Final hope for democracy in Turkey

Tomorrow's referendum in Turkey on that country's version of Germany's 1933 Enabling Act is, by all accounts, on a knife-edge. If Erdogan wins, he can exercise unrestrained executive power of a sort unseen since Nazi Germany. If he wins, Turkey also loses any chance of joining the EU, her NATO partner status will be in doubt, the migrant deal risks unravelling in time for the peak Summer travelling season and all hopes of Ataturk's secular Turkey will vanish.

Of course, if he loses, everyone expects him to to the achieve exactly the same ends by unconstitutional means. He's hardly going to put his hands up and go quietly, is he?

Sometimes the BBC's correspondents, isolated from the fake-news hothouses of Salford Keys and Broadcasting House, forget their remit and tell the truth. Mark Lowen's report here is really worth a listen. 

A young lady colleague once returned from a holiday in 'unspoilt' Turkey to report that each day a group of unshaven village grey heads, in threadbare grubby shirts buttoned to the collar and old lounge suit coats from the 1950s, would gather to keep the beach under observation. There was no direct interaction, but the visitors were all too uncomfortable to wear bikinis or to enjoy using the beach. These then are Erdogan's supporters, the illiterate bigoted Islamist peasantry of an 18th century Sultanate. God help us all.

Cameron ran a bent Referendum campaign say MPs

This won't be the headline in your MSM papers, which focus on a minor report footnote that a DOS attack may have slowed the website processing those registering to vote in the last days before the Referendum, but that this did not affect the outcome. 

However, the meat of the report is in Chapter 5 - a litany of criticisms of Cameron's misuse of public funds and of the machinery of government in an attempt to skew the result. The verdict, even clothed in the politesse of the old chums club, is damming. Cameron was bent. Never Again. 

Hmphhhh. Told you so.

Peace in Syria?

When I write 'peace in Syria' I don't of course mean the sort of peace that the West gifted to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Libya, or indeed anywhere we've interfered in the past decade or so, where we've left a legacy of death, terrorism, economic collapse and failed governance. Only the most reality-challenged drug-addled FCO PR person could term those conditions 'peace'. So let's define our terms - what must peace mean for Syria?

No Entry to Salafism - No opportunity can be given to Salafist Islamists, the West's mortal enemies, to increase their power or influence in the region. This includes Turkey, Sunni Iraq, KSA, Kuwait, the gulf states and the various barbarian head-choppers.

Non-sectarian and tolerant society -  A future Syria must allow Shia and Sunni, Christian and Kurd, Alawite and Jew, to live in peace and freedom with no sectarian discrimination. Much as the country worked under Assad before the 'Salafist Spring', which saw deluded fools in Western government mistake Islamist uprisings for democratic urges. 

Russian influence preserved - Any settlement must preserve Russian influence and port / military facilities if the settlement is not to lead to wider causes of conflict

Self-determination - Allow the Syrian people to choose their own leaders and form of government - which may not be the same as Western forms of government and self-determination

Safe return for refugees - A safe place to which refugees currently in Jordan, Palestine and Turkey (as well as Europe) can safely return and rebuild. 

Now it might be that President Assad actually offers the best opportunity to meet these objectives. I don't know. 

However, I am sure that if the US and our own blundering, inept, mistaken FCO conspire to give us yet another Salafist-dominated failed state exporting Islamist terrorism and from which millions of refugees flee, all for the sake of global corporate oil or gas pipes, that we will hang the bastards from the lamp columns in Parliament Square. They're drinking in the Last Chance Saloon over Syria.

US now free to kill its own 'beautiful babies' in Mosul

With the PR-stunt bombardment of a vacant Syrian airbase over, US forces in the region can now re-target their cruise missiles and aircraft and carry on killing beautiful babies as well as their mothers and older children in Mosul. However, since Putin is way smarter than Trump and has normal sized hands to boot, don't be surprised at some cunning piece of counter-PR. Of course it's still possible that one of those US cruise missiles hit the base creche, and that Syria produces its own dead beautiful babies torn apart by US explosives. 

I'm really sick to the gills of the lies. Sick of the superpower slaughter fought through proxies; sick of the mendacious game playing, sick of the horror, the death, the childish destruction. I'm sick of the official distortion, invention, omission and misrepresentation of the truth. Sick of the BBC, of the MSM, of RT, of Brietbart and of the bloody lying Guardian. Sick of twisted journalism of the sort gurgitated by Con Coughlin, by other maggot-struck dags, who lie for their paymasters in claiming to be sure of events a thousand miles over the horizon. Who the Hell do they all imagine they're lying to?

