It started with a report on the BBC News website that told us that:

“The Greater Manchester Police officer crashed the £33,000 VW Golf R on Wharfside Way, Old Trafford, at about 01:50 GMT on 15 December.

The driver was taken to hospital and treated for a back injury.

A Greater Manchester Police spokesman refused to reveal details of how the crash happened.

He said that “as a result of the incident, GMP is reviewing its policy on officers test driving cars”.

The officer, who has recovered from his injuries, is currently suspended from driving duties while an internal investigation takes place.”

The photo of the car shows just how much damage was done: not just a little bit of superficial damage as you might expect from a shunt on an urban road.

It'll polish out with a bit of T-Cut

Now Section 19 of the Road Safety Act 2006 amends Section 87 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 which grants police an exemption from speed limits when a vehicle is being used for police purposes. “Police purposes” is a pretty wide-ranging description but you do have to wonder what on earth this officer was doing at that time of the morning at the sort of speeds he must have been doing to cause that sort of damage whilst, apparently, testing the car for possible police use.

But the story gets better: apparently the driver was PC Paul Fletcher who was regularly seen on the TV programme “Car Wars” doing high speed chases.

PC Paul Fletcher on "Car Wars"

And GMP stated that no other vehicle was involved, despite emerging reports that in fact the whole thing was caught on camera by another high performance car out at the same time on the same piece of road when PC Fletcher – a trained driver, remember - lost control on a roundabout. Hmm. Racing each other, perhaps? That’s surely what the police would say if you or I were doing the same thing?

Greater Manchester Police are, supposedly, reviewing their policies in this regard but surely testing a vehicle would be better done on, say, the MIRA test facilities which are purpose-built for such testing?

Maybe next time I get a pull for speeding – at a significantly lower speed than that which would have led to a car being written off so badly as the Golf – I could just say I was testing its suitability? Ah wait: I don’t have the exemption they’ll be hiding behind whilst driving as dangerously as they do…

What am I talking about?

Today I had a dental appointment in Wymondham at 11.15am, so I left London in plenty of time. By 10.50am, I was 20 minutes away (maximum) on the dual carriageway section of the A11 Thetford By-Pass between the Brandon and Watton interchanges when I had to come to a halt. Why? Some dickhead driving a tractor and towing a trailer of vegetables had managed to turn the whole thing over and blocked the southbound carriageway. Remember, I was heading northbound.

Like a well-oiled team of professionals, the police’s traffic division and the Transport Agency’s Incident Support Unit had mobilised to get things sorted out.

Between then and 11.45am, I sat in stationary traffic and watched as most of the police vehicles drove off having done … er … nothing at all. One police motorcycle went down the southbound carriageway, around the roundabout and then back up the southbound carriageway the wrong way for no good reason at all. Maybe he was getting a bit warm in the summer sun and just fancied going for a spin to cool himself down. Bless!

Traffic announcements confirmed that the southbound carriageway was blocked and that there were long southbound queues. Apparently the traffic going north was slow as people were slowing down to take a look, according to the AA team.

Obviously that was as far removed from reality as the Labour Party are from unity. As I discovered when I did eventually get past the next roundabout, the southbound lane was actually flowing pretty well. And no-one was rubbernecking in my lane – we simply couldn’t get past the roundabout because of the southbound traffic effectively turning it into a lane of southbound traffic.

In the olden days, a policeman or policemen would stand there directing traffic like human traffic lights to ensure that traffic flowed as freely as possible every way, but instead this bunch of lazy idiots just wanted to sit around with their thumbs up their arses doing absolutely sod-all.

And as a result, all the northbound traffic had been at a standstill for almost an hour.

So I missed my appointment thanks to their complete lack of any positive action. Well done you! It’s really no surprise I have absolutely zero respect for them. They always set low standards and consistently fail to achieve them in my mind.

I won’t even start to go on about how South Blunderside Humberside Police have failed to take any real action against a harassing, violent and abusive drunkard (with overtones of child abuse)…

And thanks to the AA’s radio traffic reporters for rubbing it in by reporting absolute crap and insulting those of us who were stuck in the jams the police had caused.

ORLY?

