A Couple of Moorhens On the Curate's Pond ...

A couple of weeks ago police blogs all over London were closing down, following the fatwa by the Met against them.

On one of them I picked up an RSS feed, the source of which had vanished by the time I looked at the actual blog. It said that word on the Met street was that 'Sir' Ian Blair's days were numbered.

Although he has his defenders, it does start to look that way. How ironic for the PC Plod if it's the testimony of Commander Hugh Paddick that does for him.




Here's an interesting one.

Ms Docherty, director of social services at North Ayrshire Council, told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland that it was very difficult for social workers to establish grounds for removing children without drug testing.

"Parents can say that they are drug-free and in the absence of objective evidence, it is difficult for us to prove to the contrary," she said.

"We all need to think about how we get the balance right between the rights of parents and the state's duty to intervene to safeguard children and their wellbeing."

Professor Neil McKeganey, director of Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse Research, said that too much emphasis had been placed on looking after addicts rather than how they were looking after their children.

You'd need to build rather a lot of care homes, given that the majority of underclass mothers do drugs of one sort or another. On the other hand, poor little Derek Campbell would still be alive.

The only other issue is one of frying-pans and fires. Taking the child away from a drug-taking mother and delivering him or her to social services seems a bit coals to Newcastle. In my salad days I knew a fair few social workers, including some working in residential care homes. From that admittedly limited (although thoroughly researched) sample, I'd suggest that they'll need to test the social workers too.



"And finally,"

another tremendous triumph for our hardworking Probation "Service".

Four of the gang were on probation at the time of the killing in Reading, Berkshire, it has been revealed.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke said it was "vital" lessons were learned. Sentencing was adjourned to 28 April.

Drug-dealer Adrian Thomas, 20, of Battersea, and fellow gang-members Michael Johnson, 19, of Southfields, Jamaile Morally, 22, of Balham, and Krasniqi were all under supervision when the 16-year-old was stabbed to death and her friend shot in the head in May 2005.

As Drinking From Home points out, Charles Clarke says that every time someone's killed by a probationer or early releasee.