The Stupid Awards – July 2012

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the July 2012 edition of the Another Kind Of Mind Stupid Awards. All those nominated for a Stupid Award tonight have been chosen for their spectacular demonstrations of pure, unadulterated idiocy and their inability to function with any sense even in the glaring face of reality. July has been a vintage month for such complete and utter fuckwittery, what with all of tonight’s candidates showing off their not inconsiderable skills over the last week – so, without further ado, here are the nominees…

Aidan Burley MP:

Nominated for: Being a racist Tory bigot in charge of a computer.

Oh look. Yet another Tory MP has opened his mouth and stuffed his foot firmly inside it in a very public fashion. There is something to be said for politicians being on Twitter – I follow several who are actually very interesting and very human tweeters. I may not always agree with them but they mostly understand the concept of when to shut up – unlike Mr Burley, who is (for the time being, anyway) still somehow MP for the marginal constituency Cannock Chase after some really nasty comments.

His widely-RT’d tweets condemning the multicultural nature of the Olympic opening ceremony came close on the heels of photos of him clad in full Nazi uniform during a Third Reich-themed stag night (no, really), amply proving that he’s clearly the poster boy of the Daily Mail set at the very least.

For the rest of us, there was much wondering as to which country (let alone which century) Burley is actually living in – his comments certainly bear no resemblance to the Britain I and many others know. After a complete non-apology of an apology for his words (which were, in classic political scandal stylee, “misunderstood”. Apparently.), he appears to have been sent to his room without any tea by the Tory party.

In fact, even that arch-Tory (and Mayor of London) Boris Johnson has criticised Burley for his comments, but I suspect he won’t get much more punishment than a quiet slap on the wrist – because (call me cynical), alongside the general hysteria over the Olympics, this is an unexpected but highly convenient brief distraction from the ongoing Tory destruction of British society…

The Daily Mail:

Nominated for: Guess what? The usual vile generalised bigotry – and then trying to cover it up.

This is not the first time I’ve had a rant about the Daily Fail, and I doubt it will be the last, either. I still think that every issue ought to carry the banner headline ‘WE SUPPORTED MOSLEY’S BLACKSHIRTS’ in big block caps for the rest of eternity. Saturday saw yet another example of the Mail‘s long-term creeping fascism with a downright nasty article about – surprise, surprise! – the Olympic opening ceremony.

Within moments of its publication on the Mail‘s website, the article was being discussed and dissected in appalled tones online – and quite rightly too, as it was unashamedly racist in intent, harking back to a non-existent past and justifying its standpoint by using that bullshit old ‘we’re only saying this because it’s what you’re all thinking’ argument. Really? All of us?

You’ll have noticed that I haven’t linked to said article here, and that’s because I won’t and I can’t. I won’t because I refuse to send that nasty little rag’s website any more traffic than it already gets, and I can’t because firstly the Mail indulged in what has been described as sneaky ‘ninja editing’ to substantially change the article  – and secondly, they now appear to have removed it from their website full stop, without a word of apology or explanation.

Stay classy, Daily Mail. Stay classy.

The Metropolitan Police:

Nominated for: Their crass over-reaction to Critical Mass on Friday evening AND for (re)employing Simon Harwood.

While the Olympic opening ceremony was celebrating the right to protest (amongst other things) as being a British virtue, the Met were outside the stadium busily pepper spraying, kettling and then aggressively arresting peaceful Critical Mass cyclists en masse – including a 13 year old. Anyone who knows anything about Critical Mass and what they do will know what an utterly stupid move that was – although for anyone with any experience of Met Police over-reaction (to put it mildly) it will sadly come as no surprise.

What also sadly came as no surprise was the recent verdict in the PC Simon Harwood manslaughter trial. In the dock for using ‘unreasonable force’ against newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson, which caused his death during the G20 protests of April 2009, Harwood somehow managed to be cleared of the charges – despite the fact that an inquest jury had ruled Tomlinson’s death unlawful and that Harwood had a shocking record of violence that he had never been punished for.

This is a police officer who ‘retired’ from the Met on ‘medical grounds’ in 2001 to avoid disciplinary action after an off-duty road rage incident. After a stint with Surrey Police (during which another excessive force complaint was made against him), he managed to get transferred back to the Met, where he got away with a number of other violent incidents. None of this, incidentally, was revealed to the trial jury.

I don’t blame the jury though. It doesn’t take an idiot to notice that there were clearly some quite outstandingly stupid decisions made in respect of Simon Harwood’s career by both the Met and Surrey Police. After his 2001 ‘retirement’, Harwood shouldn’t have been allowed back into any police force – let alone have been able to work his way through the Met again, and into the TSG by April 2009. Cock up much?

And the winner is….. Actually, I can’t make up my mind. They’re all spectacularly stupid in their own ways. So it’s over to you – who would you vote for?