A Quick Stop-in:

For those of you who have kindly emailed me to ask whether I have been ousted by some form of Ginger Dog - which I must say I have read about on Inspector Gadget's blog with no illumination as to what it is - I have not and will be commencing my posts as of the New Year. This week I have been living in the dark hole of my bedroom, only surfacing to appear at work, sit in a transit van and watch two or three drunk people walking home, then to slope back to my bed. In Blandshire Constabulary the official term for this style of policing is "TRYING TO FIND A USE FOR ALL THE EXTRA PCS WE HAVE FORCED TO COME INTO WORK".

As of tonight I will be shaking hands with happy revellers and trying to fend off kisses from the less attractive ones. (Unless no attractive ones ask.) Come 2am I will be rolling in a puddle with more drunk men and with any luck will not trudge home until at least 7.30am when the Bank Holiday has commenced. In case anyone is wondering, Yes, I am working tonight.

Happy New Year.
Bloggs.

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Bloggs' Christmas Speech:

To start with, I should say it turns out I was wrong about the Ipswich murderer. This is nothing new: I was also wrong when I thought someone was dead in their house and smashed their door to get in, but it turned out just to be their shoes on the floor.

Fortunately, unlike my Area Commander, there are no repercussions to me announcing my wronghood to the world. Unless you count "Management Advice".

Someone has asked me to say how I would change things rather than moaning all the time. This reader has picked up on something important about the police: Institutional Moaning. The police have tried their hardest to stamp out this threat and have come up with the solution that if you ignore the Moaning, it will go away. We have now reached a glorious era when it does not matter how much you complain about something valid, no one will do anything about it. This has the positive effect of preventing people from complaining about things that could be easily changed, but if changed would highlight an error by a senior manager or Home Office official.

Unfortunately a lot of the Moaners have therefore been driven underground and their diatribes of hate and misery can be found in blog-form all over the Web. The only solution is to root out these evil-doers and fire them. If you can publicly announce that they aren't really police officers at the same time, that will also help.

As for how to improve things in the future, I have a solution to that too. The truth is that we just do not produce enough reports about our police services. With only one more coming out every few days, how can we possibly hope to gather enough statistics to successfully prevent crime?

I therefore propose the panacea to heal our wounded Twenty-First Century services: The Monitoring Monitoring Act 2007. Police services will be encouraged to produce reports describing their report-producing prowess, with special prizes awarded to those who publish detailed graphs of how many graphs they have published each year.

This Act is sorely needed if we are to ever see police officers’ time spent 100% on the thing that matters: showing off how well they are doing.

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The Girl Who Dreamed.

It appears it is a sign of mad genius if you start dreaming that you are a fictional character in a fantasy story.

I must be one such genius, as this week I had a dream thus:

I was living and working in a cupboard under the stairs where they relocated the report writing room for uniformed officers. My wealthy aunt and uncle kept giving all their cash to a fat civilian whose job was to make sure that the people's whose jobs it was to make sure other people were doing their jobs properly, were doing their jobs properly.

Then, one day, a letter arrived from Superintendent Dumbledore and I was spirited off into a parallel reality where society respected the police, school discipline worked, I was trained to investigate crime and information only needed to be recorded once by one person. Yes, that is right, it turns out I was a Police Officer!

Unfortunately, I then woke up and was back in the cupboard under the stairs. It is just not healthy to indulge these fantasies.

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PS I am considering taking a break from my blog for Christmas so if I vanish off the radar, that is why. I may pop in to post "Humbug" from time to time.

False Economies.

Blandshire Constabulary is great at saving money.

