The Bozza and the Rozzer

The London Haystack has done the public's confidence in the police the great honour of placing it on a par with his own. While the chief of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, noted that the public had been kept "largely safe", aside from those who were assaulted, and promised to investigate "concerning images" if not deplorable incidents, the London Haystack said that he personally "would not necessarily accept" that confidence in the police had been damaged, any more than public confidence in anti-capitalist protesters would have been damaged if the demonstrators had taken sticks to random passers-by. On the contrary, "I think the overwhelming majority of people in this city and this country understand the particularly difficult situation [the police] face when being asked to provide security in a demonstration such as the G20". Self-evidently, the inability to deal competently with a difficult situation is not something that would cause a lack of confidence in a police force; especially a police force with the Met's fortunate combination of crippling allergy to the truth and catastrophic ineptitude when lying.

Stephenson also said that it was "absolutely unacceptable for any police officer who should have identification numbers on not to have those identification numbers on"; however, "there needs to be a context here. That operation was one of the most complex policing operations that's ever been undertaken – protecting multiple heads of state". It is not clear whether this is intended to mean that what is absolutely unacceptable in one context may be pretty much acceptable in a more complex context, or whether the two statements were simply thrown together because they sounded nicer that way.