Nightjack

Update (17th June 2009) - following an internal police investigation the blogger was identified and disciplined, and the blog has now been taken down. However you can still read extracts published in The Guardian here

[From May]
A couple of weeks behind the times on this one. Nightjack is the blog written by a British policeman that was awarded the Orwell prize in April.

Have a read; it's brilliantly written, if very bleak. On the TV programme Late Review they were very snippy about the fact that 'Nightjack' has now discontinued the blog to concentrate on writing a book. This is just being ignorant - blogs are one way for new talent to emerge, and try out ideas and writing styles. Other writers have come up this way, for example Tom Reynolds, who writes a blog about his life working for the London Ambulance Service, and published in book form as Blood Sweat and Tea.

Back to Nightjack. It's brilliant writing, and should make a brilliant book. (& also the basis for an excellent TV series, if people start moaning about why we don't have a British version of The Wire again.)

Some people have complained that it's all a bit right wing, but you just have to interpret what he's written in the light of other things you know and have experienced.

I'd particularly recommend the posts:

Only 24 hours to crack the case Pt 1
Only 24 hours to crack the case (pt 2)
Only 24 hours to crack the case (pt 3)
& From truncheons to tasers

This is the sort of stuff that gives blogging a good name. There are too many examples of things that give blogging a bad name.