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British public ordered to stop and search each other

Under tough new measures to be announced today, the British public will be obliged to stop and search each other, thereby gathering vital information for the War Against Crime™.

The new law will require every citizen to stop and search five people per day, with each probe lasting a minimum of twenty minutes. The results, gathered on a seventy-page form, will be passed to the police for prompt processing. It is hoped that this way everyone will be searched at least once a week, and the resulting 1.5 billion sheets of weekly information will give a much-needed boost to the UK filing cabinet industry.

"We’ve always been firm believers in Stop and Search," said home secretary David Blanket, "but it’s a huge drain on police resources. In the past, the policy has been criticised for unfairly targeting blacks. Under the new proposals, everybody gets searched regardless of ethnic origin, while the police get on with the real job of enforcing parking regulations."

To make the process slicker, people with criminal records will be issued with identity cards exempting them from the searches. "We don’t want to be bogged down by bureaucracy," added Mr Blindgit. "Some of these people carry so many weapons and so much stolen property that it would take hours to write it all down."

Tony Blair, speaking from a guitar lesson where he is waging his own personal War Against Popular Music™, said: "Education, education, educ... I mean Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime. We’re going to clamp down once and for all. There will be no hiding place."

A police spokesperson expressed guarded optimism at the new law. "We need to be told how much overtime will be involved in processing the results," he told The Rockall Times. "We’re seriously undermanned as it is, what with hundreds of coppers taking early retirement on big index-linked pensions."

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