‘Perception of bias can be as damaging as the reality’
Met. Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan Howe
This is from a document from the BBC (via Guido) which is making the case for them not revealing their spending but it also reveals their level of management reduction which you might bear in mind as you read the interview by Victoria Derbyshire with the Met. Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan Howe…..
‘Between 2009 and 2011, we reduced the senior management pay bill by 26.9% and reduced headcount by 24.4%.’
One of the biggest and most contentious issues in Government policy is the cutting of the Police budget by 20%. This has been a favourite subject of the Media and in particular the BBC over the last couple of years.
It played out in front of us with ‘Plebgate’ as the police looked to be playing a political game to embarrass the Government and the Police Federation milked it for all it was worth.
We are frequently warned that cuts will lead to frontline officer numbers being reduced and that crime will rise as a result.
You might think that a long interview with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, in which he speaks about the effect of the cuts on the effectiveness of his force, would be news.
You would only be partially right in thinking that….for some parts of the interview were deemed more newsworthy than others for the BBC editors….Plebgate for instance was highlighted, police moral over pay and pensions was highlighted with a suggestion that public sector pay should be allowed to go up, the BBC’s own interest in regard to the Savile investigation was highlighted…but one revealing part of the interview went missing.
You might have thought that the senior policeman in charge of the Met. saying that the budget cuts and the actions taken to meet them meant he would have a better and leaner police force, that the changes were reasonable and sensible, would be news. You might think that when he says that the changes should be made even if we were not in a recession somebody at the BBC would think ‘That’s an important statement that contrasts starkly with what opponents of the cuts say’.
You’d be wrong if you thought that. The BBC ignored the inconvenient and highly politically embarrassing comments for some, and proceeded to highlight everything it could that it thought would make the cuts look like they will damage the police force….for instance how often do you hear that an extra 2000 police constables will be on the ‘frontline’ in those news bulletins? Not once.
This is the BBC once more playing politics and hiding the facts to suit its own agenda.
Judge for yourself…..
This is the BBC introduction to the radio interview on 5Live:
‘The Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan Howe says he believes the police officers involved in plebgate row with Andrew Mitchell DID accurately report events. He also explains why morale in the force is low, and why public sector pay rises should be considered in future.’
The whole interview, about 50 mins long, is worth a listen as Hogan Howe is very open about everything and the interview is wideranging and covers a lot of contentious or well known issues.
Here is the relevant part of the interview (From 38 mins in …whole thing starts at 29 mins), slightly abridged…..
VD: Let’s talk about the cuts to the Metropolitan Police budget of £500 million by 2015, senior officers cut by a quarter and replaced by 2000 police constables….what kind of force will you be left with?
HH: Well it’ll be different but it will be better. There’s no doubt that any organisation trying to find £500m is a challenge…that said our budget is £3.5 billion/year, so it’s a significant amount of money but we have a significant budget.
I hope what you will see is we will be leaner, we’ll have less managers, I don’t think its always true that more managers make a better organisation. (Just ask Paxman).
VD: But you’re losing a quarter of senior officers, how can the force end up being better?
HH: More managers don’t make a better organisation.
VD: I’m not suggesting it does but with a quarter of officers gone….
HH: The point I was going to make…if you look at the ratio of managers to managed around the rest of the police forces around the country probably the least managed have a 1 to 10 ratio, the average is 1 to 7, and ours is 1 to 5.….so all we’re talking about is getting our ratio up to 1 to 6 because the Met is big and difficult to manage…we’re not Norfolk. Going from 1 to 5 to 1 to 6 is a 20% difference and I think it’s reasonable. We will try to concentrate the supervision where we most need it.
Our broad point is we can have less managers and when we do look at some of the roles in the Met. they can appear over ranked.
VD: What do you mean?
HH: Well if you look at management and command teams in Lambeth, which is a very challenging area, the command team, such as Chief Superintendents, deserve their money…but then there are also CSI’s who run policy units.
VD: You don’t need CSI’s to run policy units.
HH: No, and of course over the last 20 years the force has grown and some of the money has been spent wisely and some actually….it’s like for all of us…if we an get away with it we’ll do it. But at the moment we can’t get away with it so the challenge is to spend the money wisely.
