicy dialogue. I would imagine policemen in London spend a lot of time listening to young Black men who complain about racism and discrimination almost as a conditioned response: the "Is it because I is Black?" syndrome. It must get pretty tedious. The most interesting line in the quote we are offered is

Officer B. Don’t hide behind your colour, yeah.

which does suggest to me that Demetrio is actively playing for a wind-up.

Well, we shall see, shan't we? Or not, as the case may be.


OK. Back to the structure of the article. The first half of the article is not to do with police racism per se but with the case of an officer in SO20, the "counter-terrorism chemical, nuclear and biological search team", who ordered some customized sew-on ID badges for off-duty wear, presumably at team social or sporting events. These presumably not being available from Gadget's Ruralshire merchandizing range, the unnamed copper ordered them from a company called Calder Designs.

Now the leading light, head honcho and a dab hand with the embroidery needles at Calder Designs turns out to be a chap called Martin Roberts. Who? No I've never heard of him either. And I don't suppose the unfortunate copper ordering the badges had, as it goes. Well Martin Roberts, we learn, used to be a fairly senior figure in the BNP. (Remember them? The MSM and the "antifascists" keep assuring us the BNP are a busted flush but somehow can't seem to stop obsessing about them.)

The officer [who placed the order] also did not know that Roberts owned the company, Calder Designs.

confirms the Sun. So, er, why did you mention it then? In fact, what exactly is the point of the story? Oh well, press on.


OK, what have we got. All these (allegedly) racist response officers are in the same police force as a policeman in the specialist SO20 unit who ordered some badges from a company which happens, unknown to him, to be run by an ex-BNP wallah? Looking pretty bad for the Met so far, but how does Breivik fit into this?

I'm glad you asked me that. Well,

The Sun revealed last July that Roberts, in his 40s, was one of 1,000 people sent a warped “manifesto” by Breivik an hour before his massacre, which left 76 dead.

Indeed they did.

Breivik emailed a copy of his "manifesto" to a mailing list of approximately 1000 addressees, says the Sun. Now, I'm guessing here, but cut me a bit of slack. I rather doubt that this was a voluntary mailing list at, say, http://massacres-r-us.no to which interested participants subscribed. More plausibly, I rather suspect, our Anders, a frighteningly methodical chap, had gradually collected the email addresses of people he felt, in his opinion, ought to be receptive to his views and assembled these addresses into a whopping great mailing list. Given the size of his magnum opus, it must have caused a bit of a traffic spike when he clicked on "Send".

Hold on, I get occasionally get emails from distressed West Africans who seek my help in releasing unfeasibly large sums of money trapped in, er, bureaucratic difficulties. I have no idea where they get my email address from; I certainly haven't volunteered it. But no matter. Presumably it means that I am complicit in all manner of "419" advance fee frauds. Oh the shame.



So there you have it. Some police officers are accused of racist behaviour. Those officers are in the very same force as an officer who ordered some badges from a company run by a chap who, it turns out, used to be something senior in the BNP. And incidentally a soon-to-be mass murderer in Norway had got hold of the BNP chap's email address and had sent him, along with 1000 others, a copy of his turgid "manifesto".

Ergo — as we always say on these occasions — Met police officers are racist wannabe mass murderers who will all be popping out for a spot of light genocide and ethnic cleansing just as soon as they've finished wanking over this month's issue of Voice of Freedom.

Clever stuff this journalism, innit?

Comments:
Some dimwit lefty lawyer, one Sophie Khan, has just held forth on Twitter to the effect that 'the Met' are racist because of this.

Can one imagine her response if one were to draw the same conclusion about lawyers, or Muslims, or any other group based on one incident..?

 
Good unravelling, sir, but once again we see the power of the media in full flow.

Once, many years ago, I worked in journalism as a sub-editor. An amazing experience, because it occurs to one as you hilariously invent headlines (and rest assured, it is seen as a competition among the subs who can come up with the wittiest/funniest headline) that what you are doing in return for money is, in short....

Power without responsibility!

A heady feeling that, within the bounds of libel and some mythical thing called 'decency' you can more or less say what you want in a headline.

A glorious time of invention and clever shuffling of words and subtle ideas. And this all while sat at a desk in an air-conditioned office. True it involved getting up at four in the morning to drive to said air-con heaven, but it sure does beat working for a living.

 
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