Why don’t black lives matter at the carnival?

I do not get out very much these days, but the glorious weekend weather persuaded me that I should spend a pleasant afternoon watching people stabbing each other at our annual celebration of stabbing, the Notting Hill Carnival. I go most years and enjoy the street food, the music and the sight of white police officers with fixed rictus grins ‘getting down’ with some vast-mammaried semi-clad mama, their helmets askew and rivulets of sweat running down each crisp white shirt. And of course the violence, the violence. I am delighted to say that in this regard 2016 did not disappoint, with more than 400 people arrested and five stabbed — and all for the very reasonable cost of just £7 million to the taxpayer.

I was slightly surprised that the new campaigning organisation ‘Black Lives Matter UK’ has not yet called for the carnival to be banned, as it seems to pose a rather more potent threat to black people than sitting in a police cell or being carted off to the nick in the back of a paddy wagon.