Law and Order UK - Police to prosecute

"I've got a bigger postbag than you!"

The Crown Prosecution Service is getting its workload reduced and by implication its staffing numbers. Home Secretary Theresa May has announced proposals aimed at reducing police bureaucracy. She said her plans marked a "watershed moment" in policing and could save up to 2.5 million police hours each year.

Basically the Home Office's idea is to allow police officers, rather than the Crown Prosecution Service, to decide whether to press charges in up to 80% of cases, with some people being charged by post. I'm assuming they will have been arrested and subsequently interviewed beforehand. "Will you be charging me, then?" "Not today, the charge will be the post!"

The police should be "chasing criminals not chasing targets," said Mrs May. I agree, but she better make sure that the police are involved in real chases and not paper chases.

Wolverhampton mayor arrested after cannabis raid

The Pick of the Cop!

There was a time when the police would accept the word of someone like the mayor of a town. But we live in very changed times. A gentleman may not seem all that he appears. A policeman may not appear all that he seems. We've lived through MPs having their parliamentary offices raided, MPs in court and subsequently sent to prison. We've had CEOs of large companies telling porkies. We've witnessed football managers outdoing each other on the expletives. Is it any wonder the police are not prepared to accept the word of a gentleman?

The mayor of Wolverhampton, a Liberal Democrat, has been arrested after cannabis plants were found by police at an industrial unit. He says it's nothing to do with him. Malcolm Gwinnett was detained by Staffordshire Police on Saturday on suspicion of growing cannabis after the raid in Wombourne. He said he had been "temporarily" arrested and strongly denied any wrongdoing. He has been bailed by police. Mr. Gwinnett said the plants were found in an annexe near a unit he rents out.

So he told the police that the plants were not in his unit, they are nothing to do with him and that he does not smoke. He also says the police found it funny. Found what funny? It seems arrests are made in some cases not because the police necessarily have correct evidence, but because they just don't believe the answers given. Could it be that they thought all LibDems smoke pot so why not just arrest him anyway? Or are they now so suspicious of politicians that a firm NO is mistaken for a maybe or a might be?

I do hope that the arrest procedure is not now just a simple technique in trying to prove prejudices correct.

Are you Nick Griffin?

A most unfortunate episode happened at the Conservative conference. A councillor was stopped by a policewoman who wanted to be sure he was not Nick Griffin. The poor man apparently gets this a lot. Being mistaken for the BNP leader, that is. Now two things strike me as being odd about this story that I found in the Guardian. Firstly Lynden Stowe, who is the leader of Cotswold district council, was "made to produce identification and explain that any similarity between him and Griffin was merely superficial" before being allowed in. So if one looks like a severely politically-incorrect politician, is it the job of the British police to inquire whether thoughts go with the looks? Secondly, is Nick Griffin being tailed by the police during this election? If he is, I'd suggest the police keep well out of it. Let the electorate decide. We don't wan't prissy chief constables telling us who is or is not worthy of voting for. Any unnecessary involvement in the democratic process is bound to backfire. Illegal thuggery is one thing. Trying to prevent democratic discourse is quite another.

I was watching a video of the late great Arthur Worsley with his Charley Brown character. I've just had visions of Mr. Stowe being questioned by the dummy. "Go on!!!! ARE YOU NICK GRIFFIN??? Look at me when I'm talking - ARE YOU NICK GRIFFIN???" Well, it's one way to get an answer.

Man arrested for making coffee in own home while naked

An American man who made coffee in his own home while nude is facing charges of indecent exposure. This is a bizarre case indeed. The police who arrested him, Fairfax County Police Virginia, said they believed he wanted to be seen naked by the public. He faces up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine if he is convicted. He is fighting the charge and seeking damages from police. Quite right too.

If police officers can arrest people because they think someone is going to do something or wants to do something, it's definitely turning into a police state world. This is not the same as a conspiracy to commit a crime. That is when there is evidence of pre-planning but without commission of a crime.

Police officers could arrest someone sitting in a car because they believed they might drive off at an illegal speed. Or they could arrest someone entering a store because they thought the person wanted to shoplift. It could go on.