Their golden rules are:

• No overtime - why make officers to transport their own prisoners to custody at the end of the shift, when the next shift to drive out to them and take over? It might take twenty minutes longer than the hour it would have, but we will save the time-and-a-third we would have had to pay in overtime.
• Do not refurbish anything, especially custody suites. It isn't worth spending money on this when you can simply pay two officers for a few hours' work driving back and forth to another town each time they arrest someone.
• Shut down all the facilities (gyms, canteens etc). Then they will have no choice but to work through their meal break.
• Make it mandatory to obtain three signatures to claim money for absolutely anything, or to order new uniform. The bulk of people will not bother.
• Cancel all training days and train via online questionnaires. It isn't as if changes in the law are that important.
• Run your marked police vehicles until the last possible mile until they actually die on the street during a response drive. Also, keep your fleet of vehicles to an absolute minimum. If you can reduce it so far that some officers have no access to a car for their entire shift, you have also saved on diesel costs!
• Following on from the above, do not bother putting cones, fire extinguishers or door-enforcers in any of the cars. Just have one per county which the officers can drive to pick up if needed.
• Where you used to need two sergeants for a shift of twelve, cut this down to one. Then cut the shift down to eight. Soon you will not need a sergeant at all.
• Teach your supervisors to manage by email. This is cheaper than face-to-face reprisals or encouragement.
• Encourage an atmosphere of demotivation, depression and internal bitching, in the hope of having to pay fewer salaries.
  
• Finally, do not forget what all this money is for: giving large payouts in compensation to criminals, and paying your legal fees when you cock up.

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Official Madness.

It appears that one of PC Sharon Beshenivsky's killers fled the UK using his sister's passport. The apparent flaw in his plan of his maleness was not an issue as he was wearing a hijab.

I can only imagine that the nationwide media will soon call for passport officials to require face coverings to be removed at airports! Is it just me, or is anyone else disgusted at the thought that in this day and age, our officials might be reduced to asking an apparently religious woman to remove an important item of clothing? It is not as if we normally need to see the faces of those entering and leaving our country, or that this kind of disguise has been used before. I really think that if criminals are going to be resourceful enough to dress up as the opposite gender, there is just no hope for law enforcement agencies and we should just give up.

On other matters, I am pleased to see the launch of a new government initiative to combine public sector premises such as schools and hospitals in order to save money. I proudly envisage the day that I will prepare my court files on a table that can be flipped over and used for operations, and when my incapacitant spray will double as a small fire extinguisher for running into burning buildings. Soon we will be able to get members of public to carry out police tasks. If that isn't economy, what is?

Roll on, Gordon Brown.

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Merry Courtsmas

Dear John P,

Blandshire Constabulary would hereby like to remind you that this is the season of giving, so please give your partner an extra smack from us. It is a time of year to think of the less fortunate, so if you could leave the door open behind you on your way out of Mrs Cosgrove's house this time, that will allow your younger brother to escape too.

Family is important to us all at Christmas so kindly ensure that BOTH your parents have to attend the police station at some stage during the festive season for your interviews. Don't worry at all about inviting your old Granny round on the big day, we will make sure someone pops into see her and we will even board up her door once the undertakers leave. Enjoy partying and just try to keep the noise to a level that can be heard three streets away.

Finally, have five pints on us before your drive home and have a Happy-Slapping New Year!

Regards,

Your Friendly Local Police Service.

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Three Cheers.

It is cheering to note that when a WOMAN finally makes it into the top echelons of the police, The Mirror thinks she is a man. I should add that they did correct this mistake, and after all, one can hardly blame them: Jacqui is a common bloke's name.

Meanwhile Harriet Harman has the right idea when she states, "It would be better to target the men who pay for sex than to criminalise women."

Women should never be criminalised, it isn't good for EQUALITY and I say it is no more than another way of Oppressing our poor gender.

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Just put icing on me and call me Detective.

I thought you would like to know that I have solved the Suffolk murders. The answer lies in this report.

I will not announce my suspicions online in case I libel someone or something, but if I am right be assured I will gloat about it a lot and submit an application to CID.

