Criminality Pure and Simple

In keeping with its resolution to control Britain's feral youth, Daveybloke's Cuddly Coalition has drawn up some jolly strict criteria to make sure that only the right sort of people can run for police and crime commissioner. Despite the Government's relaxed attitude to police officers who take kickbacks from Rupert Murdoch or who declare open season on middle-aged news vendors, the Home Office has, for the purposes of the police commissioner's recruitment, abolished the 1974 Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and declared that a petty juvenile offence nearly half a century ago constitutes a permanent and irrevocable stain on the character. As might be expected from the party of Straw, Blunkett, Clarke and Agent Smith, Labour did not oppose this "high standard" of lunacy; and now Daveybloke's mad old cat lady is climbing the walls and biting the furniture because the only remaining candidates are likely to be people whose energy and force of character is such that they failed to get into trouble during adolescence.