We live in a society now, or at least the so-called western world, where any innocent occurrence immediately has impure connotations placed on it. This man claims he did nothing abnormal in his own home. Just got out of bed, naked, and went to make a cup of coffee. Unfortunately he now faces the prospect of a court case with people mulling over whether he is a sick pervert or just a naked man making coffee.

Some people get their lives turned upside down in a day. It just goes to show that we do not know what tomorrow will bring.

Obama was right, was he?

President Obama expressed concern over the arrest of a Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, who is black, and had been handled in an apparently rough way by white police officers. The police department reacted angrily saying they were not racist and Obama backed down, saying he had used the wrong words, blah, blah.

Now we find there is at least one bad apple in the police department, or at least in neighbouring Boston. A certain Officer Justin Barrett referred to the black scholar as a " jungle monkey" in a letter, written in reaction to media coverage of Gates's arrest July 16. The 36-year-old policeman, who has been on the job for two years, was stripped of his gun and badge on Tuesday and faces a termination hearing in the next week, said police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll. He has no previous disciplinary record, she said.

So when people were keen to rush to judgement about the President's remarks, he wasn't that far from the truth. Okay, only one errant officer, but people are very keen to put their own judgements onto others. Speak for yourself, was once a retort. This officer spoke for himself and conjured up the thoughts of monkeys and jungles.

I would not think that either the Cambridge or Boston police departments are riddled in prejudice, but there are probably some underlying beliefs that pop out like molten lava from a supposedly dormant volcano. Boston has history. It is not always easy to keep that history hidden from present day activities.

Obama cops out as the cops complain

President Obama has just had to make a grovelling apology for a comment he made about the arrest of a Harvard professor by the keenly motivated police officers of Cambridge, Massachussetts. The professor was a "man of colour" and the police officer was white in the arrest that happened outside the professor's house.

Obama said that the police had “acted stupidly” but he was relying on reports. It now appears that they were just doing their duty. They were very offended by all this. “The president should make an apology to all law-enforcement personnel throughout the entire country,” said one Cambridge policeman. “Cambridge police are not stupid.” Maybe they are not, but I think there are some failings in the US police pysche, and this incident brings them to the fore.

My experience of the USA is that police officers are hyped up to believe that they may not come back alive from a day's patrol. That's the first bit of bad news. Then, when they've got a suspect, they delight in handcuffing the alleged miscreant. Anyone accused of a crime in the USA is certainly going to go through the humiliation hoops well before they get to see a judge and jury.

I've had a few casual encounters with US cops. One was over an out-of-date license plate. I heard the siren, saw the police car and duly stopped. I saw the cop get out of the car. Then he appeared to see my car as some sort of sexual object. He started from the trunk end and slithered slowly towards the driver's door. I had wound the window down. He kept his head from getting too close. "Good morning, officer", I said, in a very non-Southern voice. "What is the problem?" He was momentarily quiet, then told me about the license. As he spoke, he came towards the open window. I chatted about going back to England and that it was not actually my car, whereupon he said, "Don't suppose there's much point in giving you a ticket, then." "No, not much point," I said, leaving him slightly non-plussed. He then smiled broadly and wished me a good journey home.

My thoughts about that, and other meetings with the police (on a porch visit once too) is that they try to do a good job, but that there is a constant current of tension, no doubt from the thought of being attacked. This, I think leads, to groups of people being sterotyped and every arrest having to be carried out as if being carted off to Alcatraz.

With the professor, it seems that a neighbour was rustling the curtains, got all neighbourly and called the cops. It would be interesting to hear a tape of that call. They turn up, the professor is tired after his trip and annoyed at not being able to get into his house. The cops start asking questions off a crib sheet and the professor snaps. They go into autopilot and within less than a minute the professor is handcuffed and removed from the premises.

Now if there had been a slightly less tense standoff then none of this may have happened. Instead, we have the whole racial thing rise up like a phoenix in a jack-in-the-box. America is a racially tense country. For heavens sake, Obama can't even be president without someone commenting on his "blackness". The same to a different degree in the UK and no doubt any country with a mixed population.

