Plebgate

Andrew Mitchell strikes me as someone stuffed up with a sense of his own importance. I don't suppose people who are chosen as Chief Whips are ever your pleasant guy with good manners and a beguiling attitude to life. They have to impose discipline on the party and they must get to feel proud with having such power. I can't say I took to the man. Nor did I feel sorry for him over the Plebgate affair since he sort of brought it on himself.
What would I have done if a policeman had curteously asked me to use another, smaller gate to take my bike through. I might have mumbled some disapproval but I think I'd have said "OK officer, and mind how you go..... Sir." Not turn angrilly around and make for the smaller gate saying "fucking plebs" as I went.
OK, he maintains he didn't use the word plebs but admits that he used the expletive. For which he appologised. Let me tell you that if little me had used the word he used to that copper, or for that matter, any copper, I'd have been arrested on the spot and quite rightly so.
But, of course, he was an important guy in the government and coppers can't go about arresting right honourable gentlemen.
So he wasn't arrested for swearing at the policeman as he should have been.
We'll let that go. Let's concentrate on not what was said but what was not said, or rather on what might have been said. Mitchell did use the word fucking as an adjective rather than a noun; so he must have followed it with a noun. Whether it was pleb or not we'll never know but it was something. Maybe "pigs". Maybe "arseholes". Maybe "angels". We don't know but he certainly called them something and I can't believe it was anything pleasant or complimentary.
I'm not surprised that the police invented evidence or told lies or, maybe, planted dope at his residence because that's what they've always done.
There are no good eggs in this story and of the whole cast of bad ones Andrew Mtichell, in my opinion, doesn't come near the top for best behaviour.
I also think the matter shouldn't be called Plebgate because it isn't known that he said it; it should be about the exit he was to take - the gate. It should be called Gategate.