Stop, search, write

Well. Apparently stop and search forms are to be reduced to the bare minimum if the home secretary is to be believed.

Forgive my cynicism, but I'll believe it when I see it for two reasons:

1) In the name of efficiency I suspect we'll have to finish using up all the old forms first
2) It wouldn't surprise me in the least if my own force bottles out of this in the name of local accountability and we get an amended version which has more stuff to write on it.

In the meantime, I'd love to know where this claimed million hours of paperwork saved figure has come from and how it was figured out. It certainly wasn't from the response team jockeys whose paperwork burden remains as daft as it ever was.

Never believe someone official when they say they've taken x number of obsolete forms out of circulation. All they mean is that they've been replaced with a new version.