One Rotten Apple Can Protect the Whole Barrel If Properly Thrown Away

Simon Harwood, the member in good standing of the Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club who assaulted Ian Tomlinson minutes before the latter's unlawful killing by the forces of physiological anarchism, has been sacked for the gross misconduct of allowing the assault to be filmed and thereby bringing the Met into yet further disrepute. Harwood had offered his resignation twice since turning Tomlinson into an incident at the G20 protests; both offers were refused, either because the Met thought it had better keep Harwood on hand for just such a show trial as this, or because his superiors genuinely thought he had done nothing wrong. Given the steady stream of misinformation issued by police and press immediately after Tomlinson's death (to say nothing of the earlier promotion of Cressida Dick, who oversaw the assassination of Jean Charles de Menezes), the second explanation seems more probable. Like any valuable member of society, such as a banking executive or a parliamentary expenses claimant, Harwood will be able to claim his pension; he has already resigned once, coincidentally avoiding a disciplinary hearing over an illegal arrest and fraudulent note-taking, but it is apparently unlikely that he will be employed by the police again, at least until the police have been fully efficientised into the mercenary sector.