Evenin' all

Apparently our police carried out 1.87 million stops in 2006-07, the old " Hello, hello, hello and where do you think you are off to, sunshine?"

Now each time the police stop anyone they have to fill in some form or other which takes an average of about seven minutes to complete.

Just as a matter of interest I did some quick calculations and the equivalent of 130 policemen are employed every year just to fill in forms, one every seven minutes for 37 and a half hours a week without a break, to record someone has been stopped. That does not include the man hours on top of that for an army of people to collate the said information to tell us which ethnic group was top of the stops and which group are moving up and down in the stop charts.

I am sure I am not alone in thinking there are much more useful ways of employing 130 coppers a year?