Evening all; under plans contained in the Windsor review the lot of a policeman (or woman) soon really won’t be a happy one.
The Police Federation is to ballot its 135,000 members on whether they want the right to strike in response to government plans for a 20% cut in funding for the service and the widest ranging reforms of how it operates for thirty years. Included in this is the suggestion, made in the Windsor review that Chief Constables should be able to make officers redundant to cut costs.
The review says that for some staff associations, including the Police Federation, the absence of the right to strike is seen as the reason for protecting their members from the risk of compulsory redundancy. It challenges this claim citing as an example the armed forces, members of which don’t have the right to strike but can be made redundant.
Speaking about the review to the BBC this week a spokeswoman for the Home Office said ‘We must tackle the deficit and police forces need to play their part in making savings. We believe this can be done whilst protecting front line services.’ She added that the government would ‘consider the proposals in the independent Windsor review carefully, ensuring that the remuneration and status of police officers continues to reflect the important work they do.’
Even by the impressive standards set by the civil service this statement lifts mealy mouthed piety to a truly Olympian level.
The Police Federation, the national committee of which unanimously supports its members having the right to strike, will hold a rally before its conference in May so that, as a statement says, ‘police officers, friends, families and supporters can show the strength of their feeling against the budget cuts being applied to policing and the consequences for public safety.’
If you dress to the left politically there is something deeply ironic about the idea of the police going out on strike. Who will ‘kettle’ the people who usually do the ‘kettling?’ Maybe they’ll have to take turns at beating themselves up on the picket line.
Facetiousness though shouldn’t blind the left or anyone else to the seriousness of what this means. The idea of the police going on strike would only a couple of years ago have been unimaginable; now there is an outside chance of it actually happening.
There is a good reason why we pay police officers good salaries and generous pensions, because we also ask them to do the things we either can’t or won’t do. Not just the truly awful things like picking up the pieces (often literally) after road traffic accidents, but the niggling repetitive things like dealing with persistent anti-social behaviour or being a verbal punch bag for angry burglary victims who think the theft of their TV should be treated like the crime of the century.
These so called reforms will do nothing to make the police more efficient, in fact they could do irreparable damage to the service. Take 20% from the budget of any organisation and it will inevitably have to radically alter the way it operates, cut back on almost everything in order to continue delivering the most basic level of service, meaning that much of the work the police do to build links with often hostile communities will have to stop. As a result they will become an organisation that reacts to problems instead of trying to tackle their potential causes in a proactive way; a sure recipe for disaster.
If Chief Constables are given the power to make their officers redundant they will almost certainly end up doing so, just as once given the power to raise fees to £9,000 all but a handful of university vice chancellors did so. This is because these days such positions are often held by ambitious middle managers who can be easily strong armed by the accountants rather than people who understand the service their organisation delivers, be it teaching art history or catching criminals.
Incidentally saying that police officers should constantly live under the shadow of redundancy because soldiers, sailors and members of the RAF do is nonsense; one staggering act of ingratitude does not justify another.
These cuts are yet another example of the obsessive myopia afflicting the government; in the absence of anything resembling a vision for the sort of country they want Britain to be cutting the deficit at all costs has filled the resulting vacuum. This is allied with a uniquely Tory pig headedness that sees only policies that cause pain as being effective and equates a reasonable willingness to consider and change the course of your actions where appropriate as a sign of incipient weakness.
Perhaps after their epic year long battle over NHS reform the government thought the police would be an easier target for their cut at all costs tactics. In their fevered imagination they perhaps saw the late Jack Warner touching the brim of his helmet and stoically getting on with things, ours not to reason why, at least not to reason why when the orders are given by people who went to Eton and Oxford.
What a surprise it must have been for them to find out that modern police officers aren’t all cosy clichés; instead they’re professional men and women with an understanding of their value and the values they uphold. There is very little likelihood the police ever will go on strike, the fact though that they are willing to discuss the idea of withdrawing their labour should make a government that is increasingly remote and complacent think again about how and what it cuts.
