Welcome to another one of our summer specials of The Mark Steyn Show – this time going across Britain (with a jaunt elsewhere in the Commonwealth) looking at the most standout Brit Wanker Coppers of the Day from episodes past.
This anthology takes us far and wide, from London's Metropolitan police and the Bedfordshire police to the Lancashire police and an honorary wanker copper from Quebec's Sûreté.
Lurking in the shadows, criminalizing birthday serenades, and policing one's trousers are all within the purview of law enforcement in the coronapocalypse when it comes to the land where everything is policed except crime.
The Mark Steyn Show is made possible by members of The Mark Steyn Club. Mark launched the Steyn Club over three years ago, and we're immensely heartened by all the longtime SteynOnline followers - from Fargo to Fiji, Madrid to Malaysia, West Virginia to Witless Bay - who've signed up to be a part of it. Membership in The Mark Steyn Club also comes with non-poetic benefits, including:
~Our latest audio adventure in Tales for Our Time, and its more than three dozen thrilling predecessors;
~Other audio series on pertinent topics, such as last year's nightly installments of Climate Change: The Facts;
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with Mark;
~Transcript and audio versions of Mark's Mailbox, The Mark Steyn Show, and other video content;
~Advance booking for Mark's live appearances around the world, assuming such things are ever again permitted;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~The opportunity to join Steyn and his guests on our annual Mark Steyn Cruise, likewise assuming we are ever again permitted to sail;
~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here. And for our special Gift Membership see here.
One other benefit to Club Membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, whether you like this feature or would rather we lowered it six feet under, then feel free to comment away below. Please do stay on topic on all our comment threads, because that's the way to keep them focused and readable. With that caution, have at it.
Comment on this item (members only)
Submission of reader comments is restricted to Mark Steyn Club members only. If you are not yet a member, please click here to join. If you are already a member, please log in here:
Member Login
34 Member Comments
Whooo boy! I read Dr. Fraudpants "answers" to your RequestS for Admission, and he takes the meaning of "obnoxious" to a whole new level. Having been a trial lawyer for many years myself, I hope the judge understands it is not just you he is treating with contempt. It is the court itself. I can't wait until you expose how he went about "hiding the decline". Keep up the good work.
Mark-
Where do you stand with your suit against Dr. Michael Fraudpants? Have you started discovery?
Mark replies:
Scroll down here for the state of play, Collister.
A 'hate crime' is a crime committed against "you because of your ...... gender...." then could the sexual assaults and abuse of pubescent girls by muslim grooming gangs be considered a 'hate crime?' Presumably the grooming gangs are assaulting these girls based on their being female, right?
We were told by the elites that 9/11 happened because Islam was triggered by the west and their actions were justified. Now we're witnessing youth in America being taught to be "triggered" in the same way and that if they carry out violence or riot that they're justified acts against oppression. Just how close are we to having "Black Lives Matter" to becoming the next "Allahu Akbar"?
I'm glad to have observed lately London police officers ignoring people who are gathering in large groups in parks and not social distancing.
Still waiting for Hollywood to produce the cop show where the FBI and FISA judges fabricate investigations and everyone's okay with it.
Hi Mark. I live in Bedfordshire UK and it is well recognized that the Bedfordshire Police force is deemed
the worst in the country. We do see and hear the occasional police helicopter attempting to search and locate
some fugitive, but probably to no avail. Perhaps, this is a new type of drone checking up on the innocent.
Thinking has never been a strong point with the police or the judiciary.
Great to hear a Best-of-B.W.C. (The 50th episode 'special' was also outstanding.) My favourite is the loudspeaker, too: "The anonymous jobsworth in his government vehicle ordering the citizens around"... perfect!
From memory, an equivalent segment for US (Democrat) governors was suggested a few months ago. However, Victoria's premier - Chairman Dan (Andrews) - beats every single one of them hands down, with his combination of full-blown authoritarianism and abject incompetence. He oversaw breaches of border quarantine - thanks to diversity hires!! - with the entry of untold Covid cases into his state (and beyond), compounded by weeks of unchecked community spread (= source confirmed by genomic studies). He is now punishing Melburnians/ Victorians - for HIS failures - while showing zero accountability despite an independent inquiry and parliamentary committee for that purpose.
