The Home Secretary Theresa May has proposed that flesh and blood police officers directly affected by budget cuts, can be “supplemented and supported” by an army of cardboard cut outs of Dixson of Dock Green, with a mechanical swinging truncheon.
The pilot scheme, which saw life-sized cardboard coppers in the corners of shops to prevent shoplifting, has rendered actual police officers “almost obsolete”, according to people that aren’t currently cops, criminals or victims of crime.
The ‘PaperBobs’ as the media will be instructed to call the cardboard officers, to ensure that they sound friendly and reassuring, will patrol neighbourhoods on special caterpillar tracks at approximately 4mph. Pre-loaded with a variety of helpful phrases such as “ello ello ello” and “I hope you young scamps aren’t up to mischief”, they will be a “reassuring presence” and a “strong deterrent” to criminals, according to the Home Secretary.
The new scheme will “allow us to go further and tick more boxes, as once cannot fill in mountains of paperwork when one is climbing over the wall of a squat in pursuit of a violent drug dealer with a machete. It is perfectly possible to make savings without compromising the quality of neighbourhood policing. But only if all new recruits are made of cardboard and simply trundle about saying ‘evening all’ to old ladies,”
The Beezly Street Gazette 