Today’s Police Federation Conference. Gadget’s ‘Dark Lady’ getting the silent reception. News that she was on a rescue mission to save the broken economy didn’t go down well.
The problem is that most of the services we need and want are public services everywhere, with occasional, expensive alternatives like health care in the USA. Economics, as we generally have it, can’t provide that and we have no politics that gives us any choice on ‘economics’.
The problem isn’t that PC Rathband clearly was worth his salary and police face real risks, unlike bwankers. You are in more danger, generally, as as construction worker. Who is worth less than a police officer? A similarly qualified PCSO?
The cuts have barely started to make impact. Are our cops now so smug they think, en masse, that they are a special case? Should we have police officers like that?
I note there was not much spirit of shoulders to the wheel.
We have more or less no mining in the UK today – about 6,000 miners left. We didn’t need mining because we could buy energy supplies cheaper from the rest of the world. The mines are now well and truly shafted. Mining was a much harder, more dangerous form of work than policing.
One has at least to wonder what is going on and has been going on in what we have called politics. My Zambian trained Laotian Guard might be a joke, but we could well have brought in cheap labour to do our policing – the principle is the same as closing the mines or shipyards.
The question is who is the ‘we’ doing any of this (others to do with bringing in bodies to do policing from rural China are interesting, but not the point). We are voting on an economics we don’t understand, and are clearly generally so thick we don’t understanding what industry closures, job losses and pension theft are about until the wet fish slaps us in the face.
I sat in silence in the ranks (Mervyn Rees I think). We were under-paid. The same sums now show police very substantially over-paid. There are twice as many of them too, and technology and the obsolete legal system has improved (it’s still crap). Cops should be looking at 35% salary cuts across the board – and the rest of the public sector. They should pay for their own pensions from salary.
Not likely to get elected am I! Nearly all of us are overpaid. If you don’t ‘get it’, look at footage of Indonesian jack tuna fishermen (BBC mainstream) or any of the programmes in which our hapless youth try to do the regular toil of workers in poor countries (the Army would reject them all as too unfit to train). You might want to say it’s all comparative and wages are higher in the UK – but you ain’t thought that through. In terms of a labour relation to pay, some of us get massive amounts compared with others. If our miners were too expensive because of Columbian open-cast mines where workers might be paid in Bolivian marching powder, why are any of us ‘worth’ more than anyone on the market anywhere else? This ain’t rocket science.
In business terms, commodities can be bought, sold and transported easier than labour (though this still happens to people). But we have, traditionally done it with labour too. How Greren Is My Valley? is about that. Irish miners were brought in to under-cut the striking resident ones. There are stories a few generations back in my family about this kind of thing.
Smug, ingrained racist bastards we may be, when we think we are worth any more than someone in a poorer country. It’s hard to think of a better explanation. None of us, now, did anything much to establish better conditions here. We are so dumb we don’t realise they are under attack. Miners come to be regarded as ‘selfish commie bastards’ and so on -we become our own little mine owners of the past. First the gypsies and disabled, then the Jews, dissidents and then who is left to stand up for you kind of stuff.
We are told education gives us the skills to ‘compete higher’, but this is as nonsense. We graduate coffee servers. Given how much super-bwankers can ‘earn’ and get paid, you’d think there would be an open system of qualification for that – to bring costs down. No sign. Mostly we collapse the need for skill to keep costs down. We once paid left-handed welders more – there were less of them, but jobs needing them more than right-handers.
Some economists want us to buy where it is cheapest for all our goods and services. In principle this ensures a market pressurised on cost. This would be fine in a world at peace and under agreed law. In other words ‘loony’. If we had a nation of super-efficient miners getting easy to dig coal, staffed by Ugandans, this would be OK. Not so a police force of super-efficient Laotians? Or a judiciary of cheap Chinese?
All that is going on is systematically biased immigration that suits class interests. The idea that we can educate our way out of it through schooling and universities is wrong. The key stated we need to reach for is not some allegedly meritocratic hierarchy.
My guess isn’t political. We need to re-address notions of work ands pay from the ground up, taking into account how much technology can help us and what work we have to motivate. Human beings could now live relatively free of motivational basics like water, food and shelter – and with restrictions on procreation. We seem to immediately worry that this would stifle innovation, yet we have no experience of societies living in such conditions. There is research that indicates we are more innovative in projects we just want to do, than ones we do for money.
Allcoppedout's Blog 
I seem to recall one police blog in particular, posting whinge after monotonous whinge at the previous government. I enjoyed all her rants but take the liberty to consolidate them with: “We rabble, demand reformation of vegetarian farm management and we seek a special place at the festive table”.
A trifle too late to ask Gadget if she was partial to stuffing.
They don’t get it Melvin – probably think I’m urging them to vote Labour. Our public sector is now massively overpaid (in the standard sums of economics). That they don’t get the sorrow of the unemployed (with about 10 qualified for each of their jobs) is much worse. I take no joy in it, but as you know, believe Gadget is a stuffed skirt anyway.
@ Allcoppedout – have you ever reflected that perhaps you are a bitter and twisted individual and that maybe there is a good reason why only a handful of people see the world as you do?
When a bitter and twisted and quite barking individual like MTG, who sees conspiracy and corruption every time he opens his eyes, is agreeing with you all the time, it is time to be worried about your sanity.
@ allcoppedout. I agree to some extent with brontosaurus. People who think they are clever and attempt to mock those they feel are inferior to them invariably have insecurity issues and really are not that clever. MTG is a good example of this and he has allowed his bigotry to overwhelm his sanity. I fear you may be on that path too.
From this posting I would just say that if you were a police officer in the 70’s when Merlyn Rees was Home Secretary then you should not be commenting on the police from your own limited experiences as if they are relevant today. The police force now bears no resemblance to the policing of the 70’s which had changed very little from the previous 50 years.
I don’t actually know Melvin. Bitter and twisted – nah! There’s too much wit about. I’m old enough to be bitter that the promises made around me in my youth have been broken. That our society has changed for the worse is probably evidenced by the need for so many more police and the costs of the CJS.
Our police and armed services do a lot to protect our democracy in comparison with examples I could choose from my experience abroad. The idea that policing did not change much in 50 years to my time in the job is wrong – indeed massive changes were then afoot. Your comment demonstrates you don’t get the issues.