The United Kingdom, not so very united these days, is much further down the left-wing rabbit hole than America. But this has hardly made the beneficiaries of all of this compassionate government’s services very attractive. In fact, the more the political left in the UK coddles potential voters with every form of welfare known to man, with every attempt at providing security the political class and the professoriate can dream up, the more petulant, childlike, and uncivil much of the population becomes. Many of these malcontents are spending this week banging their spoons on their high chairs.
Not speaking ill of the recently dead, especially someone of considerable achievement and dignity, is basic civility. But a considerable fraction of the population of Old Blighty has let basic civility go the way of the bowler hat and smoky pubs. The bile so many Britons have released on Margaret Thatcher since her death last week (too many stories, too many abominations, to site them all here) is a national disgrace, at least to those there who still know what disgrace means.
The display of incivility has not been confined to the usual suspects — trust fund radicals, union thugs, coddled “students,” entertainment humbugs (see Dan Flynn’s “The Thatcher Haters”), and other divisions of the bone idle looking for a little fun. One of the most repellant proceeds from a balding, overweight, 52-year-old Scotland Yard sergeant, who tweeted that he hoped Mrs. Thatcher’s death was “painful and degrading.”
The Daily Mail reports that Sgt. Jeremy Scott, who has resigned from the Metropolitan Police (resignation accepted with immediate effect) since his disgraceful tweets became public, also suggested that the world would be a “better place” if David Cameron also died. As a grace note, Scott added that he hoped the RAF flyover for Thatcher’s funeral would bomb her coffin, and that her death was “87 years too late.” This from a member with rank of the organization responsible for protecting those mourners wishing to do the honorable thing this week.
This would be a sad story, at least somewhat relieved by the happy ending of Scott cleaning out his desk, save for the fact that he will receive his pension. So he can continue to be a world-class boor on Her Majesty’s dime (aka the rate-payers’ dime).
Met Commander Allen Gibson said, “This officer’s behavior was completely unacceptable and it is right that he has resigned.” Well, yes. But this raises at least three questions about the Met: (1) what do you have to do to get sacked from the Met, (2) is the Met’s Sergeant’s exam too easy, and (3) could the former sergeant have simply cruised from his office at the Met, where he was a paper-pusher, to the Costa Brava with his retirement check had he said vile things about Muslims or blacks?
To show that Scott is not just a boor but an analytical ignoramus as well, he tweeted that Mrs. Thatcher was the “architect of the hole that is Britain today.” Wrong again. Britain’s poverty and cultural devolution are the results of policies courtesy of Scott’s side of the political equation. Margaret Thatcher made the lives of Jeremy Scott and countless Scott-minded Brits across this once-great island nation better. But they’re too thick to recognize it. And their behavior since Mrs. Thatcher’s death has been, let’s use no-longer-Sergeant Scott’s own words, painful and degrading to the remaining civilized Britons, who have the sympathy of freedom lovers everywhere this week.
