POW! BIFF! ORDER AN INQUIRY!
Bit late with this but couldn’t let it pass. A new team is in town taking on the forces of darkness: Respect Squad!
BBC News: National ‘respect squad’ unveiled
Local councils, MPs and police chiefs will be able to call in the squad to help tackle cases of “yobbishness”.
According to the Squad’s own webpage…
The Respect Squad is a team of troubleshooters who can be called in to help local agencies tackle anti-social behaviour incidents causing misery to local communities up and down the country.
The Respect Task Force will ensure that there is no let up in tackling anti-social behaviour, until every community in every part of the country gets a swift and effective response to their problem. The Respect Squad will help with this by accelerating action in cases where police and local authorities need extra support, or where severe cases are going unchecked.
Troubleshooters. Swift. Effective. Accelerating. Sounds like the very model of quick, efficient justice. Or a leading brand of pain relief. The Squad will race in, take in the problems at a glance, raise themselves to their full, imposing heights and…
Once the squad has been tasked to look at a particular case a mission squad, made up of squad members with experience appropriate to that case, be assembled. The mission squad will be assigned to make contact with those on the receiving end of the anti-social behaviour and with the local agencies that have a role in finding solutions. They will make an assessment, based on the facts of the case as can be established, of the strengths and weaknesses of the action being taken and any planned future interventions by local agencies, and make recommendations back to the Chair of the local Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership.
Blimey. Yobs beware. The Respect Squad are in town and they’ll assess your ass back to the stone age. You can even sign up and follow their adventures via email. I know this is gratuitous sniping but come on. Squad? Mission? Mission Squad? Are pensioners sleeping more soundly safe in the knowledge that Respect Squad is out on the streets? Are the hoodies looking over their shoulders? I don’t what kind of respect the Squad are trying to push but it certainly isn’t for reality.
If you want to give the impression of there being a do-or-die team out there, why not do it properly give them a Respectmobile and kit them out in skin-tight lycra. Hell, give them steroids and secret identities. Homoerotic sidekicks. Like the Clark Kent/Superman split, looking at the Squad members’ day jobs - laywers, police management, council wonks - you wonder how they’re going to balance the day jobs with crime fighting.
It’s just another sign of the Reidification of the Home Office. Calling what is effectively a mundane, unexciting quango Respect Squad is an extension of Reid’s two-fisted, testosterone-crazed approach to his job. Giving it a hard sounding name though is like giving your neutered dog a set of those false bollocks - it might now look impressive but it can’t live up to its reputation and you wonder what comedy might ensue when it’s asked to perform.
Posted on June 30th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
| See also • The Casey for the defence • Clarke shoos • Respect the *snip* |
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Filed under Eye Catching Initiatives, UK politics |
I loved the photo of John Reid that the Beeb use in that story - he looks like he’s threatening the cameraman.
My favourite little nugget from the story, though, was this:
10 people? Are they trying to take the piss?
Ah, nuts. I forgot to mention there’s only ten of them. And they’re so geographically scattered I doubt there’ll be many face-to-face meetings at their secret fortress.
In fairness, that’s more than the A-Team and G-Force put together. Let’s not be so quick to dismiss them…
For me ‘Respect Squad’ conjures up images of 1970s style TV cop shows. I can see Reid and his boys screechng around derelict inner-city areas armed with fists full of ASBOS as they hunt down the ‘yobs’.
I didn’t know about the ‘false bollocks’ you can get for neutered pets, that’s hilarious.
I keep thinking of ‘Speedway Squad’, the TV show Smithers dreams he and Mr Burns are in on The Simpsons:
Burns: The year is 1965, and you and I are undercover detectives on the hot rod circuit. [puts on helmet] Now, let’s burn rubber, baby!
Left a message on the repeck man website saying that it epitomises all that is cheap, meritricious and wrong about NuLabour. The whole things is laughable. I would love to see the Bremner sketch of The Dear Leader dreaming this particular idiocy up on his sofa.
I’m still laughing, as well as thinking which cheesy theme tune should accompany the proposals.
PS: Blairwatch pointed out how Reid looks like Vic Mackey from The Shield - coincidence, or something more sinister?
Me and Blairwatch’s Ringverse exchanged pleasantly geeky emails about which characters in The Shield had an equivalent in the cabinet. I thought about posting my ideas but hardly anybody else seems to have heard of the best cop show ever and it’d probably fall a bit flat/look twattish.
One question I have about all this is whether you can call the Respec’ Squad in by phone or only by supplying your mission on a self-destructing audio tape.
BTW Justin…
Yes, there are shades of Vic Mackey about Reid’s appearance and no, it would look twattish to give The Shield a mention or two.
I hope they have a red phone that flashes whenever there’s bother.
Bloody hilarious! You just couldn’t make any of this up could you? And what about that web site? The BBC Slugger Reid photo is good but take a look at the “Respect Squad Leader” Alex Rhind. She looks more like a Sally-Army cheerleader to me - you know a kind of aging sergeant Sarah Brown from Guys and Dolls. The hoodies will be shitting themselves.
Agreed, rich source material for a Bremner sketch; or better still a Russ Abbot revival. Trouble is how on earth could they present it as genuine satire when it is so surreal?
Meanwhile, anyone with a brain is watching Arg v Ger, so this initiative will greeted by the press headlines. “The Respect Squad move in on Brighton Beaches”
So all the footie fans will think Galloway has come down hard on promiscious behaviour in Brighton.
For me ‘Respect Squad’ conjures up images of 1970s style TV cop shows.
Actually, it sounds a lot like ‘Police Squad!’