MAIL COMMENT: Anarchy and farce at Scotland Yard

How depressing – and disturbing – is the grim spectre of Scotland Yard descending ever deeper into anarchy.

Yet another Muslim police official is preparing to sue the Met for racial discrimination in a campaign which has seriously destabilised policing.

Diversity officer Yasmin Rehman joins the likes of £180,000-a-year Tarique Ghaffur in laying preposterous charges against Britain's most politically correct police chief, Sir Ian Blair.

Today, the Mail sheds even more unedifying light on the civil war, as we reveal that the lawyer co-ordinating the campaign is a convicted conman with suspect legal qualifications.

How much lower can this saga of inflated egos sink into the realms of farce? In their greed, the officers represented by Dr Shahrokh Mireskandari have unforgivably stirred up ill-feeling against the countless decent ethnic minority officers in the Met.

How fitting, then, that their solicitor himself has a record of fraud. But neither he nor his clients bear all the guilt.

Doesn't weak, bumbling Sir Ian himself – who, with exquisite irony, has been the great champion of diversity – deserve a huge share of the blame?

He must go – and make way for a commissioner who puts policing the capital before posturing.

Haves and have-nots

This is a tale of two Britains. In the wealth producing private sector, employers slam down the shutters on recruitment as the economy heads for recession.

Jobs are at risk and wages are being kept down. As for final-salary pensions, they've all but disappeared under Labour.

How different it is in the bloated public sector. There, jobs remain secure, wages are higher – and lavish pensions are available to millions.

Yet, incredibly, the state gravy-train goes steaming on, despite what the Chancellor himself has described as the worst economic conditions for 60 years.

One glance at the Guardian's public sector jobs pages – swollen yesterday to two whole sections – shows that reality hasn't even begun to dawn on those in charge of the public purse-strings.

Councils continue to recruit 'Positive Parenting Co-ordinators', 'Muslim Youth Engagement Key Workers' and 'Sexual Exploitation Team Managers'.

Meanwhile, six-figure salaries remain on offer to middle-ranking bureaucrats who'd be lucky to be get a third as much in a private business.

Even in the sunniest of economic times, salaries and guaranteed pensions such as these would be utterly unjustifiable.

In today's storm, this wilful squandering of taxpayers' money is not only economic lunacy. It is tearing our society in two.

Mind the class gap

Forget the hypocrisy of Equalities Minister Harriet Harman – the public school educated niece of the Countess of Longford – stirring up trade union resentment against the middle classes.

For once, she has a point when she says family background still has far too much influence on life-chances in Britain. But whose fault is that?

Scandalously, the social divide has yawned ever wider under Labour, as children from poorer homes have been let down by our worst comprehensives.

Yesterday, Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Alison Richard complained that the Government's was forcing universities to accept underqualified students.

Such social engineering will never narrow the class divide. The answer is to start giving all British children an education worthy of the name.