I’m nt sure if we’ve had this one before, but to be honest I’m in such a hurry today what with one thing and another, that I’ve not had time to sort out anything for the blog.
This week sees the British Medical Association trying to persuade its members to vote for strike action in protest at the government’s plans to change pension conditions.
Train drivers in Lincolnshire are expected to strike again tomorrow over plans to change their pension scheme.
Last week, the much heralded fuel tanker drivers’ strike was called off after an agreement was reached with employers. Also last week public sector workers all over the country took part in a 24-hour strike over pension plans.
Among those striking last week were UK Border Agency workers, also angry at plans to change their pensions.
At the same time as 35,000 police officers were marching in protest in London, prison officers held a half-day strike against the government’s pension reforms.
Teachers’ unions are considering similar strike action.
The police are not alone in having their wages and pensions attacked by a government who failed to prevent themselves falling into a hole they are now using our cash to claw themselves out of.
The difference between the police and everyone else is that they all have the right to take industrial action. All we get to do is spend our days off walking through London and not clap the Home Secretary while holding up signs.
Disgraced ex- police officer Ali Dizaei has been sacked from the Met for the second time.
It followed his second conviction for perverting the course of justice. He has been on full pay since his original sentence was quashed, but this stops from today. It would be interesting to know how much cash this man has been given whilst not doing a day’s work for the community that has been paying him.
Deborah Glass, the IPCC chairman, said: “Ali Dizaei’s dismissal from the Metropolitan Police Service was the right and inevitable outcome following his conviction, a second time, for serious criminal offences. There is no place in the police for corrupt officers and they have no business wielding the powers of a police officer in our communities.”
Interestingly, she also said: “Many will wonder how Mr Dizaei was able to rise to the very senior rank of commander. The Metropolitan Police Service needs to ensure that never again is its reputation so badly damaged by the acts of one of its most senior officers.”
I think we can take a fair guess at why such a man rose to the highest ranks, despite a very checkered history, and it has little to do with his skills. It is borne from a system which recognises quotas above ability.
The Home Secretary will decide on whether Dizaei receives a police pension.
A police officer in the Met has been found dead at North Wooliwch Police Station this afternoon, it is believed he suffered gunshot wounds.
The officer was a PC with the Aviation Security Command at London City Airport. Police are not seeking anyone in connection with the death.
News appears to be a bit sparse at the moment.
So Sir Hugh Orde, president of ACPO, has gone on record today saying that the cuts in police numbers will probably lead to increases in crime. Police officer numbers are set to be cut by up to 16,000 by 2015.
Of course the government will not tell you this, fixated by spin and image they still bang on about efficiency savings not affecting the front line, blah, blah, blah.
In other news tonight, Julia Bradbury in Planet Earth Live reveals footage of brown bears defecating in heavily tree’d areas of America. And in a shock revelation, Andrew Marr is told the religion of the Pope.
for your support and comments on my post a few days ago concerning the future of the blog. Of course, you are quite right that the number of comments doesn;t reflect the number of readers, but it is nice to know you’re not a lone voice in the wilderness sometimes.
As discussed, I’m going to continue posting daily until September to get that magical 5 years’ daily posting in after which it will be a good time to reassess the future of the blog.
Thanks for the kind comments, it makes an old, overweight man feel nice and warm inside.
When I read the following piece, which can be found on the London Criminal Courts Solicitor’s Association website, my jaw dropped through the floor. Imagine the ignominy of having to pay 1% towards your pension?
Some 400 judges have taken an unprecedented first step towards suing the Government over changes to their pensions that effectively amounts to a pay cut.
They have sent a letter to the Lord Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, warning that if he proceeds with the controversial plans, they will challenge him in the courts.
The action by the judges, who have instructed the international law firm Clifford Chance to send the “letter before action”, gives ministers 14 days to respond before legal proceedings are launched.
It comes despite efforts by senior judges to negotiate behind the scenes to prevent the dispute escalating into what would be a ground-breaking legal action, pitching the judiciary against ministers.
