This story was on 5 Live yesterday evening. According to the media, Poole Borough Council used "laws to track criminals and terrorists" (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) to determine whether they were lying about living in a school catchment area.

So what powers were these? Phone tapping? CCTV cameras pointed at the house 24/7? SWAT teams on standby?

No. They sent a man to check if the family left the house they claimed they lived at each morning and returned there in the afternoon. The BBC did their best to sensationalise this as "spying" - despite listeners texting in telling them to stop trying to 'sex up' their stories. Others went one better, using attention grabbing headlines claiming that 'spies stalked' the family. If this is spying, the government have been 'spying' on suspected benefit cheats for years now. Why is this any different?

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You'd scarcely credit it but Sinn Fein's Alex Maskey is fuming with Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde and is demanding an apology after the chief of police allegedly claimed the policing board had "gone a bit tribal".

Supposedly Orde accused the elected members of being more interested in political debate than policing issues. Frankly, I suspect describing the debate as "political" was being generous.

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It seems to be a constant theme that when people are surveyed about the news they complain there's not enough positive news reported, so here goes.
Belfast is one of the top 10 safest cities in the United Kingdom (also in the Tele) in which to live according to a survey from Endsleigh insurance. It landed in at number 7th safest for household accident claims and 10th safest from claims arising from theft.

That list in full (courtesy of the Daily Record):

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O'Connell Street, Dublin's main (and "most dangerous") street, was the scene for a vicious attack on St Patrick's night. A 17-year old English lad was confronted by a group of youths at 8pm who asked him where he was from and then attacked him when they didn't like the answer. The attack saw the victim, a pianist, lose a finger which police were unable to recover (until later see comments).

After almost 90 years of independence most folk in the Republic seem to have dropped the old grudges. Some, it seems, still can't get over the xenophobic hatred. So just what is it that fosters this naked hatred among a minority in a country that is developed, prosperous, and supposedly self-confident?

Is the desire to "reclaim" that fourth green field so strong that it warrants an attack on a kid enjoying St Patrick's day, just because he's a Brit? Is the irony that lost on these morons?

For some unionists, discrimination in 50:50 recruitment in the PSNI, whereby 50% of new recruits had to be "members of the Roman Catholic community", was perhaps the bitterest of bitter pills swallowed to garner nationalist support for policing here. The silver-lining appears to be that it is actually working.

Although it's impact upon clear-up rates and general police effectiveness is questionable, the 50:50 recruitment practice is succeeding in recruiting more Catholic police officers. In 1998 the percentage of RUC officers from a Catholic background was 8.3%; in February 2008 this figure for the PSNI was 23.7%. Paul Goggins, the minister responsible for security matters in Northern Ireland, said that this put them on course to achieve a target of 30% in 2010/2011.

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The traditional view of Americans participation in the "Peace Process" here is generally seen as "cynical playing to the green Irish vote" by taking the side of nationalists and/or republicans. This was particularly true under the Clinton years.

With the new presidency race I think the best some of us were hoping for was that any new administration would have more important things to worry about than the rather tedious affairs of Northern Ireland, yet still its hard to shake the feeling that the votes of 36 million "Irish Americans" may prove too tempting to ignore.

That's why I was so surprised to read today that President Bush's special envoy to Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, has criticised Tony Blair for giving too much to Sinn Fein/the IRA, who he said became used to the government "doling out benefits" whenever it came time for Sinn Fein/the IRA to do what any democrat should do, i.e. end criminality, endorse the police, decommission illegally held weapons - that sort of thing

Reiss had placed a ban on the provisionals fundraising in the US after he became frustrated at the lack of movement from Sinn Fein on these issues. Later when Gerry Adams wanted to do some fundraising in New York, he contacted Reiss to have request the ban be overturned. Reiss refused to Gerry went to his best mate Tony at Number 10 to get the British government to go over Reiss's head to get the ban lifted by the White House.

Relations with No. 10 got a bit "open and nasty" when Reiss insisted the fundraising ban should stay. The Americans thought the British government was about to fudge the issue of policing (surely not!). Reiss kept the ban in place knowing that, for Paisley and the DUP, support for policing was a pre-condition for power sharing.

It really is time to put a stop to the nonsense going on at the Bill of Rights Forum. This bunch of professional do-gooders, whose job seems to be to advise those who will advise the government on a Bill of Rights, seem to want to allow anyone under the age of 18 to escape prosecution when they commit a crime.

I'm sure you're all familiar with stories about violent and disruptive youngsters who proudly proclaim "I know my rights" when teachers attempt to discipline them. They must be having a good laugh at this. This is not what a Bill of Rights is supposed to be about!

There is an age under which children aren't held criminally responsible for their actions because they aren't mature enough to understand right and wrong. At the moment, that age is set as 10. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child don't like it being that low (the BORF seem happy enough to let us all know that bit) saying anything below 12 is not acceptable. What the BORF aren't so quick to talk about is The BORF do admit that they (the UN) view ages between 14-16 as "high" (though they deem this commendable), and yet they want the age raised to 18. So the offender, in the worst cases possibly a 17 year old who has abused a child or raped a woman, will be treated with kid-gloves and emerge with no criminal record.

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There's nothing like seeing a criminal, particularly a violent one, get their comeuppance. Those last couple of pictures are doozies.

What can I say? It seemed relevant.

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The Saville Inquiry was established in 1998 to re-examine the events of 30th January 1972, AKA "Bloody Sunday". We knew then that soldiers shot dead 14 people in the Bogside in Londonderry's. 10 years and £181 million later and that's still about all we know and Secretary of State Shaun Woodward said he still doesn't think we're going to see the report any time soon.

From the beginning I've been of the opinion that this enquiry is a waste of money given that people have already made up their minds on what happened. If it's proved that the army were in the wrong, it will be seen in some quarters as a sop to Sinn Fein. If it's proved that the army were in the right, Sinn Fein will argue that there's been a cover up (as was claimed of the original tribunal). Whatever happens, the only people laughing at the end of it all will be the lawyers and anyone seeking to exploit what happened to demonise either the soldiers (and by extension the British government) or the deceased (and by extension, republicans).

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

The Patten Commission was not a pleasant experience for Unionists. The abandonment of the historic name and symbols of the RUC GC was needless, insensitive, and damaging to Unionist confidence in the political process of the time. While this was not the only negative experience to come out of Patten, what we can say is a great many of the recommendations (PDF) in the report were good ones that have improved the already high standard of policing in Northern Ireland. One of these proposals, detailed at pages 62 and 63 of the Patten report, was the civilianisation of many tasks that were being undertaken by fully trained Police Officers. Police Officers are expensive to train and retain, this training is extensive and produces an excellent public servant for the betterment of the community. It is therefore demeaning to the officers, as well as a massive waste of public resources to have uniformed police officers manning reception desks of stations, and other such basic administrative tasks.

Despite the poor way in which the report was handled, the handful of appalling recommendations which were insensitively implemented, and the bad taste left by it in Northern Ireland, it has had a positive net effect on day to day policing. Therefore it is of note that the former Chief Constable of the RUC GC, who himself was "hurt" by the Patten report, has used his experience to implement Patten best practise across forces in England and Wales. The DPPs, the Ombudsman’s Office (which I think may have predated Patten slightly, but the point nevertheless stands), as well as civilianisation of administrative functions are positive developments in the policing of Northern Ireland, and the rest of the country can learn from our positive, if in places painful, example.