YOUR 'Opinion' column in your edition of April 9 is, without doubt, the longest piece of gobbledegook to appear in your or any other newspaper. The new Local Criminal Justice Board has all the appearances of a Quango's Reunion. As this is a New Labour initiative, from a Government that attends only to cosmetic effects in a puny effort to seem to be doing something, it is a certainty that the results will be at best, nothing, or more likely negative.

Some of your previous correspondents will take heart no doubt, as such an initiative must proliferate meetings – maybe a rash of new notices – (Burglars will be prosecuted if caught) – which these people regard as essential in reducing crime, but I see that Neighbourhood Watch is excluded from this new Board.

In short, the Chief Constable's Press Release can be dismissed in the same way as one American senator did to one of Tony Blair's speeches on the United Nations – 'sententious crap.' Everything in the Board's job description should be done already by the overmanned but useless police force and its ever-expanding administration.

This new and obviously expensive 'IT tool' will only operate if criminals are apprehended and the same criterion applies to the rest of the Board's aims. But will this new Board:

a) Put more constables on the beat as a deterrent to crime? No.

b) Will it reform the vagaries of the Crown Prosecution Service? No.

c) Will it demolish the stupid 'cop-out' (no pun intended) of police cautions? No.

d) Will it provide value for money to cover the 51.7 per cent increase in its council tax demand? No.

e) Will it make the police more accountable to the public? No.

The new Board is comprised of 'Chief Officers' and as we know already, these people are nearly always these days, university graduates with degrees in trash subjects like sociology. To them, criminals are merely statistics, which are falsified for public consumption. That the public has lost faith is overwhelmingly apparent, which faith will not be restored by another quango.

On a personal note, you address our Chief Constable as 'Dr.' In what does he hold this doctorate? Casuistry? Semantics? Or 'A' level gobbledegook? – Cy Roberts, Coalway.