Picture this. He has tattoos. “HATE” and “ACAB” on his knuckles and a spiders web on his neck.
He is shaved bald and struts imperiously. He is walking his dog Bruno. It is some unspecified sort of bull terrier. The dog defecates on the floor near a “no fouling sign” and he walks on by, just leaving it.
A young mother takes him to task over it and he blankly refuses to do anything about it telling her “It aint Brunoe's fault, he's only a puppy and no way am I going to pick up shit, you think I'm do'in that you are stupid” Suppose she stood up to him anyway and there was a fierce argument over it...
What would you think of our dog walking example? You would think he was scum wouldn't you?
You might think he relied on his physical power to avoid admitting responsibility and doing something he considered beneath him.
Now suppose the dog walker was female, maybe a UK government minister... say the Solicitor General to pick a post at random. The post is currently held by ID card and dog loving Vera Baird MP for Redcar.
If it was her would you change your opinion?
The confrontation over the dog mess was sufficiently fierce, or the dog fouling sufficiently annoying, for members of the public to call the police.
In this instance, despite the police becoming involved... well a community support officer anyway. No action was taken. No fine for allowing a dog to foul, no nothing.
When the hapless Support officer attended the scene when they didn't show sufficient biased deference she reportedly demanded of him “Don't you know who I am?” Maybe they had thought it shouldn't matter who she was. That the law should apply equally to all...
No action was taken but, it is reported, the dog owner got an official apology.
I wonder who go to clean up the mess?
You might be forgiven for thinking that, practically speaking, there is one law for the political elite and one for the rest of us.
I suspect you could be sure if it had been an ordinary member of the public they would have been instant fodder for Police figures, probably getting a fixed penalty fine, possibly being arrested and having their DNA taken if they had no ID.
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2 comments:
I know someone who was there when it happened and it was NOT as reported in the Daily Mail then picked up by other papers. In fact the MP Vera Baird went straight to get a cleaner because she couldn't pick up the dog dirt -- it was diahorrea -- and the police were called because of the behaviour of the woman who was shouting at her (beginning with "You ditrty cow!" and getting worse) rather than the other way around. Don't believe everything (anything) you read in the papers.
Thank you for your comment, I don't know who you are :-), you being anonymouse.
You could very easily be some anonymous staffer tasked by the Govenment/Party with countering the bad publicity for all I of any other reader knows.
So I leave the post unchanged, the woman is a politician after all.
I do readily concede the papers don't often get a story entirely right and will sometimes slant them to make a "good" story. They are in the business of selling copy.
Perhapse not quite so much as you suggest may have happened though.
I would have thought that if the reporting were that unbalanced the press complaints authority would have been involved.
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