The police force in the UK has fallen victim to political correctness, red tape and process-obsessed management. The result is, it is now so difficult to apprehend and successfully prosecute criminals that, for the most part, the police don’t waste their time trying.

As Theodore Dalrymple writes:

The uselessness of a police force that once excited the admiration of the world is now taken for granted by every Briton who calls the police only to obtain a crime number for insurance purposes, not in the expectation or even hope of any effort at detection. This is not because the individual policeman is lazy, ill-intentioned, corrupt, or stupid, though in the present system he might just as well be: for the system in which he works imposes upon him all the effects (or defects) of precisely those qualities.

David Copperfield, a UK policeman now working in Canada chronicles this in his blog – to the intense frustration of the UK government – and in his book, Wasting Police Time. So it comes as no surprise that the full investigative weight of Britain’s finest is being brought to bear on a clergyman who put his children on a chimney pot to photograph them: after all, if you simply must arrest someone make sure it is a non-violent clergyman who will neither resist nor sue:

From here:

Mr Blake, an archbishop of the Open Episcopal Church, placed his children on top of his home and took pictures of them reading for a school project.

But worried neighbours called the police and Mr Blake, 52, was handcuffed before being taken away for questioning.

The pictures of his sons Nathan, eight, and Dominic, seven, were taken for a school book week competition themed on people reading in unusual places.

Mr Blake, a father of five, insisted the boys were used to rock climbing and adventure sports and were not worried by scaling the house in Welling, south east London.

He said the boys had climbed onto roof by clambering up onto a flat-roofed extension after he had attached them in a secure harness.

And he said the boys were already back in the house “full of excitement at what they had done”, when police burst through the front door, marched upstairs and slapped him in handcuffs.

He said: “It was utterly ridiculous. We were doing it for a school project.

“The boys were asked by their teacher to be pictured for their book week competition reading in an unusual place.

“When they got home we discussed it and came up with this idea.

“I was very proud of their creativity and had no reservations about allowing them up there because they have both experienced rock climbing and are active participants in adventure sports.

“Not only that but the chimney stack is adjacent to a flat roof and I supervised them.

“They were quite safe.”

Accusing officers of harassment, he said: “It was a total shock and my family were traumatised by the arrest. The children were weeping as they watched their father being frogmarched to a police van.

A principal losing his principles:

A New Brunswick principal who eliminated O Canada at the start or the school day says he is considering his future in teaching.

A euphemistic understatement from one whose extravagant politically correct imprudence has severely limited his teaching career choices in our home and native land.

What a twerp.

A New Brunswick principal who eliminated O Canada at the start or the school day says he is considering his future in teaching.

In an interview with CBC-TV, Erik Millett says his decision to stop the anthem at the start of the school day was taken out of context.

“I received probably over 2,000 emails, most of them hurling abuse at me, saying everything that I should be at the end of a bayonet, I should be shipped out of the country, I should be put on the front lines with the Taliban,” he said in a broadcast interview with CBC today.

“I bore a very heavy price for something that I think was very, very misrepresented in the media.”

Millett could not be reached for additional comment.

The principal of Belleisle Elementary School in Springfield, near Saint John, has said he stopped the anthem after receiving complaints from two parents who objected to it on religious grounds.

Yes the Canadian national anthem mentions God: get over it.

I grew up – using that term loosely – without a telephone and my parents didn’t own a car; in my youngest years we had no TV and horses used to deliver the milk in the morning. Post World War 2 rationing was still in force, the iron railings outside my house had been taken to make guns during the war and, at age 4, I walked to school on my own without my parents having to worry about my being kidnapped.

My mother read books to me and soon I was reading them for myself; the first time I saw the seaside – Penarth in Wales – was riding with my father on a child’s bicycle seat fixed to the crossbar; helmets hadn’t been invented.

Johnny Onion men would sell onions door to door, there was no supermarket, no central heating and no complaining. My entertainment consisted of playing with the little curly haired girl, Anne, from across the street: we would play “alleys” – rolling marbles in the gutter and, on hot days dig up road tar with lollipop sticks.

My mother smoked in the same room as me, we had a tin bath that had to be filled from kettles boiled on an iron range that was heated by coal, no vacuum cleaner, no inside toilet and no money.

We did have a wireless and I can still remember – before school intruded – sitting down with my mother around 2:00 p.m. every afternoon to listen to “Listen with Mother”. Later, when I read to my children I usually began with, “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.”

I don’t remember any children being hyper-active, suffering from attention deficiencies nor their parents being depressed, mentally unstable or malcontent. My grandfather, who lived with us, won my affection by being a soft touch for threepenny bits which could be used for ice-cream. He had worked in a brewery and – as my mother told me later – became a little too fond of the fruit of his labour. To my mother’s horror, he used to urinate in the kitchen sink, presumably after over-imbibing.

