Hey, kids! Anyone want to go to a Christmas party? There is a slight snag, mind. I don't know where the party is or when it's going to be held. Or, come to that, whether there's going to be a Christmas party at all, which is even more of a slight snag.
Still, if there isn't a Christmas party, Oxford police commander Brendan O'Dowda will almost certainly be holding a birthday party, or maybe a cocktail party or dinner party. But don't worry about an invite, or actually being let in, just turn up, barge your way in and get ready to, as I believe the verb goes, Partay!! I'm sure he won't mind.
After all, as O'Dowda said after a screaming mob of Trotskyite activists and free speech-deniers stormed the Oxford Union and broke inside in protest at the presence of political party leader Nick Griffin and historian David Irving: "It was not our problem, or an issue for us, if a small group of people got inside a private event in a private chamber - that's a matter for those organising the event."
So there you have it: break into someone's private property, disrupt what's going on in there and it's nothing to do with the police. Maybe if O'Dowda's not having a Christmas party you could just drop round unannounced for Christmas dinner instead and force your way in.
Actually, having gone along to the Oxford Union to see what was going on on Monday, I must say the police were utterly pathetic. Not at all what some of us have come to expect from our valiant boys in blue.
There were at least half a dozen police on horseback, and yet there wasn't a single baton-swinging cavalry charge, no-one was being a good truncheoning by the foot soldiers and not one demonstrator appeared to be swallowing their teeth after absorbing the impact of a size 12.
To those of us weaned politically on such events as the Battle of Brittan at Manchester University, the miners' strike, or the Battle of the Beanfield, this was meagre stuff indeed. Most disappointing.
Still, maybe someone should have called a police horse gay. That would really have got them going. You'd be down the stairs at St Aldate's quicker than you could say Harry Hammond.
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