Thursday, February 08, 2024

Rupert Matthews: The lights are on but no one's at home

Rupert Matthews, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland, has paid £250 to put up a Victorian-style police station blue lamp in Uppingham.

"The blue lamp is an iconic piece of British policing history and symbolises not only law, order and justice, but safety and sanctuary," he told BBC News.

Trouble is, there is no police station in Uppingham, and the inhabitants of Rutland's second city are far from impressed.

Some of them spoke to Lincs Online:

Uppingham resident Dan Marshall, 45, said: "There is a big difference between a local bobby occasionally using an office to do admin and a police station.

"The issue I have is this lamp, which is lit up at night, gives the false impression that it is a manned police station when it isn’t." 

Another local said: “What happens when someone genuinely needs help and tries to enter the police station at night and finds it’s closed? It’s a gimmick, it’s no more a police station than my two-year-old’s toy police car can chase after criminals.”

I rather lost touch with Mr Matthews's activities while I was caring for my mum, but he used to be a reliable source of stories for this blog.

You can find those stories on my Rupert Matthews label, though sadly the video of him introducing the course he taught for the International Metaphysical University has been taken down.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

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