The death of common sense and how our police are losing the plot



Total lunacy: Simon Ledger was arrested and now faces charges for playing Kung Fu Fighting at a bar and causing offence to a passing man of Chinese origin

A beach bar singer on the Isle of Wight has been arrested for performing the song Kung Fu Fighting. Simon Ledger stands accused of racially aggravated harassment.



He was entertaining a crowd enjoying the Easter sunshine when a man reported to be of Chinese origin took offence at the lyrics and complained to police.

Mr Ledger was subsequently interviewed and is now facing formal charges.

Over the years, I’ve made a decent living lampooning the lunacy of modern policing.

But this case takes the crispy pancake, even though there was plenty of competition from police forces all over Britain yesterday.

Kung Fu Fighting was a one-hit wonder 37 years ago for Carl Douglas. It sold nine million copies around the world and was number one on both sides of the Atlantic.

Carl Douglas would appear on stage wearing martial arts gear and a red headband, accompanied by an assortment of dancers doing karate kicks and chops. For a couple of months in 1974 there was no escape. The tune is irritatingly catchy, the lyrics banal.

‘There was funky Chinamen from funky Chinatown . . .’ You get the gist. It’s a novelty song on a par with Wombling Merry Christmas, which also topped the charts the same year.

But no one, until now, has accused Kung Fu Fighting of being racist. Carl Douglas is Jamaican and the record was produced by the Anglo-Indian disco arranger Biddu.

So what in heaven’s name were the Isle of Wight Plod thinking when they decided to arrest Mr Ledger, who has included the song in his act for years? They maintain they had no option but to investigate the complaint. Under the law passed by Labour the definition of a ‘hate crime’ is: ‘Any incident . . . which is perceived by the victim or any other person (my italics) as being motivated by prejudice or hate.’

This legislation has previously been used to pursue, among others, two South Coast pensioners who protested against a gay pride rally, and led to Northamptonshire Police studying a Basil Brush video after a travellers’ activist complained that an episode broadcast on the children’s channel CBBC caused offence to gypsies.

Somehow itinerant members of the ‘travelling community’ have managed to get themselves defined as an oppressed species.

Those forced to live near illegal campsites might beg to disagree. Which brings us neatly to farmer Tracy St Clair Pearce.

Unbelievable: Terminal cancer sufferer Tracy St Clair Pearce has been accused of making threats against gypsies despite them menacing her close to her home

She called police to complain that she was being menaced by a group of gypsies who had set up an illegal site on land near her property in Colchester, Essex. Miss St Clair Pearce, who is suffering from terminal cancer, says a gang of youths threw rocks at her, used abusive language, and threatened to slit her throat and kill her cattle.

The police responded by accusing her of making threats against the travellers.

Armed officers raided her farmhouse and ordered her to hand over her legally-held shotguns, otherwise they would rip her gun safe off the wall. They have also withdrawn her gun licence to prevent her buying another.

In recent years, the police have moved from instinctively protecting taxpaying property owners, first to a position of studied neutrality and now to actively siding with aggressors from ‘minority communities’. No wonder Daily Mail readers no longer feel the police are on our side.

Janet McIntosh, 48, and her mother, Monica, 76, were thrown in jail by Cumbria Police — for the heinous crime of feeding the birds in their back garden.

Neighbours complained with justification about the number of birds attracted to the picnic. They said the garden was like a scene from the Hitchcock horror movie, The Birds.

But was it really necessary for the pair to be arrested by four officers and held in the cells for seven hours, accused of causing a public nuisance and distress to the birds by over-feeding them? Surely if they are causing a nuisance it’s a civil matter.

Brush with the law: Fictional character Basil Brush was accused of causing offence to gypsies during a CBBC programme

Although they were eventually released without charge, they are suing the police for damages. Does the Chief Constable of Cumbria seriously believe this is a proper use of police time and resources?

