Alas, Thou Hast Misconstrued

The Metropolitan Police, as it appears in some of Jack Straw's damper daydreams, is becoming flesh in South Africa, where it seems that somebody doing a wonderful job in difficult circumstances has made an honest mistake and shot a three-year-old dead. The protector of the public allegedly mistook a pipe for a gun which the potential criminal was pointing at him; the fact that nothing resembling such a pipe was found at the scene has been made public rather precipitately, without any of the attempts to soften the family's grief which constitute the norm in more civilised countries. The South African shadow police minister made express mention of the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, whose bulky jacket and suspicious behaviour featured so prominently in Scotland Yard's efforts to soothe his relatives' pain. "You had people falling on their swords and feeling honour bound to do so," she said; strangely enough, apart from Cressida Dick who was punished with a severe promotion, and the honourable Ian Blair who was forced to resign mere years later over an unrelated spat with the London Haystack, the self-impalements that come to mind are distinguished by their fewness.