Patrick Christys: Cressida Dick should stop virtue signalling and start policing

Clouds of noxious gas are hanging over London today, punching a hole in the o-zone layer and ruining our quality of life. No, I’m not talking about diesel fumes, I’m talking about the uncooperative crusties from Extinction Rebellion currently protesting in the capital.

But my issue is not actually with the dreadlocked tree-huggers who have drunk the climate change Kool-aid and think that annoying absolutely everyone in society is the best way to convert people to their cause.

My issue is with the Met Police. Specifically, Met Chief Cressida Dick. And, ultimately, Priti Patel of the Home Office.

If my grandma doesn’t pay her TV license, she gets carted away.

If I tweeted something that offended somebody in Outer Mongolia, I’d be taken in for questioning.

But if I wear a kaftan and some hareem pants, smash the living heck out of a bank’s front window, chain myself to the underside of someone’s van, block ambulances from getting to hospitals and cost this country billions of pounds by bringing the capital to a standstill, that’s basically fine.

Why are police allowing this to happen?

I’m all for protests and free speech, but I’m not for public nuisance, mass disruption and, frankly, criminal damage.

The last time I checked, I wasn’t sure the police were in favour of that stuff either.

Here’s an idea, instead of painting rainbow flags on the side of your police cars, or dancing in TikTok videos to the latest African banger, why not, I don’t know, police the streets.

We now have a woke police force that’s too afraid of causing offence to actually perform its basic function. I honestly wonder what they’d respond to first these days, a phone call to say that someone committed a hate crime by assuming my gender, or an actual murder.

I fear that Cressida Dick is too worried about the ‘optics’ of breaking up a climate rally to actually police the streets.

We have police warning notices in busses in Scotland telling people not to talk too loudly, we have British Transport officers on mask patrols, we have teams of people combing through twitter in case someone makes an inappropriate joke, we had officers fining people for walking on an empty beach with their young child during lockdown, we have police forces in the West Midlands who openly said they were too afraid of being called racist to crack down on grooming gangs, knife crime is spiralling out of control…

But we just allow people to block roads, vandalise statues, harm the economy, disrupt transport services, cause criminal damage…

We’ve got it all the wrong way round. I think Cressida Dick has lost sight of her priorities – stop virtue signalling, start policing the streets.