This is what happens when newspapers fail their readers.

Someone in the office found this story on an Essex paper's website and e-mailed it around the newsroom today.

Reprinted below, it's bewildering stuff and I think it says a lot about standards in some sections of my industry.

Now, this is by no means a political blog and I apologise in advance because this post has nothing to do with Leicester or the police.

People have their views about the BNP, me included.

That's not important here. I would be making the same point if this was about any political party.

What matters is that this paper has given a political meeting the treatment I'd expect for a Blue Peter bring and buy sale.

At first I thought it was a spoof or an election stunt by the BNP. But no, it's there on the paper's website.

That is just not good enough and I don't want to see any party given a free ride like this. We're only a few weeks away from a General Election.

But I think I know why it's happened. It reads awfully like a press release doesn't it?

Newspapers are struggling and I know many are cutting back on staff.

There are so many supremely talented journalists out of work or just plain worried for the future just now it's scary.

I don't know these reporters in Essex, but I'm guessing some of them at least will be under daft pressure to fill their pages and a little 'cut and paste' isn't uncommon.

It's known as 'churnalism'.

PR companies, political parties etc send out their stuff and the lesser among us maybe tinker with it a little bit or drop it straight into the paper or on to the website.

If anyone from the Essex paper wants to defend their reporting I will include their response in full.

Anyway here's the full article:


BRENTWOOD: Nationalists show their support at BNP meeting
Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 08:0018 readers have commented on this story.
Click here to read their views.

PROUD nationalists were asked to dig deep to support an election candidate when the Brentwood branch of the BNP met for the first time.

Buoyant supporters packed into a back room of a patriotic pub for the inaugural meeting of the Brentwood and Chelmsford branch – which has been founded in response to the party's growing membership.

Paul Morris, Parliamentary candidate for Brentwood and Ongar, said: "It was a good turnout considering it was very last minute.

"We officially launched six months ago but this was the first meeting."

The party operates under a veil of secrecy to protect members from those who oppose their beliefs and did not reveal the location of the meeting until just minutes before it was due to start.

With the pub set to become a regular meeting place for the new group, they have asked us not to reveal where it is.

Christine Mitchell, a 68-year-old grandmother from Chelmsford, will be running the branch from here on in.

Mrs Mitchell, who is contesting the newly created Saffron Walden seat in the general election on May 6, said: "We are fighting for British jobs for British workers, that is the start but we are standing for other reasons – crime rates, the state of the education system and the fact MPs have stolen from the public."

The former Conservative leader of Westminster Council, Peter Strudwick, spoke for more than an hour during the meeting, rallying support for what he called "ideologies" for the future.

Unlike other parties which are funded by unions and wealthy donors, the BNP relies purely on members' donations and as the first half of the meeting drew to a close, Mr Morris stood up and asked for donations.

"Michael Bateman is standing in Chelmsford and we need a £500 election deposit," he said. "Can anyone afford to put £500 in the pot?"

Searching faces scoured the room until a man who had until then sat quietly in the corner, put his hand up to pledge £100.

Others then thrust crisp £50 notes in the pot before the less well-off handed over their screwed up £10 and £20 notes.

There was much applause and hand shaking as the money came flooding in, uniting the room in the campaign to bring about radical change.

Drug dealers? You can't trust them.

I searched the internet for Leicester's mephedrone dealers the other day.

I came up with a couple of names, addresses and mobile numbers within a few minutes. Easy.

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure everything is above board.

I'm sure these advertisers want your money, but I'm guessing some of them have no intention of supplying that M-cat.

When you think about it, the online market for an illicit drug favoured by young people was always going to be a rich feeding ground for criminals.

So, they're not drug dealers. Fraudsters would seem more appropriate.

There's a lot of very made-up sounding names and some ridiculous claims that these 'companies' turn over more than a million dollars a year.

So, a couple of the numbers I tried were answered by people who clearly had nothing to sell and were more than a little surprised by my call.

Then I called on a house in a quiet part of Groby.

I was greeted by a very chatty retired gent. He wasn't selling either.

The question newspapers are asking right now is 'how many kids are using this stuff?'.

I think it would be interesting to find out how many are falling foul of these tricky online criminals.

In the meantime I'll press on with my attempts to chat to a dealer.

I want to know what he/she thinks of the ban, which will come into effect on Friday.

I'd like to ask if they still think mephedrone is a harmless, party drug which they would still like to sell to young people.

From what I've seen in the past couple of days there's a big sale on right now. Maybe they're busy clearing their stocks.

There's one who I think is selling, but he's not answering his phone.