But - not unlike New Yorkers and Cuomo - the people think their leader is magnificent!
My understanding is Cuomo is far worse.
No one thinks Andrews is anything like magnificent.
Yes ,we Melbournians , not Melburnians, are doing it tough , but your comments are way overblown
Give it time, K. and C. Without allowing for accelerating effects, recent history suggests that it should take between six to eighteen months for the most seriously hit businesses to fold. The ones which have already done so were probably already in extremis and couldn't do any leveraging. The banks should begin to feel the amplifying strain of their bad debts increasing in the same window, and the housing market should respond in about the same time-frame, 'though I can't be sure of that because the Australian housing market can be surprisingly unresponsive. I can't see possible federal interventions slowing recession all that much, 'though they might expensively postpone it for a month or two, and most are sure to deepen it.
Compounded with other schemes such as the greening of Melbourne's power supply and the effect of any lasting recession in America, a pretty deep recession seems likely. And heaven help us should another epidemic be following hot on the heels of this one. We just don't know. But give it a little time.
We'll know soon enough what Mr Andrews has accomplished. We'll also know how he'll apportion credit. He'll certainly claim it when Victoria's attributable deaths and/or recorded cases come down, but those won't be the important measures a little later on in the day. The survival rate is already looking much better, as far as I can tell, and, Russia possible excepted, we don't even have a vaccine yet.
I don't imagine that the Cuomo/de Blasio family's turf will be much different. Of course, they have more economy to wreck and might not get the whole job done in the time available to them, but they've made impressive progress.
Oh, oops, we're talking about policing the covid. "Policing the covid"? Yeah, right.
My comments are way overblown??
Sky News, 4/8/20: "Police have been forced into the extraordinary measure of smashing car windows to get Victorians to comply with second wave COVID-19 restrictions in Victoria. "On at least three or four occasions in the past week we've had to smash the windows of people in cars and pull them out of there so they could provide us their details because they weren't telling us where they were going, they weren't adhering to the chief health officer guidelines, they weren't providing their name and their address," Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said."
Last week they were strangling people for non-compliance... now they're shooting them!
PS. Even Cuomo didn't impose a nightly curfew, as Andrews has... for six weeks!! (Bill de Blasio introduced a curfew - the first in 75 years in NYC - for a few nights during the height of the BLM riots.)
You're not alone in your Stockholm syndrome. And the legions of #IStandWithDan Melburnians (correct spelling) with their "virtual hugs" are actually enjoying their pointless captivity, which comes at a cost of $1 billion a week. The healthcare system - which has had 6 months to prepare - is at no risk whatsoever of being overwhelmed. It's all about Chairman Dan wielding unlimited power to cover for his manifest failures - by blaming the citizens.
And just to be clear, Mr Andrews should not be allowed to blame his excesses on his underlings. He'll try, for sure. He *is* a singularly nasty piece of work, K., and as C. ruefully observed elsewhere in this thread, "p]eople voted for it". I remain convinced that his chickens are going to come home to roost in greater numbers than folk like to think, and that may put an end to his hour in the sun. I think that I clutch at straws when I say that I hope that he will not have put an end to everybody's hour in the sun. There won't be any talk of overblowing any of his mischief if he proves to have done the damage which I think he has.
Sadly, our prime minister, Mr Morrison, seems determined to arrange matters such that all of Australia (well, all honest Australians who put into the national fiscus rather than draw from it, anyway) will share in the damage which the state of Victoria's electorate has occasioned.
So much for serious discussion. Now is the time to investigate the marketing of chicken guano. There will be a lot of it lying around. Meanwhile, we might think carefully about the wisdom of trying to interrupt the police when they throttle Victorian voters just a little. They did vote for it. Still, we Queensland folk need not to crow: we may not have the prize pumpkin running our show, but we have a pretty dire specimen all of our own anyway.
