Just how big a mistake it was can now be seen. Hundreds of black and Asian police officers are preparing to launch discrimination cases against their own forces, claiming they have been passed over for promotion. A large number are launching race discrimination claims.

The Black Police Association says that more than 300 officers have contacted them with grievances, adding: "The Ghaffur case was the catalyst."

Ghaffur is, in fact, Tarique Ghaffur, Scotland Yard's Assistant Commissioner. He earns £180,000 a year and was appointed CBE, but he is aggrieved at not rising higher.

He reportedly applied for – and failed to land – the jobs of Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire. He believes a cabal of white officers have been undermining his position, and has accused the Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, of racial discrimination.

Ghaffur has apparently been secretly compiling hundreds of pages of emails, letters, internal documents and police reports. He also made "contemporaneous notes" on conversations with the Commissioner and other senior officers.

When Ghaffur met Sir Ian, he was accompanied by Commander Ali Dizaei, president and "legal adviser" of the Association, and another man with a strongly-developed sense of grievance.

Dizaei told his boss that he had been given "complete, unfettered licence to negotiate on Ghaffur's behalf". This, remember, is supposed to be a police service, not a branch of the boilermakers' union.

However, the Commissioner has only himself to blame. No-one has been more eager to prostrate himself on the altar of political correctness. To hear him now accused of racial discrimination is the ultimate irony. But we know from the Macpherson Report, which is now holy writ, that if any accusation of racism is made – not necessarily by the victim – no further proof is necessary. It must be racism.

Imagine the effect on the morale of rank-and-file officers (including many who believe they have been passed over for promotion in favour of black and Asian applicants).

If any of them had written a book criticising their force, they would have been for the high jump, unlike Commander Dizaei, who can also be seen on TV programmes like Newsnight, discussing racial grievances in the Met.

Dizaei can now call himself "Doctor" because of his doctorate in race relations.

The recently retired chairman of the Met's Superintendents Association says: "These are men who benefited from positive action, and now have the temerity to sue the organisation that nurtured them. They should be carpeted rather than cossetted."

I fear those days are long gone. In today's police service, political correctness rules.



LEAST surprising statistic of the month: sexually-transmitted infections among the young have risen to record levels.

Almost 400,000 Britons were diagnosed with diseases ranging from chlamydia to gonorrhoea. Half were under 25 and a worrying number were of school age. How could it be otherwise when they are swamped by a culture of guilt-free sex?

We are also top of the table for teenage pregnancies. Immediately, this brings a call for more sex education in schools. No-one cares to speculate why the number of teenage pregnancies has paralleled the rise in sex education and the wider availability of contraceptives to adolescents, particularly when sex education includes no mention of moral issues likes a loving partnership.

There was a time when the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists had its doubts, asking whether sex education was resulting in the opposite of what was intended by arousing curiosity and the desire to experiment.

With children as young as four set to be given compulsory sex education, the dangers are obvious. Teaching children about the techniques of oral sex is asking for trouble.

Over the years, we have heard the constant refrain from propagandists that Holland had fewer teenage pregnancies because there was more sex education. A study of sex education policies in western Europe told a different story. Coverage of sex in the school curriculum is limited to the facts of reproduction.

Dutch society is better educated and does not have the half-educated underclass that swells the teenage pregnancy statistics in Britain. There is also a strong religious tradition, both Catholic and Protestant. Nor is teenage pregnancy the passport to a council flat and welfare benefits.

Encouragement of teenage pregnancy is not confined to our own citizens. Joan Collins says she knows of pregnant teenagers arriving from Eastern Europe who are now ensconced with their offspring in council flats. If there are crazier ways of running a country, I have yet to hear them.