Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Jeremy Clarkson Defends Hapless Druid Hippies Against Police State UK

Hairy people in a field in England after midnight, trying to have some fun, and forge a link with their ancient cultural past, are harassed by the relentless buzzing of the unmanned spy planes that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan now know all too well. Spy planes circling religious ritualists in a field.

When powerful, influential writers like Jeremy Clarkson start taking the sides of hairy, dope-smoking old Druid hippies against the constant WTF? impositions of a rapidly expanding British police state, it's clear the cops have gone too far, for just about all Brits :

Last week (the Druids) were at Stonehenge to mark the summer solstice. Apparently, 36,500 poor souls got up in the middle of the night and were dragged by their beliefs and their little Citroëns to a field in Wiltshire where they were forced by custom to mark the disappointingly cloudy dawn by chanting and pretending to be King Arthur.

....I have every sympathy with these people and I wish them well. I like having hippies in the world. They bring a richness and a calm, and while they like to wear hoods, they do not beat up old ladies.

What in the name of whatever god you hold dear were the police doing using an unmanned spy drone to fly around, taking pictures of these people as they swayed gently in stillness of morning?

I can see why the army might need a spy drone in Afghanistan. But how on earth could the Wiltshire constabulary justify the purchase of such a thing? To catch crop circlists? It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.

Why send sniffer dogs to their annual summer get-together? We know there will have been some dope and we know, because they’d stayed up all night, that some of the morris men will have got some marching powder up their schnozzers. But if it’s busts they’re after, Plod would probably have had a higher success rate if they’d had a snout about in their own locker rooms.

Read it all, it's excellent, and Clarkson's riff about saluting magpies is hilarious.