I know a bit about being involved in racial issues. I had a black friend in Atlanta and travelling in a car poses problems in certain areas, from black as well as white. It can lead to difficulty. Rather pompously I said that I wasn't going to be told who I could be in a car with. My friend suggested that reality was far better than philosophy in a crisis.

I would hope that the reality is that the police in America could police without fear and that neighbourhoods could have policing without stereotyping (from both sides).

Fined £50 for dropping a tenner!

Mostly the police forces are served by men and women who want to do a good job for society. Just as it is clear that only a few MPs are keen to exploit the allowances they get, so it is that bad apples are few in the police force. Human nature is ever thus, that however well-intentioned the organisation may be in its public interaction, some may have their own interpretation.

Now there were two police officers walking the streets in Ayr, a nice seaside town on the South-west coast of Scotland. These two appear to be in a different league. Not from the bad apple minority, but from the clueless copper department. Stewart Smith is an arthritis suffer and he lives in Ayr. He was leaving a charity shop when a £10 banknote fell from his hand, without him realising. Mr.Stewart at first expressed his gratitude to the two officers who approached him to point out that the note had fallen to the ground. But moments later, after recovering the note, he was stunned to be accused of littering and slapped with a £50 fixed-penalty notice.

The tale becomes more bizarre and the police action more intolerable. What they should have done was to point out to Mr.Stewart that there was an anti-litter campaign of zero tolerance. However, that zero tolerance is aimed at deliberate actions and the wilful dropping of litter. This hardly falls into that category.

The penalty ticket says "You did drop a price ticket", which is true, but it hardly constitutes a pre-meditated action. Now Strathclyde Police are compounding their officers' behaviour by implying that Mr.Stewart was a trouble-maker! This is typical of today's society and very much so of those with some form of authority. It's not us, it's you. They are wandering around in a blameless bubble, keen to pass the buck.

Surely the police can see that this kind of absurd behaviour brings them into disrepute. I'm against the actions of litter louts. They make an unholy mess of the place. However, there is something to be said for policemen having a brain in their heads rather than a politically correct computer. If they witnessed the man having difficulty putting his money in his pocket, it was mean-spirited of them to fine him.

Accidents and accidental behaviour are just that. They certainly do not belong in the same category as premeditated crimes or a casual attitude that leads to wrongdoing.

New Labour police crackdown on preacher!

Freedom of speech is under attack in the wonderful world of New Labour. A street preacher in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire got two "well-meaning" coppers coming up to him to give him grief. Whilst I don't necessarily agree with this type of proslytising, I certainly defend his right to free speech. It is certainly no business of a couple of policemen going round determining what can or can't be said in a lawful manner. It is precisely this overt oppression of the traditionally minded person that is so offensive. The secular state is rising under New Labour. The Presbyterian Conscience appears unable to bring himself to defend liberty against the drift of sinister sources that would proscribe views and beliefs that they find offensive.

This is the video that the preacher took of the event. Very interesting, very disturbing.



Archbishop Cranmer's blog has a good post on this.

Cop kicks runaway driver's head in!

A suspected traffic violater is in custody, after leading police on a high speed chase in El Monte, Southern California. The driver failed to pull over after a violation, driving at top speed before trying to make a run for it. On arrest, he was kicked by the policeman. Not only that, another policeman cuffs him violently and a third lets his dog bite the guy's feet.

Rough justice or what? I'm all in favour of getting dangerous drivers off the road, if that's the case, but two wrongs don't make a right. Surely the police of California have got that message by now?

Vernon Coaker - what a travesty!

Vernon Coaker is a typical New Labour apparatchik. Straight out of George Orwell's 1984. Why is it that this regime has so many creepy characters in it? This morning Coaker was on the Today Programme sparring with John Humphrys. Coaker thinks that people aquitted of a crime need to have their DNA on a database so that they can be monitored. Basically he was implying that once nicked, a person is deemed to be a serial offender by virtue of natural inclination. Says a lot, doesn't it?

In Vernon Coaker's warped world, a person arrested for a crime is to be seen as evermore a "criminal". The criminal justice system may say you're innocent, but Coaker says your guilty. Of thought crimes. The possibility of thinking of doing a crime. Come on, Coaker, get real. You just want a controlled state run by control freaks. Admit it!

