The boost in copies is also down to the expansion of the Internet and our recent upgrading of the OffBeat website which has tripled in popularity since it went bilingual.

The reduced demand on international subscriptions has left more OffBeat copies available for Police establishments. Our recent reader survey revealed some formations were running out of OffBeat copies before all officers could have a read.

We are now hoping to prevent this by redistributing the surplus copies.

Subscribers were asked in the 655 to 657 issues to update us with their addresses or be deleted from the list.

More than 2,500 of the 3,900 subscribers said they wanted to remain on the mailing list. Others did not reply or said they would read our webpage instead.

This now leaves about 1,400 spare copies per issue which can be added to the general circulation among formations.

Many overseas readers said they were very happy with our Internet coverage of the latest Force news and info and no longer needed the paper mailed.

The website has been recording an extremely encouraging 'hit rate' per issue which is constantly increasing.

Last month a staggering 3,332 people surfed to our main index pages, up from 1,517 in July last year, and 927 in July 1997. And the figures don't include our archive pages which have also been seeing several thousand hits per month.

The vast majority of last month's vistors - 2,469 to be exact - came through our new Chinese-language website.

Other attractions were the new colourful layouts and clarity of the pages, along with the site's download speed and punctuality. The site is updated with the latest OffBeat stories almost as soon as its printed cousin comes off the presses!

So now, not only are we saving paper, and reducing labour and postage costs, we can also better ensure all Force staff get to read OffBeat and remain up-to-date.

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