Hampshire Police are annoyed. A study today shows that their plastic plods, whilst costing the county taxpayers some £7.8 million a year, managed to detect the sum total of less than one crime a week. Not each. Amongst the 300+ of them as a whole! Ah, say the Hopeless Prats, but they're not there to actually detect crime. They're there just to be seen.
You really couldn't make it up!
So much for police claims that they don't try to entrap drivers into speeding. Driving up the A32 today, I went through Farringdon village, and was puzzled to find several drivers flashing me (I hadn't left the van doors open again, surely?). Then, just as I was leaving the village, I saw it - a Hampshire Police scamera van hidden under the trees, just where the village ends but the 30 mph limit doesn't. Nice try, but I was ready for you - as were the other drivers I flashed once clear of you.
826,000 - the number of pounds spent arranging an earthquake training course.
4 - constabularies who attended - those major earthquake areas of Hampshire. Hertfordshire, Gloucestershire and Merseyside.
11 - number of people killed in the UK in earthquakes. In the last millennium, that is.
1931 - last time someone died in an earthquake in the UK. Of a heart-attack.
0 - valid reasons for this latest junket.