On Sky News this morning the chirpy James Whale was parroting the "I've got nothing to hide" routine. OK, if that's so, give your DNA to the police. Just in case, you never know. The whole thing is pathetic. This is not about fighting crime, but about maintaining a civilised society where people are deemed innocent until proved guilty. It's all well and good saying that you've nothing to hide, but just think. Here's an example. James Whale goes to a dinner party. Great merriment is had by one and all. Next day one of the guests says she's been raped by another fellow guest. James gets a knock on his door from the police. Of course, he's entirely innocent, but it's a bit close for comfort. He's asked to give his DNA as a matter of course. No problems, he's got nothing to hide. The case eventually comes to court and the accused is found not guilty. The acquiitted man's DNA still floats around the system, as does James Whale's. A year later, Whale gets a knock on the door from the police. His DNA has been found at a house where somebody got assaulted. He thinks "what?" but can't think how that could be. It all proves to be a timewasting problem. What happened was that a beer glass Whale drank from at an office party was taken back to the house of the accused for washing but it never happened. My point for James Whale is that glib remarks like "I've got nothing to hide" are not so easy to say when caught up in a DNA-driven investigation.

Thankfully, after a European court ruling, DNA profiles of up to 850,000 innocent people held on an official database will be removed. These are all people presumably with "nothing to hide".

Seeing as this government is hiding pretty much everything they can, from the truth about the Iraq invasion to the number of illegal immgrants, it is a grievous pity that DNA cannot be used on them to check the truthfulness of their words!

Max Clifford enters the G20 fray!

I am beginning to feel that this G20 protest disaster will end up with false accusations and money-driven publicity obscuring the facts. Max Clifford's name is now in the frame! He is representing the young woman who alleges she was struck violently by a police officer during the protests in London.

She may well have a legitimate grievance. But what does she think she will achieve by introducing Max Clifford to the scene? Is it that his high profile will jerk the IPCC into action? Or get some fellow police officer to start talking to the press? Or, heaven forfend, she wants to "sell her story"! It is a very disturbing course of events.

We need to return to proper accountability for the actions of public bodies. There is much that can be done to expose the cover-up condition that has infected public officials (and corporate types, for that matter!), but dangling the prospects of media cashpiles into people's lives is another matter entirely.

It may be that Max Clifford is seeking to do all this pro bono, for the sake of the nation. I somehow doubt it. We are getting a kind of trial by YouTube evidence. Public speculation before any lawful trial. All this could be stopped in its tracks if the culture of society is changed.

No more cover-ups by public officials will mean that these long drawn out media exposees are consigned to the wast paper basket. I am hoping so, anyway.

Policing the police!

Last night on Newsnight Jeremy Paxman leant across the table and huffed, "I thought you Tories were in favour of the police!". Damian Green quite rightly replied that in most situations that was correct. He had just been confirming that a police officer had suggested that he "faced life in jail if convicted of misconduct in a public office". Green said that he thought it "absurd" that such a thing had been said.

No right-minded Conservative is going to give the police a blank cheque to do or say whatever they want. On this occasion the officer who made the remark was being gratuitously menacing. It is this kind of behaviour that is getting the police a bad name.

Jacqui Smith is a hopeless Home Secretary. She does not appear concerned with the underlying problems that current policing is throwing up. It's bad enough for high-horse civil servants to use the "national security" card, but it's worse that the law enforcement agencies lack common sense and get into a lackey-type mentality of pleasing their political mistress.

What comes out of the Damian Green affair is that there was a crude attempt to scare him witless and there was a clumsy attempt to use the criminal law where civil law should have been used. This has been a divisive action.

It comes in the wake of the police raid on environmental protesters. 114 people were rounded up at a school at around midnight. Police found large amounts of equipment, including food and various devices used for climbing, cutting and locking on to machinery. They concluded that Radcliffe-on-Soar Power Station was going to be attacked. Quite properly, they felt arrests should be made. My troubling point is this. The police keep telling us they have "information obtained" but it appears that they cannot make arrests because the "evidence" isn't forthcoming. The same is happening with the Lancashire "terrorist" raid.

