Monday 28 March 2011

My Position On Police Pay Cuts « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG

My Position On Police Pay Cuts

I want to clarify my position on police pay cuts.

I believe that it is a monumental piss-take, bordering upon treason, for any government to renege on the pay and conditions for any worker, let alone emergency services workers and others who tirelessly provide the national safety net.

The arguments in favour are so easily destroyed with the simplest logic that it’s really an insult to even put them forward. For example; it’s either pay cuts or job losses. This argument when we face something like 28,000 job losses! This argument could be put forward ad infinitum until we all work for nothing at all.

Using the few lazy or unproductive officers as an excuse to penalise 140,000 personnel is nonsense. Has anyone suggested that MP’s take a pay cut because so many of them are bent or useless? Or how about cutting all nurses pay because some elderly patients have been maltreated?

The reality is simple. Tories regard us as the servant class. The Magistrate blogger once referred to me as ‘below stairs’. This sums up their attitude. These kinds of people only ever meet us when we have caught them drink driving or speeding and they hate us for it. Enforcement is for other people. They don’t see the starving children of an Albanian crack-whore at 3 o’clock in the morning, no one spits blood in their face or rams their vehicle at 40 mph.

Labour pimped us out from their second homes like 5 dollar crack-whores to every political trend going, ACPO bent over for this and now we look like a gutless bunch of losers.

Anyone prepared to sack serving soldiers by email (I know the Army did that but the culture comes from the top) or bin our nation’s fighter pilots just before they receive their wings, or announce 11,000 redundancies to troops serving abroad in harms way is clearly not going to give a seconds thought to emergency service workers.

It is about time we sorted out the fact that keyboard rattlers, weekend-free merchants and officers too grand to listen out on the radio get paid the same as those who put themselves in harms way. But that can be done without the pay cuts as represented by increased pension contributions, pay freezes and job insecurity.

The only silver lining to all this is that we will outlast them all, it is bound to go wrong at some point and despite the rantings of a small minority of frightened, jealous or bitter losers, the vast majority of the public support us and understand that all the talk of ‘no more money’ is nonsense. There is plenty of money swilling around in certain quarters of this country. It’s how you choose to spend it, whether you choose to collect the billions in tax that is really owed and what you perceive to be important.

I have served this country (and continue to do so) both in green and blue, under The Crown. The one thing Debbie fears every time I’m on duty is a knock on the front door by a senior officer and the Chaplain. I do this in return for a pay scale and a pension. Now, after taking my service, they want to renege on the money. I don’t expect or need any sympathy. It’s shameful and they know it. Hiding behind a small number of wasters doesn’t cut it.

If you really want to know who and what we are dealing with in our political party leaders, take a look at the lack of medals on Remembrance Sunday. Their chests are as bare as a Catholic choirboy’s arse. Not a days active service between them. Pathetic.