The case of undercover police officers having sex with the people they were spying on revealed a queasy possibility: this was an unacknowledged perk of the job. Perhaps undercover officers were relying on a steady supply of young women in protest movements being deeply impressed with fake activists who appeared to be swaggeringly unafraid of the police. Now senior officers have officially decreed that this sort of thing is not on. But they have also given one exception: undercover sex is all right if “there is an immediate threat to themselves or others”.
I’m sorry, what? How exactly does having sex stave off this immediate threat? If you refuse the sexual advances of an activist, does this blow your cover? Can’t the cop in question just claim to be in a relationship? Nothing reveals the deeply silly, very male, James Bond mentality of the officers than this bizarre rule. The upper reaches of the police force would appear to be dominated by guys who love to watch DVDs of 007 films, probably of the Roger Moore vintage, all about smirking spies who get to seduce in the line of duty.
Boris? He’s a big Johnson
Next Monday is 4 July, and in my Atlanticist way I am intending to have a Mexican burrito at an American restaurant in London that’s offering to tear up the bill if your clothes feature both stars and stripes. I can’t help wondering whether 4 July might have been a happier time for the worldwide release of Independence Day: Resurgence.
Not merely was this film bad enough to cause your brain matter to start leaking into your sinuses, but it may have played its own tiny, tiresome role in our island story. The stirring tale of repelling hateful aliens was released here and in most other European countries last Thursday (in the US the day after), the date of our referendum. Not a Brexit conspiracy, but assuredly an inspiration for Boris Johnson’s fatuous and burbling battle cry of “Independence day!”
Now the Tory leadership campaign has begun and, incredibly, movie advertising is again playing its role. The film Central Intelligence, starring diminutive comic Kevin Hart and muscly giant Dwayne Johnson has the vulgar phallic tagline: “Saving the world takes a little Hart and a big Johnson”. BBC local news has cheekily suggested that the Tories are yearning for the virility of their “big Johnson”. Well, given that the leavers’ weekly £350m is the biggest fiction since the weapons of mass destruction in 2003, it is probably appropriate that movie fantasy keeps recurring.
It’s rotten on the Vine
One of the fascinating things about Web 2.0 is the way journalists and critics have found themselves exposed to online comment and criticism. For some, it is pure lèse-majesté. In her personal report about being at the centre of the recent political storm, Sarah Vine (columnist and wife of Michael Gove) recorded piteously that the abuse felt like having a lovely dress mocked.
She said: “I have seen it happen to others – celebrities, sportspeople, household names – but I’d never imagined it happening to me.” Never? Really? Something about Vine’s woe brought to my mind the keening, yearning voice of Morrissey. Then it hit me. Is Vine a fan of the track That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore? The lyric is: “It’s too close to home/And it’s too near the bone.” With compelling passion and emotional woundedness, Morrissey repeatedly sings: “I’ve seen this happen in other people’s lives/And now it’s happening in mine”. Social media is turning pundits into a chorus of Morrisseys.