So it cost £8M for 43 days. Or £186,000 a day. For what?

Looking more closely at the report, they claim that:

“About half of the total spent policing the demonstration – £3.72 million – was from additional policing costs, including overtime, the Met said.”

So that’s  £86,500 a day on overtime. Nice litttle earner, eh? I mean, how many policemen are on duty there every day? 100? 200? That’s a lot of overtime or a disproportionate number of policemen.

And that leaves a balance of £100,000 a day for … er … um … doughnuts? Bacon rolls? Who knows? The policemen are already employed, the vans are already bought and will just be parked up there most of the day. So what – precisely – is this claimed additional expenditure on? Mind you, when they closed off Weston Street after a stabbing for a day or two, one of the few police vehicles on the scene was a Met. Police burger van. I kid you not!

Sounds like bollocks to me…

According to the Office for National Statistics, inflation is running at 2.2%. Clearly no-one told South Norfolk District Council about this as our new council tax demand is up 4.0% on last year.

Talking of last year, do you remember how last year Norfolk Police Authority couldn’t keep to any sort of budgeting and raised their bill by 6.9%?

Well this year, they’ve surpassed themselves and increased it by 8.3%! Clearly proper business governance is anathema to Norfolk Police Authority/Norfolk Constabulary. They say:

“Budget Issues
Norfolk Constabulary has suffered from successive years of under-funding by Government to the point where we regularly had to dip into our reserves. We can no longer afford to keep doing that.”

Erm, isn’t that what reserves are for? And yes, we know you claim to have suffered in previous years: you’ve been more than happy to share your pain with us by never living within inflation-matching rises and instead passing it on to us.

Oh and they also say that they are “Performing Well”:

“…our detection rate rose to 32% – the highest we have ever achieved…”

Which means they didn’t detect 68% of reported crime. Still, as long as they detect those heinous speeding motorists on the main trunk roads, eh… Yes, they’ve decided to increase transport costs from £3.33M to £4.03M this year, that’s a 21% increase!

Then when you look at South Norfolk Council’s budget, it’s good to see that they intend spending over £28M (out of £50M) on “Finance, Staffing and Property, including Revenues & Benefits, Human Resources, IT Services”. That’s not housing by the way. Nice little earner and a cushy job if you can get it.

No-one is taking responsibility for shooting dead an innocent man. No individual has been convicted of any wrongdoing. No individual has been sacked. Who will be paying that fine? The Council Tax payers in London, of course. So all those involved from the bottom to the top get off scot-free. As usual.

Why not take a look at the comedy of errors that lead to the death of an innocent man. No laughing matter, eh?

I wonder how the police would be reacting if they’d shot one of their own, like “Ivor” who was dragged out of the carriage with guns to his head and chest. Maybe there would have been repercussions then?

Daily Mail readers and others who are ‘hard-of-understanding’ are already defending these incompetents saying things like “the police thought he was a terrorist!” No, they didn’t. They thought he looked a bit like someone who they thought might have been a terrorist, despite his having “Mongolian eyes”, whatever that means. This man was innocent and was slaughtered!

Still, at least when our civil liberties are being further eroded and the ‘hard-of-understanding’ bleat out their usual “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to fear” crap, we can remind them that Jean Charles de Menezes had done nothing wrong but as he was about to die he had everything to fear…

What are the chances of this hypocrite being banned?

Of course, he’s no stranger to the Courts, having been caught speeding by speed camera twice before. And he’s also been taken to court on behalf of his own force for failing to inform the Courts of the identity of one of his speeding officers. But then again, one of his own was acquitted of speeding to collect a takeaway, though Hughes did subsequently remove him from traffic duties, with a spokesman saying:

“Such reprimands are normally dealt with by an officer of the rank of superintendent, but the Chief Constable wanted PC Akrill to understand how his conduct had directly led to a lowering in public confidence in the police.”

I see. I wonder how Hughes will deal with himself, then, as surely by being such an obvious hypocrite, public confidence in the police is further lowered by his shining example. After all, didn’t he himself once say:

“Driving is a privilege – not a right…”

“Police slammed for pulling over biker procession”.

Now that is amazing, even for that bunch of clowns in North Wales.