The Devil in the Detail

I'd really hoped to have a bit of a pop at the Met's much ridiculed boss, Sir Iain Blair, again. The problem is that the mainstream media appears to have let me down here, in it's coverage of the Metropolitan Police Authority's lukewarm vote of confidence in this arrogant buffoon.

Both Sky and the BBC web coverage of the outcome makes use of the same, or rather two rather similar quotes from Blair. Here we have the truth according to the the BBC:

[Blair] added: "I'm pleased to have the backing of the majority of the police authority. I don't in any way minimise the tragedy that is the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. "

Source: BBC News

OK, reasonable enough, though the nature of the make-up of the MPA doesn't exactly bear up to close scrutiny, as discussed over at The Croydonian, but in this case Blair, for all his faults would have been making a factually accurate statement, even if it did mean his was basking in immensely faint praise.

More worrying was the version over at Sky where the same quote comes out as:

"I am pleased to have the backing of the public. This does not in any way minimise the death of Jean Charles de Menezes. Now I am pleased I can get back to my job."

Source: Sky News

I've no real way of knowing which of the two statements is actually what Blair said, but somehow the Sky version seems to better fit the Blair we know and loathe.

It's bad enough that we have a serial incompetent in charge of the country's most important police force, but the growing signs that we in the capital may be being policed by someone who may well, if Sky version is to believed, completely delusional is even more worrying.

The comments I heard from a couple of PCs on the train recently on some Blair news in Metro would suggest that Blair's support even within the force isn't that solid beyond the managerial layer that immediately surrounds him, let alone amongst the public at large, unless I misheard the officers and they actually said 'anchor'.