So, 'Brian of Granby Street', if you're reading this, give me a call, please.

A breakthrough in the mephedrone thing? For now at least?

Police have taken £13,000 from a man who apparently sells mephedrone over the Internet.

The £13k is the money they believe he's pocketed from sales - presumably, in some cases at least, to kids.

The confiscation is temporary and whether or not he loses his money will be decided in court later.

They didn't use the Misuse of Drugs Act to take this money. They couldn't because, at the time of writing at least, it's not an illegal substance.

Ah, but that's where the Medicines Act 1968 comes in.

It's an offence to sell medicines, chemicals etc unless you've got all the qualifications and authorisations.

That's where the police hope this man is going to come unstuck.

A welfare worker in Leicester pointed this out to me weeks ago - possession of M-Cat won't get you into legal trouble, but selling or distributing it surely will under existing law.

There's a hearing to take place in due course when this will be decided. So, we shall see.

In the meantime, we're all waiting to hear whether M-Cat is to become a banned substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act. It seems inevitable doesn't it?

If it does - and if the anecdotal reports of this drug having such a tight grip on our young are true - then it will be interesting to see the results.

How many kids will end up with criminal records?

Again, we will wait and see.

He's at it again.

On a lighter note, I was chasing a 'street dance', erm, crew today called Diversity.

They won the Britain's Got Talent show, which I've not watched.

All I know about it is Piers Morgan appears on it. Hmm.

For obvious reasons they weren't in my contacts book, so I had to go through their PR people. Always a chilling prospect.

I still get the chills remembering an argument I got into with one of Sporty Spice's PR/tour people a few years ago.

I was getting carried away with my language when I realised that he was probably a pretty powerful foe. I shut up and took his abuse.

Anyway, Diversity's PR man, Joe, was great and came back to me with a comment by Ashley Banjo, Diversity's leader and choreographer.

The reason for this brush with celebrity is a police officer called Pc Harvey Watson.

His beat covers a big chunk of the University of Leicester and all of Victoria Park.

He's making a habit of collaring acts when they appear at the De Montfort Hall and asking them to film short crime prevention advice messages for the students and young people who follow him on Facebook and Twitter, where he's to be found as 'Campus Cops'.

Diversity did him proud when he got hold of them on Tuesday night.

Visit Harvey online to see the results and to witness a police officer using social networking sites to reach as broad an audience as possible.

So, in the space of a few months because of Harvey I've spoken to one of the Saturdays and, very indirectly, Diversity.

So now I'm a 3am Girl?

Eating my words. Again. Well, partially.

I made a point of saying the other week that serious crimes against the elderly were rare.

Thankfully, that is absolutely true.

Well, relatively. Everything is relative, I suppose.

But, a couple of weeks after reporting the particularly nasty robbery which prompted those remarks, another one has come along.

Today, I went out to Oadby after the police told us an 81-year-old man had been mugged there.

The victim, who walks with the aid of a frame, was turned over in an alleyway at 3pm on Easter Monday.

What you would call broad daylight. On a no doubt busy bank holiday too.

Are these people making the point that they commit a crime wherever and whenever they like?

The old fella had just been to the shops in the Parade and he was walking home alone. A daily stroll no doubt, with his paper under his arm.

He was attacked from behind and pushed to the ground. Our big men then went through his pockets and took his wallet.

Shall we guess how much money he had with him? I'll go for a couple of quid.

We've not spoken to the victim because he's still too upset.

Bruised too, we're told.

As I walked around the part of town where it happened - near the Legion and St Peter's Church, should you know the town - I found myself thinking of my dad and his mates, who are in their 70s and 80s now.

I was scrutinising everyone under 40, wondering if they were the sort of people who could do a thing like this.

This was Oadby though. Everyone, regardless of age, looked to me like they ran a bank.

It's election time again.

I've lived through a number of General Elections now and - despite myself - I invariably end up enjoying them.

Particularly as things move into the early hours and the results roll in from across the country.

I've covered a few too, most memorably for good reasons David Taylor's first victory in North West Leicestershire.

The low point was Blaby a few years back when it was the last but one consituency in the country to declare its result.

I was in that leisure centre in Enderby until 9.30am the day after polling day.

Apparently though, some spoilsports have dumped same-day counts and are going to wait until the next day.

I'll leave the proper politics to Jenny and David, who sit across from me.

But I'm guessing plenty of the people I speak each day will be wondering what the parties have in mind for the police.

Who will have reassuring words for Leicestershire Police Authority, which controls the purse strings here?

