by Martin Lincoln

Created on: April 10, 2009   Last Updated: April 12, 2009

I have, after nearly 2 years off from writing, found an excuse to write an article that I feel annoyingly strongly about. Well, I say found an excuse, but I think its more needing to voice my opinion.

I speak of course of something that everyone likes to call Common Sense'.

Now let me set the scene for you for a second, as it is important to know where the inspiration for this has come from. I have returned to my hometown for a few days, and just before sitting down to write this, I have walked home from a friend's house (I figured I'd walk to do my bit for the environment) and walked past the advertisements that companies pin up in bus stops. There was one that caught my eye, pinned up by the Police (as in the crime fighting people, not the band). The Police logo stood out proud across the whole advertisement, with a line of text in very small writing that stated the following

"The Police now pledge to listen to and act on reports of community crime".

Now at this point I stopped to ponder this advertisement, and all I could think was, Aren't the police meant to have been doing this all along?' With this thought in mind I sauntered on.

Common sense dictated to me that the Police should have been fulfilling this pledge' all along without suddenly advertising that it was their duty, and with that the gears were set in motion. If the Police are just advertising this pledge' now, does this mean they haven't been doing their crime fighting job all this time? Perhaps a more common sense slogan would have been to say, Hey guys, you can now feel safe in the knowledge that if you get mugged we will now do something about it', or perhaps even, Sorry for doing such a lousy job'.

Now you may now think that it's my opinion that the Police are hopeless, but this simply isn't true. What I'm saying is that it seems the Police themselves think they have been doing a bad job and have had a slap on the wrist from her Royal Majesty and have found themselves with a duty to expose this to the nation.

So, now people with an ounce of common sense are going to come to the same conclusion as me here, but rather than seeing it from both the point of view of themselves and the Police, they are going to be worried that either 1) The Police haven't been doing a good job or 2) The Police are going to start clamping down on every single person breaking some new laws Gordon and his political train have been coming up with and not enlightening the rest of us on. We as a world, as I am sure it is not

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>