Stretching credibility

Here's a rant on something else, but on-topic in a philosophical sense. Police in England have said many stretched limousines - of the type you see ferrying poor underprivileged tile-hoppers on a Friday night - are a front for money laundering and organised crime.

As I understand it, money laundering is where gangstas have a legitimate business which has its revenue mainly in cash form, then they mix in varying amounts of cash received from non-legit sources and declare it for tax. For example, there's a dodgy-looking hairdresser near my house who's never had more than two customers a week, and I'd love to see his tax return.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is the BBC news article proclaiming all this. It informs us dutifully that some senior police bod reckons hoods are turning to the stretch limo business. His opinion. No evidence offered. New paragraph. "Some of the limousines were also found to be unsafe". Ah, the old emotional lever, but again without any substantiation.

Then comes the cruncher. "We have seen, on a number of occasions", continues Genghis Plod, "some pretty unsavoury people driving or inside these vehicles who wouldn't normally be in a position where they'd be able to be with young children in party situations".

Who? Where? How many times? And what, apart from a 1kg bag of Silver Spoon, constitutes unsavoury? I am, I admit, fairly generously proportioned. But it doesn't mean I eat doughnuts all day. I have known some people who, to put it kindly, were standing behind the door when God was dishing out beauty. It doesn't mean they don't have fantastic personalities.

Mr Plod may well be right. Society as we know it may indeed be on the brink of ruin because some cars are longer than others. What riles me about this is the cynical way the BBC can publish a 'news' article stating nothing other than the prejudice of some copper and knowing that three quarters of the population will not notice the complete lack of evidence, fall for his diatribe and get swept along in a wave of support for the police who are risking life and limb to protect us all from nasty white cars.

I would hope that, in modern Ulster, we're one step ahead of them. That we can see through prejudice and that we're politicised enough to look for the facts underlying every report so we can draw our own conclusions. A newsflow purely made up of someone else's conclusions is the stuff of dictatorships.

Wherever you're off to tonight, have a good time - and take the bus.