All true, S - and I will try to keep my late reply short. Yes, Annastacia Palaszczuk - "Comrade Anna" - is another tinpot dictator. The fact that it's not permissible to travel to Queensland from NSW for the foreseeable future (without 2 weeks in hotel quarantine) makes Soviet Russia seem not so bad. But, to repeat the line again, in democratic jurisdictions the world over, "people voted for it".
Rewind to early March: Despite the lack of any serious planning, Australia - with a similar population and geographical advantage to Taiwan - could have *been* Taiwan (where there was no internal lockdown and no negative economic impact). But we turned our early good fortune into the world's stupidest and most damaging response, instead of rapidly returning to business-as-usual after a few weeks once preparations were in place. The containment of localised outbreaks and potential hospital surges (as in NSW now) - the sensible "slow burn" plan - was changed by stealth into the absurd trans-Tasman "eradication" strategy (apparently with the aim of luring elderly "at risk" billionaires to a Covid-free antipodean paradise).
In any event - and aside from the looming economic disaster which you've outlined (already bad, and made worse by Andrews) - the closure of Australian state borders and the restrictions on *leaving* the country are uniquely authoritarian responses. And now Mr Morrison announces that a vaccine will be *mandatory* - despite the improved survival/ reduced lethality/ emergence of immunity - before correcting himself.
The Great Reset, in all its permutations, doesn't look so great... does it?
PS. It's difficult to keep up with SteynOnline, including the comment threads: will see you on a more current one!
Great stuff Mark. Look at the size of that steering wheel! That's a studio mock up of the Ford Zephyr Zodiac that coppers used to patrol in during the age of 'Z Cars'. The set builder must have only had a bus steering wheel to hand.......or the original wheel passed in front of the actors face.
The copper on the right is Colin Welland.....who went on to writing success and an Oscar.
Personally, I've never over-estimated the intellect of the average policeman (nor, for that matter, the integrity of the average secret policeman), but I've never under-estimated the importance of their work. There's a delicate line to be trodden in making fun of the police when they behave like idiots and demanding that they should stop doing their proper work. On the other hand, the police do wield power, and when they abuse it (whether out of stupidity or not) they should expect a kicking when it comes their way, as should politicians and others who wield power over honest people who fund them. And I do so enjoy the boss-man's kickings! I wouldn't like to get in the way of one.
Look at the size of that steering wheel! You'd think the British engineers would have put some leverage down in the linkage somewhere instead of taking up that much interior space. The telephone handset indicates the photo is from pre-Princess phone days, so there's that.
Walt, that's a ("Zed") Z-Car - a Ford Zodiac or Ford Zephyr, early - mid 60s.
My Dad had a Zodiac - shark fins on the rear (must have been added), bench seat, column shift.
The pic is from the TV series Z (Zed, not zee) Cars, about Liverpool coppers running around in Zodiacs and Zephyrs saying "Z-Victor One to Control" into their radio phones.
The Wanker copper theme is from the TV series.
The only Zed car that I was familiar with is the Datsun 240Z. Our Australian cousins called it the 24 ouncer.
Thanks for the cultural reference. Did the Ford Zed's come with windscreens standard or were they an option?
240Z - classic. Not the pseudo American looking '60s Ford Classic, also known as the Capri, before the Capri of 1970s glory days (the Uk's answer to the Mustang - awesome with the 3.0l engine). I had several Capris as rep mobiles in the early 80s.
If you get a chance to check out an episode of The Sweeney, with John Thaw, you'll see real telly British coppers - bent as nine bob notes, but they only fitted up crooks and they served Justice, riding their Ford Grandads, chasing crooks in Jags. Not Social Justice - I guess they were the JWs, before the pajama boy SJWs.
I digress (sorry Mark). All had windscreens and wipers, but I suspect the one in the photo was lacking in that department. The 240Z was the first car I knew of that had a one-touch window descent button. Utter rotbox but definitely the dog's.
There's a few cultural references in there, Walt. If you have heard Cool For Cats by Squeeze you may get an insight.
Gideons Way featured a Worseley I think. Anyway our local bank manager, a pillar of the community , in Perth WA drove one.
rack and pinion.
knew that long ago and so far away...
