I've been reading your blogs and your books for some years now. I'm grateful that you've written all you have - it is entertaining, witty, poignant and - for many reasons - important. You have also pushed the boundaries of workplace blogging - eschewing anonymity after a while - and agreeing guidelines with the LAS. I wish I were in a similar position. As a police officer I have three choices: blog anonymously and risk career-damaging exposure; write an official blog which is so innocuous as to be worthless, or just keep quiet. Here though is the difficulty with your own type of 'open' blogging. You are so depressed, pissed off, angry - or a mixture of these and similar emotions at the moment - that you've ceased to be a 'critical friend' to the LAS and to your colleagues. I completely understand where you're coming from with this post. I recently dealt with an incident where an ambulance crew were attacked by a locally well-known chaotic alcoholic, and ended up treating his minor injuries while they themselves bled. The resources that such people tie up are huge. They cling tenaciously to life even while they poison and abuse themselves. When they do die there is often suspension, stress and suspicion for the police, ambulance or hospital team with the ill-luck to be 'holding the parcel' when the music stops. Also, as a result of legislation and policy, we have a situation where club and pub owners rake in the cash from packed establishments which sell spirits to teenagers for pennies - leaving the pieces to be picked up by emergency and health service workers whose shifts have lengthened into the night and become busier than ever this last decade. All paid for from our council and income tax. You suffer the results of a system that means you dash to jobs you've been called to by the savvy, the lazy and the thoughtless - while uncomplaining elderly people who don't want to make a fuss lie on the floor for hours. Similarly, the police have to meet the new Policing Pledge target of getting to someone quicker if they're 'upset', producing an exactly parallel situation to yours - with those who shout loudest, literally, going to the front of the queue. But no matter how frustrating, how infuriating, how stupid all of this is - beating people up can never be a solution. OK, I know what you've written is hyperbole, magical realism, exaggeration - or some other literary device. But that's not how it will read to your managers, nor to the public - who won't see it in context. They won't take into account the fact that you've long-used your supposed misanthropy in this darkly humourous way. But do you *really* think that arbitrary state-sanctioned beatings would make this country a better place? I don't. There's a lot we need to change - but that is definitely not the way to do it. And you know that though frustrating and dangerous, alcholics are ill - and that any one of us could end up in that position. Old John above says it far more succinctly. You need to call it a day for a bit. You must know that yourself, and I almost wonder if you're trying to precipitate a crisis with your bosses. The job you're doing is damaging you, and you've got to change that. Soon.