Donnie Brasco in sandals.

            That's the thumb he puts up your arse to kick-off the cavity search.

Over the past year or so, I've struggled to engage with current affairs.  The News had become one them boring but necessary things, like shaving. But just when i thought I'd lose interest forever, a corker like this one pops up.

You probably recognise the bloke in the picture.  He's PC Mark Kennedy.  He doesn't look like a copper, but then that's kind of the point.  He spent seven years infiltrating the activist community on behalf of the Police.

Or did he?  New evidence suggests he may have also been using his false identity to spy on protesters on behalf of a private security interests.  He may have even benefited from these interests long after he decided to leave the force.

So what is he?  Copper?  Businessman?  Agent provocateur?  All of the above.  The portrait painted of him is fractured and inconsistent.  He's the ideal subject for a labyrinthine blockbuster.  It looks as though he will be sometime soon.

Regrettably, I'd be hugely surprised if any films derived from this story tackle the other big issue arising from it:  The question of the ethics of investigating protest groups.  There are questions to be raised about what qualifies an organisation to be fit for undercover investigation.  Sure, environmental protest groups occasionally break stuff and interrupt the nation's infrastructure to put their point across, but is it really necessary to spend millions nosying into their activities?  Is it even remotely ethical?  Undercover policing by its very nature lacks the transparency we would usually expect of criminal investigation, but sometimes it's needed to bring down a monster.  It's a necessary evil.

But when you're dealing with environmental groups, it seems fairly obvious that this isn't necessary.  So it's just evil.  Undercover officers should be bringing down gangsters and terrorists, not vegetarians.

With chatter stirring that the student protest movement might be enjoying a rebirth, perhaps we'll see officers stocking donning Converse trainers and hanging around campuses.  That lad sat opposite you in the pub - that's right, the scrawny, bedraggled one in the overcoat supping at a pint of snakebite - you'd better watch him.  I hear his arrest record is huge.

Evening All.

Dixon of Dock Green, pictured shortly after tipping a disabled anarchist out of his wheelchair.

I've been looking at writing something involving the Police and I really wanted to be able to nail the slang used by the rozzers whilst they take a break from upholding the law and protecting the innocent.

Watching episodes of The Sweeney - which you can catch sandwiched between episodes of Bergerac on ITV3 - probably won't cut it.  Watching a show first broadcast over 30 years ago will give you no more insight into the experience of today's officers than messing around on a ZX Spectrum will help you write a bang-up-to-date techno thriller.

The most obvious place to turn is the blogosphere.  I would say something here along the lines of 'everyone's blogging nowadays', but I realise I would risk sounding woefully out of touch (get with the progam granddad, everyone's tweeting).  Nevertheless, a lot of people are still blogging, and the blogs that still seem to garner the most loyal readerships are the ones that are based around a particular vocation - copper, fireman, doctor, salesman, sex worker etc.

This blog post from way back in 2007 gives a fairly comprehensive list of slang used by the Police.  Disappointingly, I haven't been able to find any other sites to verify the information presented here, and if it is accurate, the slang only holds for the Met and not necessarily for any provincial forces.  Also, some of the slang flies straight in the face of ordinary usage (e.g. 'Window licker' is listed a derogatory term for the mentally ill, rather than its more common use as a derogatory term for people with learning difficulties.)

There are some interesting finds in there, though.  There is a surprising amount of rhyming slang, which creates the wonderful parallel with London's criminal fraternities.  I love the idea that the Police have their own private language that mirrors that of their foil.

The blogger who posted the list mirrored it from this forum.  There's nine pages of replies to the post that build on the list, though an awful lot are from abroad.  A few nuggets if you're writing a crime story set in Chicago or Quebec, but nothing if you're writing a crime story set it in Barnsley (maybe someone robs a branch of Gregg's).

The blog is still going strong to this day, though it has a habit of veering into reactionism in a way that would make Richard Littlejohn blush.