At the tail end of last year, Jack Straw made an extraordinary attack on the police.  He told BBC Radio 4 that some officers deliberately take four times longer than necessary to fill-in forms because they liked being inside in the warm as opposed to outside in the cold.  He said he was sceptical about police officers who said they were overworked or bound by bureaucracy and that some officers enjoyed being in the police station.

Did Straw learn anything about the police as Home Secretary?   Did he ever speak to a real cop or was he only exposed to the selected few with shiny faces and who had been schooled on ‘correct' answers?  I'm not saying there has never been one or two "Olympic Torches" in the service, but 99% plus of the cops I have known preferred being out doing it rather than inside writing about it.

Isn't it ironic that Straw chose this time of year to talk crap about being inside in the warm when in fact thousands of our troops are outside doing extraordinary things in freezing conditions?

Now Jack Straw is, as I've said, an ex-Home Secretary, he is the current Justice Secretary.  He is unquestionably an experienced senior Government Minister and when such a man criticises the police some people will listen.  But he's also the son of a conscientious objector, the father of a drug dealer and an MP who claimed full-council tax on his expenses when he'd only paid out 50% of it and when such a man criticises the police some people will say, ‘so what.'

So why did he do it?  Well Straw has aspirations to lead the Labour Party.  Despite tripping over himself to appear on TV to ‘condemn' the Hoon/Hewitt attack on GB, he can hardly keep the smile off his face.  He's in full election mode and that's the point.  He's positioning himself to respond to media/public dissatisfaction with law and order. Perceived failures have nothing to do with 13 years of Labour Government, crap laws and crap procedures imposed by Straw and his ilk - it's lazy cops init?

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