A rude interruption of these halcyon days came when I started Seven Road Junior School. One of my first teachers was Mr. Stucky who, on the first day, introduced thirty nervous four and five year olds to the oak case hanging on the schoolroom wall: it contained an array of canes, each with its own name. Bad behaviour in class was never a problem. It was in that year, as I recall, that my affections for the curly-haired Anne waned and I fell head-over-heels for brown-eyed Helen. Over the years, this became a recurring pattern.

A couple of years later we were handed a mug and given a half day off school to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

In the summer we used to catch a bus into the country to pick wild blackberries; later, these would magically be turned into blackberry and apple pie by my mother. An incomparable delicacy.

And now we have this:

Parents who want to stop their children from picking up and playing with their gadgets can now buy a child-friendly alternative for £19.99.

Dubbed the ‘BlackBerry for babies’ the ‘Text and Learn’ device from LeapFrog looks like an over-sized PDA and is designed for children as young as three-years-old.

The gadget helps youngsters learn how to ‘browse’ and ‘text’ without going online, allaying parental fears of their children being contacted by strangers or cyber-bullies.

I am profoundly grateful to have grown up when I did.

The “f” word was first used live on BBC television on November 13^th 1965 by Kenneth Tynan, l’enfant terrible, sadomasochist, alcoholic and misogynist who made a living writing bad play reviews and saying jolting things in the 60s. After his débuting of the forbidden word, there was shocked outrage throughout Britain – except, of course, at the BBC who heralded it as a breakthrough in free expression.

At the fateful moment, the cameraman tactfully panned to the table and zoomed in on Tynan’s drink, attempting to imply that it was the whiskey talking. In spite of this valiant effort, the BBC was compelled to issue a public apology; they didn’t mean it.

Even though it seemed likely that no word in the English language could cause any amount of consternation at the BBC now – the “f” word is de rigueur in every drama and no-one cares – Carol Thatcher has found a way to shock even the BBC:

Carol Thatcher banned from BBC’s The One Show for ‘golliwog’ comment.

A BBC source said: “There were a number of complaints from people in the room about this particular remark, it did cause offence. A number of people were quite taken aback by the language.”

Thatcher, a journalist and writer, made a name for herself by winning the ITV reality programme I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! in 2005.

Her spokesman told The Times that her client never intended to cause any offence and it was “meant as a joke”.

“She made a light aside about this tennis player and his similarity to the golliwog on the jampot when she was growing up,” he said.

I had a golliwog doll when I was growing up: I was quite fond of it. Golliwogs were, until 1983, emblazoned on Robertson’s jam jars. I can’t help wondering whether the fact that the perpetrator of the “g” word was Margaret Thatcher’s daughter had anything to do with the the howls of outrage.

One thing I do know: if I am ever interviewed by the BBC, I am going to say “golliwog”.

When I had to take RE (Religious Education) in school, it was a welcome opportunity for a half-hour nap. Now, politicians are threatening to take all that way: the new RE courses will be so profoundly annoying that lethargic students will be too irritated to sleep. Where has the compassion gone in the British school system?

From the Telegraph:

Instead of concentrating on the Bible and the holy books and tenets of other major religions, a significant part of the course is tied to citizenship and personal, social and health education.

Academics claim, however, that the syllabus, to be taught from September, had turned a serious subject in to a “pat qualification for political correctness”.

One of the topics covered is religion and relationships, which will teach pupils about homosexuality, religious attitudes to contraception and the concept and role of parenting.

Another topic is “religion, sport and leisure”. Pupils will study “religious attitudes towards the purpose use and importance of leisure; types and purposes of relaxation, e.g stress relief and the misuse of leisure time, e.g binge drinking.”

In a sample exam paper pupils are asked, under the heading of religion and planet earth, “what is conservation?” and “is recycling good stewardship”. Teenager must also give two reasons why many religious believers are against deforestation.

A second paper asks candidates to name two illegal drugs, give three reasons why some people take illegal drugs and to explain the attitudes of religious believers to smoking tobacco.

“I think it comes from the desire of politicians to stamp their influence on everything. It looks as if they are turning RE in to a pat qualification for political correctness.

Religious studies is a popular GCSE. Year on year increases have seen the number of entries rise to more than 171,000, up from 147,000 in 2006.

The evidence for the soporific effect of RE is in that last sentence above. Alas, no more: the gentle rhythm of snoring to the Psalms is to be replaced with the grating dissonance of contraception and deforestation. How are students to recover from all the binge drinking?