Once Again, Littlejohn’s Not Wrong…

The immediate aftermath of a massacre is not a moment for recriminations. All the focus should be on the victims and their families. There should be no other consideration.

So I was surprised by the tone of the press conference given by Cumbria's Deputy Chief Constable, Stuart Hyde, at tea-time on Wednesday, in which he kept referring to the man who had just killed 12 people and wounded another 25 as 'Mister' Bird.

Well, if he hadn’t taken the coward’s way out, that’s what his jailers would have been instructed to call him.

In order to safeguard his ‘human rights’…

After updating reporters on the body count and the progress of the investigation, he was at pains to emphasise: 'Whilst this was a terrifying and horrific incident, it is by its nature very unusual - locally, regionally and nationally.

'Cumbria prides itself on being a safe place to work, play and visit. Cumbria is a tightly-knit community covering some of the most beautiful countryside in the land. Its strength is as much its people as its geography.

'It remains one of the safest areas of the UK and is very much open for business and tourism despite the tragic circumstances of the last few hours.'

Yup, it’s the same sort of boilerplate that police spokesmen are expected to regurgitate in any public statement nowadays.

At least he didn’t use the phrase ‘thankfully rare’…

He sounded like a junior tourism official, not a senior policeman. It was the kind of statement you might have expected from Danny Alexander, our new Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in his previous incarnation as press officer for the Cairngorms National Park.

Did Hyde not realise how tactless and crass it sounded to announce that Cumbria was 'open for business' while standing in front of a main street sealed off by crime scene tape in the wake of one of Britain's worst killing sprees?

If he did, he’d be too scared to go against the wishes of his employers.

No, not us, of course. We just pay his wages. I meant ACPO and the Home Office…

My colleagues tell me that Hyde is a decent copper, trotting out the new-style Plodspeak dictated by the modern breed of sociologists with scrambled egg on their hats who masquerade as chief police officers.

Today's police 'service' is all about reassuring 'stakeholders' and addressing the public's fear of crime with soothing statements and massaged statistics.

Hyde was simply reading from the script, but it struck a jarring, insensitive note at a time of terrible tragedy.

If Hyde really had been a ‘decent copper’, and more to the point, a true leader, he’d have thrown away the script and spoken from the heart.