Look, I know it’s April Fool’s Day but please bear with me. What follows is not a spoof. You couldn’t make it up.
Police and council officials took a coachload of thugs from the West Midlands on a day-trip to Blackpool to keep them out of trouble.
On arrival, some of the yobs went on the rampage and kicked a father-or-two senseless in front of his pregnant girlfriend and children.
This excursion, which cost taxpayers more than £2,000, was the brainchild of the Safer Sandwell Partnership, a collaboration between no fewer than 20 publicly-funded agencies.
After careful consideration, it was decided to remove 19 young men from the streets of Dudley to prevent them becoming involved in ‘anti-social behaviour’ on the day of a planned march by the right-wing English Defence League.
All were from Asian or Muslim backgrounds and were identified as potential troublemakers. It was thought that they might try to disrupt the march, leading to violence.
Their ethnic origin is only relevant in the context of the nature of the demonstration and the understandable desire to prevent racial confrontation.
You can’t imagine the police bussing West Bromwich Albion fans to Skegness for the day to stop them clashing with Wolves supporters outside the Hawthorns.
So why, you might ask, was this band of brothers singled out for a beano to Blackpool Pleasure Beach and not the many thousands of other young Asian men who also might take offence at the sight of the EDL marching through their home town?
It may have something to do with the fact that all were members of a gang ‘known to the police’ and two of them were on bail for an alleged hammer attack in Tipton three months earlier.
So they were herded on to a charabanc with a police officer and five social workers and driven up the M6 to work off their excess aggression on the dodgems and donkey rides. Imagine the Jolly Boys Outing episode of Only Fools And Horses, directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Scene of the crime: Thugs caused chaos at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, paid for by taxpayers
When they pulled up in the coach park, the gang started chanting racist abuse at a party of day-trippers from Kingswinford. A fight ensued, in which bystander Derek Brownhill was knocked to the ground unconscious with bruising and swelling to his face and head.
This disturbing, but utterly predictable tale unfolded when five of the gang members appeared at Wolverhampton Crown Court on assault charges this week. Three were given prison sentences, two others community service and probation.
Chief Supt Mark Robinson, of Sandwell police, defended the decision to take the group to Blackpool, but said the outcome of the trip was ‘hugely disappointing’.
Derek Rowley, who describes himself as ‘cabinet member for safer neighbourhoods’ called it ‘unfortunate’. Sandwell racial equality chief executive Derrick Campbell, who doubles as a Government adviser on anti-social behaviour, remarked: ‘I wouldn’t say the trip had failed.’
What would he say, then? In what respect was this fiasco a success? Certainly, it removed a group of potential troublemakers from a flashpoint in the Black Country. But it dumped them on the seafront in Blackpool. What did the powers-that-be think a gang of hooligans was going to do at the seaside — buy Kiss-Me-Quick hats and feast on fish ’n’chips and candy-floss?
Instead, these thugs were let loose to terrorise families with young children and elderly holidaymakers.
We’ve been here before. In the 1990s, probation officers thought it was a good idea to give juvenile delinquents everything from windsurfing lessons to free mountain bikes to encourage them to stay on the straight and narrow.
One notorious case involved a young offender being flown to Africa on a safari holiday. Most of the time it ended in tears.
Ten years ago, I wrote a novel which featured a gang of young criminals being taken to a holiday camp by their social workers — with predictable mayhem. If you take this ludicrous policy to its logical conclusion the authorities would be justified in commandeering fleets of coaches to transport English Defence League demonstrators and their anti-racist imitators to the seaside instead of letting them kick off in city centres.
Then they could fight it out on the golden sands, like the mods and rockers in Quadrophenia.
Perhaps we could have the next ‘Stop the Cuts’ riot at Southend. Far safer to let them smash up sand castles than trash Fortnum & Mason. Everybody back on the coach.
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Gary, you cannot be Sirius
Gary Oldman is a talented British actor who has deservedly found fame and fortune in Hollywood.
Unfortunately, like most actors, he’s at his best when someone else is writing his lines. When luvvies get involved in politics they tend to make fools of themselves.
He flew back to London this week from his home in Los Angeles to collect an award and used the occasion as a platform to denounce the ‘cuts’.
Oldman claimed the modest amount being trimmed from the Arts Council budget would be ‘terrible’ for the British film industry.
Instead of moaning, maybe he’d like to bankroll a few independent British films out of the millions of dollars he’s earned for starring in Hollywood blockbusters.
And if he’s so worried about the size of state subsidies in Britain, he could always volunteer to pay his taxes here.
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Loser Kusa
Why has the Libyan foreign minister, said to be the architect of the Lockerbie bombing, fled to Britain?
After all, the man who actually planted the bomb went to great lengths to get sent back to Libya.
What makes Musa Kusa assume this country will be a safe haven? Probably because all the world’s detritus seems to wash up here eventually, from Al Qaeda terrorists and Afghan warlords to that WikiLeaks lunatic.
Couldn’t William Hague just tell him to try somewhere else — such as Venezuela, to pick a country at random?
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Pol Potty
Polly Toynbee, the high priestess of the Guardianistas, has applied for planning permission to build a conservatory on her £1.5 million London home.
According to one report, she has submitted the application under the name Mary Jenkins. Mary is her given name, Jenkins the surname of her late husband. Surely she’s not trying to conceal her true identity.
Seeing as any improvement to the property will add considerably to its already astronomical value, I wonder where Pol Potty stands on the Lib Dems’ proposed ‘mansion tax’.
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Our amazing India rubber benefits rules
Coralina Cattrell: Unable to work due to a rubber allergy
Today is the start of Benefits Awareness Month, a campaign to encourage millions of people to check they’re receiving their maximum welfare payments.
According to the organisers, two-thirds of low earners are not claiming their full entitlement. There could be as many as nine million people being short-changed as a result of ignorance.
The campaign is fronted by stellar names such as Carole Ann Rice, who styles herself ‘one of the UK’s leading lifestyle coaches’, and ‘X Factor star’ Andy Abraham. No, I haven’t heard of them, either.
I don’t suppose it has occurred to them that perhaps people don’t claim because they don’t need the money or they are too proud to scrounge off the state.
One person who is acutely aware of her rights is Coralina Cattrell, aged 52, from Jaywick, near Clacton, Essex. She was in court this week to hear the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) challenge a tribunal ruling awarding her incapacity benefits in perpetuity.
Miss Cattrell, described as an artist, need never look for a job again. She was diagnosed 20 years ago with an allergy to rubber and latex, which she says prevents her from seeking safe, gainful employment.
She maintains that if exposed to even a single rubber band she could suffer fatal, anaphylactic shock.
Counsel for the DWP, Jason Coppell, argued that: ‘Her allergy, although inconvenient, has not prevented her from leading a relatively normal life — shopping, socialising, travelling on public transport.’
Mr Coppell said that Miss Cattrell had never suffered an extreme reaction and didn’t even carry the syringe of adrenaline required to combat such an attack. But after the judges ruled in her favour, there are justifiable fears it could open the floodgates to thousands of similar claims from people who suffer with an assortment of allergies.
I’m sure her condition is genuine, but no one is asking Miss Cattrell to become a Kwik-Fit tyre fitter or get a job on the production line at the London Rubber Company.
Thanks to high-speed internet, plenty of people work from home these days. Surely it is not unreasonable to expect her to find work which doesn’t involve contact with rubber.
If she’s an artist, couldn’t she sell a few paintings? She isn’t forced to live on benefits, she chooses to do so because the system lets her get away with it. As far as she’s concerned, every month is Benefits Awareness Month.
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