Changing times: from mindless thuggery to thought police.Byline: Karren Brady Karren Brady (born April 1969) is a British broadcasting and sport business manager. She is best known for being the managing director of Birmingham City Football Club. THE hero detective of Life on Mars Scientists have long speculated about the possibility of life on Mars owing to the planet's proximity and similarity to Earth. It remains an open question whether life exists on Mars now, or existed there in the past. , BBC's retro police series set in 1973, is regularly shocked by the thuggery and threats of his colleagues. A quarter-of-a-century later it seems, indeed, to be of another world. The cops threaten and beat up the innocent or guilty without much regard as to which is which. Minorities are treated as scum. Were the police really as violent and corrupt as this? Being only an infant at the time, I can never really know. The series provides its scriptwriters and the BBC BBC in full British Broadcasting Corp. Publicly financed broadcasting system in Britain. A private company at its founding in 1922, it was replaced by a public corporation under royal charter in 1927. with the opportunity to use Anglo-Saxon language that today would bring down on their heads the fiery wrath of the word inspectorate and possibly today's more socially-aware police. What Sam Tyler's hot-headed boss, Gene Hunt, would make of the once gentle word "gay" in its current general use, I daren't even think. Such is the mighty change in attitudes, however, that its use by an 11-year-old boy in an email to a fellow pupil in Cheshire prompted the police to put the frighteners on him. Two of them crossed the border to the St Helens, Merseyside
George, no doubt shaken by this surprise visit of the men in blue, claimed he'd used "gay" in the sense that the boy was being stupid, an association that should cause anxiety in his English teacher. However, as a case of police overkill overkill Vox populi An excess of anything , this was special. It may not be political correctness gone mad - more that it went, well, stupid. There is always another side to such stories. As a mother, I would be decidedly unhappy if one of my children received a similar email. The sender's parents and his school would know pretty quickly what I thought of naughty George. Taking it to the police would be quite a different matter - an upping of the ante that could, and has, led to unpleasantness that a sensible copper on the desk would have avoided with a few well-chosen words to the complaining parents. I wonder if the police realise who comes worst out of the incident. They might not like the answer because it is this: they do. They open themselves up to further accusations that they are fiddling with pencils while St Helens burns. One consolation at least. The Chief Constable can mark the file "Crime Solved" - increasingly a rare event. PS: My birthday tomorrow and getting to the stage where I don't wish to tell which. However, I can promise you there'll be no cake with my picture on it or a birthday concert in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . Have you heard me sing? Do you think policing has become too PC? Write to us at Birmingham Mail, PO Box 78, Weaman Street, Birmingham B4 6AY or email paulfulford@mrn.co.uk CAPTION(S): HOT-HEADED... Philip Glenister as a 1970s-style copper in Life on Mars. |
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