Have they really increased 'Police' numbers?

Another hot day. Not so much hot as steamy! Clearly not as steamy as it must have been at the FA board meeting today!

I noticed today a wonderful example of Lib Dem nonsense. They attacked the Conservatives for arguing that some Police forces were reporting that they would have funding deficits by the end of the year. One such Chief Constable on the Today programme this morning agreed with this. And yet the Lib Dems manage to argue that our policy to have 40,000 extra policemen is half baked but then not put forward an alternative. See for yourself..... Lib Dems have no policy on Police force

But I will tell you what really worries me about this Governments and Livingstones strategy for Police. I actually think the new neighbourhood Policing (6 officers per ward) is very good but I worry about its sustainability. The new PCSO's are great people undertaking a difficult job but.....they are not Police Officers, having no powers of arrest. The really worrying thing is that here we have brave PCSO's who are now going to be the 'Police on the Street' and yet we pay them significantly less than the poor police officer stuck in an office filling out the forms for Whitehall bureaucrats. There is something wrong here and I cannot help thinking this is policing on the cheap that is also putting the less well paid PCSO's in the front line. My Father was a Police officer for thirty years so I have a bit of an idea about the problems they face but as he says the irony is that this type of policing we were doing thirty years ago!! Nothing new there!!

Yet more deliveries tonight which worked up a sweat. Having the young girl from France staying I decided to take my wife to dinner and leave the children behind. Went to a great restaurant called 'The Italian Taste' in Victoria Road, Surbiton. Great meal, great atmosphere.