Thursday, July 20, 2006

Brunstrom, Blogging And The North Wales Police

Vicky sent me a story from the BBC yesterday, which confirms my greatest fear: I have increased competition because there is now three bloggers based in North Wales. Myself, Ally and Richard Brunstrom - head of North Wales police - who launched his blog much to great fanfare on the BBC.

I was kind of expecting it, due to the increased Google Searches I'd be getting wanting our esteemed head of Police. They are directed to a story here, about how he intimidated the local drinking establishment to ID us. I haven't liked the guy since.

According to him, "There has been a suprising response so far", well - lets see the page ranks...

So, Ally on a deserved 5, myself on a 4, and Brunny Boy on a 0, and with quality blogging like this, I can see why.

"On Saturday I spent the day (should have been my day off, but my wife’s away, so I can sneak off to have some fun) out near the Wakestock Festival at Abersoch with our ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) team. We did a twelve hour stint on the A497 in the outskirts of Pwllheli, in baking sunshine. This part of Wales is one of the nicest places on the planet in good weather - shame it doesn’t happen more often! The camera read 5891 numberplates, from which we had 321 “hits”, resulting in us stopping 109 cars. During the course of the day the team arrested 22 people, mostly for possession of relatively small amounts of cannabis. Nowadays all we do for simple possession of cannabis is seize the drugs, issue a formal street caution (dealers get different treatment) and let the person go almost immediately - the whole process takes only half an hour or so, at the roadside. The ‘prisoner’ (because they are actually arrested, contrary to popular rumour) does still get a formal police record though, which will last the rest of their lives."

Fun? Well I've got a Number Plate for you: G3T 4 L1F3.

Tomorrow I'm off to the docs again - for a new patient medical. According to the letter, I need to bring a "sample". What of though?