A judge would have to be found who was regarded by all sides as as sufficiently impartial and robust to hear a case brought by his judicial colleagues.
This week the Ministry of Justice went ahead with laying regulations that will see judges make a contribution to their own pensions for the first time from April.
From April, judges who have not accrued full pensions benefits will pay 1.28% of their salary to fund their pension pot, a sum of around £137 a month for circuit judges in crown courts. The sum will rise in 2012 and 2014.
The Ministry of Justice said that the move will reap £7 million of savings to the taxpayer. For a crown court judge on a salary of £128,296 the contributions would amount to £1,642 a year.
But judges, who include district judges, High Court costs judges, tribunal and employment judges, are furious that the contracts on which they took up their posts are being changed.
They say that the changes are unlawful, unconstitutional — encroaching on judicial independence — and a breach of contract.
They say that taken over time, the cut to pay and pension combined could amount to £200,000.
Kenneth Clarke said in a written statement to Parliament that the rises in judicial contributions are in line with those for other public service pension schemes, aimed at saving £2.8 billion a year by 2014/15.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman added: “These changes will see judges contribute towards their own pension for the first time, creating up to £7 million in savings for taxpayers.
“Lord Hutton’s Independent Public Service Pensions Commission has concluded there is a clear rationale for public servants to contribute more towards their pension costs so they remain fair to taxpayers and employees, and affordable for the country — this includes judicial pension schemes.”
I’ve been at work most of today so I haven’t seen any news coverage. How did we get on, lots of good coverage?
This is what it’s about. One of the most telling comments in the below vid is where a police inspector says that he would no longer encourage his son to join the job. perhaps if everyone felt the same and the message got passed on to the next generation of would-be-cops, the government might fonally get the message?
Anyone see the news today, apparently there is a new advertising campaign to stop people killing themselves on railway lines. It showed clips of people having near misses on the lines.
My first ever dead body was a railway line fatality. I was a very young probationer at the time. I was on patrol with the sergeant when the call came over the radio. A train driver had reported hitting something on the approach to the station in the town I worked.
We arrived at the rough location with a couple of other officers, it was probably 3/4 a mile outside the station. We split up into two groups, one went north, the other south. I went with the sergeant towards the railway station. It wasn’t long before we picked up what looked like a bundle of clothes in the torchlight.
As it turned out this was about the cleanest of any railway death I ever attended through the years. Most of them have occurred at the station where people have just jumped in front of the train as it whooshed past. They can be very messy.
This one was much cleaner; the guy had just laid down beside the line and put his head on the track. The train had taken the top of his skull clean off. There really wasn’t much mess. I was given the job of collecting up what brain, skull and hair matter we could find.
We took the body to the mortuary by which time the black humour had fully kicked in. I won’t recount it here as times have moved on and things that happened back in the day wouldn’t happen these days.
One case I will recount was a guy who had been chopped in half by the railway wheels. I had arranged to take some probationers up to the mortuary to see a post mortem. This was in the days when it was mandatory to see a PM as your first taste of death on joining your team back from training school. The mortuary assistant must have thought it would be funny to wind up the new police officers. When he had laid the body out on the slab he put the top half the correct way round, i.e chest facing up, but he put the bottom half the wrong way round i.e. bum facing the sky.
It was interesting checking out the probationers’ faces when the body was revealed prior to the pathologist arriving.
It’s funny but whenever I see something about railway safety I always think back to that guy in 1980. I forgot his name a long time ago. I sometimes wonder how many dead bodies I’ve seen over the years. I have long since forgotten the details of why he came to be lying on the railway tracks in the middle of the night, but I can still picture him.
For this blog, I mean.
Lately I’ve been wondering where this blog is going and whether it has anywhere left to go. It gets that finding something to post about is more a chore these days, and is more difficult.
I’ve been blogging for nearly 7 years, longer than almost any other police blog out there. For nearly 5 of those 7 years I have posted every single day of the year, including Christmas days, holidays, days when I’ve felt like shite or days when I’ve so much real life stuff to attend to that there is hardly a minute in the day to whip up a post.
