Wiltshire police aren’t much cop if they’re willing to spend £800,000 to prove Ted Heath was a paedo
Police chief Mike Veale really is proving to be a hopeless appointment after running up an eye-watering bill
HOW dim is the Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police Mike Veale?
And how determined is he to continue wasting council taxpayers’ money on the absurd allegations that former Prime Minister Edward Heath was involved in a paedophile ring?
The answer to both questions is very.
Right now there are 17 people in the Wiltshire force investigating the farce, which has run up a bill of £883,431 in the process.
Money is pretty tight down Wiltshire way, but that money would be better spent either a) hiring more coppers, or b) employing experts to crack burgeoning online frauds.
And yet the bloke who was elected to keep these chumps in order, local Crime Commissioner Angus Macpherson, an accountant, does nothing about it.
What a hopeless appointment he is.
This investigation has been going on for two years and in the latest twist Ian Hislop, the editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye, has been questioned by Plod because 40 years ago it referred to Heath as Sailor Ted.
There have always been gay rumours about Heath because he was single, but as Hislop and the previous editor Richard Ingrams pointed out to the officers, they were jokes.
Plus Hislop was able to tell them he was just 14 during the time Heath was in office.
And yet they still questioned him.
A nice day out in London for the lads.
The cops are so desperate they have contacted former No10 employees to ask if they had seen “young men” slipping in and out of Downing Street.
Sexual abuse in Downing Street? What do they smoke in Devizes?
The bloke who made these allegations is a nutter.
Why do the cops insist on believing him? Perhaps they haven’t enough to do.
Just recently and very quietly, Mr Veale apologised for allowing a superintendent to launch the paedophile investigation as a photo opportunity outside Heath’s home in Salisbury.
It took two years to wring that out of him.
When this investigation collapses, I and the council taxpayers of Wiltshire will be expecting more than that: The very minimum will be his P45 and a personal cheque from him to the council town hall for £833,431.
I'm glad Don's our pal
Donald Trump isn’t everybody’s cup of tea but I would rather have him as a friend of Britain than the bloodthirsty theocracy running Iran.
Or, for that matter, the warmongers of Somalia and Yemen.
Only last week, without any public explanation, a 38-year-old mother of one with dual British-Iran passports, had her five-year jail sentence confirmed for plotting to overthrow the regime.
Actually, that is a damned good idea and would spread democracy in a land blighted by Muslim maniacs.
But the idea charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had any interest in forcing regime-change is preposterous, but the judges and the nutters of Tehran don’t care about facts.
Nazanin was only in Iran to visit her parents along with her three-year-old daughter, having left husband Richard back in the UK.
The little girl is now being raised by the grandparents but has been separated from Mum for so long that she can no longer speak English, only Persian.
The Revolutionary Guard – the henchmen of the theocracy – love arresting innocent Westerners with dual nationalities to win the release of their criminals we have rightfully locked up.
Give me The Donald every time over these nasty religious maniacs.
The Aussie gran slam
The extraordinary age line-up of the Australian Open finals was as follows: Serena Williams 35, her sister Venus 36, Roger Federer 35 and Rafa Nadal 30.
Whatever happened to the “young” sport embodied by Boris Becker winning Wimbledon at 17 and Tracy Austin coming on to court at just 14?
Shrivelled balls please.
• VERY taken by the fact former England rugby star and Sky Sports analyst Will Greenwood teaches maths for NOTHING two days a week at Wellington College, Berks.
Great he is giving something back, rather than a backhander in the scrum.
Well done, Will.
Got nothing 'wrong' man...
I note that David Cameron was paid tens of thousands of pounds for giving answers at a private breakfast to clearly overpaid hedge fund managers on the consequences of Brexit.
Putting aside the main consequence being that Dave lost his job, why would anybody pay good money to hear the views of a bloke who was so hopelessly wrong?
He and his chums said house prices would crash. Wrong. They went up.
Unemployment would soar. Wrong. It went down.
Growth would collapse. Wrong. It’s accelerated to the point the UK will shortly be named as doing better than anybody – including the US and Germany.
Prior to the referendum, Cameron called up individual big company bosses and asked them – presumably dangling the carrot of gongs – to issue dire warnings so their employees would vote against leaving.
The workers took no notice but did seek one person to leave – the Prime Minister.
Democracy is bloody marvellous, isn’t it?
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Loyalty doesn't pay
Column reader Tony Wilson had been with Swinton for donkey’s years but when he received his car renewal for £651 he finally took my advice and shopped around.
, rejected the cheapest quote of £289 but settled for the RAC at £302, saving £349.
I too spoke with RAC. They wanted £160 to renew my breakdown cover and I told them I would pay £140 and report the outcome in this column.
The extremely well-mannered lady went away for a couple of minutes (who knows what she was doing) and came back to say they would cut the price by £20.
Could I suggest you do the same with either the RAC or AA. Just mention my name. The price will come tumbling down.
Send your saving stories to [email protected].
No wash Fogle
TV presenter Ben Fogle reveals he hasn’t used soap or body wash for 20 years.
I suspect his wife is never too sorry when he heads out the door on one of those foreign adventures.
• First Ewan McGregor praises Roman Polanski the child rapist who fled justice (Friday’s column), and now I see Meryl Streep, another of the Hollywood lefty elite, giving a standing ovation to the director in a clip doing the rounds from 2003.
Would they feel the same if the victim was their 13-year-old daughter? Or doesn’t Hollywood care about child abuse? Answers on a postcard please.
• Went to a do where the old University Challenge host Bamber Gascoigne was talking about the opera house he has built in Surrey.
I was taken aback at how he looked like an elderly version of the bloke out of Back To The Future.
So I nipped down to the bookies and had him in a £20 GBC (Gone By Christmas) acca with Joan Collins, Martin McGuinness and Paul Gascoigne.
• According to latest research, the majority of rough sleepers in London are foreign, with almost a third coming from Romania, Poland and Lithuania.
We have enough homegrown hobos, surely we don’t have to import them.
Punnies
Shredding business in Smethwick, West Mids – Right Let’s Shred.
Mobile catering van in Norwich – Lettuce serve you.
Optician in Coalville, Leics – Eye Society.
On a lift engineer’s van in East London – Don’t accept a lift from just any one.
Carpet fitter in Boston, Lincs – Always a good lay.
Organic food van in Boston, Lincs – Fields On Wheels.
On a glazing van in Walsall – Every pane’s a pleasure.
Wood reclamation yard in Penzance, Cornwall – Shiver Me Timbers.
Fast food van in Walsall Market – Tikka Way.
Gardening firm in Manchester, owned by an ex-squaddie – Grenadiar Guard-ens.
Great punnies. Do send more to kelvin@ the-sun.co.uk.