Tom Winsor is a lot more worrying than David Silvester

There has, rightly, been widespread derision, for the UKIP town councillor David Silvester and his suggestion that the recent floods have been sent by God because parliament has brought in equal marriage.

But his are not the silliest or the most worrying words I have read today.

Step forward Tom Winsor, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary.

Here he is speaking to The Times (and quoted in the Guardian):

"There are cities in the Midlands where the police never go because they are never called. They never hear of any trouble because the community deals with that on its own ... They just have their own form of community justice."

There are cities in the Midlands where the police never go because they are never called? Really?

The Guardian goes to quote a more limited claim that could conceivably be true:

Winsor said some chief constables receive "close to zero" calls from some areas, and that police are not afraid to go to such areas, but that they do not know what is going on as communities do not tell them. 

He said: "They don't know what injustices are being perpetrated ... It's almost a closed book because we can't go there so don't know. It could be anything from low-level crime right up to murder."

However, the Guardian goes on to quote the chief constable of the West Midlands as flatly denying this.

Still, let Winsor have his say. Where are these communities?

Winsor says:

"There are some communities born under other skies who will not involve police at all," he told the Times. "I am reluctant to name the communities in question but there are communities from other cultures who would prefer to police themselves.

Leave aside the silly, saloon bar racism of "communities born under other skies": what worries me about Winsor is simple competence. How can someone with such an absurd view of the world cope with an important job?

Let's appoint someone sensible in his place and allow Winsor to find a post more suited to his talents.

My first thought is that he could be a UKIP town councillor.