WHY DO NON HOME DEPARTMENT POLICE FORCES GET MISSED WHEN LEGISLATION IS BEING DRAFTED? Note: The Home Department is the traditional name for the Home Office and the Home Secretary is technically the Secretary of State for the Home Department. In this and other pieces I tend to use the titles interchangeably. I hope that by confusing my readers I can distract them from the boring nature of the blog itself. One part of my work lies in the field of research. This is not well paid and is a somewhat lonely pastime, but I do enjoy the thrill of tracking down information in archives, dusty corners of the internet and guiding people around bits of London. I find that there is often an overlap between the past and present, indeed life is a continuum. The present is a product of the past. The influence of what has come before is often apparent in what is done today. Frequently to understand the modern operating context we have to get past the ‘that’s before my time’ mindset.