They might be perceived as radical changes but we think they are sensible changes and even if we weren’t in a recession some of it we would do because it’s what we should be doing, spending money wisely.
I think this is a reasonable change.
Amusing that the police budget is about the same as the BBC gets from the license fee. Yet another parallel.
Although maybe Derbyshire or another Beeboid needs to talk to Inspector Gadget about where the cuts are really happening. He and all his hundreds of commenters seem to think that more police are being removed from the streets and response teams rather than more desk jockeys being cut.
If anything, one suspects that these police cuts are just as politically motivated as the council cuts which deliberately targeted libraries and swimming pools instead of cutting actual waste. Perhaps not unlike the BBC’s cuts…….
In fact the BBC budget hasn’t been that low for 10 years and is now almost 5 billion (pdf link):
Click to access RFI20120897%20-%20final%20response-2%20copy.pdf
(does include other income…what do they spend it on!)
“plus other income”. I was just talking about the License Fee, which is the only part of the BBC’s income which as been frozen, albeit referred to by them as “cut”.
(Yes, I know the fact that the BBC being forced by the nasty Tories to absorb the cost of the World Service will put a dent in their Worlwide profits.)
Off topic: disgusting pro-Hamas terrorist propaganda from the useless politically correct BBC ‘News’ (Views) at Six.
Off Topic: The BBC and the rest of the lefty population are moaning about the CoE because of its vote against women bishops. Funny how the BBC are very quiet on the subject of Muslims and their largely abhorrent views towards women and females’ equality. Women Imams? Gay marriages in Mosques? Don’t hold your breath!
What aboutery is the lowest form of argument.
On your point Alan, excellent sources.
Not sure I agree though. ‘Senior plod says his plans will make the Police more effective’ is not a good story’. It’s a classic media trick to focus on the negative, and not a good thing for the BBC to do. But not evidence of bias.
Stop making up new words, please. There are plenty already in existence to choose from. Oh, and answering my important and valid point would be appreciated.
You said yourself it’s off topic. Should be on the Open thread.
You find me an Open Thread that is nearby and I would have posted it. I maybe have about ten minutes MAX, a day, to post some links on here… If I can’t find an Open Thread, I’ll post off-topic… You don’t have to read and it’s not a big deal, in my opinion!
You seem to have a team of ‘likers’ following you around because your 2 of your 3 off-topic posts have more likes than all the on-topic posts added together!
Us “likers” will click on whomever we choose, OT or not tyvm.
touchy!
Can’t help it if people like my posts. Perhaps people agree with my comments??
I agree with your comments! What I don’t agree with is putting several different topic on the same thread making the whole blog go to shit. The same comments and stats re the child abuse news this morning are on 3 threads anyway (4 with this one)
Touchy? How dare you sir!
ROFL.
Your point is neither important or valid.
It’s like saying what Jimmy Savile did is nothing compared to the brutalisation of children in the Congo, so why not as much mention of that.
“It’s like saying what Jimmy Savile did is nothing compared to the brutalisation of children in the Congo, so why not as much mention of that” – That’s is perhaps the most appalling and inept parallel reasoning I have had the misfortune of reading on here. Pathetic. Answer my question, and tell me why the BBC failed to mention the statistics I highlighted. You can’t, because to do so would be defending the indefensible.
I do not understand what it is about your point that Dandy finds so objectionable. It is a fact that there are no female Immams, yet the BBC never ever cry sexist, or out of touch, with regards to those Moslems who cause women to walk behind men and who would happily burn homosexuals death.
Likewise, to show I can put equality at the heart of my argument, in Orthodox Judaism, women cannot become rabbis.
Where is the BBC indignation of that? No the BBC are in full on attack mode at the Church of England choosing to not have women Bishops at this time.
The BBC is simply anti-Christian and anti British!
Slight deviation; US Marine, checkpoint, Afghanistan, says to his oppo,’ Look there, all the men come through with their womenfolk 25 paces behind, why? Oppo; Oh, over here, it is a custom, women are inferior to men, so follow behind……….Next week, same place, same Marines, the women precede the men by 100 paces through the checkpoint. Marine says,’ Hey buddy, look at this, thought you said that……..Oppo says, yes i know, but there is a reason’. Marine asks, ‘Well, why?’ Oppo says, ‘Landmines’.
