Posturing won’t change anything. Sacking chief constables might concentrate their minds.
The Home Secretary has scolded a police force for sending five officers to a family-owned pub to seize a collection of golliwog dolls, it was revealed yesterday.
An anonymous complaint was made about the White Hart Inn in Grays, Essex, and 15 dolls were seized because their presence was a suspected ‘hate crime‘.
The problem here is the concept of a hate crime. There is no such thing and it should never have been allowed to become one. There is crime. Something either is, or it is not. Displaying golliwogs in a pub is not. If someone is offended, that’s their problem, not the police’s. The appropriate response to this complainant is ‘go and annoy someone else or we will charge you with wasting police time.’ At least in a sane world that would have been the response.
Suella Braverman is said to have been furious about the approach, which also saw police question pub owner Benice Ryley, and has told Essex Police that bosses should be focusing on catching real criminals rather than seizing toys.
A Home Office source said: ‘The Home Secretary’s views have now been made very plain to Essex Police so they’re under no illusions.
‘Police forces should not be getting involved in this kind of nonsense. It’s about tackling anti-social behaviour, stopping violence against women and girls, attending burglaries and catching criminals – not seizing dolls.’
Sure, but unless there are serious consequences for senior officers, it will keep happening and the police will continue to look a farce in the eyes of the public.
The College of Policing issued updated guidance last month stating that non-crime hate incidents should not be recorded where there is no basis to conclude that an incident was motivated by hostility.
The guidance also states: ‘Wherever possible, freedom of speech should be prioritised.’
That appears to be working, doesn’t it? And displaying golliwogs in a pub is not an expression of hate.
‘The whole thing is totally mad. Since the gollies were taken and the story was in the newspapers, we have had so many people get in touch with myself and my husband to say we shouldn’t give up and should keep them on our shelf.
‘Over the last two days my customers keep singing ‘save the gollies’ and they want us to get them back. So we are having a sign prepared that will say ‘gollies are on display, so don’t come in if that offends you’ and once that’s ready we’ll restore some more of the dolls to the shelf.’
Quite so. The only appropriate reaction to this kind of overreach and the thin skinned complainants is a robust refusal to give in.
It’ll be Toby Jugs next, (someone will be offended by a fat white gentleman supping ale), then glass-bottomed pint pots, (King’s shilling showing up at the bottom means foced into Navy slavery), and garden gnomes etc etc…
Make up an offence, then go and look for it…
The name of the pub is a provocation. Plod should send a dozen well paid to confiscate the sign.
I wonder if plod wore those silly baseball caps?
Quite so. Even the need for ‘trigger warnings’ about gollies is another sign that the world has gone mad.
Can the complainant be charged for malicious behaviour and waste of police time? Can they be prosecuted? Don’t hold your breath, there are too many senior police that are likely to ‘support’ favoured causes.
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Bit early in the day to be drinking, isn’t it, Paul?
I’m sober. Don’t normally drink until the afternoon. What about yourself?
There was a newspaper report about our local garden centre selling gollywogs which had received a complaint from someone who had not even been there, as there were other places which had taken them off the shelves I nipped down to purchase one. My heart sank, there were none to be seen but when I asked a member of staff if they had been removed, she said “No, they had all been sold but should be getting more in” I went back a few days later, they were on the shelves again so I bought a couple and it transpires that all of this second batch sold out as well, I gloated over that for a long time. It would appear that if you wish to boost sales get one of the “Offended on behalf of someone else brigade” to put in a complaint.
The law of unintended consequences.
AA the Streisand effect.
Can the police be charged with wasting police time?
It would be nice to think so.
Er, not really. We get the bill whether their time is wasted or, as must sometimes occur due to quantum fluctuation effects if nothing else, they occasionally do some good.
Bit like “fining” a council
This woke bollocks seems to be backfiring regularly now, good.
I seem to recall that Michael Jackson went through a phase of dressing like a gollywog. Maybe golly collectors could throw the keystone cops off the scent by claiming to be MJ fans?
On a more serious note, the problem seems to be infantilisation. There aren’t any adults in charge any more and Lord of the Flies didn’t end well did it?
I was in the pub at a quiz last night and this was mentioned. I had to check the date on my watch. I couldn’t believe that a traditional child’s toy was confiscated by 5 police officers. 15 of ’em all told. Golliwogs. The polce should have told the complainant to “grow up” IMO.
Well, according to the ‘Mail’ today, the landlady has ‘defied the ban’ (the police have no such powers to order a ban) and put more dolls up.
So, over to you, Essex plod. You know what the Home Sec has said – will you meekly surrender, or double-down and try to seize these too?
Good for her. This is what’s needed. Stand up to the bastards.