Another Great Scheme:

In an attempt to combat poor performance, Blandmore Local Police Area is piloting a scheme whereby all crime is to be legalised starting on 1st January 2007. The area has been responsible for a number of successful schemes including the 2006 Drink-Drive Amnesty and the Tolerant Policing Initiative.

"It is an exciting time for policing," said LPA Commander Superintendent McGittington. "We expect to see some real impact on the crime figures."

Officers in Blandmore have voiced their frustration recently regarding the paperwork and bureaucratic restrictions which hamper them from doing their job. Police chiefs are hopeful that following the advent of this Pilot, their officers will be able to spend more time on what is really important: attending Domestic Violence training and Sending Emails.

Quizzed on what sort of crime rate we should expect to see next year, Blandshire Chief Constable Iver Vainhope replied, "I wouldn't be at all surprised if we see a 100% reduction in all crime."

Only time will tell.


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FILES.

Blandmore has launched a grand scheme where by an office has been devoted to a platoon of civilians who are now responsible for FILES. I have only briefly mentioned FILES before, but they are a crucial element of Twenty-First Century policing and you cannot pretend to grasp the greater issues of crime and convictions unless you know a little about them.

When someone is charged with an offence they will go to court and a FILE will go with them. As the person has not yet pleaded Guilty or Not Guilty, the content of this file is completely irrelevant. All that matters is that you leave a bundle of papers tied up by a treasury tag in a bright yellow tray and tick a box on the wall above it. Whether the file contains the defendant's name, offences charged or an explanation of the offence has absolutely no impact on what will happen on the day in court.

Once the suspect pleads Not Guilty, the file becomes somewhat more important. A request will therefore be sent for the officer-in-the-case (ie Me) to complete a FULL FILE. I will have to list every bit of paper that I collected during the investigation and point out all of the flaws in the prosecution case to make the defence's job easier. This will also help the prosecution as it means they will only need to read one page of what might be a 50-page file in the five minutes they are given to prepare on the day of court.

Anyway, joy of joys, I have been informed that I no longer need to complete these FULL FILES! I have been waiting with bated breath to see officers flowing onto the streets of Blandmore with hours of free time to reassure residents.

I cannot understand why this has not happened. Through various enquiries I have established that this marvellous Full File Team is fully trained on how to send emails to the officers-in-the-cases to get them to send emails or faxes to third parties. They have a full day's input on The Law. They have not wasted their time by visiting a courtroom or spending any time watching police officers do their work. Their grasp of the English language is well above the average eight-year-old's. They have absolutely no contact with victims or witnesses to distract them and they fully understand that requests for complex work must arrive with the relevant officer at least one day before the trial and preferably when the officer is at home. They have a comprehensive Checklist which is adhered to rigidly. Finally, the Full File Team is not hampered by the requirement to actually produce Full Files.

I just can't see where the scheme has gone wrong.

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By the way:
Where is my anonymous rape-updater who I would have expected to bring this article to my attention?

The Costs of Answering:

It turns out if it costs too much to answer, the government can ignore questions in Parliament. This is also enshrined in the Freedom of Information Act which puts a limit of £600 on the cost of answering questions.

I have therefore decided that if my investigations are likely to cost too much, I will not bother to open them in the first place. I anticipate my workload being lightened considerably. Take an average Shoplifting:

• Shoplifter detained by security. PC Bloggs attends, arrests and conveys to custody. Two police officers' salaries for an hour = £25.
• Book into custody/take fingerprints. Two police officers, a custody sergeant and jailer for one hour = £50.
• Leave prisoner in custody while taking statements. Two police officers, custody sergeant, jailer for two hours = £100.
• Interview, two police officers, custody sergeant, jailer, two hours (including dealing with solicitor) = £100.
• Solicitor's costs for 3-4 hours = £200 at least.
• CPS advice. One police officer, one lawyer, one hour = £100.

It turns out I won't be arresting shoplifters any more.

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The Exciting World of CID.

