In the warm, drinking tea again.I would like to wish Jack Straw a Happy New Year, but I won’t. He gave an interview today during which he stated that the police aren’t really bogged down with paperwork. We just like hanging around in police stations where it is warm.
A number of recent Home Secretary’s have upset the police with their lack of understanding of policing issues. As a former Home Secretary and now the Secretary of State for Justice I expected better. The gaffs this Government have made with regard to the police have been beyond compare. Jacquie Smith did really well shafting us on our pay deal resulting in a protest march of over 20,000 off duty police officers.
A number of recent Home Secretary’s have upset the police with their lack of understanding of policing issues. As a former Home Secretary and now the Secretary of State for Justice I expected better. The gaffs this Government have made with regard to the police have been beyond compare. Jacquie Smith did really well shafting us on our pay deal resulting in a protest march of over 20,000 off duty police officers.
We have had more Home Secretary’s over the last decade than I have had prisoners and a few hours in the warm. Most of them, including Mr Straw, departed because of their incompetence. I thought Mr Straw would have learnt his lesson and thought a little before putting his foot in it on the subject of police bureaucracy.
I wrote recently about one of the worst pieces of bureaucracy and its interpretation by the Surveillance Commissioners. This was the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. (RIPA.) One of a myriad of pieces of legislation that has been introduced in recent years and which keeps dozens of police officers skiving in the warm, filling out forms, ticking the right boxes, risk assessing everything. We love it! All this form filling stops us having to go out and do our job. Mr Straw introduced RIPA when he was Home Secretary, along with lots of other legislation that keeps us in the warm.
I see that Jack Straw’s father was banged up at Her Majesty’s pleasure during the Second World War because he was a conscientious objector. Did he prefer it in a nice warm prison rather than going to fight? I doubt it. I suspect there was more to it than that. I thought, Mr Straw, you might be a bit more understanding.
Happy New Year!
Wow, with different titles and names, I could take your exact words and use them in my blog. Happy New Year, and if you ever get a few minutes in the warm, take a look at my blog. --and be safe!
ReplyDeleteHow stupid and out of touch is this man and this party? Slash the overtime budget, open door immigration with 14% of our prisons overcrowded with foreign nationals, a criminal justice system that's on life support, single manning and now he accuses coppers of preferring a nice cosy nick with a warm cup of tea to locking villains up. The blokes lost the plot as well as any vestages of hope for police support!
ReplyDeleteOk, every job has its shirkers, but they're certainly not in the majority. A bloke in his position is totally irresponsible making such public statements. Any shirkers that do exist should be dealt with discreetly by supervision NOT by public media trial. And this idiot heads up the gang that say the only true measure of performance is by increasing public confidence, and pushing a policing pledge that promises officers on the street 80% of the time. Yeah well Jack, you really know how to inspire public confidence don't you? What a complete and utter pillock.
The Independent seem to have captured the feelings best :-
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Simon Reed, the vice-chair of the Police Federation, said that Mr Straw's remarks were "irresponsible and inflamatory". He added: "It was not not police officers who brought in 3,000 new laws. It wasn't police officers who brought in a 30-page prosecution file. And it wasn't police officers who brought in multiple forms and authorities to use a pair of binoculars. This was all done by politicians. Police officers are not the architects of bureaucracy, they and the public are the victims of it."
Mr Reed said that he had received messages of anger from officers around the country following the broadcast, adding: "New Year's Eve is probably our busiest night of the year and for police officers to hear that from a politician who will be in the warm while they are out dealing with violent and drunken individuals will upset a lot of officers.
"I've had emails from various officers telling me how outraged they are. Many of them have mentioned the name of PC Bill Barker who died protecting the public during the floods in Cumbria. He did not stay inside in his warm office. It is fair to say that the mood of frontline officers upon hearing these comments is outrage. We are livid.”
Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said: "What we have now is a group of ministers who are utterly out of touch with what is really happening in policing. They heap more and more bureaucracy onto our police, leaving them filling in form after form, often with the same information on it, and then pretend that nothing is wrong. It is not police officers who are sitting at their desks in the warm – it is ministers stuck in their ivory towers. They should get out a bit more and find out what is really going on."
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Get back in the warm Jack, your tea's going cold! Oh and don't forget your expense form for the BBC interview.
Bring on the election to get shut of this shower!
Did you notice that he praised forces that are ignoring all the regulations and paperwork, and criticised those that are following procedure?
ReplyDeleteAt least you have admire his consistency: after all, if MPs don't have to bother with tiresome boring old rules, why should anyone else?
It's not personal, all you Bobbies. This Government blames anyone but itself for everything.
ReplyDeleteWe all get it. Welcome to the club.
Straw's an arsehole. But has there ever been a home secretary that wasn't? None of these pillocks have a clue about crime, its causes and how to reduce it. They and their masters spend most of their time trying to stoke it up on purpose if the truth be known. 2010 will be an "interesting" year, TP. You won't be needing any additional out-of-hours keep fit classes.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year to all the old-school traditional bobbies reading this and bollocks to the modern politically-correct brain-dead wankers.
Barker died because he couldn't fucking swim.
ReplyDeletehahaha..when will you plod wake up???????
ReplyDeletethe imposters in the govt. hate you and the army.anything English really..........but they are quite happy to use you.imposing exclusion zones around parliament-73 of you took away brian haw..at 3 a.m......then a few weeks later one of your big tough lads punched him in the face..you stood outside fat jacquis sisters house and never said a word about her fiddling £120,000 when she wasnt even there!
isnt that aiding and abetting?
you smashed womens skulls at the countryside alliance 'bash' and killed an innocent man at gordons propaganda rally in london last april.
DONT COME LOOKING FOR PITY WHEN YOU ARE ALL PAID WHORES!
and yes they stuffed you on your wages........
and as usual you pick on the small fry-not the real slags!
Oi, Anon @ Jan 02, that's way out of order. Come to think of it...Jack...is that you hiding behind anonymity?
ReplyDeleteI suggest you listen again Mr Plod. He did not brand all police as Lazy, just some of them and he put it down to poor leadership and motivation. The police really are touchy when it comes to being critisised by the very people they are supposed to serve.
ReplyDeleteJust a small example, My elderly mother was assualted( kicked and slapped) by her neighbour of around 40 who has a history of violence, at around 11.30 at night. It happened because my mother simply had the audacity to complain about the endless noise. Guess what?, the polce didn't even bother to attend. Now as far as I'm concerned that sucks and gives a clue to the attitude of some Plod these days. It is not an isolated case as I have a couple of other incidents that are far from satifactory when it comes to the actions of our Police, so please don't expect too much sympathy if you feel that you are hard done by.
You are quite right, Maturecheese, well said.
ReplyDeleteSome police are not only lazy. Your honest post places you at risk of unsavoury responses from anonymous police - typically in the form of cocktails of cowardly abuse blended with attempts to discredit.
Dr Melvin T Gray
Maturecheese - you are quite correct to criticise for the lack of service that your mother received. It's not an uncommon story and, indeed, I can tell you as a serving police officer that my own family has been the victim of such poor service also and in similar circumstances. To clarify, I am Inspector Leviathan Hobbes, the original author of this blog. Do not expect attempts to discredit from me - I and many other police officers are familiar with your story only too well. None of this detracts from what you have quite rightly said - it is down to poor leadership.
ReplyDeleteI never see coppers down my street but I see gangs and unruly youth, when I do see coppers on the high st they are walking around with their hands in their pockets, i would say something about wearing gloves and being a little more professional but fear being charged with some sort of hate crime or offence against lazy police officers.
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