Product Description

PC DAVID COPPERFIELD is an ordinary bobby quietly waging war on crime...when he's not drowning in a sea of paperwork, government initiatives and bogus targets. 'WASTING POLICE TIME' is his hilarious but shocking picture of life in a modern British town, where teenage yobs terrorise the elderly, drunken couples brawl in front of their children and drug-addicted burglars and muggers roam free. PC Copperfield reveals how crime is spiralling while millions of pounds in tax is frittered away, and reveals a force which, crushed under mad bureaucracy, is left desperately fiddling the figures. His award-winning internet diary, Coppersblog, attracted rave reviews for its dry wit from The Sunday Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph; The Mail on Sunday featured it across three full pages. It's also banned by most police forces - just accessing the blog is a disciplinary offence. Copperfield brings the same incisive, acid humour to bear in 'Wasting Police Time'. The !
Home Secretary won't like it, and nor will Copperfield's Chief Constable, but a million serving and retired police officers and millions of ordinary Britons will be left nodding in agreement. If you're fed up with Tony Blair's bogus war on crime, and you want the truth - with added laughs - this book is for you.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3451 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-09
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Synopsis
A story of a policeman's life on the beat.

From the Publisher
If you like the sound of WASTING POLICE TIME, check out 'IT'S YOUR TIME YOU'RE WASTING, a teacher's tales of classroom hell' by FRANK CHALK (published September 06 by Monday Books).

From the Author
WHAT do you think the police actually do? If you watch a lot of telly (as most of my `clients' do), you probably think we spend all day roaring about in our souped-up cars, kicking down doors and shooting people. Or perhaps we're all devilishly clever detectives unravelling murder mysteries while listening to classical music and swanning round in old Jags? I'll let you in on a secret: it's not actually quite that glamorous. Don't get me wrong, I do like my job - especially the occasional moments where I get to chase after thieves and arrest them. I love nicking proper crims - after all, that's why I joined. The problem is, I hardly ever get to do that. Instead, I spend most of my life filling in forms and responding to initiatives, and it really gets on my nerves. Before you ask, I am a real copper, at the sharp end, and this is a diary of my working life over the last year or so. Some of it (actually, most of it) isn't all that dramatic (though I hope it will amuse you, all the same). That's kind of the point: being a policeman in modern England is not like appearing in an episode of The Sweeney, Inspector Morse or even The Bill, sadly. No, it's like standing banging your head against a wall, carrying a couple of hundredweight of paperwork on your shoulders, while the house around you burns to the ground. I hope this book will give you an idea of the depths of sheer incompetence our police are plumbing, and the downright scandalous ways in which your money is wasted while the crime books are cooked in ways that would make Nick Leeson proud. PC DAVID COPPERFIELD.

Customer Reviews

Wasting the worlds paper
Although this is an interesting book, with very salient points and views contained within, and it does provide an insight people need to know about, it is essentially the "best of" collection of an online blog by the same author. Therefore there is nothing new to read.

More a set of blogs than a book
I hadn't seen the blogs when I bought this, and if I had then maybe I would have simply read them instead. It's revealing and disturbing about the state of Britain today, of course, but that doesn't make it a particularly interesting read. It could be half the length; there's not much in the second half of the book you haven't already read in the first. You soon get the message: the police have too much paperwork to do to have time to catch criminals and the courts are soft on those they do catch. As for being funny, it's a bit like listening to someone tell you the same joke ad nauseum when it was only mildly amusing the first time. The fact that The Daily Mail finds it hilarious speaks volumes. I have a suspicion Mr Copperfield would have us live in the Wild West, each with his gun and the fastest prevail. His fondness for US style policing (no crime there, is there?) is almost as disturbing as the state of our own nation. In all, a bit of a depressing read.

Brilliant read - and one thing that all the negative reviewers missed out on...
Firstly, what a great book! It delivers everything it promises. It is Humorous, witty, sarcastic, shocking, depressing, scary, and above all, very humane. It does shed light on what does go on in the life of an ordinary bobby, and I've no reason to doubt that the vast majority of it is as honest and truthful as the author intended.

Now, I noticed that a lot of the negative reviews have focussed on PC Copperfield's political leanings (Right Wing, middle class, lock-away-the-key mentality), and to be honest, I don't ascribe to this mentality at all...but then again, I do not have the privilege of sharing PC Copperfield's experiences in his job.

Besides, the personal opinions of PC Copperfield are not, and should not be the focus of the true intention of the book. The purpose of the book is to show that the state of the Police Force in the UK is rapidly becoming a minefield of beauracracy, where forms need to be filled in & filed, where conducting 'risk assessements' become more important than saving lives, and where the statistics on "Crime" are adjusted and massaged to show a more beneficial result. - Whether PC Copperfield is conservative or liberal in his outlook is a moot point. The issues he raises are still the same, even if readers don't always see eye to eye on his policitcal opinions.

In actual fact, the book benefits from his refreshing 'Speak my mind, and to hell with the usual Political Correctness brigade'. PC Copperfield isn't racist, homophobic or prejudiced in any way, but he's not someone who seems to be too worried about watching how he phrases things to appease the out-of-touch powers that implement this tripe.

Finally, it does give a brutally honest view of Britain's underclass, and the state that it's in. I may not be a police officer, but I've seen, experienced, lived amongst and even came from a part of it, and it's getting worse. It's one thing to be working class, but this new 'Chav culture' seems to be predominantly a non-working class, and worse still they seem to be happy with their lot, of claiming dole and benefits, then leaving their kids with babysitters while they go out partying. - Again, in this book, PC Copperfield does not vent out against them, but he does tell some truly horrific stories, and reflects how depressed and how disappointed he is with these people. And frankly, whether you're a staunch Daily Mail reading Tory, or a Liberal, your reactions if you were placed in PC Copperfield's situation would probably match his.