Due to various family crises we've done a huge amount of travelling recently -- 25K+ miles since last October -- from North Essex to either Cornwall or County Durham therefore mainly motorway/major A road and I've noticed the following behaviour of police drivers/riders on numerous occassions:
1. travelling at speeds well in excess of the national speed limit whilst not showing blue lights -- I thought that unless attending an emergency running the good old blues 'n' 2s police were subject to the nsl just like the rest of us
2. parking on the hard shoulder of the motorway -- again I thought that they were only allowed to use the raised platforms specially provided for observing our misdemeanours -- an instance last week of both a bike and a car parked at the bottom of a slip road and yesterday we saw a bike park up in the shadows under a bridge.

Anyone any thoughts -- have there been changes in the rules? -- I haven't see anything in the highway code that mentions exclusions for police drivers on "normal" business.