It's all a bit like schooldays. A teacher is lambasting the pupils because a personal belonging has been apparently stolen from a fellow pupil. "Who took Jones' satchel?" Nobody speaks! Silence ensues, with much eye contact to see who cracks first. When nobody does the teacher finally departs extremely miffed that his "informant" came up with duff stuff!

All these actions lead to mistrust on both sides. The police have a duty to keep us all free from crime and anti-social behaviour. The public has a duty to act as responsible citizens. But we now have so much blurring of the boundaries. The police have become politically corrected and some sections of the public feel only direct action works. We could end up like two sets of dogs in a park, eyeing each other up. That happened a bit at the G20 demonstrations. Some officers "up for it" and sporadically attacking the crowd. The police went into cover-up mode. Would their actions have come to light without YouTube?

And he went quickly!

The look on Jacqui Smith's face said it all. My prediction last night was not rocket science. One woman who's career seems to hang on threads was in no position to pontificate on one man's "extremely unfortunate" mistake.

We all make mistakes. What matters is how we deal with them. Bob Quick has done the honourable thing. However, he must have considerable strengths that overcome his weaknesses and perhaps he could be put to better use detecting fraud and arrant misbehaviour in the hierachy of the financial world. That needs a good broom taken to it!

G20 police hit man who dies of heart attack!

The police operating on the day of the G20 summit were on "high alert" but some seem like trigger happy characters about to be let out as jack-in-the-boxes. The Guardian has obtained footage of a policeman giving an innocent bystander a two-handed push to the ground. This man subsequently died of a heart attack.

As the policing of London, and elsewhere for that matter, comes under scrutiny again, it seems that there are officers who are "up for it". The footage may not be conclusive but it does show a man being violently pushed to the ground. No doubt the officer who did it is rueing the day.

Policing violent demonstrations is not an easy thing, but I have my doubts that the police behaved in an exemplary way throughout. The media has reported that some heavy handed tactics were used in places. We want firm but fair policing, not some replica of a stormtroopers' convention.

The result is a grieving widow, the IPPC delving into it all, and a very unpleasant after effect all round. Mr.Tomlinson, the man who died, was just walking home. If only that was all that happened!

PCs to hack into PCs! How PC is that?

It never ceases to amaze me. One reason why I think New Labour likes the European Union so much is that each has a mutual nosepoking philosophy. Lord Mandelson is chief amongst this breed of busybodies. Quite keen to go sniffing around other people's business, but very sniffy when it comes them being checked out.

So it is no surprise that the "remote searchers" of the New Labour regime will be licking their lips. What quite distinguishes a remote searcher from a hacker is unclear. Answers on a postcard to Gordon Brown, I'd say, or rather email for those so inclined.

It is all part of this catchall type approach we experience today. It's all this warrantless intrusion into our lives that the ruling elite think is so acceptable. It isn't. What keeps a democracy apart from the others is the rule of law. If the rules allow for below-the-belt stuff, then we will lose a lot.

An amendment to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 made hacking legal if it was authorised and carried out by the state. So who does the authorising? The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said such intrusive surveillance was closely regulated under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. A spokesman said police were already carrying out a small number of these operations which were among 194 clandestine searches last year of people’s homes, offices and hotel bedrooms. That is all very fine, if we can trust their word, but it may not be so. Unless this is enshrined in law, all manner of "agencies" can go eavesdropping on a whim.

As usual, Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, has made some very sensible comments. He is someone I could have a lot of faith in as Home Secretary, as opposed to Jacqui Smith, where words fail me! Grieve agrees that the development may benefit law enforcement. But he adds, “The exercise of such intrusive powers raises serious privacy issues. The government must explain how they would work in practice and what safeguards will be in place to prevent abuse.”

Yes, explain now and concisely. Any delay will be monitored!

Police state? I'm still thinking!

The latest bunch of moronic menaces to trample on our wellbeing as a nation are those snoopers from Cambridgeshire County Council. These jobsworths give the Stasi the look of incompetence! They seem to revel in snooping, being underhand and generally causing the rest of us to think the worst.

Shame on Cambridgeshire County Council. The lot of them!

Nobody has apologised. They think this behaviour is normal. Well it is not. They used anti-terror legislation to prey on a shopkeeper who has employed paper boys without a valid permit.