As we've heard before, it's struggling for money and is thinking the unthinkable - redundancies among civvy staff? Unison is bracing itself for up to 150 people losing their jobs.

Police officer recruitment has been frozen since late last year and that shows no signs of changing any time soon.

Officers on the frontline are starting shifts wishing there were a few more bodies around.

However, it seems all we're hearing is that the public sector is in for a rough time over the next few years, whoever wins come May 6.

By the way:

Ken Clarke was in the office earlier today. I was in the lift with him and I was bursting to say "Giant Steps. What a record."

But I didn't.

Hello, this is the Merc. We're not here to take your call at the moment...

We've had an interesting and very out-of-hours anonymous phone call.

Apparently, the caller was a police officer who wanted to get something off his chest about staffing levels.

Because he chose to call so late at night - deliberately, I guess - he ended up speaking to one of our answering machines.

His message was that when he looks around at the start of a shift he doesn't see enough bodies.

Story?

If anyone would like to help, I'll be reprising my quaint 'hush hush' thing. (See previous post).

Incidentally, I've been reading a handful of the bewildering number of anonymised police blogs recently.

Some of them are really pretty good and seem popular.

Well, that's an understatement.

Some of these people count their readers in the millions, get hundreds of feedback comments for each post and have publishing deals in the bag.

Have a look out for 'Inspector Gadget', 'PC Bloggs' or 'Which End Bites'.

Frankly, they stand out because they don't seem to hate the 'underclass' as some of their blogging colleagues seem to.

I get nervous doing the nudge nudge, wink wink stuff.

I wrote a story last night about the search for Leicestershire's new chief constable.

Nothing surprising there, we've been waiting for some time now to find out who the new chief will be.

Three candidates were rejected after interview shortly before Christmas.

They just didn't come up to the mark apparently.

As a result the recruitment process had to begin again - and I'm sure that will have cost a few bob.

A few days ago I got the names of the four officers who have come forward since then and are shortlisted for interviews later this month.

The names came from someone who knows about these things, believe me.

I phoned loads of key people in Leicestershire and enlisted the help of people out of the county.

There was an awful lot of hush hush stuff along the lines of "I'll keep your name out of it, but could you just confirm I'm not going to look daft if I run these names."

So, after all these checks, we published these names today - a good three weeks before the interviews.

It was along the lines of: "The Mercury understands Mr So-and-so has applied for..."

One of them lives in Leicestershire.

I spent last night asking myself: "Does he read the Merc?"

And I've been wondering all day today: "Has he picked up a Merc yet?"

So, I've been nervous.

But it's my job to find news.

This isn't the greatest story ever told, but it's important and, ahem, it's in the public interest.

You hear a lot about 'the public interest'. Often it's a justification for printing some old tripe.

I think it works here because police officers often talk about 'public reassurance'.

(Well, the 'accelerated development, rapid promotion' types do.)

Some members of the public - not to mention police officers and civvy staff - might have been concerned that the first attempt to find a new boss had failed.

Although, frankly I admired the police authority for resisting pressure to appoint one of the three candidates they were faced with in December.

It showed strength I thought.

But we can all expect the force to be led by a strong team and we have a right to know who's in the frame.

It's a big job and whoever gets it will have a lot on his plate - the candidates are men - not least cutting £15 million off the budget next year and overseeing up to 150 civvy staff redundancies.

I should say the people in my story did not confirm the names, but merely gave me their thoughts on the recruitment process etc.

That's a lot lot of cutting.

We're carrying a story today which is hardly breaking news - Leicestershire police are looking to slice £15 million of their spending.

They seem to have been cutting here and there for all the time I've been covering police matters.

Now it's official - they are to prepare for the anticipated public spending cuts by shaving £15 million of their budget in 2011/12.

I think it was two years ago they said they'd trimmed every last ounce of fat and they've been saying it at every opportunity ever since.

They've also been saying long and loud that they are not receiving the Government money they are entitled to. There have been many trips to the Home Office to plead their case.

In fact, they think they've lost £15 million over the past few years.

Well, now they've announced these cuts. It seems redundancies among the civvy staff are inevitable. Maybe as many as 150.

Police officers can't be made redundant, but you can run numbers down by operating a recruitment freeze, which they have been doing since November last year.

Officers have been saying for some time: "There's not enough of us."

Where is this leading us?

The crime figures look pretty good but things are obviously pretty bad when officers look around the room and think they need more bodies.

I spoke to a few civilian staff members about the cuts - which were announced yesterday - and they seemed pretty resigned to it and just hoped the redundancy notices don't come their way.

It's been a tough few years in the newspaper business these past few years so I know how that feels.