Will all you fake journalists now please re-target your own interest from this fake gas circus sideshow to what is really happening in Iraq? In Kurdistan? No, thought not.

Oh Good. They've forgotten about the 'unspeakable' slaughter in Mosul.

I have no illusions about Bashir Assad's ruthlessness, and none about his commitment to regain control of Syria. His success in Aleppo, the recapture of Palmyra and even his quick reaction to the assault by the West's 'friendly' Islamist jihadis on Damascus have all given him the advantage. Meanwhile, the US-led blundering in taking Mosul, with its massive civilian casualties, makes Trump look a dick against Putin's effective siege of Aleppo. 

So I don't rule out Assad being responsible for a chemical attack in Idlib that has killed 70. But it's so / too convenient for the US led side, and such an unnecessary action for Assad, that I cannot rush to the same immediate verdict as the entire Western media seems to have done, at least without evidence. It's just too bloody convenient, particularly in silencing  the growing outrage against child and civilian casualties in Mosul, most recently as the 230 (as the Telegraph reported) child and mothers corpses were pulled from the rubble of a single Iraqi / US strike last week.

Whilst the slaughter of seventy in Idlib by poison gas is 'unspeakable', the slaughter of three times that number in Mosul by good, clean US missiles seems to be OK. Good. Glad that's clear.

NATO - Keeping the peace in Europe for 68 Years

NATO's anniversary today could not come at a more appropriate moment. NATO, and the Atlantic Alliance, has kept the peace in Europe since the Iron Curtain came down in 1949. NATO itself  arose from a 1941 meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt at which was drafted the Atlantic Charter - subsequently adopted by allies of the United Nations. No territorial aggrandisement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people, self-determination; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as disarmament of of aggressor nations. 

And why such an appropriate moment? Well, it's come at exactly the time at which the EU has demonstrated yet again that it is NOT an organisation that promotes peace, but is instead a malign nascent Empire that foments conflict, war, death and dissent. Britain's reaction to the EU's inclusion of Gibraltar in the Brexit talks was entirely predictable. One could have written the Sun's headline in advance. It is an unforgivable deliberate hostile provocation from this cabal of cynical hypocrites in Brussels geared at provoking conflict - just as they have done in Ukraine, just as they did in the Balkans. 

The EU is simply incapable of signing up to the aims of the Atlantic Charter; the Federast aim is wholly about expansion, not peace; "No territorial aggrandisement" is simply not a phrase they understand in Brussels. The aims of NATO and the EU are not the same - not the same at all. Which is why the EU now wants to fund its own military arm - one that can breach the Atlantic Charter provisons with impunity and no opposition. 

NATO needs a strong and effective leader who has the confidence of both Washington and London. Cameron, the Boden-catalogue ditherer, the kitchen supper dilettante, a collapsed souffle of a politician, is simply not that man.

If the Remoaners had been around in 1938 ...

It's perhaps not strange that although times and events move relentlessly forward, human nature is far less liable to change. Time and embarrassment will have erased many of the dissenting voices of 1938 as the winner's history was subsequently written, but echoes of those same 1938 types can be heard today in Britain ..

The scientific Remoaner
"Look at the statistics; look at our armaments production, military strength, renewal capacity and expected levels of attrition. They prove without a scintilla of doubt that there is absolutely NO WAY we can beat Nazi Germany. It just can't be done. It's quite impossible. I'm an expert and I'm telling you that Britain simply cannot win this war."

The Socialist die-hard
"The National Socialists in Germany are in permanent alliance with the Union of Soviets; all over Europe, socialism and communism are in the ascendant. We should invite Comrades Hitler and Stalin to come and take control here, to end the disgrace of warmongering capitalists who just want a war to sell weapons and munitions. Our future can only be as a socialist republic under the wise control of the German-Soviet pact leaders."

The mindless thug
"So what's the worst that Hitler can do to me then? Sanction my benefit again? Like these c***s keep doing by calling me in at 8.45 when I'm in breakfast mode bro, know what I mean? I bet Hitler wouldn't tell me to hand out my CV instead of doing my shift on the anti-racist march, yeah? I hate authority,  I do - I hate being told what to do. That's why we should chuck this lot out and get Hitler in, innit?"

