Are you Nick Griffin?

A most unfortunate episode happened at the Conservative conference. A councillor was stopped by a policewoman who wanted to be sure he was not Nick Griffin. The poor man apparently gets this a lot. Being mistaken for the BNP leader, that is. Now two things strike me as being odd about this story that I found in the Guardian. Firstly Lynden Stowe, who is the leader of Cotswold district council, was "made to produce identification and explain that any similarity between him and Griffin was merely superficial" before being allowed in. So if one looks like a severely politically-incorrect politician, is it the job of the British police to inquire whether thoughts go with the looks? Secondly, is Nick Griffin being tailed by the police during this election? If he is, I'd suggest the police keep well out of it. Let the electorate decide. We don't wan't prissy chief constables telling us who is or is not worthy of voting for. Any unnecessary involvement in the democratic process is bound to backfire. Illegal thuggery is one thing. Trying to prevent democratic discourse is quite another.

I was watching a video of the late great Arthur Worsley with his Charley Brown character. I've just had visions of Mr. Stowe being questioned by the dummy. "Go on!!!! ARE YOU NICK GRIFFIN??? Look at me when I'm talking - ARE YOU NICK GRIFFIN???" Well, it's one way to get an answer.

Lesbians come out fighting - nominally speaking!

What's in a name? Sometimes not a lot, other times it is your very identity. If I was a Lesbian I would not be too pleased if everytime I told people I was one it provoked amusement, silly laughter and innuendo. That is apparently the sort of thing that happens to Lesbians every day. They have the good fortune to live on the Greek island of Lesbos. Now, as we know, female homosexuals have appropriated the name. In fact, for most people around the world, it is the latter they think of before considering the people of Lesbos (if they ever do).

A similar fate beheld the people of the French region of Alsace. Alsatians are a people of distinct background with a language and culture. Canine it is not. For some reason, they managed to get dog owners and breeders in England to call the animal a German Shepherd rather than Alsatian, although some do lapse on occasions. Some name identities are confused by association of ideas. Mongolians or Mongols had to endure being likened to Down's Sydrome simply on account of their facial features. Siam (now called Thailand) disliked the term siamese twins preferring to get the world to speak of conjoined twins.

Can the people of Lesbos succeed in protecting their name? Judges in Greece will have to decide whether to grant an injunction against the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece and to order it to change its name. Apparently history is on the side of the campaigners. Sapphos, the Greek goddess whose name is linked with female homosexuality and was a native of Lesbos, was no lover of other women, but a heterosexual female who had a family, and committed suicide for the love of a man. So that puts the record straight, then!

Innocent customer dragged from his bed at 3 am!

Another story in the "if you've nothing to hide, what have you to fear" department. Quite a lot! In this case, a man went to Tesco to do some shopping but the myopic security guards took his car registration and gave it to the police. Why? Because some thief had stolen a plasma screen TV ( a feat in itself!) and managed to walk past the guards. In a totally separate incident, a woman claimed that this man, Simon Brasch, who works for a hospice charity, had scratched her car. One thing led to twenty-four and later, at 3 am, Mr.Brasch was dragged from his bed after the bizarre mix-up following his visit to the supermarket eight hours earlier.

“I felt humiliated and degraded, I felt like a criminal. I was left to languish in a prison cell, my individual rights were completely put aside for a plasma TV,” he said yesterday. “I told them, ‘I have got a full-time job, I’m a database manager for a national charity, I manage a library. This is ridiculous, you’ll see a big mistake has taken place’. It was the worst night of my life.”

Two questions. Are the security staff at Tesco so poorly trained that they can't ask simple questions? Are the police so poorly trained that they can't ask simple questions? It's an outrage that people are treated in this way. TEN HOURS in a police cell! What is it? All the mounting paperwork that the police have to fill in. "Sorry Mr.Brasch, this'll take at least ten hours to sort out. We're up to our eyeballs in bumpf!"

The trouble today is that all customers are seen as potential shoplifters, all accidents are seen as potential criminal investigations. Common sense and civility have left the brains of "management". We are all likely to end up in a police cell like Mr.Brasch. There isn't anyone of us who isn't.

As The Times reports, the thief and TV are still missing.

Is this the Britain we want?