Monthly Archive for August, 2007

written by whichendbites from Whichendbites

I am here today to pay tribute to you, to the forces you lead, to the local police authorities you work with, and above all, the 140,000 police officers and police staff who each day take responsibility for the protection of all our citizens.

Over the last year I have seen close at hand, in all areas of the country and in the last few days meeting police in Liverpool, in Birmingham, and the Met in London - your great achievements.

Your day-to-day work combating crime and ensuring safe communities.

Your one-to-one work with young people at risk of wasting their lives in crime, and
your achievements from the local to the global, uncovering and thwarting terrorist conspiracies, bringing major national and international crimes to justice.

We place in your hands our homes and our safety and security. We expect you to risk danger and sometimes your lives on our behalf - with the recent tragic deaths of PC Ricky Gray and PC Jon Henry reminding us again of the bravery and the sacrifice that is required in the line of duty.

There is no more fundamental right than the right of a citizen to be safe and secure.

So there is no greater responsibility than that which you as police officers accept.

And there is no greater obligation for us in Government than to support you in discharging that duty.

Who said this ? Gordon Brown. There is also that word again. Obligation.

He said more.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2007/press_66_07.cfm

The original post can be found http://whichendbites.blogspot.com/2007/08/obligation-part-2.html

written by whichendbites from Whichendbites

The Ant and The Grasshopper

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself


MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool. He laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

BBC, ITV, SKY news, Channel 4 & even CNN, show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The British public are stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, so civilized and prosperous this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

The grasshopper is immediately accorded victim status.

The telly tubbies appears on children's TV with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green." along with other anti-ant songs.

Representatives and supporters from the various minority Political institutions stage a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." The Archbishop of Canterbury leads the group to kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Tony Blair exclaims in an interview with Jeremy Paxman that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both agree that an immediate stealth tax should be levied on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the European Commission, pushed by the UK MEP's drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The grasshopper seeks and is awarded legal aid to take his case to the European Court of Human rights.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. The Ant is left branded a grasshopperist and as a result of so much negative press is unable to begin to work to rebuild his life.

Cherie Blair gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of High Court judges that Tony Blair appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case. The grasshopper is awarded costs and a sizeable compensation package that leaves the ant financially crippled. The grasshopper employs an agent and is able to secure book & film rights and several lucrative sponsorship deals.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the local authority low cost housing property he has been given, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is later found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: You can decide this one.

Of course this is all totally untrue and non-factual. A complete work of fiction.
How could it be anything else ?

The original post can be found http://whichendbites.blogspot.com/2007/08/morale-of-story.html

written by CSI:UK from CSI:UK

My long weekend off conveniently fell on a Bank Holiday weekend, so Fri, Sat, Sun and today have been like a holiday without using up precious Annual Leave days. Me and the Missus had a lovely camping trip, then did some shopping in town today spending all my hard earned Money. In two weeks time I'm off to the USA and Canada for a few weeks, so life is pretty exciting at present. We have been saving for a big holiday for ages so it felt like we hadn't been away for a while.

Unfortunately the work doesn't stop when I go off gallivanting, so here are a few guarantees of what tomorrow will bring.

• There will be several Photo albums on my desk all requiring Statements and Exhibit Labels
• Various Statement requests written on Post It notes on my desk which are needed urgently '..as the full file was due last week....'(how does that make it my problem!)
  
• There will be a bag full of treated exhibits to enter into the Property System.
• There will be a snotty note on my desk from my boss for something trivial I forgot to do before I went off duty last, like wash up or turn off my laptop.
• A mysterious cup and paperwork will have been left on my desk from someone who came into the office for a 'chat'.
• No working pens on my desk
• There will be a huge list of emails to trawl through, the most useless of which are usually the ones from a) a person you have never met's invite to their retirement do, b) someone who you couldn't care less about finally dropping a spoglette c) some jargon filled email from IT stating the Earth will be down, so consult your Oracle during the downtime and soon you Server will be up??? and d) the most useless of all emails, a message from Witness Warnings, asking for my court availability from now until the end of time for a case I remember little about and no useful details have been included in the text.

