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Dr Copperfield in the Daily Mail today

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PC David Copperfield is back!

And he's mad as hell!

Well, not really. He's just writing 1,000 words about British policing, from his Canadian perspective, in the Sunday Telegraph.

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(Also, a great piece about prisons by Theodore Dalrymple and some other media stuff about Dr Tony Copperfield - no relation.)

Gadget in the Telegraph

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A NEW POST ON BEDROOM BUREAUCRACY

(and police nonsense too) is up at our new blog, over at Wordpress:

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We won't be updating properly at Blogger any more, so please update your links (if you're in the least bit interested in our witterings).

WE HAVE MOVED TO WORDPRESS

LOTS OF PEOPLE WHO KNOW MUCH MORE ABOUT BLOGGING AND COMPUTERS THAN WE DO HAVE BEEN SUGGESTING FOR A LONG TIME THAT THIS BLOG SHOULD MOVE TO WORDPRESS.

ACCORDINGLY, HAVING NO MINDS OF OUR OWN, WE HAVE GIVEN IN AND MOVED THE BLOG TO WORDPRESS.

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IT'S SO EXCITING.

Dr Copperfield Reviews

Andrew Lansley and his SpAds have asked to see copies of Dr Tony Copperfield's SICK NOTES (free extract here). It certainly contains lots more examples of waste, where cash which might be spent on patients is instead shovelled into the gaping bureaucratic maw.

Meanwhile, here are a few online reviews of the book:

Fellow GP Dr Jest says: 'I suspect this book will be regarded as something of a niche market publication, but I hope it manages a wider circulation... if I have one wish it is to make it compulsory reading for all PCT managers and Chief Executives. Indeed I’m thinking of passing my copy on to our own Beloved Leader, assuming it’s still in a fit state when my partners have done with it. I get the feeling there is a real gulf of understanding between our two disciplines, and I think Tony Copperfield might have give us a means of bridging the divide. So if you’re an NHS administrator, a politician in or aiming for the Health Department, or if you’re remotely interested in the workings of our shared profession, you owe it to yourself to read this book.' 

Hospital consultant Dr Zorro says: 'Although I was offered a free copy of the book to review I chose instead to buy my copy. Among other reasons this I think allows me more impartiality than if I had accepted the gift. The cost of the book was money well spent. This book should be read by doctors , managers and patients, and anyone else who is concerned about the state of our NHS.'

Northern Doctor confesses to a slight discomfort at Copperfield's apparently endless bad days, but adds that the book 'beautifully highlights some of the more ludicrous examples of the NHS at its most wasteful. When it comes to shooting bureaucratic fish in a barrel Copperfield is one of the finest shots in the NHS.'

The chemists are less gushing ('Pharmacists snarl at GP's remarks').

A Tale of Two Copperfields

Copperfield (Dr) appears in the Times today, writing about the government's new plans to smash the bureaucracy.

He's not 100% persuaded (can't prove a Times link as we haven't yet subscribed, but if you click on the image the column will appear).

Meanwhile, Copperfield (PC) popped up on BBC1's new Sunday ethics show yesterday. It was all about whether the police should be routinely armed, and he gamely dialled in on his webcam from his Canadian redoubt to say that, yes they should.

He's living a high old life in Canada, by the way. In Burton on Trent he lived in a 2-bed terraced house looking out onto a main road covered with litter and doggerel and earned around £30k a year to be threatened and abused by morons. In Edmonton, he's got a big detached house with a huge fridge, all the guns one man could possibly need and he earns more the a UK police inspector would for doing a job he really enjoys.

You can read free extracts of the two Copperfields' books here and here.

Media Stuff

Frank Chalk was interviewed by ITN for the 10 o'clock news yesterday. The thrust of the piece was about new rules coming in to help teachers control rowdy kids and confiscate mobile phones, legal highs, pornography and cigarettes.

It was a bit blink-and-you-miss-it, but if you click on this link you can see the great man opining.

Chalk wrote about this stuff in It's Your Time You're Wasting. Lots of people thought he was making it up (ie that kids in some schools watch porn, drink and take drugs in the classroom), and The Times published a review saying it was a 'sour and vituperative' book (to be fair, they also said it was 'addictive'). I suppose not too many Times journos send their kids to terrible inner city comps, though.

Had a long chat with PC David Copperfield yesterday. Now a policeman in Canada, I wondered if he'd like to step into the breach vis a vis the BBC1 prog this Sunday (see previous blog post), part of which will be about whether or not the cops should be armed.

While working in Burton on Trent he was of the opinion that they ought to be, and his experiences on the other side of the Atlantic have only reinforced this belief. He drives around with a bootful of automatic weapons and shotguns, and says the streets are about as safe as can be. It takes all sorts (he has just taken delivery of his own personal AR15).

Anyway, he should be on the telly on Sunday morning, talking live via webcam from his bunker in Edmonton.

Reality TV With Guns

We were approached yesterday by BBC1 to see if Inspector Gadget would take part in their new show Sunday Morning Live this weekend. I think they were attracted by the (literally) hundreds of comments he's getting these days, and by his constant insistence that all British cops should be armed, all the time.

I called him (on the secure phone, obviously) to discuss this and sadly he declined, as he declines all such offers. I got chatting to him about this arm-the-cops business, and said I was sceptical; his reply was, what do we know that most of the other countries in Europe (where they do arm the police) don't, and what do we think about the fact that Derrick Bird was able to walk away from unarmed officers to continue his spree a few weeks back? Good questions, I suppose.

The whole thing is made for Monday Books authors, actually. I'll bet Moat was (semi)educated by a teacher like Frank Chalk, treated for depression etc by doctors like Tony Copperfield, arrested by cops like Gadget, Bloggs and Copperfield and assessed in prison by a psychiatrist like Theodore Dalrymple. He'll probably be attended by a paramedic like Stuart Gray when he shoots himself, or is shot. Later, our in-house neuroscientist, Simon Le Vay, might be called in to examine his brain. (I confess I'm struggling to think of a role for Austin Healey.)

I also chatted to Dalrymple yesterday, and mentioned Moat to him (he's in France at the moment, and was unaware of the lunacy). He enjoyed (and was not surprised by) Moat's suggestion, after shooting his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, that the trigger was actually pulled by a combination of the police and the injured woman, and not Raoul Moat, Esq.

This is the kind of thing he (Dalrymple) has been hearing first hand from people like Moat, and writing about, for a couple of decades now; I recommend Second Opinion, as I would, for more insights into this mad netherworld.

Talking of PC Bloggs (who we've suggested to the Beeb as an alternative to Gadget), the people who bought the rights to Diary of an On Call Girl are currently on telly with Rev (starring the brilliant Tom Hollander and the even better Lucy Liemann).

James Wood, co-creator of Rev is the guy who adapted the Bloggs book; sadly it was eventually rejected, but he's the hottest thing in showbiz (or nearly), interest is renewed. Watch this space! (Or don't, it's up to you.)

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