#6 A Bit of a Wrong'un

That title right there? A bit of a wrong’un. In fact, it’s such a perfect fit for so many people these days that you could practically use it as a name badge and still have a queue round the block. Where do you even start? You don’t, you just gesture vaguely at everything and hope people get the idea.

Politicians? Obviously. TV celebrities? Naturally. And then there are the ones we’re repeatedly told to admire, trust, and hold to the highest moral standards imaginable, because nothing says “role model” quite like institutional hypocrisy with a press office. Priests within the Catholic Church, for example, though at this point even typing that feels less like an accusation and more like a historical footnote.

If you’ve seen the film Spotlight, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, buckle up, because it’s equal parts eye-opening, stomach-turning, and rage-inducing. Actually… that might be a whole future blog of its own. One where the sarcasm runs dry and the anger takes the wheel.

The list of names is so long that if you tried to log it all in a spreadsheet, even the most powerful supercomputer would sigh, throw a tantrum, and quietly shut itself down in self-defence. Error 404: Human Decency Not Found.

No, what I’m talking about here is the kind of rank, industrial-grade stupidity that flirts so closely with criminality it ought to buy it flowers. Recently exposed in an internal Scotland Yard report, no less, this masterclass in incompetence centres on the failure to properly vet thousands of recruits between 2017 and 2023. Thousands. Not a clerical error. Not a rounding issue. A full-blown institutional face-plant.

This abject mess traces back to an earlier report which confidently announced, and did so with all the authority of a drunk fortune-teller, that people from so-called “minority groups” were proportionally under-represented in the Metropolitan Police and forces nationwide. Turns out that assessment was wrong. Not “slightly off”. Not “needs revision”. Just flat-out wrong. But by the time anyone noticed, the damage was already gleefully underway.

Enter stage left: Cressida Dick. Yes, that one. Former head of the Met, eventually ushered out amid a fog of allegations involving misogyny, sexism, bullying, racism, and corruption so rampant it might as well have had its own postcode. A glittering CV, really.

It was she who enthusiastically embraced the shiny new “Police Uplift Programme”, a manifesto wheeze cooked up by the then Tory government under Boris “The Clown” Johnson. Because when you think “measured, thoughtful reform of policing standards,” your mind instantly goes to Boris Johnson and a hastily scribbled promise on the back of a napkin.

And so, armed with laughably dodgy data, blatant political interference, and an almost heroic commitment to not doing the bare minimum of their jobs, the gates were thrown wide open. Vetting? Nah. Standards? Optional extras. Accountability? Someone else can deal with that mess later, preferably after promotions have been handed out and pensions secured.

Let’s be absolutely clear: this is a fuck-up of catastrophic, historic proportions. It makes the Post Office scandal, a decades-long institutional lie that destroyed lives up and down the country, look like a warm-up act. In fact, I’ll say it outright: this is worse. Because this wasn’t ignorance. This wasn’t an IT error. This was choice after choice after choice, made by people who knew better and did it anyway.

The Met Police deliberately bypassed normal vetting procedures. They failed to check thousands of references, not “missed”, not “overlooked”, failed. They knowingly covered up crimes committed by officers, quietly transferring them to other forces like contaminated waste instead of dealing with them. And then, in a move so grotesquely stupid it borders on parody, when vetting actually did its job, 114 refusals were simply overturned. Why? To appease a narrative. To chase optics. To tick a political box.

Enter the now-abolished “Internal Vetting Panel”, a panel so catastrophically misguided it should be taught as a case study in how to burn an institution to the ground from the inside. Christ alive, you couldn’t invent this level of institutional self-sabotage without being laughed out of the room.

This wasn’t just negligence, it was an outright dereliction of duty. Blatant misconduct in public office that edges dangerously close to criminality, if it hasn’t already crossed the line. It went on for years, unchallenged, unchecked, and unpunished. And the consequence of this moral and professional collapse? Murderers, rapists, thugs, and every flavour of wrong’un imaginable were not just allowed into the force, they were handed authority, badges, and public trust, then sent out onto the streets.

Men like David Carrick, waved through without proper vetting, who went on to commit some of the most serious crimes imaginable, including dozens of sexual offences, before finally being handed 37 life sentences. Then there’s Cliff Mitchell, too dangerous to pass vetting, until the newly introduced ‘Vetting panel’ decided otherwise and let him in anyway. He later proved exactly why he’d been rejected in the first place, going on to be convicted of multiple rapes, including that of a child.

And when it all finally blows up, we’re told lessons will be learned. Reviews will be conducted. Processes will be improved. The same tired script rolled out yet again, while the people responsible quietly disappear into consultancy roles, honours lists, or early retirement.

The damage, meanwhile, is already done. And the public is left to pay the price for an institutional failure so vast, so arrogant, and so utterly avoidable it should haunt everyone involved for the rest of their careers, if they had even a shred of shame to begin with.

Piss well and truly boiled!