the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

I grew up in a country where freedom of speech was enshrined as a right, where a democracy existed and where there was an expectation that justice could be obtained. I don’t seem to live there anymore.

No longer am I allowed to speak my mind, I have to speak within the parameters that have been set by, what seems to me, to be a minority. 1984 got here a bit late, but get here it did. Democracy has its faults, but rule as set by the majority is not a bad idea. Where did it go? Minority interests now prevail.

As for justice, it has become a joke. There was a time when I would have been more that happy to have been tried by a jury of my peers, but not now. Values have changed too much and I am very glad that my years in this society are limited.

The trigger for this posting is the recent report into the Metropolitan Police. There are things that seem clearly wrong within that force, but that is not what shakes my confidence in the system. My confidence is in the way the report has been presented.

I long ago began to get concerned when I read statements of “Institutionalised Racism/Sexism/Homophobia” (delete as applicable, or substitute your own alternative). It stemmed from a pilot questionnaire to be issued to employees of the organisation that I worked for. In describing myself I had answered three of the questions as; White, Male, Heterosexual.

What else can I say, I am a white man and have not had any doubts about my sexuality, so my answers are the truth. But the response, OK part in jest, from the person designing the questionnaire was that I had marked myself down as a racist, sexist homophobe. I wonder how much of that type of thinking has permeated into the Met report? That grain of doubt undermines the whole thing for me. I can’t trust its overall conclusions because I have no confidence in the system that has produced it.

As I have often remarked here when talking about leadership, trust is fundamental. I understand that there are those who feel unable to trust the Met, and there is a significant problem for them and for the force. We, as a country, need to find a way to rebuild trust in our Police. Whether this report is going to help bring about that change or not remains to be seen, but I fear that it will not.

Until we rid ourselves of the Woke brigade as any form of influence on public life I will not be able to trust the system.