Propeller-Head Wonk Watch: A well place co-conspirator emails to say he has seen Robert Gould, from the PM’s Downing Street Strategy Unit, thumbing through a copy of Wasting Police Time, the book of the blog by everyone’s favourite plod, PC David Copperfield. The police minister, Tony McNulty, reckons the book is “more of a fiction than Dickens.”

Strange that one of the top wonks in Downing Street is reading fiction the week after Nick Herbert, the talented Tory shadow police minister, put forward some interesting policy ideas. Perhaps it is just holiday reading.