I'm afraid I cannot get very worked up about Conservative Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell's altercation with the Downing Street police last night (he is supposed to have called one of them a "pleb").
How many of us have suffered bullying from petty jobsworths who on a whim suddenly decide they are going to make life difficult, not through any emergency requirement but simply because they want to demonstrate their own personal superiority.
Recently I have had a wheelie-bin left by the Council rubbish collectors because it was "too heavy" even though it was no different from any other week, contained exactly the rubbish it should contain, and was not even full to the top (and the rubbish department cannot define what "too heavy" means).
Recently when picking up my brother from the pub late at night I was followed by a police car all through the town, during which I was careful not to go over 30 miles an hour, and as soon as I left the 30 mile per hour zone the police car stopped me because I was driving "too slowly" (I had slowed down wanting them to overtake and leave me alone). Obviously they were hoping I had been drinking. This might seem a trivial incident but at the time I was furious that the police should try to make my life difficult for no other reason than I was driving through a town late at night.
So I am not surprised that Andrew Mitchell should lose his temper when the gates that are normally opened are suddenly, on a whim, not opened and he is told by some jobsworth that he would have to get off and walk round.
When are public servants going to accept that they are the servants of society, not the masters?
In the Twitter frenzy that has followed the pleb remark (no-one has yet called it plebgate) Owen Jones has been castigated for placing the pleb revolt in the Roman Empire period instead of the Roman Republic https://twitter.com/OwenJones84
Obviously this is a flippant remark, and should not be over-analysed but a few (flippant) thoughts occur to me:
1 Owen Jones goes on and on about his comprehensive school education, but no Independent school alumnus would have made such an elementary mistake (apologies if I have declined alumni wrongly but I went to a dumbed-down comp myself).
2 Owen Jones studied History at Oxford University - perhaps this error helps to demonstrate how over-hyped and bogus the Oxbridge hegemony is?
3 Owen Jones wrote a book on class, talks professionally on class, and helps to run a think tank devoted to class issues - and yet he cannot get even simple historical facts right (arguably you cannot fully understand the history of class without reference to the pleb revolt).
How many of us have suffered bullying from petty jobsworths who on a whim suddenly decide they are going to make life difficult, not through any emergency requirement but simply because they want to demonstrate their own personal superiority.
Recently I have had a wheelie-bin left by the Council rubbish collectors because it was "too heavy" even though it was no different from any other week, contained exactly the rubbish it should contain, and was not even full to the top (and the rubbish department cannot define what "too heavy" means).
Recently when picking up my brother from the pub late at night I was followed by a police car all through the town, during which I was careful not to go over 30 miles an hour, and as soon as I left the 30 mile per hour zone the police car stopped me because I was driving "too slowly" (I had slowed down wanting them to overtake and leave me alone). Obviously they were hoping I had been drinking. This might seem a trivial incident but at the time I was furious that the police should try to make my life difficult for no other reason than I was driving through a town late at night.
So I am not surprised that Andrew Mitchell should lose his temper when the gates that are normally opened are suddenly, on a whim, not opened and he is told by some jobsworth that he would have to get off and walk round.
When are public servants going to accept that they are the servants of society, not the masters?
In the Twitter frenzy that has followed the pleb remark (no-one has yet called it plebgate) Owen Jones has been castigated for placing the pleb revolt in the Roman Empire period instead of the Roman Republic https://twitter.com/OwenJones84
Obviously this is a flippant remark, and should not be over-analysed but a few (flippant) thoughts occur to me:
1 Owen Jones goes on and on about his comprehensive school education, but no Independent school alumnus would have made such an elementary mistake (apologies if I have declined alumni wrongly but I went to a dumbed-down comp myself).
2 Owen Jones studied History at Oxford University - perhaps this error helps to demonstrate how over-hyped and bogus the Oxbridge hegemony is?
3 Owen Jones wrote a book on class, talks professionally on class, and helps to run a think tank devoted to class issues - and yet he cannot get even simple historical facts right (arguably you cannot fully understand the history of class without reference to the pleb revolt).
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