In all that time I’ve never managed to entice more than 1 to 6 comments, so it’s never been a really popular blog. I find myself wondering whether I have just said all I need to say. I’m not sure there are many more ways to demonstrate that this job is fucked without constantly repeating myself.
I’m getting involved in more things outside work now, which leaves me even less time sitting in front of a computer screen. I’m torn at the moment between giving up all together or just returning to the occasional entry.
I thought it might be nice to make it through to September, just to get the 5 years with a post every day under my belt, so maybe I’ll do that and see how it goes.
Not the sharpest tool in the box
apparently…
1. It’s the dogs mess that I find hard to swallow.
2. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off.
3. I wish to complain that my father twisted his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage.
4. Their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.
5. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other day that blew them off.
6. My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?
7. I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away from the wall.
8. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.
9. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.
10. 50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster, and 50% are just plain filthy.
11. The next door neighbour has got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can’t take it anymore.
12. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared.
13. Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny colour and not fit to drink.
14. Our lavatory seat is broken in half and now is in three pieces.
15. I want to complain about the farmer across the road. Every morning at 6am his cock wakes me up and it’s now getting too much for me.
16. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous.
17. Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third, so please send someone round to do something about it.
18. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night.
19. Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife..
20. I have had the clerk of works down on the floor six times but I still have no satisfaction.
21. This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broke and we can’t get BBC2.
22. My bush is really overgrown round the front and my back passage has fungus growing in it.
The latest entrant into the “200weeks Scum of the Week” Hall of Fame comes to us our courtesy of a particularly loathesome example of scum-sucking pond life from the Birmingham area.
This low life entered the home of frail 94-year-old Emma Winnall and for some unknown reason, battered the hell out of her as she slept in her bed.
Mrs Winnall was found on the morning of 1st May by her carer and was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries.
She was left with a broken arm, broken wrist, partially severed finger, as well as injuries to her face and head.
Police are at a loss to explain the attack, they said she had nothing to steal.
The victim remains in hospital.
What does it say about policing when a medal awarded to serving officers is handed out one day and appears on ebay the next?
I have the previous Jubilee medal which was awarded to0 all officer who had at least 5 years’ service. Whilst I have never seen the medal since the day I brought it home, I don’t think I’d want to flog it off.
I’m in two minds about the ebay issue. I can see that the medal is meaningless to lots of people and to that extent, why not flog it off for a few quid. I wonder whether the current state of policing and the levels of feelings of self-worth in the job are so low that people have absolutely no pride in the whole thing.
It’s certainly surprising to see what people are trying to sell it for. One has two days to go with 1 current bid of 99p, another has several bids and is up to £109, whiles two have buy it now prices of £200 and £500.
Disillusionment or simple profiteering?
The Ali Dizaei farce rumbles ever onward.
You’ll remember he was jailed in February for three years after having his first sentence quashed. Due to time served he is already out of prison on a tag. He was given his old job back after his winning his appeal but has been suspended on full pay since then.
He’s now trying to delay his misconduct hearing postponed but has lost a high court bid to delay the misconduct hearing citing insufficient time to prepare for it. He was ordered to pay nearly £4500 in costs for the attempt.
Additionally, he is trying to launch another appeal against his second conviction.
All the police houses were sold off years ago, police stations have been sold off for many years, this has speeded up over the last two as more and more police stations close. Police duties are being sold off to G4S.
Now the lowest blow, Edinburgh Police are selling off 22 police boxes which are dotted around the fair city.
Successful buyers will need to remove the boxes from their current positions around the city, or get council permission to leave them there, but if they do, they must be painted a different colour to the standard police blue.
I expect there will be a clamor from Dr Who fans around the world (although I think they are a different size and shape to the old English police boxes.
I wonder what they could be used for?
Ar least one Cheif Constable is so concerned about some of the recent police reforms, that he’s decided to hang up his truncheon.
Gloucestershire Police chief Tony Melville is decided he will not work under the forthcoming Police Commissioner system and has resigned, effective from next month.
It will be interesting to see how may follow (that’ll be none, then)
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