Who you gonna call? Not us!

Do you trust the police?

That was the subject of the radio phone-ins after the Hillsborough news broke. The answer was “generally, no” and the picture was skewed by the disproportionate number of serving and retired police phoning in (mobilised by the federation? - Is that too cynical?).

There was an internal study by the Met, back in February, with the results (understandably) buried. Until now. It seems only something like 20% of serving London police would trust the police if they were members of the public and needed their assistance. That's shocking.

There were similarly shockingly poor responses to the questions about depending upon senior colleagues for support and similar matters. However, the main (published so far) worrying response was that, were they to need the police, 80% of the police would not have confidence in them turning up and doing a good job. That's hugely damning and shows up for the lies they are the statistics repeatedly trotted out about efficiency, crime solving percentages, all that rubbish.

When any job becomes an exercise in arse-covering and career advancement by living long enough without actually killing anyone to make the next promotion panel while ensuring all the health, safety and due process boxes are well and truly ticked along the way, well that's when it all falls apart.

Back in fire brigade days I had an excellent Station Officer, who was giving a lift to a less than excellent Station Officer to Moreton in the Marsh for a training course. They were discussing operational priorities. My guy said:

“Simple. Do the best job you possibly can while making sure your blokes are as safe as they can reasonably be from injury.”

The other guy said something along the lines of:

“Make sure nothing career-damaging happens and if it does have some other monkey tee'd up to take the fall.”

Famously, he said something along those line just before being dumped on the roadside, in the middle of nowhere, miles for the nearest home / phone / station / anything other than cow or sheep, and, after failing to take the opportunity to reconsider his point of view, a failure to agree was recorded.

More like my guy getting on the organisations, and there'd probably be more like a 80 / 20 than a 20 / 80 response to the questions.

Chilli tomato soup

An end-of-week tomato glut, so I made soup. Onions, garlic, some leftover bits of pepper, a red chilli and loads of tomatoes. Minimum water, salt pepper and not very much else. Nice.

BLISS liked the vegetable Thom Yum I made for her, too.

Boca

I'm going to watch Boca tonight. Brazilian film. I'm not going to sleep much as I have not got around to sorting out the broken tooth (right hand upper, cutting tongue a bit) and have just lost the repairs to two more (left hand lower, cutting tongue a lot).