Hey You, Yes You – Loser!!

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That’s right, you, you’re the biggest loser round here. And I don’t mind telling you why.  There’s tens of thousands of other folk who could tell you why, but they won’t because they’ve got their careers to think about, and that’s perfectly understandable, but before you get the hump with me, I’m a loser too. We’re all losers except for my 4 readers who happen to live abroad, lucky buggers.

Retired folk like me can tell you why you’re a loser and damn the consequences, cos Camoron hasn’t found a way to get to us yet.

Way back in 2006 David Camoron set out his proposals to reform the Police in a speech in East London. I won’t bore you with the details of that speech, the full text is available on the net if you want it.

More relevant is the very close resemblance to his views on Police Reform in recent years and the contents of the Winsor Review, Parts 1 and 2.  It’s almost as though Camoron told Cruella what he wanted and she told Uncle Tom what to write in his report, but surely it can’t be that simple, can it?

Then the very same Mr Winsor is appointed Chief Inspector of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, reward or coincidence?

Throw into the pot one Andrew Mitchell MP and his notorious alleged ‘Pleb’ comments. Apart from the very obvious furore this sparked off, the most immediate consequence of this was Mr Mitchell resigning his lucrative Cabinet post and returning to the back benches.  But not for long.  Mr Mitchell is no great loser in this farce.  I have to be honest, I don’t know who the hell to blame. Operation Alice rumbles slowly on, CCTV ‘evidence’ was shown on Channel 4 which appeared to cast doubt on the Police version of events, but that had so clearly been tampered with it was a not very funny joke. Now Mr Mitchell is set to become our next European Commissioner at a salary in the region of £250,000, much more than the Cabinet Minister’s salary that he ‘sacrificed’, so he’s certainly not a loser, any more than Chief Inspector Winsor is a loser.

So, where was I? Oh yes, Camoron and Cruella have engaged Winsor, and possibly others. to bring the Police to their knees. 20% cut in Police Budgets, Police numbers going down all over England and Wales, except for a couple of very minor exceptions.

Another ruse to divert everyone’s attention and help decimate the Police Services is, dare I say it, Privatisation, or Outsourcing/Procurement if you prefer.  It is well known that I’m against it, but I might be wrong. What you can’t deny is the timing. Winsor, Plebgate, Privatisation, Pension Reforms, Budget Cuts, Number Slashing and soon Compulsory Severance, all at the same time, more or less.  Is it any wonder that the Police, along with other Public Services, are crumbling.

Then came Police and Crime Commissioners last year, to further destabilise and confuse. Who are they? What do they do? Why couldn’t Police Authorities have remained? Have they been a force for good?

Plebgate must have come to Camoron like a gift from the gods. Something to reduce public sympathy in the Police. Well, I would venture to say, they don’t need your sympathy. What they need is understanding.

I was fortunate enough to spend my 30 years serving in the Met, a force that was pretty much self-contained. We had our own fleet of prison vans, driven by our own drivers. We had our own garages with our own mechanics (oops sorry, technicians these days).  Almost anything you need to run a police force the Met had somewhere under its umbrella, or should I say, there was a family member somewhere that had it.

Having met up with some of our Constabulary cousins I now realise how fortunate I, and the Met, were. But why couldn’t all Forces have been a scaled down version of the Met, self-contained in a smaller version, or groups of smaller Forces joining together, but keeping it in house?

Camoron didn’t get his way in 2006, but he obviously has a long memory. He also seems to be Hell-bent on being the most despised Prime Minister in British history. Well, he’s succeeding in that at least.

I haven’t the foggiest idea why Camoron despises the Police so, but most, if not all,  Prime Ministers before him have managed the Police but kept them well-resourced, and kept numbers where they need to be.  Camoron/Cruella’s policy of slash and burn, reduce the numbers, slash the budget has apparently now been responsible for a rise in the crime rate.

I have seen many conversations on Social Media about ‘fiddled’ crime stats, crimes that no longer get investigated, regular officers being replaced by PCSOs and/or Specials, Police Staff jobs going over to the private sector. I have sympathy with most, if not all, of these arguments, but surely, at the end of the day, they are just a distraction. A distraction which seems to be working, and preventing us, the great British Public, from realising that we are being conned. We have become losers.

We have lost Police Officers.

we have lost Soldiers/Sailors/Airmen.

We have lost Doctors and Nurses

We have lost Social Workers and Probation Officers

We have lost Coastguards

We have lost Teachers.

I don’t know if it’s too late to reverse this. Sometimes it’s too expensive to put things back the way they were. The way that worked!!

I don’t have a degree in Politics or Political Science, but this certainly isn’t what I understand by DEMOCRACY.

If every inhabitant of England and Wales of voting age was asked

Do you want to cut the Police/Army/NHS/Probation etc etc? What would their answer be?

Ask them Do you want the Public Services to suffer to get us out of this mess, or shall we get the banks and financial institutions to pay for it? What would their answer be?

That would be Democracy in my view.

At the same time as this is going on, MPs are getting a nice fat pay rise, their expenses rumble on seemingly unchecked. When did you last get a pay rise, never mind an above-inflation one?

So, if you’re still with me and made it to the end, who’s the loser here? The Public Services are certainly losers, but it’s US, the Public. We’re the biggest losers, and the government are trying to convince us that we should be grateful.

#AllInThisTogether or #SnoutsInTheTrough?

Meanwhile, if any of you has a couple of groats spare to buy me a new quill I’d be terribly grateful, this one’s getting all blunt and scratchy, I thank you.

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6 thoughts on “Hey You, Yes You – Loser!!”

  1. From my own observations as a West Yorkshire plod, I would say, yes, 25-30 yrs ago, people were being retired on sick pensions with ridiculous injuries to thumbs and wrists. However, in the last 15-20 years after being told, “you will reduce medical retirements”, it appears that one would have to be terminally ill to be retired in that fashion.

    1. Thanks Andrew, I can only comment on my experience with the Met, but it seemed that Medical Retirement went in and out of fashion at the whim of the senior management. One of my old partners was medically retired much against his wishes, and those of local management. I guess Finance will always have the final say.

      1. Example: Officer with cancer has two years service left after treatment. Returns to work on reduced hours (2 hrs a day on instructions of consultant and force surgeon) on full wages. It would have cost WYP less to retire him on a medical pension but no. Instead they required him to work the remaining two years at two hours a day then allowed him to retire.

  2. I agree with practically all you say here and hope the electorate remember come May 2015 what this shower of a Government have done to public services however would you agree that the police were allowed to getaway with blue murder in the past with “golden backache” retirements and over staffing via antiquated practices and structures within the Met and regional forces? I also suspect support for all police forces across the whole country is in short supply given the many instances of people being framed and for allowing forces to be politicised.

    1. Thank you Kevin. I’m not sure I could agree with your ‘blue murder’ comment as I carried my backache all my service and was never offered the option of early retirement, even had I wanted it. I can agree on out-dated procedures, and over-staffing to a degree, but I can only speak for the Met, maybe one of our Constabulary friends can enlighten us regarding the situation in the regional forces. A professional review of staffing levels and systems is one thing, wholesale outsourcing something completely different.

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