Policing the Raj

Samizdata commenter guy herbert has discovered a list of the New Labour Nine Principals of Policing can't have anything from before Day Zero in New Britian

* Police must make people show respec', so messy activities won't be permitted.

* The degree of co-operation of the public depends on the arbitrary availability of physical force.

* Police seek and preserve public favour by pandering to noisy public opinion, and cultivating press contacts to ensure celebrity suspects have their names blackened in the papers and a proper fearfulness is promoted.

* Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of powers of summary search and seizure do not meet with immediate submission.

* Police, at all times, should be sure the public is aware of their special status as guardians; they are, after all, a privileged arm of the state, with unusual immunity from petty laws such as motoring regulations.

* Police should always endeavour to comment on cases before and after any judicial conclusion; their opinions ought to have special consideration in determining what the law should be.

* The test of police effectiveness is the adherence to Home Office activity targets and prime-time documentary footage, not any absence of crime and disorder thet might call into doubt the need to increase police numbers and powers.

But on a more serious note The Englishman points out a strange difference between England and Scotland. In England the forces are being merged, with a loss of 25000 officers, and to sustained protests from the police forces themselves. North of the border they are being split as they are currently too big to be efficient at preventing crime, but if the same policy was followed in Scotland as England they would all be merged into a single force.