Be very, very afraid.

Listening to Radio 4 this morning I gather that the posh-boys have set up a new web-site enabling the hoi-polloi to access the crime figures within any given postcode. Apparently it’s had 70,000 hits a minute, causing it to crash. 

  John Humphrys comprehensively demolished Policing Minister Nick Herbert’s rationale for the site - giving the public the information needed to hold the police to account. As Humphrys said, if your street’s being terrorised by yobs you don’t need a website to inform you of the fact. If you’ve been burgled, as Humphrys had, you report it to the police as does every other victim of a crime, so the Old Bill don’t need a website to tell them what their crime stats are. If you urge the police to prioritise your case they will reply, not unreasonably, that they have many calls on their time - some, murder and  rape for example, more urgent than yours. And, as Humphrys didn’t point out, thanks to the posh-boys’ cuts there are fewer policemen to investigate your burglary or arrest the yobs. 

   Unfortunately, Humphrys didn’t go on to  suggest the real reason the site has been created:  to increase paranoia among the general public. This will enable the government to add yet more authoritarian measures to those introduced by Blair and hasten the day when the ordinary citizen is treated with all the respect and dignity accorded a Ryan Air passenger.