'Idris Elba wouldn't need to ask for a knife ban, if 247 Eton boys had died'

08 January 2024 , 13:18

586     0

'Idris Elba wouldn't need to ask for a knife ban, if 247 Eton boys had died'

Good afternoon, and here are the headlines.

Parents from the stockbroker belt have converged on Parliament Square to protest the knife crime epidemic which saw 247 Eton schoolboys killed with a blade in the past year.

In other news, the government has vowed to speed up compensation for directors of the Post Office, who have been the victim of a 20-year miscarriage of justice, after it was dramatised by ITV.

And a selection of generals, admirals, and air commodores have united to launch a legal case against the government after discovering parts of their medical records were mysteriously "lost" by low-ranking clerical staff.

Movie star Idris Elba is leading the anti-knife crime crusade, which featured 247 carefully-folded, but bloodied Eton uniforms, complete with top hats, which the boys were wearing when they murdered in a series of teenaged arguments.

Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade

He said: "What we need for these rich white boys is more compassionate understanding about how they went so badly off the rails. Instead all we get from government is increased punishments, like being banned from the tuck shop and having the carnation removed from their lapels."

Meanwhile, the government has pledged to speed up compensation to former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells and other board members, after almost 1,000 sub-postmasters and mistresses accused them of stealing from public funds.

The accusations meant Vennells and her team were prosecuted by the sub-postmasters themselves, without recourse to the Crown Prosecution Service, which has been described as the greatest wrong in British history since King John's generous offer of universal suffrage was refused by the barons at Runymede.

Oh no, we had him wrong all this time

And finally, we can report that military top brass have been the victims of a 70-year cover-up by the junior ranks, who denied ever handling the medical records of senior officers until it was discovered by the Mirror in a year-long investigation.

The officers are now launching a lawsuit against the MoD for causing them post-traumatic stress disorder. "My time in uniform was a nightmare," said Major-General Frederick Smyth-Watson. "I've no idea if my blood tests show I have an over-weaning sense of entitlement. The NCO says he 'lost' them, but I don't believe it."

So would run the news, if the world were as blind to colour, wealth, and social status as those with the fashionable amount of each would have us believe.

Unfortunately, as the news proves today, it isn't. Which is why knife crime is seen as a 'black problem' rather than a too many dead children problem. It's why sub-postmasters were punished with jail time and six-figure bills while the worst anyone can dream up for Paula Vennells is to take away her CBE. And it's why the junior ranks of nuclear test veterans are having to battle top brass for medical records hidden away with state secrets decades ago.

Nuclear veteran John Folkes has found that 14 months has been excised from his medical records - covering the same period he flew through mushroom clouds at Operation Buffalo (Tim Merry/Daily Mirror)

It's always the little guy, the poor guy, the 'other' guy. And, since Simon de Montfort called the first Parliament of knights and burghesses in 1265, those deciding how to fix these problems are NOT the other guy. They're the rich, the landed, the titled, the military officers; the business-owners, house-owners, tithe-takers. And guess what? Their solutions to a problem are the same they were 800 years ago.

Blame the poor for being poor. Blame the other for being too other. The problems of the people are a problem you must protect yourself from, not do something about. Announce a crackdown, break some skulls, go for lunch.

Then, as now, politicians are selected to represent a community. Someone who can speak well, and seems clean, is sent by the peasants to advocate on their behalf. Not all - but far too many - are blinded, once in Westminster, by the number of people who are just like them. It must seem the whole WORLD is just like them. And anyone who isn't, by definition, is a trouble-maker, a rabble-rouser, a rebel or a revolutionary.

Richard 'shuts up' GMB guest who says Hancock 'deserved' being called 'd***head'

Which is why eco-protesters get called terrorists, and some papers get very upset that some of them are middle-class. It's why the Minister for Veterans tells veterans he won't advocate for their medical records, and they must find a lawyer to do it instead. It's why the worst anyone can think of to do to those behind the Post Office scandal is to make them slightly-less shiny, when the River Thames, awash with post-storm sewage into which someone can be easily dropped, is right THERE.

It's not like she's not spouted some in her time (PA Wire/Press Association Images)

It was ever thus. People at the bottom don't get put at the top; they haven't the time, anyway, not when there's potatoes to harvest or children to mourn. Politics gets left to those with the financial and mental bandwidth for it, which is why in 1265 we got a religious zealot who led anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the land, and today we have Rishi Sunak and Budgie the Helicopter (or to use its full title, Budgetary Restraints Are For A Different Helicopter).

It's on days, and in columns, like this I wonder whether we'd be better served with a system of jury service, and every shire sends a couple of randoms to Westminster for a set period. Yes, there'd be lunatics and idiots, gobsh*tes and glory-hunters, but we get plenty of that sort now. What Parliament needs is disabled people, pensioners who travel in with their free bus pass, nurses, mums, the occasional teenager. If the people in that place now are all as brilliant and important as they think they are, let them go and do a proper job and pay proper taxes to fill the country's coffers, and let the governing be done by people who know what existence is like for everyone who isn't brilliant and important.

Ach, cloud cuckoo land perhaps. The ghosts of De Montfort and King John would be united in horror, along with the entirety of the Conservative, and the majority of the Labour parties.

But it might work. And when you look at the news today, and see Idris Elba having to go out and ask nicely for a ban on machetes, when politicians are being asked about Paula Vennell's CBE and no-one at all is asking about the nuclear veterans' medical records, just remember: none of this would be happening, if the little guy got to sit in the big chair.

Fleet Street Fox