I see that the police trade union has been busy using the BBC for a little scaremongering and shakedownism!
“The number of young police officers in England and Wales has fallen by nearly 50% in two years. There were 9,088 officers aged under 26 in 2009-10 but only 4,758 in 2011-12, figures obtained by the BBC show. In Cleveland, North Wales and Staffordshire the fall in the number of officers aged under 26 was more than 70% over the period. Overall police numbers hit a nine-year low in 2012, due to tighter budget constraints slowing recruitment.”
Oh no..those savage and cruel Coalition cuts. Vote Labour – the policeman’s friend. Looks like the BBC is keen to do all it can to prove how awful cuts are for these highly paid police officers
Well, we don’t need them any more, do we? What with probation services being privatised, prisons being demolished, and policemen/women who make ‘informed’ judgements upon the innocent before they ever get to court.
Don’t need police – anarchy, that’s the answer (well it might be, if the British public weren’t so weak and disinterested).
Ah, the ever-reliable BBC. Not a press release from a trade union or a favoured single issue pressure group that isn’t treated as heart-stopping news.
‘figures obtained by the BBC show’
Always intrigued, sources who say-wise, by how the acquisition of such data occurs, and what the differences are in the descriptions.
For instance, is an ‘obtained by’ different to a ‘has learned’? Or are both just the same and actually mean ‘a press release we’ve been sent, cut and pasted’?
And if so, what governs the sudden coyness on flagging the actual source for proper context up front?
The irony of this being a BBC FoI (basis, scope and criteria still a bit vague) that did not meet Helen Boaden and the six Exclusion Lawyers at the door is noted.
The possibility of any young folk, especially talented ones with an interest in justice as opposed to index-linked pensions, not joining another national treasure whose institutional reputation at the top is not all it might be, has evidently not figured.
I notice a sidebar of ‘analysis’ from an FoI specialist called Martin Rosenbaum, who on clicking through is in fact just another BBC team hack. I wonder if he was one of Hugs’ hand holders and protectors from nasty Tony Newbury and his darned… questions? I can see he does get climatic here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20159417 – but see no reference to what some may find a more interesting aspect of FoI deployment, if perhaps reflecting less well on his employers.
Could it be that some accounts should not be held to as powerful account as others? Again.
On Radio 5 this morning (12:10 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01pvw0z/Double_Take_13_01_2013/) Anita Arnand introduced ‘Jon Collins, Deputy Director of the Police Federation, which is an independent policing think tank’.
I wondered what sort of scam the police trade union was pulling today, to be described as ‘independent’, but it turns out that the dim woman presenter gave the wrong name and his organisation should be the Police Foundation.
Such is the BBC-NUJ political deference here that it would have us believe that it is the Police Federation trade union which runs the police force!
And the following gives the political flavour of the Police Federation|:
“Thames Valley Fed applauds television introduction of black officer”
http://www.polfed.org/mediacenter/1DE571A17FD34343A01249B0E02CA1A1.asp
(Fictional character applauded for the black colour of his skin!)
Whatever next?
Police Federation applauds Association of Muslim Police?
“Association of Muslim Police : Public servants of Allah whose duty is da’wa – keeping the United Khalifate safe for shari’a”
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2440
‘Since 2002 the Metropolitan Police Service has amended its dress code to allow female Muslim officers to wear the hijab. The Head of the Met’s Human Resources, Bernard Hogan-Howe, has said: “It is only right that the Met ensures that its uniform is appropriate for all its staff.” .
See picture.
Yet a woman gets the sack for wearing a small necklace crucifix to work. What a wonderfully tolerant country we have become.
Who can blame the fat, lazy transgendered wing of Blunketts plastic plodders for wanting Labour back in power?
Imagine-no further need to deal with druggies(unless it`s to blag a Rizla)…no need to deal with criminals that might turn nasty and call them a name-or even threaten them.
Instead you can snoop on old ladies who might need to pay a license fee, you can throw the Book( not the Koran though-ever!) at someone who says your high viz jacket looks a bit tight/gay/wrong colour this season dearie.
And of course a chance to hold Sienna Millers poodle, be unsackable, never leave your new office…and get Tories sacked if they`re a bit eggy with you!
Ah-way too busy to catch a crim…there`s a police state to ensure is fit for Ed Balls old fancy dress parties.