Somewhat related to incompetent public officers: a few weeks ago, the mayor of Kansas City proposed an ordinance which would make it illegal to "doxx" police officers or political officials. While I don't think it's right that some anonymous coward can jump on social media and blast addresses and phone numbers into the ether, where is the legislation that states public servants can't doxx private citizens? Joaquin Castro dumped the names, address, and places of employment of Trump donors in his district. I'm good friends with a woman who was arrested for a crime which she did not commit, had her name and face splashed all over the news, and after one year of police and prosecutorial ineptitude, she was presented with a nolle prosequi - a formal abandonment of the case. Where is the justice for private citizens? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes - who watches the watchmen?
Who would think that a new catch phrase would be "Make Orwell Fiction Again". The Progressives wish to dismiss the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as old dry documents written with quill pen by candlelight and not with a text processor with spell correct and grammatical hints. Technoology changes but human nature hasn't and that is the issue that confronted The Founders.... dealing with human nature. The Left can exploit the weaknesses of human nature but still require force and coercion to control it.
Winston Smith and Julia worried about Big Brother during their forest liaisons; life imitating what was supposed to be fiction.
What a disturbingly easy flip of our freedom into totalitarian lite.
Which will not remain lite for long.
Thanks for being brave enough to speak out.
With you, E.
As the legislator and regulator has "progressively" encroached on our private lives, so have the activities of the instruments of enforcement. As the ambit of criminal justice has expanded beyond the area of crime as we all understand it, so has crime become ever less the focus of criminal justice.
Socialist dictatorship, it appears, advances as well through evolution as it does through revolution. Marx didn't foresee that. Still, he might not have been entirely mistaken: the recent rioting suggests that many socialists simply prefer revolution over evolution. They evidently don't want to have their way without a little hellfire. The selection of Kamala Harris as their candidate for the joint post of vice-president and president in waiting is a sign that in their plan evolution will soon be yielding to revolution on a grander scale. Mind you, I never really thought of Lucrezia Borgia as a revolutionary, so that might be wrong. The dictatorship of Napoleon I marked the ironic climax of the French revolution. Perhaps we're coming to a new ironic climax.
Never mind, democracy had a good run, and nothing is forever.
"Never mind, democracy had a good run..."
You've summed it up very well, S.
Thanks, ace. Loved the job you did on that communist homunculus in Melbourne, for my part.
I've been pounding this point home for more than a year. There seems to be a stubborn belief among conservatives that this dystopian future playing out daily is just too horrible to actually happen in America. All dynasties and empires run their course eventually and the 'greatest country that ever was' is no exception. Election day 2008 was ground zero for it revealed an apathetic, incurious electorate easily fooled into electing a truly monstrous President. Professor Jason Hill, on with Tucker last week got right to the heart of what is really playing out in America. It's not about revolution at present but pure nihilism for it's own sake - nihilism with a purpose of course - the true revolution comes after phase one runs it's course. The left tried to destroy Prof. Hill after he dared criticize Greta Thunberg, perhaps the most obnoxious teen on the planet. At De Paul University Prof. Hill has a front row seat to what has happened to academia in 2020 America and to the culture at large.
Thanks, R. Will make work of scouting out the interview in question.
People voted for it,
The phenomenon of policing everything except crime actually underscores the transition to cowardly cops. It's safe to accost normal citizens whereas grooming gangs and criminals might pose some physical threat. Better to pretend to be a brave Stasi, than to go up against real criminals and risk revealing your yellow streak.
I agree David, well said. The recent assault by the Australian cop on the 21 year-old woman not wearing a mask is the best example. He'd be afraid to confront a real criminal. Mark talked about it but seeing it on youtube is a jaw-dropper.
This is simultaneously funny and horrible. Do we need these object lessons in human nature and the inevitable, ubiquitous tendency of every organ of the State to expand to fill all the space it has access to? Yes, we do. We always will need to re-learn for ourselves the lessons our forebears have already learned. That's what Santayana meant, and that's why Mark's regular historical references (100 Years Ago, etc) are so very important.