The troubled Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, has been musing aloud about the type of police service required by the British people. It is, to be fair, a vexed question. The British people can't be trusted to give a sensible answer on any matter of serious import, as they have proved repeatedly in general elections.
On policing, the public always asks for more bobbies on the beat, as this is seen as reassuring, ignoring the fact that if the Peelers are walking up and down the public avenues or - as is more often the case - queuing for white pudding suppers at Toni's Fish'n'Chicken Bucket, they are not really solving crime.
In general, the public hankers for a Dixon of Dock Green style of policing, while politicians favour the community policing of Mr George Orwell's 1984 (with CCTV, "thoughtcrime" and the "Two Minute Hate" on satellite television). The nostalgia for dear old PC George Dixon is in any case misplaced, as he was shot dead by Mr Dirk Bogarde during his first screen appearance, in the splendid Ealing film The Blue Lamp.
Sir Ian Blair suggests that the answer to the problems of policing lies in something called "targeted intolerance". As he says this, news arrives from the Netherlands that an innocent house sparrow has been shot dead after knocking over 23,000 dominoes, thereby disrupting a world record attempt organised by Endemol, the television company responsible for Big Brother. In other news, the shrill "wine expert" Ms Jilly Goolden; the "long-haired lover from Liverpool", Mr Jimmy Osmond; and Ms Carol Thatcher, the daughter of the former Prime Minister, Lady Thatcher; have signed up for the fifth series of the ITV "reality" TV series, I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.
If ever there was a justification for a display of targeted intolerance, that is it.
3 comments:
blogging this good eeserves a book of its own! Get cracking, Kirk!
If police chiefs are chosen by election, problems relating to police priorities, focus,and targeted achievements will be automatically solved. No other solution, in particular public consultations, parliamentry debate, or left-liberal elite pontification will achieve the remotest benefit.
Those of you who live by the Internet should be grateful that the peelers have got Weaselboy bang to rights; this is the name given to the sneering little toad who used his banausic 'skills' on the web to spam and scam to his immense profit. Would that all such abusers of fraudulent emails were now in his position, viz, unwilling to bend down and pick up the soap in the shower.
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