56 seconds of Farridge - "My response to the attack in Southport" - statement, 30 July 2024

Farridge      Commentary

Well it's pretty horrendous. The third young girl has died as a result of the stabbings yesterday in Southport. I obviously join everybody in my horror at what has happened. I know the prime minister went to lay flowers and was heckled, and it shows you how unhappy the public are with the state of law and order in our country.

Indeed we are (though when was the last prime ministerial visit which didn't attract the odd heckle?)

• police numbers slashed and only partly replaced by inexperienced recruits after ten wasted years
• prison staff slashed and hard to recruit due to working conditions
• probation half-privatised then re-deprivatised
• courts closed, judicial schedules squeezed, legal aid lawyers' pay held down - for more than a decade this time - and legal aid withdrawn
• child and youth provision pretty much disappeared in many areas
• boasts that crime is down - largely true - but sentences pushed up, so the prisons are full to overflowing
• Covid effects (there are some, but most of it has nothing to do with those two years) leaving court schedules way behind and many more remand prisoners
• prosecutions, from the appalling figures for rape, to shoplifting and all points in between, apparently just not happening

I have to say, there are one or two questions. Was this guy being monitored by the security services?

Nobody seems to have any reason to say so, but let's throw that in.

Some reports say he was, others less sure.

A classic directed on-the-one-hand-but-then-on-the-other, with several hands missing and a strong hint at the direction he wants you to take.

The police say it's a non-terror incident, just as they said the stabbing of an army lieutenant-colonel in uniform on the streets of Kent the other day was a non-terror incident.

As far as I know, neither of these terrible cases is being investigated as a terrorist incident, though counter-terror police might be consulted in complex cases - see this discussion of police and media methods from an experienced journalist.

I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don't know the answer to that, but it is a fair and legitimate question.

He has no reason or evidence to wonder this (except perhaps a suspicious mind), but he thinks he should by now have planted the idea that "fair and legitimate question" actually means "bleedin' obvious".

 What I do know is something is going horribly wrong in our once beautiful country.

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