“The beatings will continue until morale improves” is one of those sardonic phrases that you’d once find on posters adorning the walls of almost every police station muster room the length and breadth of the country. Alongside would usually sit an equally acerbic artwork ridiculing the explosions of meetings which began to infect the service in the mid to late 1990s. “Are you lonely – tired of working on your own – hate making decisions – Hold A Meeting” was a particular favourite of mine.

The fact these posters existed at all points to a more enlightened time when ironic observation was not only tolerated but actually permitted in our police forces. They spoke to the weary recognition that talking was fast becoming far more fashionable than actual doing – and all with a cynical nod to the fact disbelievers and the ungodly would not find life easy in the new orthodoxy.

Put those posters on a wall today and it wouldn’t be long before someone claimed they were triggered by the implied violence – or that there was a lack of courtesy and respect for those whose whole lives were built around attending meetings. But even with the benefit of hindsight I could never have envisaged that what started as satirical artistry on an office wall would ever have developed to become actual policy.

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