The liberal mum Remoaner
"Basically war will prevent my two, Tarquin and Murgatroyd, from reaching their potential. We took them across the Channel to Le Touquet last year and they came back with several words of French and after the Olympics they sooo want to see the torchlight processions in Nuremberg and Tarquin in particular wants to go on Erasmus to meet his Hitler Youth penfriend - he even keeps a photo of Horst wearing his athletic vest by his bedside! You can't travel freely when armies are trying to kill eachother."

The Remoaner MP
"War with Germany will mean the total extinction and annihilation of this country -starvation, economic collapse and in ten years by 1948 we'll be little more than apes scratching in the dirt with sticks. If we take what Germany is offering we'll keep a model Parliament that's free to make laws on dog fouling, loud noises, garden shed colours and similar matters and life will be pretty much as it is now, well, except for the Nazi troops on the street, loss of freedom, confiscation of our wealth and so on. Most importantly, the Germans have promised to keep-on in Parliament all MPs that sign up now .."

Spaniards badly rattled over Factortame / CFP

When I owned a British Registered Ship (Part 1 registration) the ship's passport or Certificate of British Registry was an impressive thing; a long blue cloth cover embossed with the royal arms containing a large fold-out sheet of an obsolete size of sea-resistant high-rag thick paper - Demy, Double Post or even Elephant, perhaps - whereon were detailed the vessel and most importantly the ownership of each of the sixty-fourths into which British law divided ship ownership. I was stated, as the ship's fifth owner, to hold sixty-four sixty-fourths of her property. I could therefore wear a Red Ensign and salute our warships. In those days Johnny Foreigner wasn't allowed to own a British Registered ship.  

Then of course came the bloody EU and Factortame. This was a court case brought by some rich Spanish fishing boat owners who declared that the requirement of the 1988 Merchant Shipping Act that 75% of British registered ship owners (48/64ths) had to be of British nationality was contrary to the Treaty of Rome and that Spaniards should have the right to wholly own Red Duster ships. They won. 

This means that not only can Spanish ships fish our waters under their own quota, they can also, through buying British ships and the quota that goes with them, take our fish using British registered ships. And there are an awful lot of Spanish fishermen, trawler owners, shore-side secondaries and Spanish government tax euros currently coming from Britain's 200 mile exclusive economic zone, under both their own and our flag. The blow to their income and commerce from being excluded in two years time will be immense - if that is what happens - and Spain will scream in agony. 

Hence Gibraltar. Now I've no idea whether we can reverse Factortame in two years - Richard North is your man for that sort of knowledge - or how we'll exit the Common Fisheries Policy, but Spain is very rattled. 

There's a deal to be done, but Gib's comfort will cost us fish.

EU talks gamesmanship - bluff and spin

One can usually tell when a journo has been royally fed the official line. Con Coughlin's MOD lunches are marked by subsequent pieces of strong, coherent journalism pushing a risibly absurd line that defies all logic. Which probably seems really convincing until the cold light of the following morning.

All the EU's planted stories so far on the Brexit talks have been models of Teutonic coherence. One can almost hear the machine-gun rattle of the press officer listing out the points at the journo's winking recorder. And once they actually realised that the UK really will walk away from a bad deal, the focus of their press manipulation has been pushing the line that our hopes are unrealistic, and that our only option is to take our punishment for the good of the 27. Only it must never be called punishment. 

The best example this morning is a piece in Der Spiegel. The author doesn't even bother to hint at those hedging prevarications that a news story usually contains. Nope. This is pure gamesmanship - using the only weapons the EU can muster, bluff, threat and spin. 

Whenever I've gone into negotiations with an unassailably strong position, the very last thing I've done is to crow about it to the other side. In fact, you rather hope the other side doesn't realise quite how strong your position is - if you want a deal, that is. So why is Spiegel, parotting the official line, crowing so loudly? Unless it's all tommyrot. And everything else we hear from the EU side suggests they're living in La-la land, hoping that bluff, spin and bullying will scare the UK into doing as we're told. They really don't know us, do they?

"I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too"

An early post for Brexit Day as I've got a chocca full day's graft from first light tomorrow. 

Of course, England has been here before. The EU (that's the Pope and the whole of Catholic Europe) excommunicated Queen Elizabeth and barred all trade with us; not even a WTO-terms deal, only a bit of state-sanctioned piracy and smuggling kept us going. In reaction we went further afield to find new trade partners and accidentally founded the British Empire, established dominance of the seas and oceans and led the world in trade and commerce. They did us a favour, really.  

Anyway, if you fancy a rollocking good yarn with your celebratory tipple on B-day, rent Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth - The Golden Age; it's really rather appropriate.

