Cough up, Met

Met policeman Tarique Ghaffur has settled his claim for racism and discrimination against the force - for money, of course.

The Met was not prepared to say how much had been paid to Ghaffur.

Why?

Don't the public have a right to know how much of taxpayers' money was given to Ghaffur?

Tolerance works both ways

A Christian policeman has been sacked after claiming that gay sex was "sinful".

Pc Graham Cogman, twice commended by his force for his loyalty and diligence, received literature promoting gay events so he emailed his colleagues with details of Christianity. His bosses said that he was not showing enough "respect and tolerance" to fellow officers and forbade him from using the office computer.

Speaking about his treatment earlier this year, Mr Cogman said: "The blatant support for homosexual rights in Norfolk police makes being a Christian officer extremely difficult.

"I have to make a stand when things become so blatantly biased against me just because I hold a faith."

What about respect and tolerance for Mr Cogman's beliefs? Why are his views less worthy than other people's? Would the police had been so quick to sack him had he been a Muslim? Why does it always only ever go one way?

Bags o' money

We are back to carrier bags again. The BBC carries a story that supermarkets hope that carrier bag use will halve by next Easter.

Again, the reporter trots out the line that "the bags... take about 1,000 years to decay". How does he know?

Also, he reports that "UK retailers hand out an estimated 13 billion free plastic bags every year." No, they don't. The cost of the bag is built into the price you pay for the goods you buy in the shop. If we are getting fewer bags, the cost of the goods should come down. Will it? What do you think?

The police are moral arbiters - that's what we pay them for

A mother was walking her teenage daughter to school when they saw two semi-naked men having sex. Marie Cragg, 44, called the police who told her to use a different path.

This follows on from last month when Deputy Chief Constable Mike Cunningham said people caught having sex in public should only be arrested as a last resort. He added that it was not the job of police to "take the role of moral arbiter" and claimed punishing those involved rarely solved the problem and could cause "humiliation, breakdown of relationships and the outing of men".

It is exactly the role of the police to be moral arbiters because morals are what underlay the fabric of society. And the problem is that they abrogating their responsibilities which is making society worse.

President Obama - or is it?

Well, today's the day America elects its first black president. Or is it? Everyone thinks Barack Obama is a shoo-in and they are probably right.

But.

Remember Britain in 92? Everyone thought Neil Kinnock was a shoo-in and we woke up with five more years of John Major. Could it happen Stateside? Probably not but I am loath to make predictions since I got it so wrong over Hillary Clinton...