So, Sussex Chief Constable Keith Jones is considering covert activities to root out police personnel who utter racial remarks.

He was disgusted by a recent TV programme in which five recruits had been secretly filmed and recorded over six months during which their most newsworthy racial comments were carefully selected for the documentary.

I don't know how much of this is tongue-in-cheek diplomacy or how much is serious but I and chief constables have said in private things which would not bear national broadcasting.

They and I would find it intolerable to work in such circumstances.

This is exactly the sort of thing that was encouraged and fostered by the Gestapo in Nazi Germany and, in case the racial purists are missing a trick, they should encourage all schoolchildren to report to teachers the racist remarks they overhear their parents making at home so those parents can be appropriately dealt with.

This proved to be a valuable source of information in Germany with parents carefully vetting all their utterances with children present.

When that system is working nicely, we can intensify our censorship with newspapers, radio and TV followed, of course, by Press closures and detention camps.

How on Earth are we allowing ourselves to take seriously such utter stupidity?

-JB Cameron, Hove