In Enid Blyton's Noddy books is a policeman, PC Plod, who is genial, public spirited and has a very positive attitude.
These are unrecognisable characteristics of the police today, and therefore to commend the police to adopt such characteristics, I refer to them publicly as plods.
Which gives us in turn, ploddery for constabulary and ploddity for their behaviours and cultures.
A few years back I lamented these thoughts in a poem ...
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?The Oddity Of Ploddity? Copyright © 4th November 2005 by Gareth Alun Evans
English people have a traditional view of their police forces, based on the good-natured and efficient PC Plod of Enid Blyton?s stories. Such a viewpoint is no longer true, and the ploddery has degenerated into a self-seeking organisation dominated by groupthink. The ploddery frequently break the very laws that they are expected to enforce, seemingly without any awareness of the absurdity of this behaviour, especially when they kill pedestrians on zebra crossings whilst driving at 60MPH in a
30 MPH zone. There has been no consensus of Englishmen that the ploddery should be habitually armed, yet this has become a reality, with plods regularly passing the death sentence without any comeback. Ploddity is, at the time of writing, a social experiment that is only 150 years old. Perhaps it is time to realise that it is a failed experiment?I dedicate this poem to Jean Charles De Menezes who was summarily executed at Stockwell Tube station by the Metropolitan Ploddery with SEVEN (?) bullets to the head on the 22nd July 2005.
Since when has the boarding of a Tube train been an offence punishable by death?
Old England has a band of men Who rule of law ignore, Reducing towns down to a wen, (Which decent folk deplore).
They think that they can do no wrong And do not understand The way their minds do not belong In England?s civil lands.
From racing cars at quite a whack Along the village road And killing those on Zebra?s track Who?d thought a safety mode.
Bring death to men who ride the train With shots right to the head. More than enough, one, to the brain, But seven lumps of lead?
And beating up the Irishmen Until the poor men cracked. To torture six from Birmingham Confessions to extract.
Then kicking in the fragile door, Suburban houses? gate, Upon a reason, very poor, To terrorise your mate.
What IS the point of such a force? They don?t protect the man, But break the laws they should endorse, Instead the flames they fan.
Preposterous, we?re all aghast, We find we tear our hair. The oddity of ploddity Drives men to a despair.
Just for a century and a half, A bad experiment, This ploddery is but a laugh And bin-wards should be sent.