Gosh I wished I worked for Suffolk CID at the moment and could be involved in a bona fide serial killer investigation. The most excitement I get in Blandmore is discovering that Mr Purchase and Mrs Roberts have made yet more counterallegations that the other has thrown garbage over the fence into their garden.

Whilst in no way wishing to make light of these awful deaths, I can't help hoping that the guy is caught by sending in an overly-ambitious and attractive female officer to pose as a hooker in fishnet leggings, who will decide to turn off her microphone and wander into some dark woods where she will narrowly avoid being killed herself but be rescued in the final moments by a dashing young detective who is also her secret lover.

I have a feeling he will more likely be caught by the thrilling process of interviewing witnesses and having a friend who grasses on him. Suffice it to say that however this comes to pass, you can guarantee it will involve an impressive amount of paperwork. How jealous I am of the DCs drafted into Ipswich from all over the force to fill out requests for copies of CCTV and to knock on lots of doors and write down people's names.

That said, I am reassured by this story that the days of the Undercover Sleuth are not over.

In case anyone is wondering how we balance Health and Safety against these dangerous undercover jobs, the answer is a gruelling training course in which applicants are expected to drink beer heavily each night until 4am and then spend the day trailing around town in unwashed clothes trying to blag free food from shops. Seriously.

As a sidenote: I never thought I would see the day I entered "Tommee Tippee" and "murder" into Google.

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We Are Not Safe!

"Never do anything in a vest that you wouldn't do without one. They don't make you invincible."

I am astonished to hear that police officers are not invincible whilst wearing their stab vests. It is a disgrace that we are being sent out in kit that cannot stop any injury imaginable. I also agree wholeheartedly with the above quote: if I wouldn't attend a knife-fight WITHOUT my vest, I am not going to bother WITH it, as it obviously makes no difference. The two officers I know who have had knifes glance off their vests would have been just as safe without the vest on as their skin could have performed the same function.

On health and safety grounds, here are some other things I will be refusing to do over the festive season:

• Administer first aid to anyone.
• Transport any prisoner.
• Lift drunk people off the floor.
• Go on foot patrol.
• Arrest violent people.
• Attend robberies.
• Go home.

None of these activities are safe, especially for Women. Until we can foresee every eventuality and prevent it, police officers should not leave the station.



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PC Bloggs Investigates... Inappropriate Adults.

With everybody talking about the state of the nation's children, I went deep undercover in Upper Blandmore at the weekend to find out the secret to good parenting.

The first step was to locate a "good" child who had "never done drugs", "doesn't drink" and "goes to school". I found this child on the Porle estate, when I called round to share a cup of tea with his erstwhile parents and arrest him for breaching his ASBO.

It turns out that a good parent should train their children never to open the door to strange police officers. This can be best taught through leading-by-example and if the door must be opened, it should be followed up with the remark, "Ryan's not here." It is then vital to discover what has brought the officer to your door, in order to select the appropriate response from the list below:

• "That bitch deserved it and anyway it was an accident."
• "Ryan was here with me when that happened."
• "I want to press charges against them for harassing my Ryan."
• "This isn't Ryan, it's his twin brother Noel."
• "You can't arrest him now, I've got the baby to look after."
  

If you are unable to fool or intimidate the officer into going away, the next best thing is to get yourself arrested as well as Ryan, to support your son in his endeavours. It will also mean you can both visit his father in the nick. Failing that, refuse to attend the police station with Ryan as it will be good for the boy to learn about Social Services.

On attending the police station when all other options have failed, bear in mind the role of the Appropriate Adult is:

• To interrupt the Custody Sergeant when he is talking.
• To protest your child's innocence at every possible moment.
• To answer questions during interview and speak over any lies your child tells with the words, "This is ridiculous".
• Warn your child that even though he didn't do it, his father will "kill" him.
  