What statistics? On this thread or elsewhere?
Jim, ‘Commissioner Backs Cuts’ is a great story for any new organisation looking to inform not indoctrinate.
‘Not sure I agree though. ‘Senior plod says his plans will make the Police more effective’ is not a good story’. It’s a classic media trick to focus on the negative, and not a good thing for the BBC to do. But not evidence of bias’.
Your mission, Jim, should you choose to accept, is to find lasting evidence of the BBC doing same from a right-wing point of view.
Keep ’em coming, baby, lookin’ forward to it already!
Off topic: the utterly useless politically correct, Marxist BBC completely ignore the Muslim link (like that stupid lefty Guardian reader who wrote the useless ‘report’) in the North England (and who knows where else?). Disgusting cover-up of the figures were also blatantly apparent to anyone with a rudimentary level of arithmetic: The revolting BBC failed to say this: the ‘Asian’ population constitutes just over 5pc of the population and yet ‘Asians’ represented 25pc of these loathsome rape cases. Says it all. The author of the report and the BBC are complicit in these crimes when they choose to put community cohesion before safeguarding children.
The BBC’s report has been a long excuse for Moslem Rape gangs and a blatant attempt to cover up the scale of it. They claim firstly that :
“Details on perpetrators were harder to obtain unless they had actually been arrested, so it is difficult to be sure of their ethnicity, notes the report. ”
And yet later claim:
“Analysis of the reported ethnicity of more than 1,500 alleged perpetrators showed that about a third were white, the largest ethnic group.”
Without qualifying that by stating that 85% of the UK is white and so there is a massively disproportionately large number of rape-gangs that are none-white.
Also are they using that “difficult to be sure of their ethnicity” line to hide that disproportionate number of none-white rape gangs? How many “White” rape gangs have set up recently in response to the Moslem rape gangs in the north? Not to excuse rape by whomever has committed it, it is a vile, violent and abusive act for which I would support a reinstatement of the death penalty.
The fact is, that the BBC and other establishment liberals are bending over backwards to present this damning report of overwhelmingly none-white rape-gangs as being not representative of vile, foreign cultures abusing the trust and hospitality of our country in the most vile and degradingly violent way possible.
Baffled by numbers? Oxbridge PPE grads whose mathematical ability stops at double-entry expense claims?
Which is more relevant training for BBC journalists – the interpretation and presentation of statistical data, or Common Purpose induction?
Answers on a postcard.
Now being discussed on 3 other threads…
Doesn’t that reinforce how contoversial the issue is?
I used to go thro’ life thinking ” a place for everything and everything in its place” too.
Then someone told me I had an OCD.
You DO have a point sir, yes, and it’s all neater and tidier under your rules. But some latitude is surely allowable?
But I WILL choose to LIKE whatever I choose.
TYVM
I do have OCD…bad!
yw
I liked that!
‘This is from a document from the BBC (via Guido) which is making the case for them not revealing their spending
Larks. What will the BBC say the BBC will say this time (and then get it wrong)?
On matters Cutzzzzz in the public sector, this raised an eyebrow… of hope that money may still be sloshing about…
School hires proof reader to catch teachers’ spelling errors @Telegraph http://soc.li/qB2ZuGQ
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-20427048
A team????
I was hoping in a quick scan to see if the BBC may have strayed, but literally couldn’t see one, though of course it’s not what you’d call formal or anything.
The first recipients of cuts should be the diversity directorates, & all performance management teams – disbanded. Return all suitable officers to frontline duties. Coppers should have the need to be civil to all of the public drilled into them during basic training. This, from 2006: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-412948/outrage-police-spend-450m-equality-diversity.html
The police are undermanned at the sharp end, overmanned at the top. Sack 50% of senior officers (ACPO). Increase the numbers on street patrol. And, for goodness sake, set up a highly-trained task force to combat the ever-increasing sophistication of cybercriminals.
The police used to be a force, not, a service. An important distinction. Like the BBC, they should revert to their original purpose, without politicised distractions. The police to combat crime, the BBC to adhere to its charter, & take a pride in its balance, quality of factual information & its irreproachable impartiality.
The ACPO is a political distraction.
