I am not a crook. Unless you count gross misconduct. You do? Oh.

The Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police has had a final warning for trying to give his relatives a leg-up into the job.  After denying any wrongdoing for the best part of a year, Grahame Maxwell has suddenly realised that cheating his force's own phone system by making an outgoing call to get his cousin/child/auntie an application form was in fact immoral and therefore a discredit to his force.  

The cause of this eleventh hour epiphany?  Dare I suggest that the "cough" came when he was promised a final warning rather than the sack.  Along with the admission was a statement that "a very difficult week led to errors in judgment".  Good thing he isn't in an important job then, where he might have to make life and death decisions under pressure.

Maxwell and Briggs: Where did it all go wrong?

Perhaps when they wandered off the set of Dixon of Dock Green.

The situation of having a Chief Constable who has admitted to flagrant nepotism and spent six months trying to crawl out of the hole he'd dug himself is unusual, to say the least.  I wonder if the two members of police staff who were fired for similarly bypassing the recruitment process, will appeal against the different treatment they got to that meted out at the top.  

A baffled Mr Maxwell: "But I joined up to help people... no one told me I wasn't supposed to help my own family get a job."

Of course, the papers have missed the real scandal in all of this: that North Yorkshire Police aim to recruit the best candidates for their force by a race to the phones in a first-come first-served application form bonanza.

Then again, at least they still have application forms.  I believe Blandshire's planning to recruit next year's batch by throwing rugs over people's heads on the street and dragging them into a transit.  If you fight your way free without uttering any racist epithets, you're in.

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