Sunday Post, Ruralshire, England.

Ruralshire Constabulary lost many police officers during both world wars. Looking at the book of remembrance, one can see large numbers of constables who left to join the armed forces in the Great War, and who subsequently died. World War II shows a significant number  in air raids, and further military casualties and deaths. The various Ruralshire battalions suffered many dead and wounded, particularly in the far east and again in northern Europe.

Why then, is it against Force Policy to attend Remembrance Day parades in police uniform if you happen to be off duty, but it is OK to wear it for the annual Gay Pride march?

 

Question: When Is Crime a Good Thing?

Answer: when there is less of it here, than in the next county.

Here in Ruralshire Constabulary, we have been issued with a small Aide Memoire, consisting of ‘positive messages’. It is now accepted that we have to admit to having a certain level of crime. So; each time we admit to a crime, we have a ‘positive message’ to go with it. Here are some examples.

There has been a (fill in the gap) in your area. Deliver (choose from list) positive message. Make appeal for witnesses.

Violent Crime – ‘Mercifully, such crimes are very rare in Ruralshire. In fact, Ruralshire has less violent crime than (insert name of neighbouring county).

Vehicle Crime – ‘We are working with vehicle owners to ensure that valuables are kept out of sight, and anyway, we have less vehicle crime than (insert name of neighbouring county).

Burglary – ‘The good news is that Ruralshire suffered less burglary last year than (insert name of neighbouring county).

We have always been at war with Blandshire Police.

As you can see; a positive message for Ruralshire is a negative message for, say, Blandshire. This effectively means that for us to succeed, another police force has to fail. Personally, I don’t imagine that as a victim, you really care who is better or worse than us. You just want it sorted.

But who cares what you want? Not us apparently,

We just want to be better than the next county. A kind of huge game of playground football. A sort of ‘My Dad is bigger than your Dad’ kind of thing.

Bonkers.

Gadget Note: We are at war with Blandshire Police. We have always been at war with Blandshire Police. Blandshire Police are our enemy. (Sound familiar?)

Lift The Stone Just A Little Bit Higher and…………

The aunt of abducted schoolgirl Shannon Matthews was today jailed for a year after admitting to benefit fraud amounting to more than £35,000.

Mother-of-two Amanda Hyett admitted claiming a range of benefits while failing to tell the authorities she lived with her husband, bus driver Neil Hyett.

Hyett, 27, of King Edward Street, Thornhill Lees, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, was a prominent figure following the disappearance of Shannon Matthews last year.

She lived next door to the schoolgirl and is the sister of Shannon’s mother Karen’s former partner, Craig Meehan.

Former Policing Minister Hazel Blears told parliamentary authorities that a flat she owned in Kennington, south London, was her second home. However, she told the taxman that the property was her main home – and therefore did not have to pay tax on the profits of its sale in 2005.

Miss Blears sold the property for £200,000, about £45,000 more than she paid for it. Revenue rules at the time stated that any profit made on a second home was subject to capital gains tax at 40 per cent.

The reason for this post is simply to inform police officers what kind of person we used to work for (Blears), and to contrast her behaviour with that of the kind of people we work against (Hyet).

I guess the answer is that they both do what they can to feather their nest while the rest of us work hard to pay for it. Some are cute about staying inside the law, some are not. I’ll leave it to you to make the distinction.

A Minute For Madeleine McCann

A MINUTE FOR MADELEINE MCCANN – SPREAD THE WORD

Please help to pass this appeal around the world by posting on your Blog or social networking site. If you know anything about Madeleine; It’s never too late to do the right thing.

Theodore Dalrymple – Second Opinion

Monday Books must be involved in a conspiracy to prevent any police work being done in my small corner of Ruralshire. The book is compelling reading and I have not been able to put it down.

Second Opinion has clearly shown me three important things:

1. I cannot write, having previously thought I could.

2. The Underclass do exist, they are not just figments of my imagination.

3. Senior Managers in the NHS are as barking as ours in the police.

Dalrymple is a prison psychiatrist and works as a consultant consultant psychiatrist in a city hospital. His observations about the criminal dependency class who now call the shots in Britain are both funny and awful at the same time. Clearly, his ‘customers’ are the same as ours, and his frustration at system which allows these people to flourish, shines through.

Dalrymple will not bend to satisfy the latest political silliness. There is a great story about how he totally ignores an ‘important’ letter from his bosses, only to discover that whatever was inside must have been totally irrelevant as evidenced by the complete lack of consequences of the department never having received it. This could be the police, where new initiatives, usually designed to gain a promotion, are discarded as soon as they are adopted.

Dalrymple does not pander to his ‘customers’ in the way we do. He refuses to prescribe drugs to prisoners who fake illness and describes how methadone is used along with heroine, instead of as a replacement for it. Reading this book is not an education, it is a reinforcement excercise. For the un initiated, it must be a shock.

Together with Frank Chalk and his book about education, Theodore Dalrymple provides us with another indication that ‘Broken Britain’ is indeed, very broken.

Having said all of that; his writing style makes the book an uplifting read in a funny kind of way. You would expect this content to be depressing, but he avoids this with a skill I can only marvel at. This is a ‘must have’ for those hours spent waiting at Court in the police witness room, never to be called anyway, for an offender who will not be sentenced properly in any case.