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Policemen from your childhood and the f**kers we've got now

A STAGGERING 1,000 Met officers are currently suspended for alleged wrongdoing. And somehow it’s worse when you compare them with the respected coppers you grew up with, be they real or fictional.

The Sweeney: If confronted by police malpractice, Jack Regan and George Carter would have a mournful session on the whisky about nicking one of their own. Then they’d prove they were the good guys by kicking the miscreant’s head in.

Modern Met officer: Would close ranks to protect the dodgiest fellow officers, seeing nothing untoward about them having the nickname ‘Dave The Perv’.

The policeman who came to your primary school: Obviously he could secretly have been bent as f**k, but it’s unlikely he was selling confiscated cocaine between investigating petty vandalism and giving Cycling Proficiency lessons.

Modern police officer: Would massively overreact to you forgetting to do a left-turn hand signal on a quiet road, forcing you to dismount with ASP baton drawn, then act like Judge Dredd in front of a crying seven-year-old.

Dixon of Dock Green: Almost certainly before your time, but you get the gist, and it wasn’t Dirty Harry. The epitome of the firm-but-fair, respectable, strait-laced copper.

Modern police officer: That wanker in a club flashing his police ID to impress women, who you later see trying to throw his weight around in a kebab shop like a knob.

Gene Hunt: Or ‘the postmodern Jack Regan’. Sexist, but fundamentally a good guy, and never afraid to mix it up with the toughest criminals, including pickaxe-handle-wielding versions of the Great Train Robbers, in a postmodern reality-meets-fiction heist Baudrillard would have loved.

Modern Met officer: Never afraid to mix it up with the toughest lightly-built student girls armed with a candle.

Jim Bergerac: All-round decent 80s bloke who overcame his alcoholic demons and remained friendly with his ex-wife Deborah while romancing new love Susan (popular Doctor Who assistant Louise Jameson).

Modern Met officer: Would most likely stalk Susan as well as Deborah and hassle them for sex, requiring another police officer to protect them from the first one, who would then try it on with them as well.

Brian Paddick: Pioneering gay police officer famous in the early 2000s for stopping the police wasting their time on minor drug crimes, who later became a champion of diversity in the Met. 

Modern Met officer: Probably not that fussed about minor drug arrests either, but would discuss it on WhatsApp using an array of racial epithets for black teenagers no one has heard since the 1970s. Would also use terms like ‘poof’ and ‘shirt-lifter’ so many times an inanimate Samsung would get tired of the homophobia.

I drove around Wales at 20mph and escaped with my life: one journalist's story

WALES, that blighted country clinging to England’s belly like a parasite, has imposed a nationwide limit of 20mph. Here’s what happened when I travelled there: 

9.45am

‘Croeso i Gymru’ says the sign by the A55, and I immediately slam on the brakes. I’m not being fined by Marxists. Decelerating from 70mph to 20mph suddenly, I’m almost hit by the HGV behind which jack-knifes, overturns and blocks both carriageways. Already this policy is causing chaos.

10.50am 

The road signs say it’s 60 but I won’t be fooled. I’m crawling along, barely into the country, and it’s clear Wales’s motorists are furious with the imposition of this new policy. They’re breaking the law to pass me, shaking their fists and gesticulating their passionate support.

12.10pm

I pull off the main road onto one of the country lanes with which this crude country is riddled and continue at the pace imposed by their excuse for a government. Soon I find myself leading a go-slow convoy of protestors, all honking horns to show their opposition  to this undemocratic imposition. They’re practically in open revolt.

1.33pm 

Stopping in a town with too many Ls in its name for lunch, I realise I’ve barely penetrated this dark continent. To reach Aberystwyth would take a further 36 hours of driving. Soon those communities will run out of supplies and starve, all because Labour hates ordinary decent people.

3.22pm

The threadbare figleaf of an excuse for this limit is that cars travelling at 20mph cause far fewer injuries, so I’m outside a school to find out. But it also gives children far more time to hear my vehicle and jump out of the way, so my test is inconclusive one way or another before I hit a lamppost I hadn’t seen because I was so focused on the speedometer.

4.08pm

Fleeing on foot, I know I could easily escape the police – or Heddlu, as they’re termed in this primitive language – because they can’t drive faster than 20mph. But they flout their own laws, driving at upwards of 35mph to catch me. I’m charged with obstructing the highways and dangerous driving. The sheer hypocrisy of it when that’s their entire policy.

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