How many crime victims will take comfort that hot flushes are a priority at the Yard?

F‘The police at management level are a joke’

AIR to say the Capital’s police force haven’t exactly had the best week. Pictures of them standing around — apparently aimlessly, certainly cluelessly — while a succession of puce-faced indigos and Portias deliver tremulous rants about their future being stolen, from atop gantries on the M25, haven’t done much to boost confidence in His Majesty’s law enforcement.

Ordinary, law-abiding citizens — you know, the poor sops who have to actually work for a living — have been left tearing their hair out at the force’s total inability (or is it unwillingness?) to tackle the eco-vangelists.

One police commissioner, whose officers wrongly arrested a journalist for covering the protests this week, even tried to shift responsibility for the mayhem on to the media, claiming news outlets were ‘fanning the flames’ of protest by reporting on the disruption caused.

That’s right: blame the messenger. anything to avoid facing up to the truth. Which is that the police — at management level, at any rate — are a joke. Were this not already abundantly apparent, along comes the Met — currently in special measures owing to its stunning record of incompetence — to press home the point.

Forget gang warfare, armed robbery, knife crime; forget 20-mile tailbacks on the M25, or wanton vandalism of buildings and priceless artefacts.

Forget crazy people gluing themselves to things. What Britain really needs now is a police force that can tackle one of the most dangerous threats of our age: middle-aged ladies feeling a bit hot and sweaty.

Yes, you read that right. That’s what the Met police are focusing on now, as our capital city descends into chaos. The menopause. Brilliant.

Mind if i interject here for a second? as a menopausal woman, can i just say i am so bored of talking about the menopause. Fair enough, it’s a thing, and it’s good that people know about it. But there’s a fine line between being open and honest about something in order to raise awareness — and turning it into a full-blown industry.

That’s what’s happened over the past few years.

You can barely move for books/ TV shows/ podcasts about the menopause. and as well as a money-spinner, it’s become another one of those fashionable causes for celebrities and wannabes to latch on to in order to raise their profile and show the world how much they, you know, care. Hence, presumably, the efforts of the Met’s assistant commissioner and ‘HeForShe Gender Equality Lead’ (whatever that’s supposed to mean), Matt Jukes, who has been ‘sharing’ his experiences of wearing a ‘menovest’ — a garment that mimics the effects of hot flushes — with colleagues. apparently he found the experience ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘distracting’. No sh*t, Sherlock. if it weren’t so tragic, it would actually be quite funny. Talk about fiddling while rome burns.

Can the Met not see how incredibly insulting this is to all those victims of crime in London whose person or property they have failed to protect? Or, while we’re at it, how insanely patronising it is to actual menopausal women like me for them to waste police time on such an idiotic endeavour? it’s hard to know where to begin, really, but how about this for starters. Do we think the family of a 16-year-old stabbed to death in Brixton this april will take comfort from the fact that hot flushes are front of mind at Scotland Yard?

Likewise the relatives of the 14-year-old who was stabbed outside Tesco in west London last Sunday? as they wait anxiously by their son’s hospital bed, will they be happy to know that no middle-aged female officer will ever have to feel embarrassed to ask a colleague if they can open a window again?

Or how about the widow of a 45-year-old who was killed in august while protecting his 17-year-old daughter from thugs wielding metal bars? Will she be relieved to know that Mr Jukes now has ‘ heightened awareness’ of menopausal flushes? What a farce. The tragedy is that the Met, like so many other once fine institutions, has been infiltrated over the past few years by a woke ideology which is completely at odds with their main purpose.

Let’s face it, the job of the police is to enforce law and order, protect the public from criminals and, wherever possible, keep those criminals off the streets. That is not, by definition, a role for those who care unduly what other people think of them. it requires a certain toughness, not to mention a degree of assertiveness, both physical and mental.

The public need to be able to trust and respect the police — and those who break the law need to fear them.

instead, we have a situation where victims fear the police — let’s not forget the murder of Sarah Everard, by a then-serving police officer, and the two officers recently jailed for sharing pictures of murder victims — and where blatant law-breakers such as this week’s protesters are treated with kid gloves.

How some bloke prancing around in a heated vest is going to fix that is beyond me.

‘Fiddling while Rome burns’