The Insidious Kerry McCarthy and DNA Swabs

Via Leg Iron and Al Jahom, I see that the egregious Kerry McCarthy wants me to be DNA tested* because I live in Bristol. After all, being male and living in Bristol, I am now apparently, in this deluded woman’s mind, a suspect in the Joanna Yeates murder.

Kerry McCarthy, Labour MP for Bristol East, wants swabs to be taken from the entire male population – around 250,000 people.

Miss McCarthy said: ‘I understand some people think this is an invasion of their privacy but I think most people would understand that city-wide testing could get the killer off the streets.’

Well, it is an invasion of privacy and I don’t “understand” that city-wide testing will get the killer off the streets. I do understand why Miss Yeates’ parents might think so, but grieving parents are not the people who should be involved in such decision making and MPs who jump on populist bandwagons at their expense really are the lowest of the low.

Al Jahom has already covered the absurdity of the suggestion –  on cost grounds, time and false positives, so I won’t repeat it. What I will say is this; DNA testing is not a panacea and testing all of the men in a whole city is overkill. I have a cast iron alibi for the time Miss Yeates went missing, so, doubtless, do many of the 250,000 men McCarthy wants tested. Yes, I can prove it, too. Therefore, there is no need to DNA test me. Also, as I live on the other side of Bristol, I am no more likely to be in Clifton at the relevant time than, say, someone from the Yorkshire Dales. Indeed, I cannot even recall the last time I was in Clifton.

So, should the police call upon me to submit to a DNA test, the response will be a firm refusal. And Kerry McCarthy can stuff her misanadry where the sun don’t shine. And I am not going to aid the police in their obsessive DNA gathering exercise.

*Daily Mail, so caveat reader…

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Update: The Evening Post also has the story.

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Update: As the day has progressed, it seems that ms McCarthy is distancing herself from the comments published in the media, claiming that she has been misrepresented. This I find entirely believable given the general quality of journalism we’ve come to expect. The trouble is, who do you believe; journalists or politicians? There’s only one way to find out…

 

5 Comments

  1. The story’s moved on since yesterday afternoon, LR. now, the police are requesting DNA samples from her Facebook ‘friends’, even those who live nowhere near Bristol, and in fact may never even have met her!

    This is getting more and more surreal as time goes on…

  2. It is this kind of bullshit that really makes me despair about our so called leaders. If this is her best suggestion about how the investigation should proceed she should stick to watching CSI and publishing balls on Twitter.
    Incidentally, were she a true CSI fan she should realise that in a crime such as this where there appears to be no sexual motive and doesn’t involve the copious spilling of blood (which as a strangling I assume it didn’t) you can NEVER rule out a female perpetrator. Of course, as we live in the real world where DNA is a useful but far from flawed tool rather than the magic bullet it is on TV, she should, on balance, just stick with shutting the hell up.

  3. Intriguingly, the ‘Mail’ was reporting this morning that there were moves afoot to move off some of the younger officers, and bring in some ‘old hands’.

    Now, if true, it might just be the police equivalent of ‘bringing on a sub’ ( fresh blood) or it might be that modern policing methods and the whiz-bang CSI-style approach is suddenly under the spotlight. Not least for the cost outlined by Al Jahom..

  4. Barking idea but don’t forget that Kerry McCarthy was McDoom’s Twitter Czar. It’s in their genes!

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