Old for New

Talk about recycling old presents and giving them away as new at Christmas, there has recently been a glut of old news dressed up as today's headlines.

Apart from the staggering news that hot drinks can help a cold, and that dogs feel jealousy, this month I have again read that patients will be able to rate their GPs online. Perhaps I'm suffering from festive fever, but I'm sure I read something like this and blogged on it about a year ago.

Has the public now become so gullible that it really is acceptable to publish as news things that have existed for days, months, years, even? Earlier this year the media broadcast the comments of McMillan-Scott MEP, who said if the UK had a system such as the US Amber Alert, Shannon Matthews would have been found sooner. It didn't seem to matter that the Child Alert was started in 2003 with the backing of Milly Dowler's parents, or that between 2004-2006, Child Rescue Alert was gradually adopted up by all UK forces. (And that's overlooking the basic truth that an Alert would not have found Shannon because her mother already knew where she was.)

The trouble with this endless regurgitation of news is that the public are now encouraged to flare up at the slightest thing, rant about it for a week, and then put it down and forget about it until it's mentioned again some time later.

We are becoming a nation of goldfish, with small excitements, small fears, and smaller hopes and dreams.

Is it wrong that I still desire to save the world, whether it wants saving or not?

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Baddie Bags

In a new initiative designed to foster safe and sensible night-time behaviour, drug-dealers in Blandmore will be handing out goodie bags to revellers over the festive season. The bags will contain a plastic bottle crack pipe, a drug awareness pack, a drink spiking aid, acid lollipops and hash brownies, as well as a pair of high-heeled shoes.

Operation Overdose goes live in Blandmore this week, and is the brainchild of local pusher Goldie "Death-Bringer" Hawkes. Goldie explains: "The drug awareness pack assists punters with the latest street names and advisable quantities to purchase. The drink spiking aid is a cap with a hole in it, and it is accompanied by a handbook describing likely target for spiking. The lollipops and brownies are just to line people's stomachs before they smoke hard crack, and the high heels should encourage their rape in a comatose state afterwards."

The criminal fraternity have been criticised for turning to soft tactics to combat the lethargy of thecredit crunch, but they defend themselves saying, "Anything that gets people stoned safely by the end of the night is a positive move."

If it all means that I won't become a glorified taxi driver this Christmas, I'm all in favour.

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

The weight of the world...

A link my email is on the top right of my sidebar. This means I receive on average 2-3 emails per month about one of the following:

1. Can I explain why the police took so long to turn up to the sender's burglary last week.
2. The sender was arrested last night over a domestic where all he did was push his partner, and he was kept in custody for NINE hours. This was ridiculous. I am asked to advise how he can claim compensation and have the officers in question fired.
3. A police officer wearing a poorly-ironed shirt told the sender to move his/her car out of an are where the sender really thought he should have been able to park. When the sender politely queried whether this was necessary, the officer issued him a ticket. Please can I account for this behaviour.
4. Why, even though the sender in no way wanted anyone prosecuted, did police insist on arresting his cousin for a heated scrap over a mutual relative? This has ruined a good relationship and is my fault personally.

Sometimes I reply to these emails. Sometimes I point the sender in the direction of my blog. It frustrates me that, no matter how much police bloggers talk about it, the public still do not seem to grasp that front-line police officers are just as pissed off with bureaucracy and jobsworthiness as they are. Or that we are not each responsible for everything that anyone wearing all or part of a police uniform does.

You might wonder why I leave my email address up there.

Well, I get other emails too. I hear from rape victims confiding in me about how the criminal justice system treated them. I hear from the families of people who have been murdered, whose killers received a pittance in jail time, and how it has affected them. I also sometimes hear from the families of the killers, and that can be just as moving. I hear from people who support my- our- efforts, and who appreciate that the job we do each day will always have beneficiaries and losers. I keep all the emails, and sometimes I read some of them again.

Keep getting in touch.

As long as you don't expect me to rescind your speeding ticket/sympathise with your wife-battering/pay you compensation, all emails will be carefully considered and your privacy respected.

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Breaking News: Everything Is Going To Be All Right

For the last couple of years I've been somewhat pessimistic about the prospects for policing in this country. But over the weekend, I have had an epiphany. An impossibly cheery email from the Superintendent Responsible For Email-Based Morale has made me realise that the world is really full of smiles and laughter.










In particular, I have realised the following:

• If we try, we can give people the Service They Deserve.
• Every Scumbag Behind Bars is my own grandmother's life saved.
  
• Criminals can run, but they Can Not Hide. Not For Very Long Anyway.
• Together, we are STRONGER.

This week I have seen smiling happy faces everywhere in the police station as a result of this email, and can guarantee that crime will fall at least 10% before the end of the day.

God Bless the Superintendent. How could we get any real police work done without him?

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Pressure

Coppersblog has already reported on this story, whereby social rights groups have condemned the wearing of hi-vis vests by offenders doing community service.

