A cunning plan...

So, the lovely Theresa May has finally published the proposals we all knew were coming. And to my mind, they're exactly as idiotic as we all expected.

The trouble of course is money. The reforms have been inspired in part by the government's demand that the Home Office make sweeping budget cuts, amounting to an expectation that some GBP2 billion will need to be saved from the police budget in the next year. Although cutting bureaucracy and collaboration have long been hailed as a way for police forces to save money, collaboration is expected to account for savings of just GBP5.7 million in 2010/11. Hence the government's cunning plans.

Now, the Bandit is not set fast against the current government. Cameron's 'diplomatic' initiatives and ability to piss off half his own side as well as foreign governments that we ought to have been willing to piss off years ago fills me with admiration - I too like to piss off half my own side. However, the proposals to reform the police smack me as ideological, and I hate ideological policy.

Take this lot. A pool of volunteer police reservists and 'community crime fighters' will be introduced, allowing ordinary people to take part in joint patrols with police officers. The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) will be phased out. Police authorities will also be scrapped, and replaced by elected police commissioners with the power to hire chief constables. These elected commissioners will be overseen by new local Police and Crime Panels made up of local councillors and other independent members.

Now does this spark halcyon visions of democratic and accountable policing, with happy citizens patrolling hand in hand with genial coppers? Or a disastrous farrago with every Daily Mail reading nut-job demanding their police go after the neighbours that piss them off with their general scruffiness and youth? Meanwhile the 'oversight' will inevitably be a panel of overworked local councillors, some of whom - as anyone familiar with local politics will testify - are bordering on barking mad - and other 'independent' interested parties. Surely my heart can't be the only one sinking at that prospect? The 'independent' interested parties who end up on governing bodies are often bored party activists and local nutters - but with schools, they're balanced out by parents and teachers. The local panels will just be small-time politicos and their hangers on with too much time in their hands. Exactly who I want overseeing my security.