Horses, Harry and the hokey-cokey

THE FRIDAY THING:
ANOTHER week that underlines the fact that we are in danger of going to hell in a handcart.

Horse meat in bargain burgers on sale at Tesco was a shock for most of us but those who put the mortgage or rent money on the favourite at York or Wetherby only for it to lose might relish the thought that, post race, they could be munching on the three-legged nag that had let them down.

But it was only the start.

Prince Harry, not all that long ago flashing his, shall we say, credentials in a game of strip billiards in the States has now added to the label of being a royal liability (I expect the Queen and Prince Charles had something slightly stronger to offer) by effectively putting a big red target on his head.

Harry’s bold (or mad) assertion that he has blood on his hands (well, it makes a change from cocktails and rude billiards) after killing enemy fighters in Afghanistan will now be the target not only of Afghan militants but every nutter around.

Prince Harry, God bless him, should keep his trousers on and his military exploits to himself.

Then, just to put the tin hat on the week, chubby Dave said that he will hold an in-out referendum (yes, there is more than a hint of hokey-cokey about it) even though there is every chance that he will not be Prime Minister and probably not still in Government.

It is a promise bathed in bravado with a dash of wishful thinking thrown in and has the virtue of sharing common ground with other forlorn and now forgotten promises.

How long will it be before we can all say that instead of all being in it together, they are all out of it together?

And the week finishes on a puzzle. How come we can make hundreds of soldiers, who have been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq redundant as a reward for all their efforts on our behalf and yet find the money to send specialist troops, aircraft and heaven only knows what else to Mali (no, I don’t know where it is and what its problems have got to do with us either).

So here we are, it is only January 25 and there is already little hint of joy for 2013.


IN what has to be one of the most bizarre decisions of this or any other decade, we are now told that the present-day Wyatt Earps (law and order upholders in the USA) are to be invited to become senior police officers in England. And no, it isn’t a joke. Hopefully they won’t be riding horses, wearing Stetsons or chewing tobacco and spitting in the streets (we have enough of our own spitters sad to say). The Home Secretary has decided that rather than recruit law enforcement officers from the UK as she evidently has little faith in the home-grown version she would rather bring then in from the States and put them in charge.

Quite what this move will do for police morale when officers, like many other folk, are facing redundancy and reductions in pay as well as having a newly elected boss, a police commissioner, is not difficult to guess.

Senior officers must have been disturbed by the decision to have a civilian in charge of operations and are not likely to be ecstatic about a retired American crime fighter giving the orders.

There are those who suggest that the Home Sec is venting her anger on the Police Federation (the force’s union) and the way it has reacted to her activities as Home Secretary and if that is true it is a move that does her no credit.


FINAL WORD: Islamic extremists have launched vigilante patrols in London to enforce sharia law by confiscating alcohol from residents and ordering women not to wear short skirts.
These “hooded zealots” according to Scotland Yard are seeking to protect “Muslim areas”

How long will it be before non-Muslim vigilantes take to the streets of London to defend what they see as their rights? It is, by any standards, an alarming development.