Sir Ian Blair

Time to get political again.

The man's clearly a moron, and the de menezes affair has put the seal on my opinion. t's hard to ignore the catalogue of errors coming from the Commissioner and his inner circle. He is presiding over a Force that manages through a series of errors that - whilst individually they might be understandable - add up to a situation where an innocent man lost his life AND got called a terrorist suspect in a press conference.

The man should go.

And that's before you consider his stirling efforts to block the POolice Complaints Commision's report.

While I'm on the subject, let's get shot of the Home Secretary too. Jacqui Smith has come out in defence of Sir Ian Blair, saying to her opposite number "You and I will never face the challenge of making split second decisions in life and death policing operations." Erm, excuse me. Exactly which of Sir Ian's decisions are split-second? As far as I can tell, although he's eager to trumpet what he sees as successes, or to criticise other Forces when they manage to arrest terror suspects without shooting them, they're not exactly "split second" are they? The blunders in the De Menezes shooting were caused by a variety of factors - and I believe that much of the root cause is the policies and atmosphere created from the very top. Fact was, some sort of accident was almost inevitable that July, with Sir Ian sending as many of them out there with guns, ready to jump at shadows. Split-second how, exactly?

Another lefty weighed in with this pearl: "Policing and politics make for a volatile mix." Might be worth his considering where both of those words originally stemmed from (I thought that despite their eagerness to close them, most politicians had a grammarschool - or public school - background, and could be relied upon to know a bit of Ancient Greek). The simple fact is that politics is how the citizens decides how it is to be governed and ruled. The Police are a body appointed by the citizens to oversee those rules - they cannot enforce anything without the goodwill and support of the citizens. It ought to go without saying that questions of politics should lie at the very heart of how we are to be policed. Especially when one is considering the Police's own policies. Do we not have a right - nay, a duty - to get "political" when things are done in our names of which we strongly disapprove?