Vox Polis

Grant Shapps, Conservative MP, has released research revealing that 5 out of 6 police officers have been assaulted in the past 5 years. He was on Today this morning claiming that this meant that society was crumbling and that we should all take a long hard look at ourselves:

“It is only by rebuilding a sense of social responsibility that we can hope to tackle this truly deep-rooted problem. Preventing our officers from being assaulted requires a change in attitude towards our police.”

It’s certainly not good that a lot of police officers have been assaulted but, frankly, this discovery is equivalent to the shocking news that most soldiers have been shot at. The police spend their time arresting (mostly) guilty people; criminals, shockingly, don’t like being arrested and tend to fight back. Would Mr Shapps be happy if we had only gentleman criminals who, when caught, exclaimed “Bother! Well it’s a fair cop guv’” and handcuffed themselves? If you’re going to bemoan the collapse of society at have some relevant data before you do it.

It takes real effort for a government to be “not fit for purpose”. It’s not just the big headline grabbing stuff like losing criminals and filling prisons to bursting point the small things count as well. Rubber stamps for instance:

When a government department can’t even rubber stamp stuff you know there’s trouble. At the time of posting it’s unclear if this stamp shortage applies only to stamps for the mystical “Untied Kingdom” or to our own country as well. Whether the big split will make a jot of difference remains to be seen.