On changing my Original Notes

Adding context

I’m now five chapters in (thanks for sticking with me) and I have realised that the chapters I have published here lack context. All of this book is inspired by what is happening in Britain today; the memoir is just a vehicle to comment on recent events. To correct the record I have added a short narrative to each chapter published so far, to explain what the chapter is about. I have not edited the original note, just added an explanation. I follow the rule of law news all the time so you don’t have to, but there is so much going on I have realised that I need to be clearer about how chapters link to the present day.

These are the narratives that I have added to each chapter:

On policing (the introduction to the book)

This book is about contemporary Britain, its swift and catastrophic decline from a proud and confident “Cool Britannia” celebrating the start of the London Olympics in 2012. The vehicle for the story is Britain’s iconic unarmed police force, the famous British “Bobby”. This is because the first duty of government is to protect its people and the Bobbies dispensing justice are the frontline of that defence. In 2009, as a British government official, I set out to sell British justice as a global good. Over a fifteen-year period I witnessed British justice back home being systematically hollowed out. This serialised book explains how and why. Each chapter’s narrative introduces an amusing anecdote that links to dark current affairs.

Chapter 1 (On vetting police recruits)

Not one but two predatory serial rapists were convicted in 2021 and 2023. They were both serving Metropolitan Police officers. They had not slipped through the vetting net, the net had been taken down. In bid to swiftly correct a shortage of officers the vetting system was relaxed in the early 2000s when both rapists joined. The political drive for numbers sacrificed safety. From 2010 onwards the political drive to cut “back office functions” included no vetting at all for those who were to serve on the frontline and finally a political bid to correct the fall in police numbers sacrificed public safety once more. Even as the rapists were being convicted the Metropolitan Police invited 250 previously disciplined officers to re-join the force to boost numbers. All these recruitment policy errors stemmed from the same fundamental political failure to understand that good policing is delivered by skilled human experts not unqualified numbers.

Chapter 2 (On suspicion)

A fall in the quality of recruits during the 2010s led to a misguided attempt to force new officers to simultaneously become a street police officer and take a degree. This combines three mistakes. The first is a failure to recognise that savage cuts to pay and conditions had reduced the calibre of the recruit pool, the second was to think that ‘being a graduate’ was relevant to real policing and the third was that the common practice in Europe was for new recruits to spend two or more years studying policing full-time before being let loose on the public. It was a bad policy implemented on the cheap.

Chapter 3 (On the frontline)

In 2024 it was reported that half of London’s Police stations have been sold over the last decade. This massively increased wasted journey time on all police operations. It also reduced access to justice, police availability to the community and thus community support for the police. This has undermined the essence of the British Bobby. It was apparently a political drive to save money, but the negative impact on policing is obvious. It undermines public safety, the first duty of any government.

Chapter 4 (On rank stupidity)

In May 2025 PC Lorne Castle of the Dorset Police was dismissed for swearing at a person whom he was arresting. A colleague started a crowdfunder for PC Lorne and his family which raised £20,000 in week. The Chief Officer team then released a video to help the public understand how PC Castle had behaved during the arrest. After the video was shown the public donated an astonishing extra £110,000.

Chapter 5 (On institutional racism)

The Macpherson Report (1999) following the tragic murder of Stephen Lawrence is always in the news. The recommendations of this very good report have a troubled history of implementation. In part this derives from a basic misunderstanding that institutional behaviour comes from the environment in which the institution exists, not from the misbehaviour of its staff. The result is that public time and effort was wasted trying to correct something that didn’t exist in the police at the time, whilst simultaneously failing to address problems in other institutions and in society at large.