Spitting is on the rise, we are told. It takes a special kind of stupid to spit on another person. You’d have to agree it’s a pretty low thing to do, not to mention repulsive. I mean I guess if you’re an Anglo Saxon and you’ve just killed the Viking who torched your village and killed your family then you could be forgiven for allowing yourself a moment to spit on the corpse, but that is an exceptional circumstance and if I had just seen you kill a Viking with an axe then it’s unlikely I’d be running over to voice my moral objections. But in a society that considers itself a touch more enlightened and civilised I’d say that spitting on someone else in public is little more than a way of demonstrating that you’re a cock and need a good slap and some mental attention.
You can’t always trust the news and you can’t always trust statistics but let’s just believe that this news is exactly the kind of thing that’s believable, in this country and in this truly fucked up moment in time. According to the BBC some ‘officials’ (very vague) have said that members of the public spitting on police officers has risen by 14% in a month (compared to a month from last year). Start doing the numbers and the first number you get is that 14% and that figure is only really useful if you get to know what it is 14% of. If 11 officers were spat on by the public last year then that rise only takes it slightly above 12. Maybe 12 officers and a German Shepherd. However, if (and trust me I’m the last person you would want teaching maths) there were 10,000 incidents in a month last year then we’re talking some big numbers and some serious shit. Sadly we are not afforded such clarity, though they do slip in some random figures later, as an afterthought.
Spitting is classed, quite rightly, as an assault – along with other pathetic acts of those cursed with tiny brains such as biting and coughing in the face. That there are cretins in this world that think that running up to a police officer, come to think of it anyone, proudly declaring they have Covid 19 and then spitting in their eye makes for a very sorry state of affairs. I like to think I have a fairly healthy respect for the law and those charged with enforcing it and so I find it hard to imagine the quantity of alcohol and mind bending drugs that I would have to take to make me consider even approaching an officer of the law except to say sorry, thank you or to ask for help. Call me a goody two-shoes and you’d be a bit wrong but then neither am I a deranged sociopath who has nothing better to do with themselves than to gob at a rozzer. There are no doubt many jobsworth plods out there and just as many dodgy ones, but if they tell me what to do I’m just going to do it because it makes my life so much simpler. Why bother complicating things by being a grotty little prick?
Some have tried to explain all this away by saying that the public are deeply frustrated with lockdown but I’m afraid that doesn’t wash in any way at all. Find me someone who is genuinely enjoying everything about lockdown (except those for whom life itself is one big lockdown) and I’ll be impressed. This is not a happy nation at the moment but that shouldn’t mean idiots should have a carte blanche to skitter along the streets flobbing at anyone with a walkie talkie and a hi-vis jacket. Those arrested for being such unforgivable bastards should hence not be forgiven. One such twat was given a 26 week jail sentence and I hope he’s having a fucking horrible time. It occurs to me that he should also be tested for Covid 19 and if the results come back negative then he should be given the virus immediately and refused medical treatment. Just reading that back makes me sound like a columnist for The Daily Mail and for that I am ashamed, but somewhere in all of this I think I’ve made some kind of a valid point; and in doing so I haven’t needed to physically assault a single person. Go me.
G B Hewitt. 23.05.2020
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 