Child protection police officer DC Peter Cooper is still on the Staffs police payroll – a month after being exposed as a paedophile.

Cooper, 58, was found guilty last month of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy – but remains suspended on full pay pending a police disciplinary tribunal. And West Midlands Police are revisitng media pressue to say when its misconduct inquiry will even meet to hear the case.

But if you think that was slow, how about this: the allegations were made against the officer in 2005.

And astonishingly, West Mids police has no plans to reopen Cooper’s case files – or alert any of the families who were involved.

More secrecy. More stalling. More blase smugness. No contrition. No action. To paraphrase JFK, “To those who say Britain isn’t being broken by corrupt secrecy about institutional incompetence, I say ‘Let them come to Stafford'”.

Believe me, it was a lot safer in cold-war Berlin than it is in 2010 Stafford.