A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post

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So now, in true NuLabour fashion, we face immediate calls for new taste and decency guidelines to govern what can be shown on TV. Another level of censorship, in other words.

As I’ve said before, asking NuLabour to protect your personal freedom is like asking Louise Woodward to babysit. But you knew that, anyway. And you still voted them back in.

That policeman from Wakefield should be ashamed of himself. A boot in the goolies and three left hooks and he still can’t put the kid down. What’s the world coming to?

Now I have no doubt that the little scrote probably deserved it. They usually do. Just as the whining soap-dodgers who got roughed up in Genoa got everything they asked for. Listen girls, if you’re not up for a bit of violence, then don’t start it in the first place.

Anyway, where are the howls of outrage when innocent football fans are regularly tear-gassed and beaten by the Italian police? You didn’t see my mate Scalpel Tony getting front page treatment in The Guardian, did you? And he’s not even a postman.

The other surprising factor about the Wakefield incident is that the cops in Yorkshire still had two officers prowling the streets. After all, 46 of them are still on sick leave after the Bradford riots with most of them intending to file compensation claims that would cost £1 million to settle.

Well I’m sorry, but when you choose to be a policeman, you must expect to come across the occasional criminal. Not often enough, I will admit, but at least occasionally. Some of those criminals might not be innocent motorists who’ve strayed a couple of miles an hour over the speed limit. Some of them might even be violent.

You don’t hear of a fireman going home at night and saying to his missus “You’ll never guess what they asked me to do today. They wanted me to put out a fire. Just gave me this fire engine and a hose and told me to get on with it.”

This kind of compensation culture is threatening every aspect of our society. We will return to the subject at a later date. I’m off for a pint of Turbo Shandy. It’s half Stella Artois, half Smirnoff Ice, since you ask.

BARRY BEELZEBUB

The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this newspaper, or of all the middle-class snobs expressing surprise that more people voted in Big Brother than voted for NuLabour.

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