Showing posts with label deficit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deficit. Show all posts
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Sunday, 31 July 2011
As the economy stumbles its time for some REAL blue skies thinking from Downing Street
The sun is shining, the politicians have skipped town for the summer recess and the silly season is upon us, which must be why the latest wheeze from Steve Hilton, the Prime Ministers ‘blue skies’ advisor has received so much media coverage.
Steve Hilton is what you might call the ‘holy fool’ of the Cameron government, a trendy type given to wearing t-shirts to the office and, allegedly, going barefoot through the corridors of power. Anyway his big plan for kick starting our moribund economy is, drum roll if you please; scrapping maternity leave.
The thinking, such as it is, behind the plan is that businesses are put off hiring female workers because they might one day want to have time off the have a family. I’m sure this is true too; well it is if the businesses in question are trading in a 1970’s time warp. Its all very well your wanting to be CEO of ICI, but how are you going to have your hubby’s tea on the table when he gets home if you get the job, really my dear you haven’t thought this through at all.
Not thinking things through, it seems, is an experience with which Steve Hilton is all too familiar himself. As a government insider told the Financial Times this week ‘some of his ideas are great but a lot of time is spent at an official level trying to deconstruct his maddest ideas.’
Mr Hilton mad, surely not? Wanting the government to invest in technology to blow away the clouds and make the UK a sunnier and happier place is sanity incarnate. The road to madness surely lies in supporting the barmy ‘Big Society’ project, oh hang on a minute, turns out Steve Hilton does support it and really has got the t-shirt to prove it; maybe he is barking mad after all.
There is no doubt that the UK economy needs something to lift it out of the doldrums. This week the Office for National Statistics published figures showing that growth had slumped to just 0.2%, even taking into account the effects of the Japanese earthquake, the Royal Wedding and a wet summer things look pretty bad.
At least they do to everyone but the two men who matter most, David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne. The Prime Minister is reportedly worried by the poor performance of the economy; the Chancellor though seems able to see sunshine and flowers where the rest of us see only trouble and strife.
On Tuesday he told the press that ‘the positive news is that the British economy is continuing to grow.’ Well up to a point Chancellor, in roughly the same way that someone who has only gone down twice can claim to be still swimming rather than drowning.
The opposition has poured criticism over the government’s raising of VAT to 20% and the breakneck speed with which it is cutting public spending.
Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said that the Chancellor’s ‘rash decision to hike up VAT in January and to cut further and faster than any other major nation has caused confidence to fall and the economy to flatline since the autumn.’
Brendan Barber of the Trades Union Council said ‘A target of eliminating the deficit in just four years always looked as if it came from what others might call ‘right wing nutters’ than sensible economics.’ Making along the way a thinly veiled reference to Business Secretary Vince Cable’s accurate, if not exactly diplomatic, assessment of the Tea Party and their contribution to the debate over America’s own debt problems.
He went on to add that the UK economy needs a ‘Plan B based on growth and investment’ if we are to avoid another catastrophic recession.
None of this criticism seems to have reached the ivory tower inhabited by the Chancellor who believes despite all evidence to the contrary that ‘our economy is stable because the government has taken the difficult decision to get to grips with Britain’s debts.’
Could it be that Steve Hilton isn’t the most deluded man in Downing Street after all? The austerity sold to the British public as the only option to avoid the fate of Greece and Ireland turns out to be holding back the growth without which we cannot hope to clear our debts. Who’d have thought it eh? Not the Oxford educated man in charge of the country’s economy it seems.
The problems faced by the UK economy are real and require a radical solution; some real blue skies thinking if you like. They require us to address the long avoided question of which matters most, economic growth or the health of our society?
If it’s the former, fine cut away; but don’t call out for help if you fall ill, lose your job or become a victim of crime because there will be nobody there to help. If it’s the latter then we will all have to accept, in the short term at least, having fewer gadgets but a much stronger society.
John Maynard Keynes famously said that when the facts changed he changed his mind. The facts of the economic picture have changed, if inflexible ideology beats common sense and the ability to strike a compromise next week causing the world’s largest economy to sneeze the rest of us might just catch pneumonia.
