Betjeman You Are So Nicked

This has been a hell of a week for law and disorder. Firstly there was the absolute farce of the twitter trial where the full force of the law has been brought to bear on some poor devil who made a tongue in cheek remark about blowing up Robin Hood Airport.(see http://tinyurl.com/2evepym for details)

If Paul Chambers is in the crown court for threatening to blow up an airport that until he tweeted about blowing it up most people did not know existed, how much trouble would John Betjeman be in for the immortal lines

"Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough" ?

Slough that is a whole town, thousands of innocent people live there. They make Mars bars there, people would miss it (well the Mars Bars  anyway) but here is Betjeman is calling for it's wanton destruction by means of high explosive. How irresponsible is that ?  

You have to wonder about the intelligence of the people involved in the prosecution. At any point did somebody not think "if this goes to trial we are going to look very stupid." Although to have got to trial and then been prosecuted the case would have passed through the hands of many qualified people all of whom have degrees but not much sense, not unlike the student protesters up in arms over increases in tuition fees.

The spoilt children of the English middle classes had a temper tantrum and broke a few windows, I hope it made them feel better because that is all that the protest will achieve. If they want to change tuition fees, simply do not sign up for the courses the prices will soon fall. That said if a whole generation failed to go University where would the Crown Prosecution Service get the next generation of highly educated lawyers ? 

A world with fewer lawyers wouldn't that be a terrible thing ? If any of the thought police at the CPS stumble across this blog and are now searching for John Betjeman's tweets I will save you the trouble, he died in 1984 and I am  fairly sure that was not an act of irony on his part.