Peter Rhodes on shops, scumbags and eye tests for ageing drivers
A shopkeeper in Wales puts up a sign referring to “scum bag” shoplifters and is asked by police to take it down to prevent causing offence. I believe this may be the golden rule of modern policing in action – the Tick & Duck approach.
Under this policy few things matter more than ticking the box marked “incident resolved” and ducking a punch-up which might put a copper off sick for weeks. Grabbing a shoplifter might lead to violence, and not ticking the box will infuriate the police commissioner. So the perfect solution is to confront a harmless shopkeeper instead and ask him to take down the sign. Thus everybody's happy, apart, of course, from the public who are furious. But then who ever gave a flying fig about the public?
It had to come. Britain's current system of letting old folk declare their own fitness to hold a driving licence is a risk that no state can take – especially a nanny state like ours.
