Finally….although if common sense had been applied in the first instance, we would have saved a lot of time and money by not recording utterly trivial nonsense just to satisfy government bureaucrats

An incident of multiple offences but only record the one principle offence. Will this apply to the detection rate, i.e. record the principle offence detection but not the rest, or will they all go down as detected? Officially sanctioned Spanish practices as this was once called?

Er....are we allowed to say "Spanish practices" these days ? Maybe I should report this hate speech to the PSD of whatever force you used to serve in, just to be on the safe side. Wouldn't want to offend Pedro

I thought that the HOCR already dictated that only the principal offence was recorded? I used to love hearing the public get themselves in a tizzy whenever a force was criticised for not properly recording crimes, their assumption being that this meant they weren't actually being investigated either. The same sort of folk who assume that the Police is like a boys club, with officers covering for each other. If only they realised that North Korea wince at some of the touting that goes on, whilst PSD ride roughshod over every human right or legal protection an officer should have.

@Mike Hunt Us dinosaur's do not come easy, I have barricaded my front door and rigged up a hose pipe to the inside of my letter box ready to spray the thought police if they come for me. As well as...hang on someone is knocking at my door quite loudly, will be back in a minute.........................

But of course! You cant have a run in to a general election without the required changes in crime recording practices. How would the Tories be able to point to a subsequent reduction in crime otherwise? It's so predictable and laughable.