If you are doing your job properly you should be evicted from interview at least once. Your child will not always thank you for your strenuous parenting, but any sign of embarrassment should be taken as confirmation that you are succeeding.

If worst comes to the worst and dear Ryan is charged with the offence, make sure to book him a dentist appointment on the day of court. If he must attend, at least dress him in his finest tracksuit for the big day to give the magistrate the right impression, and sit in the back of court where you can aim death stares at the witnesses. Always remember that it is the shitbag teenager you have raised who should take priority over your well-behaved younger children.

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Huh?

Can anyone make head or tail of what is meant to have happened here?

Ten Things...

Ten things I love that don't happen to me enough at work:

1. Getting called "Ma'am" by a teenager.
   
2. My prisoner not wanting a solicitor.
3. Reuniting lost children with parents who really do want them back.
4. Opening my Inbox and finding I have no new emails.
   
5. Catching out people who lie in interview.
   
6. Arresting a child who has never been arrested before, who cries and says sorry.
7. Receiving emails containing praise.
8. Finding people hiding in cupboards who aren't meant to be there.
9. Getting into work and finding that there is actually a police car available for me to drive that day.
10. Being thanked.

My favourite thing in the world, though, is coming into work to find that someone has removed one of my investigations from my tray and taken responsibility for it.

Sadly I'm still waiting for that to happen.

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The Wondrous Net.

In case you did not know, the solution to all problems is to Name and Shame. The next sector of society to be subjected to this treatment will be Absent Parents. I just cannot wait to see the success of this scheme, whereby parents who refuse to support their children will have their names published on a website.

I think you will all agree that this initiative will save the mass of deprived offspring roaming this land. We will surely see their promiscuous and dole-collecting sires/dams hanging their heads with embarrassment. It will also promote healthy peer pressure whereby the children whose parents DO pay for them can surf the Net to find out which of their classmates are not so lucky.

Not only will this idea do wonders for children's esteem, but it is yet another ingenius alternative to sending people to prison, which must be avoided at all cost. Will the creativity of this government never end!

No, really, will it?

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More Breaking News!

From the desk of detective extaordinaire PC Bloggs, I bring you the latest in her ongoing investigation into the driver who crashed nine years ago: the DNA is finally back from the lab and he was drunk!

This is an improvement on the DNA sample I took a few weeks ago which was destroyed during a "clear out" of "old" exhibits in the crammed Blandmore freezer. I have only myself to blame for overlooking the golden rule of investigation, which is that if you are too busy to do an enquiry for two or three weeks, the enquiry can be thrown in the bin.

Here is how I investigate crashes where the driver has been drinking:

1. Arrive on scene and note how the car has left the road for no apparent reason.
2. Breath/blood/urine-test the driver.
3. Charge with drink-driving.

If the driver is dead at the scene, step 3 can be omitted to simplify things further. I think you will agree that my powers of detection are above reproach and I am thinking of joining the Parisian police to show them how to cut down their drink-drive investigations from nine years to an hour.

Note: If you receive an unusual result and suspect the blood samples have been swapped, believe me there is more than a small chance that they HAVE been swapped accidentally while left in a heap on the Scenes of Crime officers' table.

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How to deal with Salesmen:

Turn on your speakers and click here.

Bowing.

I am confused: is "Bowing to Public Pressure" a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

Modern Britain has accepted that we police officers are here to Serve the Public. Blandshire Constabulary embraces this mission wholeheartedly and I think you will agree that the results speak for themselves:

• We now produce a fleet of statistics each year that show things the public love, such as evidence of our inefficiency and racism.
  
• We have put more and more bobbies and quasi-bobbies out on foot, which has had a noticeably Reassuring effect on the public: whereas seven or eight PCs used to be ready to respond to a caller, now they have one Personal one.
  
• We have enforced more and more laws targeting Antisocial Behaviour and other modern buzzwords, becoming specialists at rearresting people who have just been released with no sentence by the courts.

