From the file marked ‘Coppers who don’t give a fuck about civil liberties’ comes this gem of a story on which I’ll stick to writing a short ‘drive-by’:

Too many organised criminals are using low-cost air fares and relaxed border controls in Europe to evade justice, the head of Merseyside police has said.

Chief Constable Bernard Hogan Howe called for greater powers to extradite suspects for questioning.

If you need to know why this is a bad idea then this article by Spyblog will explain everything, but what really caught my eye was this…

“Quite often now criminals are not that organised – but they can spend a small amount on a low-cost airline and they are away and out of our grasp, and they may be arranging drug supplies.

Fuck me, has anyone told Stelios how easy it is to get started in the short-haul airline business these days?

If its not Fraser Nelson musing over rapidly diminishing price differentials between cider and lines of Coke then its senior coppers telling us you can now buy an airline for the price of a couple of bags of skunk, so why all the gloom and doom over the budget when it seems that opportunity abounds and fortune is passing everywhere.