Theresa May reads the draft of the Article 50 letter one last time before it is carried to Brussels. This is it!




 

In Brussels, Herr Juncker and Commissioner Mogherini discuss their reaction to the notification

PM May has a problem - half the country are still Remainians, committed to the 'old ways' and the sinister Tim Farron is doing his best to sow dissent in the realm

The Labour Party NEC meets to discuss the implications of Brexit. Mr Corbyn is misplaced and found later in a store cupboard. 

Meanwhile Brexit Secretary David Davis sets out to 'singe the King of Brussel's beard' before negotiations start, and is ably partnered by ...

Boris 'spuds and tobacco' Johnson, just back from exploring Washington and meeting Mr Trump, the chief of the indiginous tribes in the New World

At home Nicola Sturgeon, Queen of Scots, is caught by GCHQ plotting with Remainians to betray Brexit. 'We know the contents of every secret letter you sent' the head of MI5 tells her.

Herr Juncker's chief negotiator, Herr Barnier and Herr Verhofstadt discuss destroying the British negotiating position 'We vill crush dem and stomp dem into ze eart! No trade deal for dem!'

Mrs May makes her final speech to Conservative Party Conference before the climax of the Brexit talks. "I may have the stomach of a feeble woman, but my legs are rather good and I have the heart of a Lion"






The EU main negotiating team arrives, stunning the Brits by the size and scale 'Crikey!' exclaims Boris, and takes up smoking again, thanking providence he remembered to bring tobacco back from his US trip.

That night, Mrs May smells smoke and wakes to see the entire EU negotiating team on fire. She summons Boris, but he's nowhere to be found

Herr Juncker and the Commissioners have to explain to Europe that they've screwed up, and that all their homework got burnt in an accidental cigarette fire; Britain wins the talks

Boris turns up from the direction of the ashes of the EU team clutching a baked potato 'You see I knew there was a reason I brought these back from the new world; just the thing to keep you going when you're looking for a dropped fag ..'

Demonstrations don't count half as much as votes

Paul Mason reprises a Remoanian whine in the Guardian today; they may have lost the vote, our Article 50 letter is good to go, our negotiating teams are primed but still he clutches at the most feeble of straws. Demonstrations matter, he says, because they lay the ground for future electoral victories. Thus NHS and pro-EU protesters will see no easy victory now, but will score unexpected wins in the future.

To a point, Lord Copper. Was the Brexit vote then a delayed effect of the Countryside march, the first I ever attended? It was as much a protest about the disregard of the elite Metropolis for the rurality as about hunting, and until the Iraq march was the biggest ever seen in London, dwarfing the recent piddling little NHS and pro-EU huddles. And what of the anti-Blair march, the second of my lifetime (and probably the last)? Did the size and scale of this presage the overwhelming destruction of the Labour Party, it's utter unelectability for all time? 

Yes, the pendulum will swing back again. It always does. But not because of enfeebled radicals such as Mason calling fewer and fewer ageing followers onto the streets. Generational change will drive a future political rebalance. Demonstrations are really no more influential than a successful pop song or blockbuster TV series. It's universal suffrage and the secret ballot that really bring change - both of them striking fear into the hearts of the Illiberals. 

Let me fix that strapline for you, Paul ..

Britain needs a new people's Party - What should it stand for?

There seems a degree of agreement that the nation needs a new party of the people that transcends the left - right political axis; what ten key aims would such a party stand FOR? Over to you, but here are my starting suggestions -

- Small state and the rule of law; a balance between central and local control
- Greater democratic control by a variety of democratic forms for each democratic tier, as appropriate
- Patriotic, not nationalistic; A Britain Internationalist in trade and outlook, but not subservient to Globalism
- A focus on the little platoons that will help build a strong and congruent British national identity  
- Fairness, justice and equity both within and between the generations
- Pride in our values, confidence in our cause
- Sustainable and practical use of our land, seas and assets
- A nation slow to rouse, but strong to bite 


NB being clear about what a party stands for implies those things it is against - they need never be stated explicitly. Negative aims turn people off. 

(Uhm, I'm not volunteering to start one.)

I always thought Carswell was a bit of a cad

Not saying I told you so, but this post from 29th August 2014;

Carswell - A bit of a mess

Oh dear Oh dear. Where to start. Mr Carswell.

