Is Your Horse Gay?

Last week, both student papers reported an incident in which a student from Balliol was arrested for referring to a police horse as gay, whilst on his way back from a night out. Rather drunk, he apparently told one of the mounted policemen he encountered on Cornmarket that the horse he was riding was gay. Evidently the policeman took offence to this,and a little while later the student in question was apprehended by no less than six officers, arrested and fined £80.

I can't help but feel that it was a complete waste of police time and resources, which would be bad enough if the police dealt with real crimes properly and efficiently. I remember however an incident in my first year when some of us witnessed a girl being kicked in quite badly by a very drunken male companion. Upon dialling 999 we waited almost 20 minutes for the police to arrive, in which time her male companion had had ample time to stagger away completely. At last four squad cars turned up, but they seemed more interested in discussing which of them was meant to be on a break (yes, seriously) than dealing with the poor girl lying in the road. For some reason they also seemed unsure how many girls there were meant to have been, and pursuing the guy who'd inflicted the damage was out of the question.

Fortunately the Ambulance crew who arrived did their job far more competently, but I'm sure I'm not the only one with such experiences of the police. It doesn't inspire much confidence, to be honest. I'm still wondering when Thames Valley are actually going to start 'reducing crime, disorder and fear' and stop just trying to extract as much money as they can in fines from generally harmless students.

I'm also hoping that if they could arrest the Balliol student for being a nuisance (of course he disturbed oh so many people) that they'll also arrest the council worker and his petrol powered vacuum. Yes ladies and gentlemen, he was outside my window again at 5.41 this morning, this time on my side of the street.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Talking of wasting police time, the lovely HRH Queen Elizabeth II was visiting Cambridge today and there must have been at least 200 policemen squirming around the place. All of us going for exams were ID'd before we could enter the building, or go within about a mile of where the Queen was meant to be... You'd think that the police would have something better to do with their time really...
Wed Jun 08, 03:36:00 PM GMT
Sam Pritchard said…
I tell you why the police can't do their job properly.... we've got a Labour government!
Wed Jun 08, 03:55:00 PM GMT
Anonymous said…
the gay horse story appeared in London's "Metro" newspaper this week too, so was no doubt read by millions of amused London commuters, myself included.
Fri Jun 10, 01:55:00 PM GMT
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the purpose of religion

One of the things which featured in the recent debate on this post is the idea that “religion should be about improving oneself”. This has got me thinking; ‘religion’ of course takes many forms, but in the vast majority of cases I disagree with this. To paraphrase MarkC, religion is certainly something which as a by-product might help with “improving oneself”, but however you measure self-improvement it is not the sole point, certainly not in the Judeo-Christian case. In fact, if your sole aim is to “improve yourself”, why waste your time playing around with the trappings of religion? Most religions are based around the idea of faith in God, and that, surely, is the point. Considering Christianity specifically, Jesus said “ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself ” and so ‘religion’ should not be in danger of becoming all about wo...
Read more

atheism is a matter of faith, not science: the debate continues

Following the letters page in last Wednesday's Metro and the follow-up comment on this post I’m pleased to see that the beginnings of a debate are brewing, and I intend to use this post to pick up the baton again. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to start by responding to the aforementioned comment. I apologise if my tone was deemed to be a bit sharp, but I have no hesitation in defending the point I was trying to make. According to dictionary.com , faith can be defined as “belief that is not based on proof.” As there is no proof that God does not exist, belief that God does not exist (i.e. atheism) must be faith. Now, I take your point that “as human beings we are always revising and fine tuning what we hold to be true based on the evidence to hand, what we discover and our ability to determine what is probable or improbable.” To digress slightly, that is why switching on the Large Hadron Collider is going to be something of a milestone, as it could eit...
Read more

milk and sugar?

I've been debating with my housemate as to whether tea or coffee is more popular world-wide. We've both done quick web-searches, and we've both got results to match our different claims. I say tea, he says coffee. So, to settle the debate, it's down to you. Do you prefer tea or coffee? Please leave a comment below - one word is all it takes.
Read more