Thank you Ian Blair…no relation to Tony, but another Yogi Blair in need of “serious counselling and a caution”
The Police ‘Service’ (apparently ‘force’ sounded too aggressive for the skin-headed baboons in The Met) has never been more openly partisan and political than it is now. Ever since The Dear Leader and his useless Politburo got kicked out of Downing Street, coppers have been on a national sulk, looking for any opportunity to stick the boot into the Coalition, with the ever-willing help, of course, from their comrades at the BBC.
Pathetic.
A good friend of mine retired from the Police in the late 90’s and reckons the downhill slide began with the fast track graduate entry scheme. Prior to that all officers had to spend time on the sharp end dealing with the public and catching criminals , if you were good at that you got promoted. The fast trackers (whose face fitted) usually only spent a year or two doing that though before being promoted to a special squad usually working office hours. These people are now very senior and yet my friend believes have no understanding of the job and the public. Even worse in his eyes they have a disdain for their colleagues who do want to do the proper “catching criminals stuff” rather than being a member of the transgendered domestic violence and carbon reduction squad.
Sounds like the hero in a high viz in Brum yesterday appealing for public input on what he was only prepared to refer to as an incident where a man had stabbed some men.
Luckily, this is incredibly rare. He sounds like a great one to put up against a squad of NGO or charity CEOs from outfits set up to address this rarity.
His main concern was that possible family, friends and colleagues had access to counselling as the community came to terms with this latest box-ticking market rate talent.
Ah, the old trick of equating Inputs with Ouputs. Perhaps it matters more what the Police do all day, like hundreds assigned to phone hacking of celebrities, the deceased Jimmy Saville’s kiddie-fiddling (compensation lawyers rub hands with glee “Have you ever been touched inappropriately by Jimmy Saville? You could be entitled to compensation!”)
First the BBC uncritically repeat the Fire Brigades Union press releases, now run the Police numbers tip-off, all humming the same tune of Torycutzz. Perhaps the bBC think we can’t see their lips move.
Aint it strange the plods can focus on all of Savile’s misdeeds now he’s brown bread. But when they had evidence before he hopped off the perch, they ran screaming in the other direction from the case! Who, just who was guilty of dumping the evidence into the bin?
This article was placed just above the one about policemen being injured in Northern Ireland and that one was just above an article about underfunded hospitals. I’m rather a fan of the Drudge Report and Matt Drudge’s artful placement of articles, but the BBC has no business being partial (in fact no business at all, so to speak) in its placement of stories. As for the story itself, it seemed designed to obscure the positive story that the police forces are not making redundancies, but allowing natural wastage to level off or reduce numbers. Even more remarkable is the fact that despite not hiring oodles of public workers the economy is still adding jobs. The fact that public services are not hiring so much is just a sign that they are sticking to their budgetary plans. Good news, one would have thought…
Don’t forget that the crime figures have fallen through the floor, so maybe no need for more Police in such a peaceful country as ours……….
Well I got the feeling the BBC were overdoing the ‘problems’ potentially caused by lack of young police! OK so some older police are overweight and unfit, but since the demographic shortage is limited to just the under 26 age group, we are hardly in danger of the force as a whole imminently turning into one of puffing bunters!
I suspect the BBC is dripfeeding the ‘solution’ that middle aged, not just near retired, police shoudl be bearing a share of the dismissals, all the better to take on more young VEMS (visible ethnic minorities).
Did you note the higly ageist suggetsion that older officers might not be able to ‘relate’ to the young (gangstas)?
Imagine if anyone had suggested women officers might not be able to relate to male offenders, or (worse) that foreigners might not be able to relate to ethnic British people, even though its clear that ethnicity and cultural differences, including language, is likely to be far more
of a barrier than age. In fact I would go so far as to say young(ish) offenders are going to relate more readilly to a parent figure than some ‘goody two shoes’ who is no older than them.
The BBC never reports on the wastage and inefficiency aspects – back office overstaffing with high-salaried officers, early retirement, invalidity retirement (I know one copper who was ‘invalided’ out at 48 with a bad back and hasn’t stop travelling the world since), time wasted on PC – driven (political correctness, that is) paperwork etc.
Funny that, from the home of ‘the world’s best investigative journalists’.
Thanks for finally talking about >