Yet as a modern Service we also recognise those times when we should NOT bow to public pressure and stand up for our values. These include:

• Calls for us to do less paperwork.
• Calls to stop terrorist demonstrations.
• Plans to Name and Shame paedophiles.

It is a tricky business for forces to identify those times when they should Bow to Pressure because that is what our Customers WANT, and the times when they should not give in to Out-of-control Vigilante Pressure Groups Who Don't Understand the Law.

Here is a simple test your force can use to establish the right course of action:

1. Can the thing called for be fulfilled by legislation?
2. Will fulfilling it make a pressure group go away?
3. Does it mean making easily-Detected offences Recordable?
4. Can officers be trained to do it Online without the need for a classroom input?
   
5. Can it be achieved via email?

If the answer to all of these is Yes, Bowing to Pressure is a Good Thing and your force should do it.

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Bloggers Beware!

I think I missed a trick with this article, discussed by another blogger. For my readers who are scared at the prospect of following a link, it is about the police obtaining access to a journalist's mobile phone records to see if he had been talking with an officer.

Whilst "RIPAs" (authority to invade people's privacy) are hard to come by in Blandshire Constabulary, a case of a detective in Major Crime leaking information to the press would probably justify one, albeit the investigators might stumble across a bunch of other private information on the journalist's phone in the process.

This case might cause particular alarm for us police bloggers. If a journalist had been in touch with us by telephone and produced articles on the strength of our information, could the police justify a RIPA into his phone records to reveal which bobby has been bragging?

My gut feeling is: they would LOVE to, but our posts would have to constitute criminal activity to fall under the Act. I don't think simply bringing discredit on our employers would do it.

Hoorah! Now when will all those journalists call...

Little and Often...

A few weeks ago a commenter on The Magistrate's Blog suggested that if motorists were debited £10 from their account every time they inched over the speed limit, it would not take long before they stopped speeding altogether. The issue is one of finding exactly the right deterrent and punishment to actually prevent the offence.

Today and recently the issue of discipline in schools is being discussed. What is the right deterrent for an unruly pupil who repeatedly disrupts classes? It used to be a good wallop with a ruler. But in the Twenty-First Century kids have nerve-endings and we should not breach these without substantial cause.

Some schools are employing discipline programmes involving the use of warnings, further warnings, and then stern warnings said in a really loud voice. These systems are being implemented with no thought as to the terrible emotional psychological damage that may be done to youngsters by being told off. Likewise the courts give out community orders haphazard without reference to the potential long-terms effects of having to attend a monthly meeting with a probation officer or wearing a wrist-bracelet that can only be removed to go on holiday.

It is time we re-thought our Draconian approach to discipline nowadays and remembered that there is good in all of us.

Sensible Policing Petition

Frank Chalk's Petition

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"Support" is the operative word.

A PSCO has been stabbed while trying to serve an eviction notice. I stay away from blogging on these awful stories as it is not for me to be flippant about someone lying in hospital, but the significant aspects that struck me about the story were:

• Even if he had a stab vest on, he was stabbed in the neck.
• Police officers were en route but for the PCSO arrived first and went in.
• Was this a suitable commitment for a PCSO to undertake?
• How much training do they get in self-defence?
• Do they have enough experience of confrontation in their day-to-day work to practice for these situations? Do they get to observe experience colleagues or police officers dealing with confrontations which to me is the best form of training.

Any thoughts?

Do we expect too much of our PCSOs?
	Yes
	No
	Sack them all!

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Going MENTAL:

Newsflash: one person a week dies at the hands of the mentally ill.

Or, to use the official terminology: Somebody goes MENTAL. Fortunately, Thurrock Council has solved this crisis and in 2004 they announced that "There are no more murders being committed by people with mental health problems". Phew.

