For many years listeners to Radio 4's Thought For The Day were treated to regular contributions from the Rev. Canon Dr. Alan Billings, a liberal Anglican priest. But a few years back he became the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire and had to leave the programme. It looks, however, as if he kept his old TFTD ways of thinking and applied them in his new role. And he's been front-and-centre today, on non-BBC broadcasters, defending the controversial South Yorkshire Police tweet shown above. He's not been doing very well though. Take this, for example:
South Yorkshire Police asked the public to report "non-crime hate incidents". Nick Ferrari's extraordinary interview with their Police Commissioner is 🔥🔥🔥. pic.twitter.com/M72FhwobkM— LBC (@LBC) September 11, 2018
Or this:
Maybe it's time for him to hang up his sheriff's badge and mosey on back to the Today studio. After all, he can be as platitudinous as he likes there and it wouldn't matter.
This is an extremely sinister development. We knew it was already happening. But now they are soliciting information about non-criminal speech officially, presumably in order to intimidate the general population.
ReplyDeleteBillings seemed to be taking PC stupidity to new levels, but also I got the strong impression from the LBC interviews that he is extremely vain. More interested in preening himself than serving the public. I hope none of those observations are hatefully hurtful or hurtingly hatelike.
I've been meaning to re-read 1984 for some time now...I feel I ought to get started on that as a matter of urgency.
Was he saying that if a person from 'the minority' i.e. 'the whites' says something nasty to 'the majority' i'.e 'the Asians' then that was upsetting because the later are part of 'a community' whereas the former aren't?
ReplyDeleteHe certainly seemed to be avoiding talking about the elephant of colour in the woodpile. (Remember the preamble to the USA programme 'Soap'?).