Our courts are comatose and our cops are clueless – justice in this country is a joke
THIS week we learned that the criminal justice system in this country is not fit for purpose.
After considerable public pressure, the police finally arrested and charged two women who proudly displayed an image similar to the Hamas paragliders who murdered and burned Israeli families.
But with the crown courts paralysed by a backlog of more than 65,000 cases — 65,000 cases! — Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said they would not face trial until 2025, “or even later”.
Even later than 2025? Then our courts are comatose.
And this after 13 years of government by the party of law and order.
No wonder the police look as though they can no longer be bothered to catch criminals.
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No wonder shoplifting and burglary and even rape are no longer treated as serious crimes.
One rape victim who has waited SIX YEARS for justice wrote to the judge to say, “our system has effectively decriminalised rape” due to lengthy court delays and repeated postponements of her case.
No wonder it feels like we are on our own now.
The rot begins with the police.
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From London to Manchester, uniformed British policemen are seen ripping down the posters of kidnapped Israeli children.
And at massive protests, the police appear to stand idly by, completely uninterested, while a mad minority call for the extermination of Jews.
The tremors of war in the Middle East are now felt in every major city.
Emotions are at boiling point.
And just when we need them most, our police are useless, gutless and clueless.
No wonder the Jewish community in this country feels in mortal danger.
No wonder Jewish children are afraid to go to school.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman demands that police officers should take a “zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism”.
But to me it looks like the police have a remarkably high tolerance for the most grotesque anti-Semitism.
Every person in Britain has the right to march, and enjoy the freedom to peacefully protest on behalf of their cause.
But nobody has the right to act as though this country is Germany in the 1930s.
Nobody has the right to bully, intimidate and terrify another community.
Yet that is exactly what is happening to the Jewish community in Britain.
There are legitimate reasons to march in support of Palestinians.
With nearly 10,000 dead in Gaza, you would need a heart of stone not to care about the innocent people there who are suffering and dying for the crimes of Hamas.
But this should be the moment when our police are ensuring that — whatever your feelings about Israel and Palestine — our people are all equal under the law, and all protected by that law.
Pitiful plods
And the police are failing miserably.
Too often, faced with mobs screaming hatred, our police look scared witless — absolutely terrified to intervene.
In our capital, this cradle of the free world, the police explain their removal of the posters of kidnapped Israeli children as “reasonable steps to avoid further increase in community tension”.
No, you pitiful plods — taking down those posters makes the Jewish community feel like the lives of everyone they love are in mortal danger, while the police stand on the sidelines, soiling their pants.
Next Saturday the UK falls silent on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month as we remember our glorious war dead.
Some folk will not give a damn.
Another march is planned in Whitehall for that day, the eve of Remembrance Sunday — the special day when we remember the generations who fought and died for our freedoms.
Will the police ensure that this country is allowed to observe our sacred rituals in peace and reflection next weekend?
Or will our time of remembrance be wrecked and ruined and spat upon, as our cowardly cops yet again grovel to the hate mob?
Zombie Zara wasn’t stiffed
ZARA McDERMOTT blames her Love Island history for her getting the heave-ho from Strictly.
But is there a crossover between the Love Island audience and the Strictly crowd?
Personally, I had never heard of Zara before she bowled up on Strictly.
That was probably true of most of the watching Strictly millions.
Zara should consider the possibility that she got the boot because she dances like she has rigor mortis.
Ad it to list to watch
THE Marks & Spencer Christmas ad urges you to have the Christmas that you want, rather than the Christmas that tradition and annoying relatives demand of you.
So we have Sophie Ellis-Bextor using a blowtorch to lovingly glaze the roof of a gingerbread house – before gleefully lighting a bonfire of unwritten Christmas cards.
We see board games getting chucked in the air and a fire fuelled by tinsel tat, lovingly stoked by Hannah Waddingham.
Marks & Spencer has – laughably, ludicrously, incredibly – already apologised for an Instagram post where Hannah is proudly seen burning Christmas party hats of red, green and silver.
You know, THE COLOURS OF CHRISTMAS.
Ah, but M&S was accused on social media of “promoting the burning of the Palestinian flag” and promptly deleted the post, simpering that it was deeply sorry for causing “unintentional hurt”.
Catch this glorious commercial for Christmas while you can.
Because I suspect the controversy is just getting started.
It can’t be long before someone tweets that Sophie Ellis-Bextor is a crazy fire-starter promoting a spot of merry festive arson.
And this brilliant ad will get banned.
Tyson's downer
THE big heavyweight punch-up that everyone yearns to see – Tyson Fury with Oleksandr Usyk – has been delayed after the Gypsy King got a bit of a battering as he struggled to victory in Riyadh against former MMA fighter Francis Ngannou, who in the third round even dumped Tyson on his back.
It was a depressing, money-grabbing night.
As my colleague Wally Downes Jnr wrote from ringside, “The showing reeked of a fighter with too much time on his hands and eyes on other prizes”.
But I will say this for Tyson Fury.
He gets knocked down. He gets back up again.
King's Kenya class
IN his quiet, understated way, the King is demonstrating a real genius for diplomacy.
His tours of Germany and France were a masterclass in reaching out the hand of friendship in the aftermath of Brexit.
This week’s trip to Kenya was infinitely tougher – but Charles pulled it off with dignity, sensitivity and restraint.
The British were at their most violent in colonial Kenya, putting down the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s.
But there were atrocities committed by the other side too.
White settlers – including children and pregnant women – were slaughtered by rebels.
So let’s all educate ourselves about the crimes our country committed in the past.
But when the Mau Mau are promoted as saintly freedom fighters, we are overlooking atrocities that Hamas or Islamic State would be proud of.
Charles expressed “the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret” for the “wrongdoings of the past” – but he did not offer some fatuous Tony Blair-style apology.
And he did not offer “reparations”, as many in Kenya and our other former colonies would love.
It is completely appropriate that our king extends the hand of friendship.
It is also completely appropriate that the hand of friendship does not hold a blank cheque.
Not fab for me
I HAVE strained every sinew in my being to love the new Beatles song, Now And Then. It’s just not happening.
The “last Beatles single” – a John Lennon demo brought to life with some slick AI tech – is a dreadful dirge.
You can understand why John left it mouldering in his bottom drawer.
“Incredible, biblical, celestial, heart-warming,” gushed Liam Gallagher.
That may be overstating it.
When folk claim Now And Then is incredible, what they are really saying is that they love seeing those images of The Beatles in their youth, and they long for days that will never come again.
We all miss The Beatles.
Even Paul McCartney misses The Beatles.
But that very human nostalgia can’t disguise the fact that Now And Then is a fab-free zone.
DONALD TRUMP has had a lot of sport with what my mum would have called Joe Biden’s “old timer’s disease”.
But Trump, 77, can also be a bit, er, absent-minded.
At his most recent campaign appearance in Iowa, Trump cried: “A very big hello to a place where we’ve done very well – Sioux Falls! Thank you very much Sioux Falls!”
Trump was actually in Sioux City – not Sioux Falls, which is 85 miles away and in South Dakota – a different state. Gawd.
Can’t those crazy, mixed-up Yanks find some sprightly 75-year-old billionaire to be their next president?
ACTRESS Gwyneth Paltrow says she is retiring from acting to concentrate on her wacky “wellness” business, Goop. That’s a shame.
Paltrow is a terrific actress.
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And many years from now, people will remember Gwyneth for her Oscar-winning turn in Shakespeare In Love.
Rather than her This Smells Like My Vagina candle.