By sun-up if you're not the sorriest piece of ass in all'a Redruth... you'll certainly be the sorest!

What is a police state? It's a state where the police act as law-maker, judge, jury and enforcer. Scary places, like, I don't know, Cornwall.

Evidently, the resident fascist junta there goes by the name of PC Marc Griffin, who has put his name to something called "Operation Goodnight":

Operation Goodnight in Redruth, Cornwall, will see officers given the power to remove any youth under 16 seen on the streets after 9pm and any child under 10 after 8pm.

The scheme encourages parents to voluntarily sign up to the lock-in and register their children.

Any child found outside after hours will then be checked on a register and if their parents have refused to take part in the voluntary scheme they face tough parenting orders.

Er, what? So, it's voluntary, but if you don't partake, the law will be brought to bear on you? How the fuck is that "voluntary"?

PC Marc Griffin said the curfew was brought in because unsupervised youngsters face an "increased risk" of becoming offenders.

Oh, right, so we'll criminalise all children because there is an increased risk of some of them becoming offenders? What a belting idea!

Here's another idea: why don't the fucking police get off their doughnut-eating arses and patrol these anti-social hotspots? Why don't fucking judges throw the book at people actually convicted of crimes? And why doesn't this useless fucking government build sufficient and unpleasant gaols to keep miscreants?

But it must all be justified, because this place must be a violent shithole with an appalling crime record, right? The police wouldn't just do this for fun, would they? They wouldn't be trying this out to see whether people kick up a fuss so that they know if they can float the idea elsewhere? Ah, well, see:

Redruth - population 13,000 - has one of the worst crime records in Cornwall but still has figures below the national averages.

PC Marc Griffin and the Redruth and Cornish police in general: I'm not even going to bother describing you as cunts. You should just hang your heads in shame.