Police funding cut by 20%

Finally, someone did it. Someone cut police funding. In the Commons a few hours ago, a brave government majority approved a cut of 20% to police forces in England and Wales. The Association of Police Authorities said this will do long-term damage to policing capabilities - but I couldn't hear them over the sound of the party poppers I was letting off.

The police – arguably the laziest public service – have had this coming for a long while. Here are some facts about police wastage:

• 99% of police time is spent being extras in the TV series The Bill. It’s not even on anymore!

• 100% of all solved crimes are either committed by, or solved by, the police. A chilling statistic.

• Despite having sold 30 million copies of the single Roxanne, The Police have consistently failed to chart in Canada.

Now, David Cameron promised on a TV show before the election that there would be no frontline cuts to the police. But the producer of that show, who was probably Greg Dyke, cut away from Cameron just as he mouthed – ‘but I will cut them by 20%’.  The Association of Police Authorities says this will cut frontline police. Indeed, the Association of Police Authorities said this will do "long term damage to policing capability". But if the Association of Police Authorities was worth listening to, surely I’d have bothered to look up who they are?

The thing that the dope-smoking, police-loving liberal left don’t understand is these are necessary cuts, given the state of the economy. No matter how much they permanently destabilise law and order. After a recession, common sense tells you that the way you run a country’s finance is exactly the same as the way you run your household finance. If your household is overspending, then you destroy a part of your house.

And that’s the thought I want to leave you with. Complex problems demand simple solutions.

Take the ancient riddle “if a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” My answer would be to privatise that wood, cut it down and have it turned into a shopping centre, because the trees are all weird and philosophical. And since when have trees been any good at fighting crime, anyway? Everyone is an idiot.