We could ask a similar question of the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset. His force launched a full-scale manhunt to find the culprit responsible for drawing a Hitler moustache on a poster of a local councillor in the village of Pitcombe.

Four officers — do they all go round in fours these days? — visited every one of the 20 houses in the tiny hamlet, knocking on doors in the evening and interrogating householders.

Tory councillor Mike Beech made a formal complaint to the police because he was ‘offended’ by the alteration to his picture.

Drawing a comedy moustache, or pair of National Health specs, on a photograph of an unpopular public figure has long been considered a legitimate form of criticism. Since when did it become a criminal offence?

Quite apart from the fact that he obviously isn’t cut out for the rough and tumble of politics, Mr Beech should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.



So should the police, who began an inquiry under the Public Order Act, alleging that the poster could cause ‘harassment, alarm or distress’. A spokesman said they were legally obliged to investigate cases of ‘criminal damage’. Oh, for goodness sake.

They should have told the thin-skinned Conservative councillor to grow up and get a life — or give up politics for good. He should not have been indulged.

There is no need for the police to stick pedantically to the small print of the law in order to investigate every vexatious allegation of distress. Yet some officers seem to take great pleasure in pursuing the most trivial prosecutions on the flimsiest of evidence. The law-abiding middle classes are increasingly on the receiving end of this politically-driven zeal.

Proper coppers tear their hair out in despair at the idiocy of their superiors.



Experienced officers are leaving in droves because of the obsession with ‘diversity’ and bureaucratic, box-ticking pettiness. They didn’t go into the job to side with violent gypsies, arrest harmless women feeding birds, or round up ‘vandals’ who draw a Hitler moustache on a poster of a pompous local councillor.

When they’re not wasting time on frivolous investigations, the police behave like a branch of the social services.

Wasting police time: Is it really the job of police to act like a branch of social services to keep youths who cannot behave themselves out of trouble?

Take the picture in yesterday’s Daily Mail of three coppers in Hemel Hempstead babysitting a young man from a problem family on a fishing trip. He was one of half a dozen who had been taken fishing to keep them out of trouble.

Even if there was some merit in this scheme, is it really a job for the police? The officers can be seen playing with their mobile phones while the youth stares at the lake, hands stuffed in his pockets, fishing rod at his side.

His face has been pixellated to protect his identity, but it doesn’t take a psychologist to work out that he probably doesn’t want to be there any more than the police officers.

This is the same allegedly cash-strapped Hertfordshire force which recently scrambled a helicopter to chase a man suspected of stealing a packet of mince from a supermarket in Potters Bar.



These are not isolated incidents of idiocy. All were reported on a single day in yesterday’s newspapers.

This is a result of the pernicious cult of political correctness which now infects every sinew of our body politic, especially the police. It has institutionalised knee-jerk stupidity in the name of ‘diversity’.

A few years ago, if someone had turned up at a police station demanding the prosecution of a man singing Slow Boat To China in a pub, he’d have been given short shrift and be lucky to escape being charged with wasting police time. Today, the case goes straight to the CPS ‘hate crimes’ unit.

Any eager young bobby who brought in a prisoner accused of drawing a moustache on a village notice board poster would have received a rocket from an old-fashioned custody sergeant and would spend the rest of year on school crossing patrol duty.

But now all initiative and application of common sense has been stripped away from individual officers, and the police are regularly becoming involved in areas which should be none of their concern, in order to appease their political masters.

It has done nothing to make Britain a safer place and only served to undermine the essential trust between the police and the paying public, and drive a wedge between citizens of different racial origins.

Meanwhile, back on the Isle of Wight, beach bar musician Simon Ledger still doesn’t know if he’s going to be prosecuted for ‘racially aggravated harassment’, simply for singing an innocent pop hit once bought by nine million people. Just as well he didn’t perform Walk Like An Egyptian or Turning Japanese, too.

I’ve heard of criminal records, but this really is ridiculous.

