Good policing or showing ‘citizen focus’?

Inspector Gadget has been writing about the latest load of codswallop that frontline police officers have had poured over them by their senior management teams and politicans, namely the shift to “Citizen Focus” and the need for officers to generate letters from the public to show that they are suitably focused.

Of course, all it means is that a certain kind of officer will simply focus on getting a suitable number of letters instead of doing any real policing, while leaving the real policing to those those officers who believe in what they do and act accordingly.

It’s no different to teachers who teach to the government’s tests, no different to NHS staff who work to narrow targets and no different to civil servants who work to quota.

Rabbits beware

I’m just heading out to stalk a few rabbits with the air rifle and, more importantly, to see how much the rabbits are using the trap tunnels.

We’re suffering the expected spring plague of rabbits at the moment, so I’ve laid a strip of rabbit netting along the top of the pig field, between it and the rabbit warren around the water tank.

The rabbits come down from the warren, cross the pig field, and then fan out to find my field-grown vegetables.