Mind How You Go

The last time that this lot were in, they tried to turn Police Authorities into bodies of central government appointees with "business experience", whatever that had to do with the local scrutiny of the Police. But today, even they have excelled themselves. Everything a bit big is to be taken out of the hands of local forces and given over to an agency of central government, while everything else is to be made subject to some local demagogue.

I used to be vaguely sympathetic to the idea of elected sheriffs. But there is really no need for them. We already have our own system of local accountability, if we could be bothered to use it. It is called Police Authorities, which should be made up predominantly - I do not say "entirely" - of local councillors, and which should ordinarily meet in public.

That Eric Pickles will be allowing councils to resume the traditional committee system marks a welcome return to our own way of doing things, and we may hope that, at the very least, there will be no more elected mayors, with the existing ones phased out as rapidly as possible. But whatever happened to joined-up government?

Get over imported cop shows. Then we would no longer have the ridiculous spectacle of cars careering through our quiet countryside adorned with imitations of the giant badge of the NY or LAPD. Nor would we have to endure guff either about elected sheriffs or about "a British FBI".