Let’s face it, as a country, we are in trouble. It’s time to recognise this, and prepare our children for what is come.

As our National Debt approaches £3 trillion, with an associated interest bill of some £90 billion, which is more than our defence budget, every year, there is a problem.

To illustrate this, if we repay our National Debt at the same rate we repaid the United States for their help in WWII, the biggest debt ever, prior to the current one, it will take our children 3,000 years to repay just the capital sum.

We have incurred that debt over the last 30 years. That is our legacy. We have defrauded our children and put them into debt for millennia. This is the crime of the century.

What can we do about it?

It must start with raising the quality of debate by including and involving our young people in the solutions. Which is what I will try to do in this monthly column.

The Police

Let’s start with the police, and 'crime prevention' The stabbing that took place earlier this month in Hall Grove, resulted in a man, protecting his property - his car in this case - being stabbed twice in the chest, and having the knife stuck in his arm, and pulled down leaving an open flap of muscle and blood all over the employee from the Co-op who went to help.

As it happens, my car tyre was slashed as part of this crime, and one of my neighbours also challenged him. She could have been killed. So that brings this close to home.

There is a staggering lack of police presence in the community. The concept of "the police are the community, and the community are the police" started by Sir Robert Peel when he founded the Met in 1829, is still the motto of the Police Federation today.

And yet, we have lost our community policing. Our police no longer police by consent and that puts our front-line police officers in danger. This is not acceptable.

We should be together in this, but it has become us and them. That is a management issue, and it needs addressing.

I have written to Charlie Hall, our Chief Constable, and have the support of David Lloyd, the Police and Crime Commissioner about a case that clearly demonstrates the problem.

I run the Army Benevolent Fund for the county. Thank you to the Chieftain, the Grove, the Café on the Station, and The Doctors Tonic, for keeping our collection tins on the bar.

This is the case of a repeat offender, ripping our collection box from the bar in The Chieftain, stealing from our veterans. He was caught red handed on CCTV.

Exactly the kind of case you would expect the police to act upon. But that is not the case.

What is clear is that they have layers upon layers of overhead designed to ensure, that they do not prosecute.

So far, I have been through ten separate layers and counting. I will publish the letter once Charlie Hall has had an opportunity to respond.

In the Interim, you can help with this campaign, by letting me know what matters to you and your family, how shop lifting, drug dealing, private security guards everywhere, not wanting to go out, no free parking, and the cost of everything, are affecting your life, so we can get some priorities and do something about it.

Please visit we.careabout.co.uk/police, express yourself and find out what everyone else thinks.

Let’s build that quality of debate, give our community a voice, and start holding people to account, before more people get hurt.

Please ask your friends and family, particularly the younger ones to get involved.