Here is an example of how using the press can put pressure on the police. Ten days before Christmas the Dover Express published the following letter:
Begin forwarded message:
From: Peter Garstin <peter@garstin.net>
Date: 26 November 2010 13:12:25 GMT
To: "newsdesk.doverexpress@krnmedia.co.uk" <newsdesk.doverexpress@krnmedia.co.uk>
Subject: Op Stack/Christmas.
Now that the Christmas season is about to begin, may I use your letters page to make a public appeal to Kent Police?
The Saturday before Christmas is the busiest shopping day in the year. Both in 2008 and 2009, on that day Dover was totally gridlocked as a result of the police's abject failure to anticipate or even respond to traffic and weather conditions. 2009 was particularly bad, with Operation Stack not implemented until eight hours after Dover had become inaccessible by road and, it seemed to me, only enacted after the queue from Dover reached the Channel Tunnel. Further complicating matters, no attempt was made to send queuing traffic back out of the town. As a result the town was jammed rock solid all day from shortly after 3am until well into the following night, costing all the town's businesses the vast majority of their takings for what should have been a bumper day. All over Dover there were hundreds of heavy lorries, whose drivers' hours had expired, blocking both main and side roads. A local councillor who has DDC responsibility for 'Access' (ha!) told me that the same truck was outside his house in a main thoroughfare for 18 hours.
This cannot be allowed to happen again. May we please have an official assurance that the officers responsible for Stack will not remain asleep at the wheel this year?
Peter Garstin,
Blakes of Dover.
01304 202194 / 07867982141.
Result: nothing.