Instead of using common sense, they act like they are control freaks. Common sense would have suggested that the council sends an officer round to see the shopkeeper to warn them of an infringement and then, polititely, say that any future infringements may result in prosecution. That would be the common sense way.

However, we live under the New Priggery Party's rule, which encourages jobsworths like those at Cambridgeshire County Council not to employ common sense. Instead, they gladly use anti-terrorism laws to crack down on hapless shopkeepers, to spy on them from cars and to shove them through the courts willy-nilly. So another criminal record, another person done down by the new order.

Get a life Cambridgeshire County Council. We do not like your ways! Andrew Lansley, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, is quite right to say, "These powers should only be used for the scope they were intended, which is to tackle serious crime and terrorism." The trouble is we have a hopeless Home Secretary and a government that wallows in these kinds of attacks on people.

From the website, "Cambridgeshire County Council's community and living pages focus on citizen's interests". Question is - Do they really?

Are the police helping the BNP?

I sense I'm not alone in wondering if we have a police state. My mind tells me not. I do think, though, that they are interfering where they should not. The House of Commons is not the only place for unwarranted intrusion. In Northumbria, a publican has had his pub raided by the New Labour thought police. It was Peter Mailer, the landlord of the Black Bull Hotel in Warkworth. Following a formal complaint over newspaper clippings, political cartoons and other items displayed on his bar-room walls, he got a visit. Rather pompously, a spokeswoman for Northumbria Police said, "A 52-year-old man from the Alnwick area was arrested on Tuesday, November 25, on suspicion of committing a racially-aggravated public order offence, and has been bailed."

I've been into countless pubs where landlords shove stuff up on the walls. A lot take pride in saying who has visited, such as George Clooney, to make people think of who sat where they sat. Mr. Mailer put up copies of the Daily Mail (probably they were looking for puns too!). Now this front page headline was displayed all over the country in newsagents, supermarkets and corner shops. The police didn't object then. Surely one officer must have seen the "offending" tabloid? Or even read it! Plenty of policemen without a self-righteous trigger mechanism?

What I find so sneaky about this is that the complainant was an off-duty senior police officer from Nottinghamshire, who was on holiday in the region when he paid a visit to the Black Bull the previous Friday night. Mr Mailer said, "This chap was in with a friend and their respective wives for a drink, and I had a chat with them. It was their first time in Northumberland. There was absolutely nothing said about the so-called racist items on my wall. About 90 per cent of them were clippings taken directly from national newspapers. On Tuesday night two Northumbria officers turned up and arrested me, took everything off the walls and I had to go to the station to give a taped interview."

So he has had his DNA taken to be held on file. Thank goodness he will be able to cite the court case in Europe which has outlawed this practice. The police are only fools to themselves. Why did ?this senior officer not mention his discomfort at seeing the offending literature. I think it is because he is a spineless man who has to go behind peoples backs. He was probably the sneak at school. If he thinks for one minute this helps to confront the BNP he is living in a fantasy world.

The police may want BNP types out of the force, but this kind of entrapment only fuels the fire. The officer is wantonly stupid, but we seem to have an afflication cast upon our police currently.

It's called HUMBUG!

Police State Britain!

Undoubtedly, all New Labour ministers are either dissemblers of the truth or inept managers of prevailing issues. Some are both. It doesn't surprise anyone outside this rather self-serving band of irritatingly provocative busybodies, that an MP got arrested. Not only is it an affront to democracy, it is an affront to all of us as constituents.

Ron Paul got my support because he had the guts to stand up and expose the crass nonsense being peddled by Bush and his cronies. David Davies was right to stand up to New Labour's posturing on 42 days detention. Wherever and whenever governments seek to trample on the democratic rights of the people, we should resist them.

So it is no surprise to me that the ineffectual Jacqui Smith knew nothing about Damian Green's arrest. Of course, her mandarin at the Home Office was off doing his own thing. Sir David Normington should answer now to the people. Is he a cunning political operator? Is he out to subvert Parliament? Is he just paving the way to allow a smooth run for the gravy train? His actions, by giving the police time to raid the inner sanctums of Parliament during a recess, need to be answered. I hope there is a public enquiry, so that these democracy ursurpers can be questioned at length, possibly for more than nine hours apiece.

