Last Saturday, my girlfriend and I were walking through the shopping area in Clapham Juction station when my girlfriend decided to pop into a shop called Accessorize. For those of you not familiar with the chain, it’s pretty much my idea of Hell: all sequins and bangles and tat; filled with cackling, legging-clad high-street fashionista.

I opted to wait outside and catch up with the weekly wittertainment from Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s brilliant film review podcast. In particular, being a fan of Alan Moore, I wanted to know what the good Doctor would have to say about the Watchmen movie.

It was while my thoughts were on Alan Moore comics, and their recurring themes of police states, fascism and the abuse of public fear to enforce totalitarianism that I was approached by two uniformed police officers. One of them introduced himself as PC Colin Swan and informed me they were randomly stopping me to question me under Section 44 of the terrorism act.

Random eh? I don’t think I’m being cynical when I say that I suspect that I was approached due to the fact my skin tone is in the beige pantone region. I was tempted to ask Colin Swan how many blonde people he had “randomly” stopped that day but thought better of it.

I shouldn’t be too hard on Colin Swan. He was after all just doing his job. Quotas to fill and all that. He was quite polite and had the decency to be a little sheepish about the whole thing. I do think, however, that if you spend your day aimlessly asking random people if they are planning any terrorism, you should at least be able to spell the fricking word without being corrected by the potential perp.

terror

I’ve blanked out my details but in the “Search Grounds” section you can make out that PC Colin Swan originally wrote the following.

TERRERISM 44 STOP
ACCOUNT
STOP IS RECENTED

I couldn’t help myself. I had to correct him. I pointed out that ‘Terrorism’ is spelt with an ‘O’. It was only after they gave me my copy of the slip that I noticed he had also misspelled ‘resented’.

Good to know the safety of our nation is in the hands of such bright sparks.

For a full review of my thoughts on the policies of Wandsworth Borough Police and the useless bureaucrat Borough Commander Stewart Low in relation to Section 44 of the Terrorism act, you can read the post on my personal blog.