Police in Manchester are threatening to crush the Britain First ‘battle bus’ unless leader Paul Golding can come up with new insurance within the next few days – and that may not be as easy as it sounds.
But first, let’s recap: three weeks ago, Paul Golding and his co-leader Ashlea Simon drove their ill-named ‘battle bus’ around Manchester flaunting a banner which said ‘Keir Starmer is a wanker’.
Clear warning
Unsurprisingly, he was pulled up by Manchester’s finest, issued with a Section 59 notice and warned that if he and/or the vehicle were involved in similar behaviour within the next 12 months, the bus would be seized.
He was told this twice, in clear terms. And indeed, it was on the actual notice he was handed.
So, high on a whiff of marketable martyrdom, he repeated the exercise a few days later, turning up at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool where it was no shock to anyone when the local constabulary took possession of the bus.
Impounded
Retrieving it from the police pound, and knowing full well the likely consequences, he then paraded it at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester where, as you might expect, it was again taken off his hands and impounded.
But there was something else that Golding learned during these run-ins with Old Bill.
When the vehicle was seized it was not only examined for possible offences, but the police also checked with the insurers that it was properly covered.
So, when it was seized in Manchester at the Tory Conference, Golding’s insurers were aware that the vehicle had been issued with the Section 59 notice and Golding had breached it.
What Golding might not have realised is that a Section 59 notice is not a trivial matter. It is a formal police warning that the vehicle has been involved in behaviour that has caused alarm, distress, or annoyance to the public.
Getting serious
And, crucially, it must be notified to insurers by the insured driver, as it means the vehicle has been used in an anti-social manner which could lead to a claim being reduced or invalidated if not disclosed.
Did he bother to tell the insurers? Well, we don’t know, but we do know that after the last seizure in Manchester, his insurers told the police the vehicle was no longer insured.
So when Golding pitched up at Urmston police station on Friday, it all got a bit more serious.
He was told that as the vehicle was not insured he would have to provide valid insurance within 14 days of the seizure or it would be crushed.
But that might not be straightforward, given the circumstances in which he has just had his cover cancelled.
Unlikely conspiracy
Golding is now pleading an unlikely conspiracy against him by the police who, he says, bullied the insurers into withdrawing his insurance.
“The sneaky police despots rang our insurance company while we were at the police station and pressured them to cancel our insurance policy, meaning that we could not take the bus away” he claims.
It’s a point he keeps hammering away at – but the fact is, it’s complete fiction. There is absolutely no basis in fact for the allegation.
His own video of the visit to Urmston police station shows he was told by the police, as you would expect, that they were not at liberty to discuss their conversation with the insurers and that he would have to contact the insurers himself to find out.
When he did, he says, he was simply told his insurance was cancelled.
No evidence
Nowhere is there a shred evidence to support his claim that police bullied insurers into cancelling it.
We suspect that the truth is that it was cancelled because of his repeat offending and for omitting to inform his insurers of the Section 59 notice.
Because one thing we know is that Paul Golding, the village idiot of British fascism, needs no help from anyone else in getting himself into a jam by behaving like an total dick.
And then expecting his mug punter followers to bail him out with their donations. Because, inevitably, this has now cued a grifting appeal for money.
It’s ‘Save my battle bus’ time, an ‘Emergency Appeal’ launched with an 11-minute rant outside the police station.
Transparent scam
He claims, totally implausibly, that “Our legal costs, since the first detainment of our Battle Bus several weeks ago, and including two subsequent seizures of the Battle Bus, are already sitting at several thousand pounds”.
Frankly, we don’t believe it. It’s just another transparent attempt to scam his remaining loyal supporters into stumping up, yet again, to save him from the consequences of his own idiocy. With hopefully some left over for…whatever.
And, much as we would delight in the spectacle of his hate wagon being unceremoniously reduced to scrap metal – which, by our reckoning happens in about four days time if he doesn’t sort out his insurance – we are resigned to the likelihood that they will fall for it yet again.
