Manchester Airport brawl video proves you need all the facts before you judge
BACK in 1986, a newspaper ran a thought-provoking TV ad that showed a skinhead running towards a woman standing on the street.
“An event seen from one point of view gives one impression,” said the male narrator.
The skinhead then ran past the woman towards a startled businessman and appeared to grab the briefcase he was holding up to protect himself.
The narrator continued: “Seen from another point of view, it gives quite a different impression.”
The camera then panned out to show a pile of bricks from an overhead building project about to fall on the businessman’s head as the skinhead wrestled him out of the way to safety.
The narration concluded with: “But it’s only when you get the whole picture, you can fully understand what’s going on.”
And that was the days before social media where perspective has become so skewed that the age-old adage of “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” is now an almost everyday occurrence.
Much of the time, the fake “facts” emerge during online discussions about trivialities such as the latest celebrity break-up.
Like, “I can tell you for a fact that (insert name of Hollywood A-lister) is vile”, states someone from, say, Scunthorpe, who you can guarantee has never met them.
For the most part, these character assassinations vaporise in to irrelevance as quickly as they emerge, but when it’s a high-profile court case or rapidly unfolding news event, one-sided online debate can be very damaging indeed.
This is highlighted by the reaction to initial footage showing a police officer kicking 19-year-old Mohammed Fahir Khan in the head as he lay on the floor at an airport.
Seen from one point of view it gave an impression that garnered accusations of racism and police brutality. But then footage emerged that showed the events leading up to it and it gives quite a different impression.
Barrage of punches
Quite why it took so long to locate and release it is anyone’s guess, but it shows Khan punching a female police officer and breaking her nose, then hitting another to the ground.
Prior to this, his 25-year-old brother Amaad had thrown a barrage of punches at a male officer who had confronted Mohammed Fahir over an earlier confrontation with a fellow passenger.
Former police and crime commissioner Kevin Hurley has described the officer now suspended and under investigation as “frankly, the hero” of the situation.
Meanwhile, the Khan family’s solicitor says: “No police officer is above the law, no matter the context of his actions.”
But at least they are both commenting on the whole picture, rather than just half of it.
Let’s hope this acts as a much-needed lesson to all the keyboard warriors who leap to an inflammatory conclusion without knowing the full facts, but somehow I doubt it.
In the meantime, for the umpteenth time, I find myself asking: “Who’d be a police officer in modern Britain?”
Team GB divers have nothing to hide
CONGRATULATIONS to Tom Daley and diving partner Noah Williams on their silver medal for the 10m synchronised event at the Paris Olympics.
And, of course, the same to all the other Brits who have made the medals podium so far.
Noah also made headlines recently after it was revealed that he and fellow divers, such as Matty Lee and Jack Laugher, have joined subscription site OnlyFans to supplement their income.
Matty, who won gold with Tom at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, says on his OnlyFans bio: “Where you wanna see more of me.”
Given the microscopic trunks these lads wear on the world stage, it’s hard to know what else there is to see.
Not so Strict
ITV has commissioned a new reality TV show called The Summit, which follows daredevil hikers trying to scale a mountain peak.
It has already run for two seasons on Australian TV and reportedly produced “high octane drama” and “nail-biting moments of peril . . . between warring factions.”
It’s in the high stakes mould of Celebrity SAS, which sees participants thrown out of helicopters in to freezing lakes and adopting stress positions for hours with a bag over their head.
Meanwhile, the investigation in to who trod on whose toe in Strictly is ongoing.
Is Ben a home body?
JENNIFER LOPEZ spent her 55th birthday surrounded by friends and acquaintances at her lavish Bridgerton fancy dress party.
She posted the photos to her impressive 250million followers and several more since of her at home, by the pool etc.
By contrast, her husband Ben Affleck – who was absent from the party – deleted his account in 2021.
“My wife’s a genius at that,” he said last year. “I view these things as land mines, where if you say one wrong thing, your career might be over.”
Relationship troubles are always more complex than just one difference of opinion, but perhaps part of their rumoured issues is that she actively enjoys the limelight and he doesn’t.
Don't put it Sharia
MUSLIM cleric Sheikh Yasser al-Habib has raised more than £3million to buy the island of Torsa, off the coast of west Scotland.
Is he perhaps planning a luxury yoga retreat or golf club?
Nope. He wants to build a school, hospital and mosque there, then practise Sharia law, which has no legal enforcement in the UK.
But local opposition means the owner is refusing to sell it to him.
Yasser says: “We want this place to be a homeland to the Shias and their believers.”
Might there be more suitable locations for his Sharia law dream?
I hear Saudi is lovely (45C) at this time of year.
Now Brat’s what I call music
SINGER Charli XCX’s album Brat is making waves among Gen Z because, post-Barbie mania, it advocates a more rebellious woman.
“It’s like this girl who goes to a rave and she’s wearing a tank top. You can see her nipples through it and she is sweaty but she is hot and she is dancing with her friends,” says Charli, who is now being described as the “It girl” of the 2020s.
In other words, Edie Sedgwick in the 60s, Bianca Jagger in the ’70s, Madonna in the ’80s, Kate Moss in the 90s, Alexa Chung in the 2000s and Cara Delevingne in the 2010s.
As Mark Twain once said: “There is no such thing as a new idea.”
Card to do crime
HOME Secretary Yvette Cooper is forming a 1,000-strong team to crack down on rogue nail bars that act as a front for gangsters and modern slavery.
Good. An easy start would be to insist that all those operating from shop units must take cards and issue receipts, making them officially accountable.
As it stands, many work on a cash-only basis that makes it open to exploitation.
CALL me cynical, but is part of the reason that Chancellor Rachel Reeves has dared to scrap the winter fuel allowance for pensioners on the assumption that some of them won’t be around to vote against Labour in the next election?
SHARON STONE says that if Donald Trump becomes President again she is thinking of buying a house in Italy.
Where the Prime Minister is, er, Giorgia Meloni, who has been described as “hard right” and is opposed to same-sex marriage and parenting.
Will you tell her, or shall I?
MEMO to Rosie Duffield: The two-child benefit cap is not “social cleansing”.
It is merely encouraging people to take financial responsibility for the number of children they have and, where possible, not to have more if they can’t afford to support them.
AFTER being voted out of the Love Island villa with partner Jessy Potts, Joey Essex said: “It’s nice to walk out with someone who has meant a lot to me.”
Meant? That’s showbiz, folks.