On top of all this I sure there will be a deluge of jobs mostly from companies who have closed for the Bank Holiday and have returned to find they have been broken into. Of course they will all be demanding they be visited straight away so they can clear the mess up and continue trading. I think I feel a stomach bug coming on....................

The original post can be found http://csiuk.blogspot.com/2007/08/morning-after.html

written by unlikely cop from Unlikely Cop

This started as a comment to this blog by Sergeant Says but got a bit long as I started to rant.

I have a particular bee in my bonnet about the PCSO's too. If they are supposed to be in addition to Police then it certainly hasn't happened in my neck of the woods. The Beat Officers used to number from 15 to maybe 20. Now there are about 8 with 10-12 PCSOs.
Sounds more like replacement to me.

And this also compares to a distinct paring down of the response side. I have a memory, not that many years ago, of briefings of about 8-10 officers. Often we run with about 3-4 now.

Odd then that we are supposed to have more Police to do the job.

Inevitably they are trying to civilianise some of the jobs that police do now, and put them back on the front line. Trouble is these cops never seem to make it back on the streets. There always seems to be one more job worth creating.

There are several ways for those in the know who are in an office job, not wanting to go back on the streets but find they might have to.

1) Get a job the bosses don't understand: Performance Management is a good one. Needs at least 3 and often more people to do it and if you are bright enough a whole sergeant can hide in there with a few PC's and a computer full of figures that no-one can make head nor tail of and are mostly lies anyway. (Who fills their ABC/Activity forms in accurately?)

2) Get a job that they do understand but add so many complications that they don't undertstand it any more and daren't get rid of you. Crime Records is an excellent place. Even the government don't know what they want out of this one any more but I guarantee you that there will be something you can add in 20-20 hindsight that will require two more signatures and a whole extra layer of cops to double-check. The governement will even send round auditors to make suggestions for you... perfect.

3) Get an "issue". This is useful for cops with a little less service. Health is a good one nowadays having temporarily taken over from race and sexuality. When you consider that a missing limb may no longer be a bar to you becoming a cop if you can turn it into a disability you might even get a grant or a forum. Besides, it is cutting edge and you will be able to get some of points 1 and 2 in there as well.

In the real world, the one where we want to live but can't or daren't, there are desk jobs that are suited to cops because of their experience. Dispatch is a pretty good example. But they were traditionally for cops with 25 years, high blood pressure and a boat load of local knowledge. Centralisation is slowly doing away with these posts as the cops with experience of one patch are looking after the other side of the division.

And in the meantime you, our adoring public, can have the PCSOs. The true face of modern policing.

The original post can be found http://unlikelycop.blogspot.com/2007/08/ludites-unite.html

written by unlikely cop from Unlikely Cop

I'm sure I won't be the only cop out their to have noticed this but I just had to have a bit of a moan.

Yes it's excessive to send a kid to court for assault by sausage. And yes we have better things to do. But these are the rules you want us to live by.

If you, the "customer", would be a better parent, give your kids boundaries and not just give in to their first yell, discipline them when they are bad and praise them when they are good with a fair and consistent hand.

If teachers and police were not berated and vilified for putting hands on your dear little cherub when he is trying to punch some other kids lights out. If, when your neighbour comes round to say they are sick of your cherub using their garden as a litter bin, you could see their point of view for once and not tell them to "f" off.

And the little darling who has done this?

He is 12. He already has 3, yes 3, reprimands. The victim is 74. And deserves not to have stuff thrown at him.

You don't want him to be clipped round the ear. And you don't want to offer suitable punishment yourselves. That's too much like hard work and might require thought and, God forbid... SELF-discipline!

So we (the police) act.

And what options have you left us???

We can't do nothing. That is a lesson he learns from you.

And we can't reprimand him. That's no good because it's already had no effect and you don't follow it up.

So we take him to court. Because that is what is left to us.

Not because we want to. I can almost feel the frustration of the cop who had to submit THIS one.
And not because we think it is suitable or sensible.
But because that is what we have.
It's time to shut up and smell the coffee! We are only doing what you want us to do.

The original post can be found http://unlikelycop.blogspot.com/2007/08/like-it-or-lump-it.html