It’s rarely a day goes by these days when I do not come across something that makes London’s Metropolitan Police look bad. There’s the recent cases of a murderer and a serial rapist that have made the news and the ongoing problems with the Met having to employ hundreds of officers whose conduct is so questionable that they’ve been given desk jobs well way from members of the public. It is a force where few officers consider it noteworthy that some of their fellow officers have nicknames like ‘Bastard Dave’ or ‘The Rapist’ or wonder whether a person with such a reputation should be a police officer. It’s also a force that is incredibly politicised and one that has been captured by various ideologies ranging from identity politics through to the acceptance of diversity policies that put equity of outcome ahead of equality of opportunity.

It was a desire by the Met to burnish their diversity credentials and to follow policies that would make the police look in racial and communal make up, more like those in the city that they policed, that has caused the latest Met Police related disaster. That disaster, by way of being overly lax with recruiting standards has been the deployment of police officers who cannot properly read and write, officers who are, in the words of one of His Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary, ‘functionally illiterate’.

Yes ladies and gentlemen this is where we are with the Met Police today, police who can’t bloody read or write. I do hope that we are now at the peak (or is that trough) of UK clownworld but sadly I expect things to get worse. In an effort to make the police superficially look like London’s population they have lowered standards and allowed in those who are the right skin tone or background but have ignored any questions regarding whether or not the candidates for police officer can do a basic thing like be able to read and write. Nobody in London, no matter what their race or faith is being properly served by having police officers who cannot be considered as properly literate.

The Met Police is completely buggered it really is. It’s as buggered but in different ways as were the means of crime prevention and detection that existed prior to the Met being formed. It’s as bent as some of the eighteenth century thief takers and is as ineffective at policing as was the ad hoc nightwatch and constable system of the seventeenth century. The Met is a mess and it’s the people of London who suffer from having police officers chosen on the grounds of skin colour rather than whether or not they are capable of doing the job of a warranted police officer. Unfortunately I look around at this country and I don’t see anyone of Sir Robert Peel’s calibre who could put the broken remains of the Met back together again.