Personally I think it's outrageous that offenders are made to do community service at all, and much prefer the way sentences are enforced in Blandmore Magistrates Court. There, magistrates take a three-step approach to curing naughty people of their naughtinesses:

1. Start out on the basis that the crime they have committed warrants only a custodial sentence, but instead give out a community order.
2. When the offender fails to carry out the community order, tell them they really must try a little wittle bit harder to do it.
3. After 12 months of trying to persuade the offender to do the work, accept that a community sentence is not working and exchange it for an absolute discharge.
   

It is this sensitive approach that has boosted the confidence of several troubled souls in Blandmore: namely Ryan who now thinks nothing of screaming abuse at his teachers mid-class, Kellee who tells the police to fuck off as a pastime on a Friday night, and Lee who is so immune to social embarrassment that he bravely shouts over all customers in his local minimart whilst waving a replica handgun around and making off with the cash.

If these poor mites felt degraded and humiliated in front of their peer groups, how could they possibly have the poise and charisma to behave like this?

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Another victim of Saturday Night Blame culture

Firing Sharon Shoesmith will do nothing to make children safer. Nor will calling for public inquiries, naming and shaming those who directly killed Baby P, bemoaning the breakdown of British society/families/morals. No indeed, we need to go much further.

Since the dawn of time, people have abused their children, and I now propse this radical ten-step programme to eradicating child abuse FOREVER:

1. Baby licenses. Couples have to apply to have children in the first place, and the adjudicators who give out the licenses will be people like Jacqui Smith and Boris Johnson.
2. It goes without saying, certain categories of person will not be allowed to give birth at all: single parents, those who have had more than one marriage, or more than one partner, or more than one sexual partner, or any sex at all ever.
   
3. Cameras installed in every home, with audio, and voice recognition to call the police immediately if any of the following sounds are heard: crying child, raised voice, loud thud or other noise.
4. Social Services to vet the household of every new baby at one week intervals, for the first five years of their life, then fortnightly until they are 10, then monthly.
5. Social Workers to have the power to have someone instantaneously convicted of child abuse without the need for judicial process.
   
6. Sterlisation in police stations. Whenever someone is arrested, along with their DNA and fingerprints being taken, they will be sterilised. People who get arrested shouldn't be allowed to have kids.
7. The immediate removal of all children from their parents. The parents will then have to retrospectively apply for a license as above.
8. Parents to wear a tag with satellite navigation system, to allow their parental effectiveness to be monitored at all times.
   
9. All children to be put into foster care, forever.
10. The whole of the UK to become one big family, with all children as wards of the nation and politicians directly responsible for their welfare. This is because ultimately politicians know best how children should be brought up.

Until we enact the above programme, cases like Baby P will continue to happen.

I don't WANT that to be the case. But I do want to live in a society where people who aren't torturing and murdering their babies can bring them up without state interference. You can't have it both ways.

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

You Ain't Got No Warrant

The Met has been lambasted, along with the Speaker of the House of Commons, for the search they conducted of MP Damian Green's office, because they didn't have no warrant.

I am often being told by people, usually skinheaded youths or dole-receiving single mothers, that I "can't go in without no warrant". This is usually followed up with the information that said youth or mother "knows the law, yeah".

It has now transpired that the Met didn't have no warrant, but had consent to search the office from the Serjeant-at-Arms.

Several thoughts:

• First, you don't need a warrant to search premises controlled by someone if that someone is in custody for an indictable offence and an inspector has authorised it under s.18 Police and Criminal Evidence Act.
• Second, you don't need a warrant if consent is given for the search by the person in control of the property. For example a parent gives consent to search their child's room, even if the child is over 18 (as long as they're not considered a tenant).
  
• Third, anyone who gives someone a job title of Serjeant-of-Arms [sic] should not expect that serjeant to know or care a great deal about anything other than ancient codes of chivalry and heraldic emblems. Let's face it, Serjeant Jill Pay probably spends most of her day leaning against a doorpost in an impossible tall and cold Gothic hallway.

Either way, I'm not sure I much like the thought of the police entering the House of Commons for a search, whether legal or otherwise. But I also don't much like the thought that an MP could hide illegal goods/documents in their office there without any fear of it being found.

As the Cabinet stick by the police whilst disowning all knowledge of the affair, there may be half a thought in the Home Secretary's mind that this probably all started when a constituent of Ashford reported that someone was leaking documents and named the MP as the offender. Under the National Crime Recording Standards introduced by this government, the force had to record this as a crime and list the suspect. For all we know the Met have introduced a Positive Intervention policy when it comes to whistle-blowing and had no choice therefore but to arrest the named offender immediately, whether or not there was any evidence.

Either way, a lot of people have stuck their necks out this week saying it is an outrage that Damian Green MP was arrested. A lot of people had better hope that Damian Green MP really has done no more than leak documents provided to him by a civil servant in the way that many have before him. Something tells me there's more to this than straightforward whistle-blowing which half the House have probably indulged in to get where they are.

Still, I've burned my hard drive just to be sure, and told the Serjeant who guards my front door not to let anyone in with or without a warrant.





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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.