It's a scene that could have been ripped straight from a Hollywood movie. The outsider - be they cowboy, vietnam veteran, or biker - wanders into an unfamiliar town in rural America and finds themselves subject to abuse, disgust and ultimately rejection. They aren't doing anything wrong, they had no plans to cause trouble, but narrow minds seldom grasp wider pictures. However, this particular story is not set in Bumsville middle America. This story finds itself cast among the rolling green sheep infested hills of rural Wales, Great Britain. Deputy Chief Constable Clive Wolfendale of the North Wales Police has something of a history of being shown to be a brainless moron. In 2004, after being invited to address the inaugural meeting of the North Wales Black Police Association, Wolfendale thought it would be a good idea to get down with his fellow homies in a way they could relate to, so he took to the stage and performed a rap he wrote.
Among the gems of lyrics was the verse"The Beeb Man stuffed us with the Secret Policeman / It's no good moanin' cos' he found the Ku Klux Klan / Job ain't what it used to be; it's full of blacks and gays / It was just us white homies in the really good ole' days So what we bothrin' with this stinkin' institution / No love, no heart, no sense, no proper constitution / No-one loves the coppers cos' we're rotten to the core / Cross between the devil and a governmental whore"Oh dear. Wolfendale's latest act of lunacy has been to vocally call for the banning of motorcycles from national parks in North Wales and to quietly instruct his officers to cause bikers as much inconvenience as possible. The police force recently admitted to stopping 400 motorcycles on public roads every single weekend, an average of 350 of them having committed no offense.
One officer actually stated it was highly unusual to see those kinds of numbers and that the force usually stops about 1000 bikers a year, not 400 a weekend. In an effort to reclaim the roads that bikers in England pay to use through their annual road tax, Motorcycle News Magazine and British biking organization the BMF are proposing a mass ride on September 13th. The ride will commence at one of two points detailed on MCN's website and then proceed to the other point. Normally BMF events attract tens of thousands of bikers and so this particular ride is sure to attract a lot of attention. Regardless of whether or not it has the desired effect, one target seems to have already taken the hint. Wolfendale has resigned his post and will leave the police force in September as well.
