"Walk the streets for money, you don't care if it's wrong or if it's right..."

Neighbours are appealing for police to clamp down on prostitutes in Southend town centre.

Are they actually appealing? Or is this another case of the police trying to drum up complaints so they can act?

There have been 11 reports to police in the past two months.

Well, that settles that…

Most reports had been about a red Peugeot car which had been seen picking up the girls and driving them to a new location.

PC Dan Hedges (Ed: Hello again, Officer Dan!), neighbourhood constable for Kursaal, told the meeting: “We spoke to the driver. We stopped him I’d say about ten times, but he kept coming back.”

Well, if all you did was stop him, why shouldn’t he?

Perhaps if you’d dressed up in a blonde wig, miniskirt and fishnets, like they do in Hollywood cop comedies, you’d have been able to arrest him…

Police had been working with the Crown Prosecution Service to try to find legislation to prosecute the man.

But the problem solved itself, because the car was written off last month.

Because it’s not like he can get another one?!

PC Hedges said it had been raised at a previous meeting that two particular women were causing most of the antisocial behaviour.

He said: “One of those females is in a rehabilitation programme to deal with her drug issues, so hopefully we shouldn’t be seeing her for at least six months, and when she does come out hopefully she may have been cured of the drugs problem and won’t be seen again.”

That’s a lot of hope. Is hope standard police issue nowadays?