A Downing Street advisor with the ability to think clearly, about blue skies or anything else, would be advising David Cameron to show some real leadership and order his Chancellor to follow Keynes’s example and change his mind about how to deal with the economy before it is too late.
Steve Hilton is what you might call the ‘holy fool’ of the Cameron government, a trendy type given to wearing t-shirts to the office and, allegedly, going barefoot through the corridors of power. Anyway his big plan for kick starting our moribund economy is, drum roll if you please; scrapping maternity leave.
The thinking, such as it is, behind the plan is that businesses are put off hiring female workers because they might one day want to have time off the have a family. I’m sure this is true too; well it is if the businesses in question are trading in a 1970’s time warp. Its all very well your wanting to be CEO of ICI, but how are you going to have your hubby’s tea on the table when he gets home if you get the job, really my dear you haven’t thought this through at all.
Not thinking things through, it seems, is an experience with which Steve Hilton is all too familiar himself. As a government insider told the Financial Times this week ‘some of his ideas are great but a lot of time is spent at an official level trying to deconstruct his maddest ideas.’
Mr Hilton mad, surely not? Wanting the government to invest in technology to blow away the clouds and make the UK a sunnier and happier place is sanity incarnate. The road to madness surely lies in supporting the barmy ‘Big Society’ project, oh hang on a minute, turns out Steve Hilton does support it and really has got the t-shirt to prove it; maybe he is barking mad after all.
There is no doubt that the UK economy needs something to lift it out of the doldrums. This week the Office for National Statistics published figures showing that growth had slumped to just 0.2%, even taking into account the effects of the Japanese earthquake, the Royal Wedding and a wet summer things look pretty bad.
At least they do to everyone but the two men who matter most, David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne. The Prime Minister is reportedly worried by the poor performance of the economy; the Chancellor though seems able to see sunshine and flowers where the rest of us see only trouble and strife.
On Tuesday he told the press that ‘the positive news is that the British economy is continuing to grow.’ Well up to a point Chancellor, in roughly the same way that someone who has only gone down twice can claim to be still swimming rather than drowning.
The opposition has poured criticism over the government’s raising of VAT to 20% and the breakneck speed with which it is cutting public spending.
Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said that the Chancellor’s ‘rash decision to hike up VAT in January and to cut further and faster than any other major nation has caused confidence to fall and the economy to flatline since the autumn.’
Brendan Barber of the Trades Union Council said ‘A target of eliminating the deficit in just four years always looked as if it came from what others might call ‘right wing nutters’ than sensible economics.’ Making along the way a thinly veiled reference to Business Secretary Vince Cable’s accurate, if not exactly diplomatic, assessment of the Tea Party and their contribution to the debate over America’s own debt problems.
He went on to add that the UK economy needs a ‘Plan B based on growth and investment’ if we are to avoid another catastrophic recession.
None of this criticism seems to have reached the ivory tower inhabited by the Chancellor who believes despite all evidence to the contrary that ‘our economy is stable because the government has taken the difficult decision to get to grips with Britain’s debts.’
Could it be that Steve Hilton isn’t the most deluded man in Downing Street after all? The austerity sold to the British public as the only option to avoid the fate of Greece and Ireland turns out to be holding back the growth without which we cannot hope to clear our debts. Who’d have thought it eh? Not the Oxford educated man in charge of the country’s economy it seems.
The problems faced by the UK economy are real and require a radical solution; some real blue skies thinking if you like. They require us to address the long avoided question of which matters most, economic growth or the health of our society?
If it’s the former, fine cut away; but don’t call out for help if you fall ill, lose your job or become a victim of crime because there will be nobody there to help. If it’s the latter then we will all have to accept, in the short term at least, having fewer gadgets but a much stronger society.
John Maynard Keynes famously said that when the facts changed he changed his mind. The facts of the economic picture have changed, if inflexible ideology beats common sense and the ability to strike a compromise next week causing the world’s largest economy to sneeze the rest of us might just catch pneumonia.
A Downing Street advisor with the ability to think clearly, about blue skies or anything else, would be advising David Cameron to show some real leadership and order his Chancellor to follow Keynes’s example and change his mind about how to deal with the economy before it is too late.
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