I got mail this morning. No further action on my arrest for the infamous meme. You might expect I would have an immense feeling of relief today. That is not the case. I have been fairly confident that this would not see the inside of a courtroom, and that was especially likely thanks to the law firm Free Speech Union put me in touch with. I could have handled this myself, but FSU put me in touch with a firm I could trust implicitly and that took a lot of the load off. That’s why it’s worth worth joining. You have to be able to trust a law firm. But, like I say, my feeling this evening is not relief. It is anger.
I’m angry that this was done to me in the first place. I am angry that this has been hanging over my head for weeks. I am angry that North Yorkshire Police wasted my time and OUR money. I am angry that they didn’t even have the decency to apologise - and sent me a letter implying I’m still effectively under open-ended investigation for voicing my opinion.
I am especially angry today given the backdrop of sectarian mobs on our own streets while the police do fuck all. What we get from the police when we need them most is bureaucratic incompetence and abject cowardice - and they have the nerve to turn up at MY door, and drag me from my home in the middle of the night, shutting me in a cage, because I have the audacity to notice my country turning into sectarian slum.
So no, I am NOT relieved. I am not pleased with this outcome. It is a grotesque insult. Just who in the hell do they think they are to be telling us what we can say? The police notice says “No Further Action”, but I can promise that there will be further action on my part. This is NOT over.
Plod are becoming a sick joke. Many moons ago I lived next door to a senior police officer. He never said what he did, but I saw him standing next to a senior government minister on the TV one day, so assume some sort of protection role. He once told me (we were talking about the police force and sidearms), that the police could only fulfil their role with the consent and support of the public. They appear to be doing their best to destroy that.
I would be seething as well. Plod's level of accountability when balanced against their power is totally out of kilter. If they have the power to drag someone who is not suspected of a violent crime out of their home in the small hours and bully and frighten them, then the individuals concerned should be on the receiving end of an investigation where they are obliged to explain their actions and the proportionality thereof and be at risk of losing their jobs if they are found to have behaved disproportionately when set against the suspected offence. Anything less is not acceptable. We need new regulations for the police as the current breed patently have zero common sense and need reining in.