Stating the Bleeding Obvious...

I wish I was a retired Chief Constable. I could earn a few quid touring the country, chatting to my mates, then produce a report, which any copper in the land could have written.

Everyone knows there's too much bureaucracy in the Police Service. The big question needs to be, "What are we going to do about it?"

Over the years, many departments, that feed off bureaucracy, have sprung up. (Best Value, Performance Monitoring, Corporate Development, to name but a few!) Are we going to disband these departments? I very much doubt it! There are too many empire builders within the Police Service, for change to happen overnight. Just look at the Police Almanac for any force and see how many officers of Inspector and above, there are at each HQ. What do all these people do? Obviously there is the Chief Super in charge of counting paperclips and Chief Inspector for colouring in pie charts. But what about the rest of them? No doubt, each and everyone of them, will seek to justify their role, but come on, who are they trying to kid?

If this governemet seriously want to reduce bureaucracy for the bobby on the beat, then they need to start at the top. Until, these bean counters are made redundant, nothing is going to change very much. The Tories are no better, because they want to bring in performance related pay. What do they think that will achieve? More bureaucracy and people who know how to play the system.

The only thing that will change as a result of this report, is the colour or name, of the forms!