Smoke cannabis and block the M25, no one cares. Chop down a bush? Jail
I’M starting to get confused about what I am, and what I am not, allowed to do these days.
I know that if I break the speed limit for even the briefest of moments, I will be caught on camera and fined a large amount of money.
That’s clear.
I also know that if I break into your house this evening and steal your television, the police will not be interested and I’ll be allowed to get away scot-free.
That’s also clear.
But what about drugs?
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We know that cannabis is illegal and that you can go to prison for five years for even owning some.
But when hundreds of weed enthusiasts descended on Hyde Park in London this week to spend the afternoon finding the trees to be funny, the police simply wandered around asking people to put their drugs in the bin.
So the officers were despatched to uphold the law.
And then they didn’t.
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Hate crimes are confusing too.
If I deliberately call a woman with a penis a man, I’m well aware that I’ve caused offence and probably some mental health issues as well, and that I must go to prison for 500 years.
But if someone calls me a fat Tory b***d, that’s not a hate crime at all.
We have similar issues with protests.
If I block a cycle lane with my car, I know I’ll be for the high jump.
But if a bunch of cyclists block a road they’ll be praised by a judge for their “courage”.
Only this week, a bunch of eco-loons who’d glued themselves to the M25 pleaded guilty in court to causing a public nuisance.
And were told by the judge that even though they’d disrupted the lives of thousands of people they would not be getting a prison sentence.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a farmer who cleared away a few bushes from the side of a river has been sent down for 12 months with instructions that he must serve half of that behind bars.
What’s more, he’s been ordered to pay costs which add up to — and you’ll need to sit down for this — £600,000.
So you can block a motorway and get a slap on the wrist.
You can smoke dope in public and plod will look the other way.
But if you pull down a bush and squash some fish eggs with a digger, you will do serious jail time and be out of pocket to the tune of six hundred grand.
Now let’s be clear.
I don’t think what the farmer did is right.
I can’t imagine what came over him.
And he does need to have a finger wagged in his face.
But we have reached a point in this country where the punishment rarely fits the crime, and half the time we don’t even know what the crime is, or if it’s a crime any more.
What a grand result
WHENEVER a Formula One car loses a tiny bit of trim, or a mirror, the red flags are brought out, the race is halted and poor old Martin Brundle has to spend the next two hours commentating on nothing at all.
So I was expecting more of the same when protesters arrived at Aintree last weekend.
Hours and hours of faffing around and no racing of any kind until health and safety officers had ticked every box.
But no.
Thanks to some proper, physical policing and a deal of strong-armed help from the Northern crowd, the idiotic protesters were cleared away in a matter of moments.
And the Grand National, in the end, was only delayed by 15 minutes.
Perhaps the softies in London should stop worrying about what pronouns they’d like today and learn a few lessons here.
Give it a rust, Alec
I’M a great believer in keeping calm, carrying on, and not abandoning a project just because someone’s broken a toenail.
Over the years, we’ve carried on filming with broken bones, hangovers to flatten Oliver Reed and tummy bugs that could be detected from space.
But when you are making a film and the lead actor has shot and killed the camerawoman, and injured the director, even I’d say: “Right everyone. Go home.”
Amazingly, however, shortly after involuntary manslaughter charges against the actor Alec Baldwin, were dropped, there was an announcement that the film in question – Rust – is going back into production.
What’s the mood going to be like on set?
Not cheery is my bet.
And who will want to see a movie that has been made at such an enormous cost?
Not me, that’s for sure.
Signs of the times
I’M no Arsenal fan but I was saddened this week to see their players getting stick on social media for not even acknowledging a kid whose shirt they were signing as they walked by.
Yes, it looked bad.
Overpaid, unsmiling halfwits delivering an illegible squiggled autograph, without even looking up.
But these guys are asked for autographs and selfies constantly.
And they can’t possibly be expected to beam and chew the fat every single time they’re stopped in the street.
So let’s drop this one guys, and go back to disliking them because they play for Arsenal.
Bomb's a Brum deal
THE pilot of a Russian fighter bomber is probably feeling a bit sick this morning having discovered that he missed his target in Ukraine and dropped a bomb slap bang in the middle of a Russian city instead.
Amazingly, though, this is not the first time a pilot has hit not just the wrong target but the wrong country.
In the First World War, the crew of a German Zeppelin airship reported that their bombs had flattened Birmingham.
Only to discover that they’d actually spent the night blowing the bejesus out of Amiens.
Which is in Northern France.
Farming not so easy
WHEN I first started farming, I thought that I’d spend all day long leaning on gates, eating ploughman’s lunches and driving around in my
Range Rover, pointing at things.
Hmmm.
This afternoon I’ve been told I must go into the woods and “sex split my weaners”.
I have literally no idea what this means.
But I’m not looking forward to it, whatever it is.
Especially as yesterday, I got to smell the inside of a goat.
Tapes? You must Bee kidding
SO, the cassette is coming back is it?
Why?
When all my music was stored on tape, I used to spend most of my life untangling it and then winding it back in place with a pencil.
Still, at least the sound quality was so terrible that you could spend all day listening to the Bee Gees, before realising that, actually, it was Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
Deer me
THERE were calls this week for people to stop eating red meat.
No surprises there.
There are calls every week for us to stop eating red meat.
But this time the calls came from a former head of the climate change commission, who said stop eating red meat and eat venison instead.
It sounds ridiculous, asking people to put down their McDonald’s and eat Bambi instead.
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But he’s on to something here.
Deer are completely free range, they need to be culled because they are wrecking our trees, and best of all, the meat is both cheap and delicious.