Hampshire Police's Chief Constable needs to go. Perhaps Sadiq Khan will welcome his force's absurd DEI policies

Quite clear that the DEI was, in part, responsible for the officers handcuffing an innocent young white lad who was dying from stab wounds because they preferred to believe the racist lies of a Sikh killer.

My pal was quite clear about the effect the course he was on had on him and his colleagues. They all felt pressured. They were uneasy. Being good at their jobs was no longer enough.

If they didn’t ‘’understand’’ where people of colour came from (either their religions or their countries of birth) they might not get preferment at work.

What right do public or private companies have to dictate how you think? Why would anybody who was white be required to listen to this tosh?

Surely it makes more sense to make the newcomers to the country change their thought process and understand the white majority. Certainly, Muslims put their religion as the most important aspect of their life. Not true of most white religions.

White privilege? There’s no such thing. Might have existed seven or eight decades ago, but the latest employment stats show that minorities are getting jobs by a factor of 20-1 over the whites. 27-1 actually.

If anything, it’s black or brown privilege.

What about unconscious bias? I have conscious bias. I like some people and dislike others. Quite normal. I was introduced to a Muslim married couple while walking along the Thames towpath. I shook his hand, I think he was a doctor, and reached out to shake the wife’s hand.

She left my hand hanging in her mid-air. She literally refused to engage. I don’t know anything about Islam, so had no idea that a woman is not supposed to be touched by another man, even if it’s a handshake. I thought her reaction medieval and since then have had a conscious bias against Islam. I could argue that Muslims should have lessons in common courtesy.

However, if I explained my thought process to my employer instead of being supported, I suspect I would receive a visit from some HR halfwit and invited to take a one-way trip down the company escalator.

The other word that received prominence in the diversity training of Hampshire officers was ‘’ally’’. Its meaning has been hijacked by minorities. The various gay communities are big on us being ‘’allies’’. We don’t need to be an ‘’ally’’ as all our families have LBGTQ+ relatives and we love them for who they are. I don’t need a pink cowboy hat and a whistle to stand up for members of my wider gay family.

If you go on Google, you will now see ‘’ally’ as described as someone who ‘’actively supports and advocates for a marginalised and underrepresented group they don’t belong to.’’ If you want to speak for minorities, you surely don’t have to go into a room at work and be lectured. You can make that decision in your own time.

So you can see why police officers in Hampshire felt so ‘’controlled and pressured by those DEI training courses so loved by their police force headed by Chief Constable Alexis Boon.

In a staff survey of officers, 15 per cent had felt ‘’controlled’’ to adopt certain ideas in the sessions, the same number thought ‘’mistakes would be held against me’’ and 20 per cent feared ‘’being rejected for saying the wrong thing’’. So perhaps inevitably, an innocent white youth, who had never done anything wrong in his life, dies with handcuffs on because officers thought an Asian guy couldn’t be lying, but a white boy must be.

I would sack Mr Boon immediately for giving a press conference saying there was no two-tier policing in his area when it's clear to me from the survey results that there must have been. I believe his statements suggest he doesn’t know his officers and hasn’t been properly listening to their fears and worries.

Get out of Hampshire, Mr Boon, and get back to London where your force's diversity policies will be welcome to Mayor Khan.