Recent news caused me to take a look at the Statement of Common Purpose and Values for the police force. I particularly like,

        to pursue and bring to justice those who break the law; to protect, help   

        and reassure the community with common sense and sound judgement.

Sara Thornton, leader of the country’s chief constables, appears to be working to a different brief. Her suggestion that victims of burglary could speed police response by uploading crime pictures and emailing them to the local station made us laugh. She seems to assume that IT kit like laptops and tablets won’t be stolen. Maybe she wants burglars to take ‘selfies’ and email them direct to any police station that is still open. And if the burglary is in the Leicestershire Police area, only houses with even numbers need to send the emails. Odd numbers don’t count as a crime. And if you live in a house with a name rather than a number, send a pigeon! Police stations that are being closed down will shortly be converted to pigeon lofts. An officer will visit each loft daily to feed the pigeons and collect messages.  He will transfer any messages to a specially designed on line form and transmit it to his nearest station, where it will join the queue to await response. For an immediate response to a burglary we recommend the words racially motivated, homophobic and Savile be included in the conversation when you telephone 999.  Even if the burglary occurred in the Sixties, this terminology will guarantee an overwhelming response with no budget or time restriction on the investigation.

    It has been hard to turn on radio or television for the last few days without hearing the dulcet tones of Camila Batmanghelidjh – pronounce it at your own risk. A colourful character, she brings to mind visually those tins of fruit salad we used to get – multi-coloured chunks of fruit with no discernable taste.  The collapse of Kids Company appears to have been the result of misleading allegations, mainly from the media, to hear Camila talk. No fault lies with the lady herself, though she led the organization. She has an answer of sorts for every point put to her. The one I enjoyed most was her comment that the latest funds, the ones that never happened, would have helped them to begin to build reserves. To start thinking about reserves almost twenty years after you started the organisation sounds naïve at best. Clearly, Camila has no head for business and that poses questions for the trustees. What was their role, since Camila’s business knowledge was somewhere between limited and non-existent. Mind you, chairman Alan Yentob, draws his salary from a charity called the BBC, so draw your own conclusions.  Unfortunately, the idea behind Kids Company was sound. There are significant numbers of emotionally challenged children in the country who don’t fit the norms. They need the sort of nurturing support that Kids Company delivered. Hopefully, Kids Company will be resurrected, but with proper controls and accountability, freeing Camila to move on to her next project. She’d make a great replacement for Sepp Blatter and find the FIFA brown envelope accounting fairly straightforward.

    You may remember the Lib Dems. They were a significant political party that received a serious ‘Clegging’ at the last election.  Their manifesto called for a major cull of the Lords, suggesting the numbers be reduced to 450 heads. I’m not sure how that fits with their demand for another 10 seats in the next tranche of £300/day freeloaders.

    Donald Trump has identified a new way to win votes in his charge for the Republican nomination. Any challenging question or statement is met by vitriol, no holds barred, the more personal and outrageous the better, it seems. How he gets away with it while sporting that hairstyle is beyond us. But it seems to work in the eyes of voters, or so the polls say. In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn takes an opposite approach. As past and present Labour ‘Big Guns’ suggest he’d be a disaster as leader he refuses to be drawn into a slanging match, remaining calm and restating his position on government.  His manifesto seems extreme to those of us old enough to remember what a disaster nationalized industries were, but he’s gaining traction. Will either of them win? We’ll watch with interest.