Back in Blandmore... After the MENTAL attack, the nutter in question is usually handed over to the police to deal with, whereupon the Mental Health services have little to do with him or her until he is sentenced to a Hospital Order by a court. If we are lucky, we can palm them off on the MH team as early as post-arrest, but if it is a murder we will be looking to charge the MENTALIST anyway as it seems to be the only way to force the Courts to do something.

One of the suggestions in the first link above as to how the Mental Health workers overlook these imminent attacks is the fact that they are apparently desensitised to the warning signs by constant exposure to MADMEN.

This is interesting, as I find that as a police officer, I get gradually more and more sensitised to CRIMINALS. On the few occasions I am on patrol in Blandmore, I amuse myself by trying to stop vehicles being driven by Criminal Record-holders, otherwise knows as "CROs". Only last month I stopped five vehicles and had a 100% hit rate. (To any CROs out there reading my blog: firstly let me congratulate you on learning to read and secondly, by stopping your cars I am not trying to HARASS you but to gather INTELLIGENCE. The first concept you will know well, the second perhaps not.)

Why does this logic not apply to MH workers? Surely they should be able to visit one of their regulars and think, "He's about to GO MENTAL. Call in the troops [ie Me] and lock him up!"

Conversely, it appears that I have become more sensitive to loonies instead, to the extent that I can diagnose them purely from the content of the 999 call made by their partner.

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Just to show I am a police officer...

Todday I drove awt the nick and knabbed a bad guy. It was grate.

PC Bloggs.

Chaaaarge!

It is now being recommended that we pay charges to drive on roads.

This is glorious news: I do not think that the innocent motorist can be targeted enough by government schemes. If people like myself will insist on wanting to rush everywhere, we must pay the price. For example, it would take me an hour and a half by rail to get to work instead of twelve minutes by car. If I finished late following an afternoon shift I might even have to walk home which would take two or more hours. That would teach me.

Other ways we could target motorists for their selfish ways of life are:

• Introduce a set fee per person carried in each car. The more people who travel in these fume-beasts, the more psychological harm they are doing.
• Install every car with a black box and video camera which will be downloaded automatically each week. They can then be fined for every minor error they make.
• Produce a website which shows the location of every car in the country, its speed and course, to name and shame those drivers.

If anyone can think of any more suggestions as to how we can make motorists' lives a misery, let me know.

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I am most peeved.

Gosh and darnit, somebody out there thinks I'm not really a police officer. This same person also accuses me of being a graduate and a journalist, and of bringing out a book in a year's time. I can only imagine that this commenter is a member of Professional Standards trying to trick me into revealing my identity. Their schoolboy error was the suggestion that a journalist might have a degree - if there are any out there I haven't met them yet.

But I will answer the accusation: you are quite correct, I am actually a writer. My works include "The Report of the Man Attacked with a Hammer", "The Tale of the Egg-throwers" and "The Day I Attended an Attempted Murder". You might also have read my crime novellas: "The Job That Could Not Be No-Crimed" and "Crime-Managed To Death".

I am not just a writer, however. I am also a mechanic, delivery driver, carpenter, therapist and teacher, mentor, parent, social worker, soldier and friend. I'll even have a go at your plumbing.

I hope this clarifies matters.

I cannot really blame you for thinking I might not be a police officer: most of the people who have required my services in Blandmore are not entirely sure that I am one either. I was nonetheless unaware that being a graduate and police officer are mutually exclusive. Furthermore, I must take umbrage at the suggestion that I work part-time and would prefer that you use the politically correct term "dosser". In terms of bringing out a book, I can only hope that once I have written one, someone is foolish enough to publish it and a whole lot more people are foolish enough to buy it.

Finally, you have attacked my description of "taking the piss" as a verb. You are correct, I should have said "piss-taking" which would have been a compound verb with a nounal specifier.

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PS In case it is not clear, I AM a police officer and I work FULL-TIME. In the event that this article did not spell it out, it is possible to be a full-time bobby AND use the internet simultaneously.