From the BBC:
Budget cuts in the police service in England and Wales could lead to 60,000 police officer and civilian posts being axed by 2015, a study suggests. That "worst-case" scenario represents about 25% of the total, with civilian posts probably hardest hit, says the report for Police Review magazine.
So the report wouldn't be biased in anyway?
Now, say what you like about the police (no, seriously), with about 140,000 coppers in this country, i.e. one-per-four hundred of population and we seem to be in the middle of the rankings*, and crime in the UK is not particularly high by international standards. So in numbers terms, this seems 'about right'.
How much could we 'save' by cutting halving the number of coppers? Maybe 60,000 x £30,000 = £1.8 billion, i.e. about 0.3% of government spending? Or about a fifth of the budget for the Department For International Development?
Sure, there are plenty of things that our coppers could be doing a lot better (and it's not their fault that the 'justice system' seems to have the equal and opposite approach towards crime and criminals), but hey, no local council in its right mind is actually going to reduce the number of coppers in the area. Might they not rather be thinking of reducing the number of 'civilian posts'?
* UPDATE: I did this post from memory. According to this, it's one-per-five hundred, which is less than most other European countries, but the point still stands.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Shroud Waving Of The Week
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5 comments:
Might they not rather be thinking of reducing the number of 'civilian posts'?
By the way, how much is ACPO costing the taxpayer again?
1 copper per 400 of us? That's interesting. can we afford it?
Assume £30K per copper and then add overheads and a car so we might multiply that by three, so call it £100,000 per annum per cop.
100,000 / 400 = £250 each per copper. Or perhaps £350 each if we assume a certain number of the 400 are in education, prison etc.
So I need to commit £6.73 per week for coppering services. Seems OK, as long as I can chose the service provider. (I'll have the SAS please. I WILL kill the bloody fly tippers)
PJH, I dunno, but somewhere in the region of "a massive f***ing shedload" sounds about right.
L, having Googled (see update), the UK is in the bottom half of the rankings with one-per-five hundred, but your maths is sound.
Mark, was it you that said that the cuts always fall on the "sharp end" because if the people at the "blunt end" allowed themselves to be cut, it would be admitting their jobs were superfluous in the first place, and the "blunt end" people are the ones who get to decide what gets cut.
Anyway, the problem with the police is not the number of civilians working for them, but all the bloody pointless paperwork the government has landed on
them. But OTOH, if they cut the red tape, that would be admitting that it was superfluous in the first place......
B, no I didn't say that. It may or may not be true, of course.
As to your second para, this is, technically, a new government, and they can merrily scrap all the red tape they want and blame it one the previous lot. Or just admit it's all EU-driven. Or something.
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