Calamity May should resign

The G4S Olympics fiasco has hopefully put paid to the theory that private companies are sleek, dynamic and frugal compared to bloated, wasteful and inefficient public services.

G4S has been under close scrutiny from the Home Office. Leaked documents show that even in April, Government officials had grave doubts that G4S would be able to recruit sufficient numbers of competent staff. Against this background, it is hard to take seriously the claims of the Home Secretary that all was thought to be well until Wednesday. The Defence Secretary said today that the ‘notice to move’ given to troops was shortened at the weekend, meaning that the actual decision was taken prior to that.

Mrs May is either incompetent, or has mislead Parliament with repeated assurances that all was on plan, when her department knew that the reality was nothing of the kind. If she didn’t know, she should have done. This follows her infamous Human Rights Act cat story, the Abu Hamza farce, and she has also become the second Home Secretary in history to be convicted of Contempt of Court. In the last few weeks she has also appointed a new Chief of HMIC as a deliberate affront to the Police Federation. She has lost the confidence of the police & public alike, and should if she had any honour she would resign. She has been, head & shoulders, the most calamitous Home Secretary in living memory. She even has her own hashtag on Twitter - #NoConfidenceInTheresaMay.

It’s particularly galling for the armed forces, when in the last two weeks thousands have been told that they will be made redundant. Within a short period of time, they’re told they’re not wanted, now they’re mopping up after G4S. Had the security operation been kept within the public sector, the primary objective would have been getting the personnel trained and in place in time. The primary objective of G4S is profit. Policing functions should never be outsourced, especially never to G4S who have proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted. They have already been caught falsifying reports in order not to incur contractual penalties.

Public service is about exactly that – service. Private companies exist to make profit for their shareholders, and any service that they provide is incidental.

10 Reasons Why Police Reform is on the wrong track

10 Reasons why the Winsor reports are wrong, from the point of view of a member of the public.

1. Winsor's report says that police officers are paid about 10-15% more than other emergency service workers. I am not in a position to say whether or not this is true, but assuming that it is, it is to compensate for the following:-
• Total lack of any employment rights. Police officers are legally prevented from striking or otherwise withdrawing labour, the ONLY sector of employment (aside from Prison Officers) so restricted.
• Restrictions on private life, including being required to be apolitical and never being off duty.
• Directed overtime, which police officers cannot refuse.
• 30 years of mostly working shifts, in dangerous and confrontational situations.
• Rest days and annual leave can be cancelled at any time.
2. The report suggests that officers who are deemed to be in the bottom 10% of the performance range are subject to dismissal, whether their performance is actually sub standard or not.
3. The execution of police duties should never be subject to targets or performance related pay, if the public are to have faith that the actions taken by officers are necessary and not simply for the achievement of targets. The oath that officers take at Attestation says that they will carry out their duties without fear or favour. Further, once you have target-led anything, let alone policing, you simply end up with more forms, more bureaucracy and less actual time focused on the activity at hand.
4. The report claims to encourage performance related pay, and yet at the same time removes Competency Related Threshold Pay (CRTP) from specialist officers such as firearms teams, whose role is especially demanding, and other officers who are able to demonstrate high levels of skill & competence. Similarly, officers who are currently Public Order (i.e. "riot") trained who receive CRTP will only do so in future if these duties are required six times per year. Imagine six separate occurrences of last summer's riots! In all practical terms, this means these officers will never receive that payment. How can that be fair? In fact, Winsor suggested scrapping CRTP in his first report, "Winsor1". This was rejected by the independent Police Arbitration Tribunal. This didn't deter Winsor. He simply repeated the proposal in his second report, "Winsor2".
5. The report made several factual errors, such as claiming that 75% of male officers in the Met were overweight. The truth is that the Metropolitan Police ran a health scheme for officers concerned about their weight. Of these officers who attended the clinic, 75% of these were indeed overweight. This is far from saying that 75% of the total officer numbers are overweight. This is either gross incompetence (reason enough to dismiss the entire report) or it's deliberately misleading.
6. Under the terms of the report, officers who are injured in the line of duty, and unable to carry out warranted (i.e. full police officer) roles or meet the fitness test standards, will have their pay reduced by 8% or £2922 (whichever is lower) and by the second year of this injury, they will be sacked. That's a great reward for an officer isn't it? Remember PC David Rathband? Under Winsor's report, he would have been sacked by now.
7. The report suggested regional pay for officers from different areas of the country, because of the different costs of living across the regions. This already exists to some extent in London. Officers serving here already receive more than officers from other areas. As a result, areas bordering London like Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire find that they are recruiting and training officers, only for them to transfer to the Met for the higher salary for doing the same job, and living in the same area. If this is implemented all over the country, this will lead to chaos. Besides, you don't hear MPs in favour of regional pay for MPs, do you?
8. Winsor proposes that candidates should be able to enter the police service at higher ranks, such as Inspector, up to and including Superintendent. What this does not appreciate, is the unique nature of policing. Using the NHS as an analogy, you could have someone "manage" a GP practice or even a hospital trust from a financial and administrative point of view, but they would not be suitable for setting healthcare policy or critiquing the work of doctors, nurses and surgeons. In fact, find someone who works in a hospital, and ask them how popular these "parachute" bosses are, and how "in touch" with the front line they are. It is possibly the worst suggestion in the entire report. Watch an episode of The Apprentice, and now imagine those same people in charge of your local police station, or even a whole policing division. That is a truly frightening thought.
9. Winsor says that he wants to make the service more "professional" and as such, wants to raise the educational requirements for entry, but at the same time reduce the starting pay for the office of Constable to less than that of a PCSO. Recently during a debate on MPs salaries, they said that it was necessary to keep the salary of an MP at the current (£65000) level "to make sure that the right calibre of people were encouraged to become MPs". How can it be right to increase MPs wages to increase professionalism, yet reduce wages to increase professionalism in the police? It seems that this suggestion is simple market economics. Each police officer vacancy is vastly over-subscribed. The logic seems to be to reduce the starting wage to discourage more people from joining.
10. Winsor says that a role which does not require the warranted powers of a constable should be paid less. What this does not account for are roles where the actual knowledge and experience of the role are absolutely crucial, such as training, control room supervisionand, perhaps to a lesser extent, call handling. Officers will not volunteer for these roles if it is going to mean a sizeable cut in pay.

