Another Thank Fuck I Left Moment - In Association With Merseyside police

Just read Wat Tyler's comments at Burning Our Money on the story that a motorist was stopped by the police for laughing.

"Gary Saunders, a company director, was using a hands-free phone when he burst out laughing at a joke told by his brother-in-law, who he was talking to.

A few moments later he noticed a traffic officer flashing his lights at him and gesticulating at him to stop his Renault.

When Mr Saunders got out of his car, the policeman told him: "Laughing while driving a car can be an offence."

What a knob. I very much doubt you'll sell that to a jury unless you could show that he lost concentration and crashed in the process.

"It went from ludicrous to unbelievable. In the end he reluctantly admitted that he had nothing he could accuse me of, but still required me to take my documents to the station."

So in other words, not actually an offence. Fuck me but there are some power crazed little Adolfs wandering around in police uniforms these days. Sure, there probably always were but with more and more laws from the ridiculous nanny state these annoying twats have got ever increasing licence to stick their noses in where they're not only unwanted but quite unnecessary and generally be unpleasant authoritarian pests. It could be argued that using the phone, even a hands free one, is a distraction and isn't going to improve the standard of driving, but absent anything actually dangerous in an immediate and obvious way the best any cop can do is offer it as friendly professional advice. I don't think people mind when police do this, especially if they're polite and respectful towards the member of the public who is, after all, paying their bloody wages. Certainly I don't have a problem with police who deal with people this way, and I'm far more inclined to listen to them and take their comments on board than I am with some ludicrous uniformed (and uninformed) twat chucking his weight around.

Wat Tyler notes:

For a policeman to spend half-an-hour questioning someone suspected of laughing, you'd have to guess this is an area where the cops have already cracked all the real crime.

Ah, no. This is Liverpool, which in case you don't know, has some eye-watering crime rates: violence against the person is 40% higher than the national average, car theft is 70% higher, robbery is 140% higher, and burglary also 140% higher. We somehow doubt that cracking laughter crime is a priority for the typical Liverpudlian.

And then goes on to talk about the Policing Pledge, the latest daft initiative from the Home Office. Worth a read.