THE New Forest is to get 30 police support officers, and parish and town councils will have to pay extra for them. I thought we already had a police force funded by a whacking amount on our council taxes.

I appreciate the real police are far too busy filling in government forms to deal with local crime; but it might help them get closer to what's going on if they could be extracted from cars, meet the population and gain local intelligence like they used to do. While their close presence would deter many of the problems of youth nuisance and vandalism.

What has happened to the volunteer specials? If the example in my own parish is anything to go by, an initiative to recruit specials in Fawley parish was a great success, and for a couple of months we had the satisfaction of seeing them on foot patrols at night.

Then they vanished and it would appear they had enrolled to look after their own village; but were disillusioned at being pulled away to do car parking, and crowd control in Southampton.

My parish was requested to pay £6,000 a year for one of the community support officers. True to form, like other paid volunteers we have seen in the parish, they would soon be off sick, find it too dangerous under health and safety to patrol at night on their own, or be moved to another area.

Fawley parish councillors were sensible enough to turn down the idea of costing council tax payers a extra £6,000 for a plastic policeman'.

If we ever get a real government the police will be released from form filling, and being politically correct. Then they will be back on foot fighting and preventing crime, as they used to do in my distant youth. I expect this is what they joined the police for.

If we were going to spend £6,000 on the defence of our village we would be better employing somebody from the security services who would work from our local knowledge, where and what times we wanted them.

COUNCILLOR P G PEARCE-SMITH, vice-chairman, Fawley Parish Council.