Musings Of An Angry Dinosaur

Last updated on August 22nd, 2023 at 12:18 pm

Last updated on August 22nd, 2023 at 12:18 pm

This Angry Dinosaur has been Musing.  I don’t know about anybody else but I am reaching the point of no return with our current brand of politicians. It doesn’t seem to matter very much which party they represent , they’re all as bad as each other.

In recent months we have seen, what appears to me, a huge increase of really rather violent assaults (and worse) on our Police Officers. But what has that got to do with politicians? You may well ask.

Without going over old ground too much it all started back in 2010 when the Conservatives won the General Election, albeit in a coaltion with the Lib Dems and a rather dodgy deal with the DUP. Prime Minister David Camoron (sic) and Home Secretary Theresa May seized upon the opportunity to degrade, demoralise and radically reduce the size and effectiveness of the Police Service of England and Wales. Camoron had long since held such ambitions, his views were laid out in a speech many years before, which spookily foretold the ‘reforms’ that were to come.

(Sir) Tom Winsor was tasked to review and reform the Police, changing Conditions of Service, Pensions and who knows what else, the list seemed to go on for that. He was so successful at this task that he was awarded a Knighthood, was made Chief Inspector of Constabulary and got a fancy uniform (god knows why, unless it was to piss the Police off)

The demoralisation of the Police Service was complete, or so we thought. Even Nostradamus would have struggled to predict that more pestilence was gathering over the horizon.

In no particular order, we now find that the Police Service is facing many other factors which combine together to lower, even further, morale amongst our fine officers, and make this country (or certain parts of it) much less safe to live in.

Soft sentencing in the Courts. Many offenders never come anywhere close to receiving the maximum punishment for their crimes. So many times they don’t even receive a short custodial sentence for what are really quite serious crimes.

Main Stream Media are having a field day. One day they will be criticising the Police for standing around and doing nothing while statues are getting toppled, the next day they will run a front pagecarticle about how ‘heavy handed’ the Police have been in policing a demo.

Many bodies and individuals will join in the mantra that Stop and Search must be radically scaled back, and that it is infringing the rights of people walking the streets. They conveniently forget that children and young people are being maimed and killed on our streets, often by other children and young people carrying a variety of often quite wicked-looking knives, like the so-called zombie knives.

There have been a number of instances where athletes, politicians and others have been stopped and searched. Strangely these instances have often been filmed, commencing magically before the ‘stop’ then suitably edited. If there is a complaint to be made about how the Stop/Search was carried out (or why) then I respectfully suggest that the media is not the place to do it. There is a well established process for dealing with such complaints. Chief Officers issuing a public apology, sometimes before the matter is concluded, just reduce morale deeper and quicker. If an apology is warranted then fine, issue the apology at an appropriate time, and appropriately worded.

Officers at what have the potential to be violent demonstrations are frequently pictured wearing inappropriate kit for the situation they are in. Flat caps and baseball caps offer little protection to the head. Your officers are a valuable resource, protect them properly. If this offends a few snowflakes then surely this is a price worth paying.

We have people like the Mayor of London etc criticisng Police actions, or lack of action, in relation to the absolute epidemic of Knife. Rime in London. More than 700 people were injured by knives in the first 3 months of 2021 alone. What has the Mayor DONE? Nothing that I can see. I, and others, have written to him many times about the magnificent Knife Angel. I don’t know about any of the others but I have never even had the courtesy of a reply from him.

Graduate Entry, Direct Entry Detectives, Aprenticehip Entry, I could go on. All of these schemes do little more than generate an illusion of elitism. There is a place in the Service for Degrees and Graduates, but are they really essential for day to day Policing? Can you really picture a couple of Oxbridge Graduates having a roll around on a pub floor on a Saturday night? I am already hearing of Graduate entrants leaving because they didn’t realise that ‘Policing’ involved a degree of confrontation with some sections of the public.

I’m sure I have left some out, feel free to highlight them in the Comments below, but to me, a retired and angry dinosaur, it seems that a combination of factors have the Police Service on its knees, and much of it has every appearance of having been deliberate. I’m not going to repeat myself here, you can read it elsewhere, if you haven’t already, but even the Police Uplift Programme seems to be nothing more than a cynical Vote Winner and yet more Smoke and Mirrors.