”The animal which most frequently came before the criminal courts was the pig.”

Ah, those quaint medieval country bumpkins and their peculiar ways:

At Mesnil St. Denis, near Paris, there still exists a spot called Truye Pendue, after a sow which was once hanged there for killing an infant, and about twenty similar cases are recorded in France alone by the writers above mentioned.

Thank goodness we don’t go in for pointless, self-aggrandising public displays of this nature in this country now, eh?

What?

Oh:

A police officer who was cleared of killing Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in London will face force disciplinary proceedings on September 17.

Pc Simon Harwood was acquitted of manslaughter last month, but police watchdog the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) ordered that he should face the internal Metropolitan Police hearing in public.

For what possible reason?

Via Inspector Gadget’s comments, we see the official Met website touting seats at the spectacle. This is unprecedented, and unseemly.

And it most certainly won’t prevent anyone remembering the real scandal of the whole affair, either:

A series of allegations were made against him over a 12-year period, and he was allowed to retire from the Met on medical grounds in 2001 despite unresolved disciplinary proceedings.

He was accused of unlawful arrest, abuse of authority and discreditable conduct over an incident when he allegedly shouted at another driver and knocked him over his car door, before announcing he was a police officer and arresting the motorist on a common assault charge. But the proceedings were discontinued when he retired.

Later, Harwood rejoined the force as a civilian worker, before becoming a police officer for Surrey. He was then allowed to rejoin the Met in 2004 as part of its Territorial Support Group, specialising in public order.

Rather than have a show-trial of Harwood, why not name names and publicise the disasters in uniform who failed to heed the warnings about the man’s conduct?