1. He's undoubtedly right in believing that Cameron will flunk any reform negotiations - Dave has all the negotiating ability of a collapsed soufflé and about as much real commitment to fundamental reform as a nun writing a condom ad. Many Tories are exhibiting the triumph of hope over experience on this, convincing themselves that Dave will somehow behave completely differently to the way he has for the last ten years. There's no hope I'm afraid - he will flunk it, and be wholly humiliated, and will then flunk the Brexit referendum, leaving the UK as weak losers. 

2. A minor but nonetheless niggling point - he's stolen Nigel's thunder as the first elected UKIP MP (or will do if he succeeds in the by election). While the gain to UKIP outweighs the stolen prize, it's a bit caddish.  

3. Carswell is an unlikely hero. Committed to the privileges of the political class, he led moves to make the home addresses of MPs secret on election applications. Neither was his Localism book (with Dan Hannan) entirely original, owing much to both Simon Jenkins and Helena Kennedy, sometimes without attribution. If I met him in the pub, I wouldn't like him. 

4. However, at least few care personally what happens to him. His move is useful in gaining UKIP air-time and in forcing Tory MPs to realise that Cameron's emollient charms are unsuited to the job in hand. It also brings back into discussion a Tory - UKIP election pact for 2015; if a worried party forces Cameron into this, Carswell's actions will be justified.    

Back to today ...and apropos of nothing
==================================

Apropos of nothing, you may not be aware that the EU Commission actually has its own FOI system, application form HERE.

I've already submitted two - 

- (1)Inventory and valuation of the Commission's cellar stocks of wine, beers and spirits (2) Inventory and valuation of the Commission's cutlery, crockery, napery, cruets, condiments, candelabra, candle holders and all other equipment and table decoration held for official Commission dining and events

- A complete inventory and valuation of all works of art valued each at over €1.000 (one thousand Euros) held by the Commission to include paintings, sculpture, prints and drawings, installation works and all other objects held for artistic and / or cultural reasons

Well, if we're entitled to 10% of the CDs in this divorce, we don't want to be stuck with the Spice Girls and Robbie Williams, do we? 

Facial Asymmetry - Mayor of London

Just one more photography post and I'm done ...

A game we used to play when bored was to 'split' on Photoshop the full face photographs of convicts in US jails (many American states publish mugshots of their jailbirds on the web) to find the greatest degree of asymmetry. Convicts gave good results because they generally have the most asymmetric faces - balanced, sober, law abiding college football players tend to have very symmetrical faces.

Watching London's Mayor yesterday I was struck by the thought that he would also give a good result. Of course there's absolutely no suggestion whatever that Mr Khan is criminally inclined, but the two composites perhaps suggest that there is more than one side to the Mayor. 

This picture is genuine

This picture is credited to Jamie Lorriman. It is genuine. Jamie is a professional photographer. It appears, credited to Jamie, in the Standard. 

Islamist killers are just pathetic failures

Hate-bearded Islamist killers in Britain will all end up as cold lumps of bullet-torn meat in the common morgue. No glory, no martyrdom, just squalid deaths shot down like dogs. And no burial the following day - we'll keep the bodies in the fridge for weeks, or what's left of it after Heckler & Koch and the pathologist have finished. They will lose the humanity we grant them the moment they raise a weapon in anger against us. 

There are no good Islamists (using the former PM's definition of Islamism). Non-Islamist Moslems can live amongst us in peace so long as their true allegiance is to our realm and not to their faith. And Moslems cannot just walk by and pretend that they and their faith are not the root of the problem. Unless Moslems here are now active in helping destroy Islamism in Britain, they are also part of the problem.   

NB If anyone has evidence that this picture is a fake, I'll happily remove it. I've carried out an image-match search and it doesn't appear on the internet before yesterday early evening. Light and weather conditions are right, for yesterday, as is clothing. Could be a photoshop - please alert me if someone has done a pixel analysis.

EU's Brexit talks strategy - Hire Raging Ronnie

It happens from time that time that contractors lose big money on a construction job. Either they won the work with a loss-leading bid, hoping in vain to make it up on variations and instructions, or they mis-valued risk, or they simply badly mismanaged the process. Often, they simply don't figure the P&L on a job until site work has finished, get a shock and submit a claim for an outrageous sum to get them out of trouble. Usually a firm and very chilly meeting with full forces assembled was enough to see off trouble, but when senior jobs were at risk they would hire Raging Ronnie. 

