AND FINALLY

UNDERCOVER COP SHOCKER EXCLUSIVE: The secretive anti-social world of policing has been rocked to its foundations this week by revelations that undercover eco-activists have been posing as police officers, working in the shadowy ‘tactical units’ supposedly fighting the menace that they themselves threaten.

Clean-cut William Jackboot seemed like a regular plod, popular with the lads - a rising star, swiftly moved up the ladder until, in 2009, he was promoted to a position co-ordinating the elite forces of a new inter-constabulary force to combat activists, the Countering Undesirable Nasties Terrorising Squad.

As the team bodged operations, or arrived somewhere to find activists were one already step ahead, it was assumed all to be a result of normal police incompetence, but now that Jackboot has been outed and identified as really being a ramshackle hippie anarchist named Ramblin Bill Specialbrew who, six years ago, changed his name, got a haircut, and signed up. He proceeded to work his way up, alongside and friendly with unsuspecting colleagues - presumably all the while passing personal information and operational details back to his anti-authoritarian handlers.

Former friends on the force have been stunned by the realisation that ‘Slick’ Willy was not all he seemed. They recount happy evenings of hard drinking at Spearmint Rhino. ‘Why, he even helped me rough up a few black bloc” said one, “He had the Top Gear box-set n and didn’t seem to give a shit about the state of environment,” tells another.

Since his outing, which followed leaving copies of SchNEWS and a bong accidentally in his open locker one day, Specialbrew / Jackboot has gone into hiding in Armenia, saying he fears for his life.

“I’m only the one they know about,” he said, “there are loads of secret tree-huggers in all branches of the force. On one occasion we went on an climate camp raid and there was only one real copper there - except for those undercover organising the activists we were after...

“Anyway I was just doing what my eco-superiors suggested I do, after they’d plied me with mushroom tea one night. But after a while you get confused. I found myself having sympathies with the cops plight. It was like stockholm syndrome - before I knew it I was busting kids and shaking down villains - and I started to love the life. But the pressure of this double life was grinding me down and I was getting no emotional support from my handlers. I’d been walking, talking, shouting, pushing, beating like a copper for so long, I lost track of who I really was.”

Trust and moral within the force has plummeted as other eco-plants start to be weeded out and cops are wondering how far this thing goes. Brian Paddick? Sir Ian Blair?