I omitted to say that the remaining 50% of ACPO will be put on foot patrols in our most challenging neighbourhoods. Just to see what their frontline coppers really have to deal with. I’m sure natural wastage at senior level would accelerate.
That’s a good idea!
I would vote for you graphene fedora, I would make one crucial distinction. The police are not there to “combat crime”. They are there to uphold the law and only do so with consent. That is a critical and crucial distinction between free states and police states.
Police commissioner appointed by Theresa May and Boris Johnson to implement government cuts supports government cuts. Blimey, what a surprise.
Dez, that is not the surprise. What we would like you to be able to do is ascertain why the BBC would leave out that part of the report? Why would the BBC not report that the cuts could be considered GOOD for the police? Other than the fact that this senior police officer actually contradicts the BBC’s narrative of all cuts only being destructive.
I remember when the Met police chief, Blair, was constantly being reported as supporting the then labour Government’s policies, so the BBC was not opposed to a Government appointed police chief supporting the government’s policies back then when labour were the governing party. Why the change?
The simplest answer is usually the correct one. BBC BIAS!
Go on Dez, admit it, I dare you!
I await Dez’s reply with interest..
C’mon
Police cars with “Vote Labour” stickers!
“It’s all gone quiet over there….”
doggywoggydooda;
“I remember when the Met police chief, Blair, was constantly being reported as supporting the then labour Government’s policies… ….Why the change?”
I can’t explain your memories. Are they anything like:
“Conservative conference: Force against burglars to be allowed” – “The Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe told the BBC he agreed that homeowners need better protection than they currently get.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19879314
Or; “Despite the ‘huge’ £500m savings target ‘we will probably end up more efficient, a bit leaner, a bit meaner but we will be effective‘, pledged the Commissioner.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19723730
Or; “Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe said: …’It is early days but it seems this dedicated team is making a difference in tackling gang crime.
‘It is part of our Total Policing approach. There is more to come.’…”
…”Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: ‘By cracking down on gang activity we are successfully bringing down knife and gun related crimes’.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19462265
Dez,
You are the loony left and I claim my prize. Or are you Nicked Emus and I claim 2 prizes!
Shame you don’t have an argument, but never mind.
Talking of which, still not had your views on the BBC’s involvement in CMEP or its refusal to release the Balen report.
Or your refutation of BBC bias in this little gem:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/24/bbcs-kirby-admission-to-phil-jones-on-impartiality/
Oh, and here’s another which I seem to recall slipped past your beady eye:
http://www.kentishtowner.co.uk/2012/11/13/ich-bin-kentishtowner-martin-plaut-bbc-journalist-author/
‘Please note we have amended the title of this article as Martin Plaut retired from the BBC as World Service Africa editor at the end of October.
Retired… ‘hurt’?
On full pension no doubt. Plus, what, double the legal requirement to go quietly?
That BBC legal fund is going to have to raid the budget again.
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2102/spiralling_bbc_legal_fees_leave_licence_fee_payers_out_of_pocket
(I can see the squad assigned to petty semantic trolling there is earning its keep too)
Good stuff Dez. Thread closed I think.
Thread closed I think.
What folk think can often be at odds with what happens.
Paraphrasing a legend in his own mind… such a point is neither important or valid.
No, it’s not good stuff. Pointing to some reports on the website that hardly anybody will read does little to balance the overwhelming bias we hear on BBC radio and TV.
Scez, there’s plenty of Government appointed ‘Heads of’, I’m not aware of any apart from the MetComm whose taking a positive view of budget savings.
So what would you cut instead, Dez? Or do you believe we should Carry On Spending Regardless?
Dez, the Labour party put up candidates for PCC’s so they must support the alleged government cuts. Unfortunately in my neighbourhood Vera Baird was elected by less than 10 per cent of the electorate. We are so screwed. She will be so busy troughing that she will not notice any cuts, will not care about how the electorate are policed, (the electorate in Redcar had her Sussed out), and will try and impose her left wing insanity on the running of the Police. The CC has already stated that she will have problems working with her. Well done Dave. Yet another stupid idea gone wrong.
Howe made a very good case for what the private sector has been doing for years – flattening the management structure.
Don’t expect someone who works for the BBC to get their head round that one.