There. Ten reasons, written quickly, by a member of the public. It didn't need a great deal of analysis or time to come up with these reasons why the reports should be rejected. It's simple logic and common sense.

I haven't even mentioned the cuts to officer numbers which will risk the safety of the public and officers alike. The Government will tell you that these "cuts" are necessary. Let me tell you something. This isn't about savings. It never was. How do I know? Have a look at the full speech by David Cameron on 16th January 2006. The speech can be found here. He's been itching to get his hands on the police for years. Even before 2006, in fact. Cameron was a major contributor to the Sheehy report in the early 1990s. Some of the suggestions in Winsor's reports are simply Sheehy re-heated and served on a nice plate.

Oh, by the way, Policing Minister Nick Herbert, and the Minister for Government Incompetence Theresa May, will tell you that this report by Tom Winsor was "independent". Read Cameron's speech from 2006, and decide for yourself how independent it is.

Crystal ball: Police & Crime Commissioners

I've never really been one to try to look into, or guess, the future. I'm going to have a go now though.

The year is approximately 2015, after the Police & Crime Commissioners have been elected, and have had their attempt at running a police service. The PCC will have outlined a set of wholly unachievable goals. The public will be largely disgruntled and disillusioned. The Chief Constable will be feeling the heat from the PCC. Based on the old adage that "shit always runs downhill", that heat will be felt, in differing ways, by every officer through the organisation, down on to what used to be called "frontline" duties. It's now called "customer-facing crime technicians".

There are now fewer "Customer Facing Crime Technicians" than at any time since the Second World War, but more people in back offices than ever before in "Customer Service" and "Customer Experience Manipulation" departments, yet crime figures are less accurately recorded than Enron's accounts.

The Chief Constable has had enough. He decides that he needs to confront the PCC.

The Chief Constable storms into the office of the PCC and says "Sir, you've promised the electorate things that my police force can't possibly deliver. Do you know what this means?"

The PCC eyes the Chief Constable suspiciously. "Of course I know what it means. It means I'm a great politician and you're a crappy Chief Constable."




With apologies to Scott Adams whose Dilbert cartoon the above was based on.

Police officers stabbed in the back by unions

In a spectacular cock-up/communication breakdown/deliberate betrayal (delete as appropriate) the PCS and Unite unions have severely dented the hopes of UK police officers to make a protest felt by marching on London on May 10th.

How's that?

When the police last marched, in 2008, there was around 25000 officers protesting. The changes now being made to numbers, pensions, terms & conditions etc are even more strongly opposed. I would have thought that numbers on the day could have been 30 000 to 50 000 officers, all protesting. That would have made a sizable spectacle, one that not even the UK media could ignore. (Up till now, the UK media has done an excellent job of ignoring the protests of police officers from England & Wales. The BBC has done itself especially proud by not mentioning it at all.)

The plan was, then, to have as many as 50 000 officers marching through the streets. Quite a site, quite a statement.

Then, PCS and Unite decided to strike and stage protests on the same day. Why they chose May 10th is anyone's guess. Unite have ignored my request for an explanation, and other interested parties have asked the same question.

Why is it important? Well, two main reasons. Firstly, in the face of widespread strike action and demonstrations, many police areas will cancel rest days and annual leave to ensure that the strikes are adequately policed. The officers who are recalled to work have no choice in the matter - such are their terms & conditions that they can't strike or refuse to work. This means that many officers who wanted to come to London to protest - and will have already booked time off and travel/accommodation plans - will now not be able to because they will be obliged to work.