It is outrageous that this raid happened! Every opposition in a democratic society must hold the government of the day to account. The New Labour Stasi Machine thinks differently. They have no love of parliamentary democracy. They are mainly apparatchiks. So we, the people, suffer in the long run.

We are allowed our freedom to speak so long as it does not interfere with their running of democracy as they see it. Sounds a bit like what Mugabe told Morgan Tsvangerai. "You can sound off if you like, but you don't get any democratic control!".

Damian Green was fingerprinted, had his DNA taken, and thrown into jail. The police took a certain delight in the raid. Am I imagining it or are some officers pleased by being New Labour's poodle power? One officer told those present, as he plodded around Mr. Green's office, "You are at the site of a crime scene".

Sorry, chum, but the real crime scene here is the sight of our disreputable Prime Minister gulping in air as he feigns memory loss!

Tory MP arrested and Government is "unaware"!

It beggars belief that a senior Tory MP can be taken from his home by police, questioned and arrested, and that not one single government minister got an inkling of it. I simply do not believe Gordon Brown. He has cloth ears when he wants them. The Queen is still waiting for an answer to her question "Why did nobody see it coming?", referring to the credit crunch!

Brown's rather odious little bag carrier, Phil Woolas, said he was "taken aback" by the arrest. He's the immigration minister who knew that a Home Office official had been suspended from duty ten days ago over a number of leaks and the matter had been referred to police. This person was arrested but not charged. So is Woolas saying he was never told by police that they were thinking of interviewing Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman? Surely not?

And are we to believe that the senior police officers monitoring the case just buttoned their lips? Woolas says "As far as I am aware no ministers had any knowledge of this". I like his use of as far as, because this allows him to deny now facts he may know so at a later date he can unravel his dissembling. I do not trust the man. Neither does the whole Conservative Front Bench it seems. What on earth did the police have to ask Mr. Green for nine hours? Was he just put in a cell to make him sweat? Surely a simple set of questions would suffice?

Stalinist behaviour is how it has been described. New Labour is a troublesome outfit. All pompous pretention on matters of unimportance and severe dithering over serious things that should be done. Mandy Rice-Davies had one of the best lines in the 20th century, during the Stephen Ward trial arising from the Profumo affair. When the prosecuting counsel pointed out that Lord Astor denied an affair or having even met her, she replied, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?".

Gordon Brown denies knowing about Mr. Green's arrest and nine hours in detention. Well, he would, wouldn't he?

Have the police gone mad?

I'm beginning to wonder if the chief constables of this country want to get along with us or whether they think they are there to change our minds. It appears they have become very political and rather prone to doing what they think is right and proper.

So it is that if you come across two gay men having a sexual encounter on a footpath you are advised to take an alternative path! The ludicrous deputy chief constable of Lancashire, Mike Cunningham, has called for police to turn a blind eye to outdoor sexual activity. So to hell with the fact that it breaks the law. He is judge and jury now. He knows his mind and his mind will be our mind. I wonder if George Orwell is getting this beamed up to him?

It is outrageous! Under the Sexual Offences Act anyone who takes part in 'dogging', where couples meet for sex in car parks, and cottaging, where men meet for sex in public lavatories, face arrest for outraging public decency, voyeurism and exposure. But Mr. Cunningham isn't outraged. So why should we be? The Daily Mail has a full report, as they say.

However, when the police get uppity about other peoples' political activity they pounce. As I mentioned before, they seem to think that causing the BNP grief by spending thousands of pounds chasing them round the streets, knocking them up at 6 am and generally letting them know that they are "after them" is what they are expected to do. Actually, it does the political system no favours. Mike Hume in The Times has a good article on this. "Free speech means freedom for fools, too".

He writes that, in reference to the Liverpool arrests, "It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to see a connection between the appearance of a Merseyside officer on the leaked list of BNP members, and Saturday's arrests. Being able to claim that its members are victims of political persecution is the best publicity for a small outfit that gains support from disaffection with the political class. The best weapons against the BNP are democratic debate and free speech, not censorship and blacklists."

When will these chief constables learn?