You couldn't make it up and be believed.

I work continental shifts, 12 hours, 2 days + 2 nights 4 on 4 off. It suits me, doesn't suit everyone, but the fact that my weekends move around a bit means that often enough I'm off when everyone else is at work. Paperwork is the bane of my life, it prevents me from actually doing the job I'm being paid for (yes I know paperwork is necessary on occasion) by keeping me in an office filling out forms rather than fixing/maintaining the equipment I'm in charge of. All in all though it takes up about 10% of my time or 5 hours over the 4 days I'm on.

So I was surprised (well not really as I much suspected this was the case) that the Police spend fewer than 6 hours a week on the streets.

Officers spend less than six hours a week patrolling the streets because they are swamped with paperwork and rushing between incidents like a "fire brigade", The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The proportion of time on the beat has dropped by almost ten per cent in just three years while the amount of paperwork has risen by the same proportion, despite Government pledges to slash red tape.

Rank and file leaders said officers now did more "fire brigade policing", racing from one incident to another, with no time to simply patrol.

Now assuming that the average plod works 40 hours then that means that they spend only 15% of their time doing what the public presume to be their job and the rest (85%) filling out forms.
No wonder you can't get a policeman (unless it's a hate crime against one of the favoured) only 15% of them will ever be available at any one time cos the rest are doing paperwork!

No wonder this country is going to the dogs and every promise to remove red tape ends up with you've guessed it, even more red tape. The one bit of regulation they did remove was the one checking up to see how much red tape they were producing.

Anyone putting this sort of thing in a novel would be accused of taking fiction to extremes, yet here we are in modern Britain shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic whilst the population slips more and more into despair with the way the country is being run in seeming opposition to their wishes.