Let's call the cops on the cops

WHITHER the polis? So far, they haven’t come out of the current predicament well, with their heavy handedness and repeated exemplification of the sort of stupidity for which they are institutionally famous in popular folkore.

I say that with a heavy heart. Most of us will at times have summoned a constable and found them to be able, reassuring figures who are a credit to the force. But something has gone badly wrong with the police as a whole in the last couple of decades, imbued as they now are with bizarre political correctness, mad budgeting, and everyday invisibility.

I laughed out loud when I heard a chief constable south of yonder border say on the radio that his officers were patrolling the streets as normal. I think we have a serious existential or perceptual problem here. They do, genuinely, seem to think they are patrolling the streets when, in reality, they are patrolling their offices.

The truth is, there are two types of police, and two types within one of these two types.

The first distinction is between top and bottom. Like football managers, those at the top are always exceptionally dense – hence the institutionalised stupidity referenced above – while those on the front line are generally heroes.

However, the behaviour of the latter group changes according to circumstances. Put them in large groups against striking workers, football fans or, in a national crisis, as at present, and they become clots, sometimes dangerously so. Their usual individual helpfulness becomes sullied by collective authoritarianism.

As an international phenomenon, it has always amazed me that the police as a social entity – ken? – have not been excoriated more for their behaviour in continental Europe during the war. Put it this way: it wasn’t your actual Nazis rounding people up. One dreads to think what would have happened here if England hadn’t won the war.

It’s also true to say that, in some countries that should know better (naming no names in case they come for me in the night), the police are just organised and funded hooligans. They are state security officers rather then citizens in uniform as is supposed to be the case here in Britain, as England is now known.

One thing is clear: after all this viral unpleasantness is over, there is going to have to be a reckoning. Government, banks and the police will have to be seriously repositioned, with many citizens’ arrests carried out by members of the public.

I am tempted to take advantage of the impending revolutionary chaos that is about to sweep the country, and to shoehorn in a couple of my hobby-horses, such as abolishing secondary education and denying bald people the vote, but I think that would be invidious.

Furthermore, in the tumult of the forthcoming revolution, we should remember the good side of the police, and reorientate them towards dealing with housebreaking, violence and domestic emergencies, while valuing their often unsung role in protecting us from terrorists.

But we will need to take away their cars, computers and telephones. They have simply abused these and will have to get their big feet pounding the beat again if they are to regain our respect.

How you can feel the burn

ALL together now: lift your arms above your heid and wave them a’ aboot. Right, that’s your exercise lesson for today. Tomorrow: lifting your legs above your heid and waving them a’ aboot.

During the current crisis or challenge there’s been a plethora of articles with advice about exercise and I haven’t read any of them, including this one.

I do my own thing, ken? In normal times, I’d be down the gym once or twice a week, though half the attraction is the sauna afterwards. Stuck at hame, I decided to get bits of gym equipment out of the garden shed. Don’t normally have space for it in the hoose.

Unfortunately, it was in bits and, by the time I’d figured out which bolt went into which hole and had bludgeoned Part A on to Part X, I lay in an exhausted heap – without having done one exercise.

Next day, though, I gave it a right go and almost enjoyed myself, not least because I could play my own music instead of enduring the ruddy rap that’s always on at our Highland gym.

I was surprised to find that I’d some really good equipment too, including a weights bench, a biceps doofer and an abs enhancer contrivance (abs are the invisible things that hide under your blobby stomach). Afterwards, I felt great. And then the following day I couldn’t get up because I’d such a severe case of the screaming abs-dabs.

Still, no pain, no gain, what? Of course, I missed not having a sauna afterwards. But I did the next best thing and just stuck my face under the grill. Same effect really, apart from the third degree burns.

Five things we learned this week

1 Glasgow Uni boffin Professor Colin McInnes has received a European Research Council grant to investigate the use of space-based reflectors to shine more sunlight on solar power farms. That’s solar power for you: never a dull moment.

2 Newly uncovered files at Britain’s National Archives reveal the KGB used sherry laced with drugs on British diplomats suspected of being spies. Motto of the story? If on active intelligence work, stick to beer. Or carry your own Buckfast in a flask.

3 Smelled any good books recently? Scents from tomes in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library feature in a forthcoming exhibition of the senses, complete with “scratch and sniff” cards. Exhibits include ancient Egyptian texts and a First Folio of Shakespeare’s "Aroma and Juliet".

4 Earth, the controversial planet, used to be much warmer than previously thought. Researchers found there was even rainforest in Antarctica back when dinosaurs waddled aboot. Pity there was no Extinction Rebellion back then to warn the dopey lizards against complacency.

5 Evidence, in the anecdotal sense, has emerged of the first killing of an Earthling by aliens. Brazilian Luis Barroso Fernandes was allegedly zapped in the coupon by some hooligan from a UFO in 1973. Police have warned: “ET, hand yourself in.”