Raging Ronnie was himself chartered in three professions, with an array of post-nominals that exceeded his own name in length. One of his professions was as an Adjudicator, but he was rarely appointed in that role. Mostly he worked as muscle for contractors. The first Raging Ronnie letter would come in, with copies to the Chairman and Secretary, expressing outrage and shock that we had refused his client's eminently reasonable claim, and demanding that we paid up straight away. The second would come a week later, expressing outrage and shock that we had not yet agreed to his demands, and threatening immediate Arbitration. The third would go just to the Chairman, as between equals, a reasonable and calm appeal over the heads of we stubborn underlings to intervene and pay, and the fourth would be the formal notice to seek Adjudication if the claim was not met. 

Our strategy was always the same. Ignore all demands and keep twitchy board members calm, stiffen their backbones and prepare for a hearing. 

Of course all Raging Ronnie's bluster, hubris, outrage, anger and threats would vanish in the case made. Adjudicators don't like intemperate parties. Then it was just a calm and patient slog to demolish their claims. We'd always have to pay something, of course; the Adjudicator will make an award to a contractor just for spelling their own name correctly, but usually it was peanuts.   

And so it is with this oh-so-carefully 'leaked' EU negotiating strategy document that threatens taking the UK to the Hague if we don't meet their demands. I'm beginning to think that Raging Ronnie has found a new client ..

When Guardian comrades fall out

The disintegration of the left is the gift that goes on giving; hardly a day passes without one fraternal comrade thrusting a knife into the back of another. Honestly. The Tories just don't have to bother - the brothers are doing it themselves.

Now two of the Guardian's foremost cis-scribblers are at eachother's throats; Nick Cohen and trainee welder Owen Jones. I don't know whether Cohen backs Fatboy or some fourth party but the handbags are definitely unsheathed.

"This is the final word on the matter" declares Jones optimistically on Medium, then goes on to write

The response to the current terrible political situation by Nick Cohen is as follows: “I Told You So You Fucking Fools!” In a profanity-ridden rant, he says supporting Corbyn in the first place was a colossal misjudgement despite all the warnings about what would happen. Let me be polite about this. Cohen was a passionate and unapologetic supporter of the Iraq war, one of the greatest calamities of our time, a ‘misjudgement’ (I’d prefer ‘crime’) so colossal that ‘catastrophic’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, a war waged on a false pretext which led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, countless others maimed and traumatised, millions driven from their homes, Iraq turned into a hunting ground for sectarian murderers and Islamist fanatics, which played a critical role in violently destabilising the Middle East. Cohen demands penitence for those who backed someone who will lead Labour to defeat. That’s not quite on the scale of noisily backing a calamity that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people. Imagine being unrepentant about backing one of the worst disasters of the post-war era and then abusively attacking others for failures of judgement.

Wow. 

Police Drones

"So, Inspector, this proposed Drone Squad can be staffed by transfers from the Internet Porn Squad? How's that gone?"

"Well sir since 2004 the lads have watched over 2 million hours of online porn. Deserve a medal, they do sir. Constable Hotchkiss can't hear the word 'Brazilian' now without twitching."

"And how many arrests and convictions have resulted?" 

"Just the one sir. The chairman of the golf club who put hidden cameras in the ladies. But that doesn't affect the deterrent effect of those evil film makers knowing that the Force is watching. And we've learnt our lesson - the lads need periodic rotation out of the squad. Hence the new Drone Squad, sir"

"Ah yes. Sergeant Thom bought one for his kids and saw the crime-busting possibilities straight away...."

"That's right sir. Of course, police drones would cost a lot more, it being taxpayers' money, and the lads would need professional training from the RAF"

"I'm still not happy about us flying these potentially lethal things over people's houses and gardens .. have you considered the risks?"    

"We estimate that 80% of the time we'll be flying over public roads and open land. In particular it will allow the lads to gather video evidence of widespread 'dogging' activity in Knickers Woods, sir.  We could spend a year keeping constant tabs on it all then swoop. Then there's the poofs sorry BLTs on Handy Heath. We can follow 'em sir from the sky without risking officers on the ground."

"You don't think there's a risk that some of this footage may leak onto the web? Doesn't this sort of surveillance constitute a variety of porn in itself?"

"That's the beauty of it sir. The Internet Porn Squad can keep an eye out for any leaked footage"

"Ah yes. When was the last time any of these men actually walked a beat or responded to a disturbance? Some of them look as though they have difficulty walking"

"Yes sir. Injuries incurred in the line of service, watching the porn sir. Sixteen early ill-health retirements so far. We're hoping that working the drones gets them out of their chairs, sir. Into other chairs."

"Very well. Carry on, Inspector"