Spitting Image, PC Dimbleby
In the 1980s and 1990s Spitting Image, primarily master puppeteers Fluck and Law ran for 18 seasons on ITV. The political satire was often sharp and one aspect of it was a focus on the police in the Thatcher era. Portrayed as ignorant and thuggish Spitting Image picked up on the point that you could be arrested for being the wrong colour, looking at an officer oddly or walking in an unapproved way. There were actual instances of such cases, but the satirical point was that anyone could be arrested for doing or not doing pretty much anything and sometimes were.
Fast forward thirty plus years and we have a Labour Government headed by a former human rights lawyer. However it now seems that if someone says or displays words that the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper does not approve of then arrest is possible.
In the meantime the stakes have been upped because doing this, or possibly just thinking about doing it, can be labelled as ‘terrorism’ with a potential jail sentence of up to 14 years.
Liberal Democracy anyone?
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