THREE silly idiots who went on a pro-Palestinian march with pictures of paragliders sellotaped to their backs and their placards were arrested and charged with an offence under the Terrorism Act.
And I’m sorry, but we need to get our heads screwed on the right way round here.
Going into public with the symbol of that ghastly Hamas attack on Israel on your coat is stupid for sure.
It’s also provocative, inappropriate, offensive and distasteful.
But in what world can it be classified as “terrorism”?
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Did you hear about it and immediately dive for cover under your bed? Did you drive as fast as you could towards high ground? No. Neither did I.
According to the United Nations, the definition of terrorism is “criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public”.
Having read that, I’m sure you’ll agree that sellotaping a picture of a paraglider to your anorak doesn’t really count. Flying a packed airliner into a skyscraper. That does.
So does releasing toxic gas into a metro station or putting a bomb in a department store or a Tube train or a bus. Or flying a paraglider over a music festival and shooting anyone you see. That definitely counts.
I’m well aware of the saying that one man’s terrorist is the BBC’s freedom fighter. And I get that.
I have a Che Guevara T-shirt and a photograph on my desk of the time I had tea with Nelson Mandela.
I’ve also watched Star Wars and rooted for Luke Skywalker, a man who definitely had terroristical tendencies.
But sometimes, this argument just doesn’t wash.
Sometimes, one man’s terrorist is just a terrorist.
Hamas does terrorism. And you’d have to say that Israel’s response to the attacks on October 7 is getting pretty damn close.
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Then you have the IRA, FARC in Colombia, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Shining Path in Peru, the Red Army Faction in Germany. All of them crossed the line. So did IS and Al-Qaeda.
Ignore them
But those three women Noimutu Olayinka Taiwo, Heba Alhayek and Pauline Ankunda? Nah.
They’re not even criminals really. They are just morons. The trouble is that now they’ve been charged under the terrorism act, they will have kudos at the Dog & Corbyn, or wherever it is they drink.
They will be held aloft as heroes of the Left. Soldiers of fortune. Fighters of the good fight.
It would have been far better to simply ignore them.
HOPE IS LONG GONE
SO many things that used to work perfectly well are now broken.
The trains. The roads. The health service. Air travel. Everything. We’ve even got people queuing round the block in Bristol to have their teeth mended.
Of course, if you’re old like me, you’ll know the country has been in a state like this before.
The late 1970s and the early 1980s. Rubbish piled high in the streets.
The car workers on strike. The miners on strike. The steelworkers on strike. Bombs going off left right and centre.
Unemployment going through the roof. Everything was terrible.
But there was one big difference. Back then, we had hope. We had a sense of direction. We knew where we wanted to go.
Everything was being privatised, people were being given the right to buy their council houses and troublemakers were being put back in their boxes. In short, we had Thatcher.
Today, we haven’t. We’ve got the Tories who don’t know what to do next and Labour who do, but daren’t say it out loud.
And where does that leave us? In the rain, waiting for a train that isn’t coming. And thinking that perhaps it never will.
A NO1 NOISE
THROUGHOUT my entire career I’ve talked about the noises made by all the cars I’ve driven.
I’ve waxed lyrical about the howl of a Lexus V10, or how the V8 in a TVR sounded like two lesbians in a bucket.
I’ve moaned about the drabness of the inline four in a Vauxhall Vectra and the spine-tingling joyfulness of an Italian twin cam.
But the truth is every car I’ve driven over the past 40 years made exactly the same noise.
The noise of Steve Wright’s crafted mayhem coming out of the speakers. I shall miss him.
BOWL'S SUPER BORING
THE Super Bowl was on this week. It’s billed as the biggest sporting event in the world, which it isn’t, by a very long way.
What it is, is absolutely unfathomable to nine tenths of the entire planet.
You’ve got 72,000 people in a stadium, some of whom are quite famous on that side of the Pond, and they’re chatting and smiling and drinking what passes for beer in America, and occasionally someone in a helmet runs into another person in a helmet, and then there’s an ad break, and you fall asleep.
I’d rather watch cricket.
I WAS interested to read in The Sun this week about Lucy Entwistle, an attractive 36-year-old gym instructor from Darwen in Lancashire who says she’s only once had an orgasm with her husband.
She went on to say that she waits until he is asleep at night or out with the boys before having some “me” time with her sex toys. And that he doesn’t suspect a thing.
Really? I only ask, Lucy, because there’s a picture of you along with your name and address. So it’s possible that now, maybe he does.
FAMOUS OWNERS? I JUST DON'T BUY IT
I WAS a bit intrigued to read this week that someone spent £130,000 on a crappy old Ford Bronco because it once belonged to Jenson Button.
And now the buyer is cross, claiming that actually, it belonged to Jenson’s wife, Brittny Ward. Does it matter though, really?
Why you’d pay a premium for a car just because it once belonged to someone famous is un-understandable to me.
But not as un-understandable as the moment a few years ago when someone called and asked me to pay way over the odds for a Ford Escort Cosworth, because it had once belonged to, er, me.
LAGER ISSUES IN LIFE
LISA and I are thinking of setting up a website, SouthYorkshire.com.
It doesn’t matter, of course, that Lisa doesn’t know anything about my birthplace, or that she isn’t actually British. People will gloss over that.
The most important thing is that I’ll finally get a chance to tell everyone my truth, explaining that I achieved the rank of Lance Corporal after five hard years of part-time soldiering in my school’s Combined Cadet Force and that I once hosted a charity auction for something or other.
Also, I am passionate about a sustainable future and committed to reaching out to those in need. Of my lager. Which is on sale in most good pubs.
Oh, and soon, I’m going on an eco fact-finding journey to Bahrain for the Grand Prix, on a mate’s private jet.