Secondly, 50 000 officers marching on their own, as I've said, is quite a sight. Now significantly reduce the number of officers and add on 100 000 other protesters from PCS and Unite, and we've now simply for "a large protest by public sector workers". What police protest? You mean the police were protesting as well? The media is already ignoring the destruction of UK policing by this Government. How much coverage do you think it will get now?

I'm not saying for one moment that PCS & Unite shouldn't have a strike. That's a matter for them and their members. After all, unlike the police, they already have the right to strike, so why not use it? In fact they have other strikes planned for later in the year. What PCS & Unite have done is the equivalent of turning up to a wedding in a big white dress and upstaging the bride. May 10th was supposed to be the day for the police officers of this country, the ones with no industrial rights at all. Police officers can't even join a union, let alone strike. Did you know that? The Police Federation is a staff association, and can actually do little to force the Government's hand on anything. It's an offence to incite disobedience among police officers. Basically, the rank-and-file officers are over a barrel. It was supposed to be time to fight back and show the strength of feeling among officers.

PCS and Unite KNEW that the police were marching on May 10th. They were told by the Police Federation as soon as the march was announced. I am told that there was even consultation with PCS & Unite, but they metaphorically gave the police service the finger and decided to go ahead anyway.

Unite and PCS unions have selfishly decided to ruin and neuter the police protest.

SHAME ON YOU Unite & PCS.

David Cameron is a big, fat LIAR

The title might seem a little harsh. Indeed, it may seem unfair to single out the Prime Minister, as most leading politicians are economical with the truth. However, Cameron is supposed to be the leader of this country, and for him to be so frequently untruthful is simply not acceptable.

In this previous blog entry I discussed how Cameron had been caught rolling out a statistic that had already been exposed as false after the Home Sectretary Theresa May said it. That didn't stop him from saying it again though. In this instance, he was attempting to mislead the public about the number of frontline police officers, saying that they were increasing when in fact they are provably decreasing.

I've spoken before about how statistics are misused, or to be more exact, used to mislead and create deliberately false impressions. That blog entry is here. Cameron was at it again in a 2006 speech, about police reform. It seems that Cameron likes to lie about the police, for reasons unknown. Certainly the recent "independent" review of the police service by Tom Winsor is shown to be anything but independent when you read the 2006 speech. You can read the full text on the Guardian website.

The biggest lie in the speech was this:

"This year, each police officer, on average, will make under 10 arrests. That's not even one a month. Think about it. Yet one police constable in Nottinghamshire, PC Coetzee, arrested over 300 suspects last year." [emphasis added]

Cameron's Conservative Party appears to have some agenda against the police service. It is hell bent on selling their opinion of the service as lazy. Winsor's report told several half-truths and this whopper: that 75% of male officers in the Metropolitan Police are overweight. In fact, the inconvenient truth for Winsor was that the Met ran a scheme for officers who were concerned about their weight. Of those that joined the scheme 75% were overweight.

I suspect that Cameron's speech writer simply took the total number of arrests and divided by the number of warranted officers. Leaving aside the arguments about the term "average" in my last blog, this is misleading because not all warranted (i.e sworn) officers are in positions where they are likely to arrest offenders. For example, firearms officers (ARV teams) will often arrive first at a scene, contain it, and detain anyone who needs to be arrested until the local beat officers arrive. This is done so that the ARV can resume patrol duties rather be tied up taking statements and filling in paperwork. Similarly, there may be warranted officers who work in areas such as the training department. You might say "Why have fully qualified officers wasting their time in the training department?". I can answer that. I've worked in the training department of a police force, training new Special Constables before they went to their respective stations. It is extremely difficult to convey the application of law and best practice without having the practical experience of having done it yourself. There is also the issue of credibility before your students.

Then we have situations where five or ten officers might arrive to deal with a particular situation, such as a pub fight, and only one or two arrests get made. Does that mean that the other officers were wasting their time? Of course not. Only an idiot would suggest that. However, an idiot did.

Can a police officer's performance be measured solely by the number of arrests made? Obviously it can't. It really would take someone who didn't understand policing to say that. That'd be like saying if an officer isn't arresting people then he's not working, or that while an MP isn't earning their public salary whilst carrying out Executive Directorships on the boards of private companies. Oh, hang on, that might not be the best comparison.

Cameron's lies aren't limited to slagging off the police though. We can find him lying about the number of people in work during PMQs on January 25th, debunked here.

We can also find him lying about the benefits to taxpayers of their economic policy. That lie is put to the sword here.

Let me be clear that politicians of all parties make false claims. Labour are equally guilty. I don't support any particular party. Voting for any of them is akin to choosing the burglar that's going to ransack your house. Just remember, though, Cameron is the man who said he was going to clean up politics and stop the "Punch and Judy" exchanges in the House of Commons. Perhaps that was his first recorded lie?

The Death of the Police Service

The UK Police service, as we have known it since the 1800s, is dying. The process began with the administering of a lethal injection yesterday, with the announcement of the second part of Tom Winsor's recommendations into police pay and conditions. Some of you reading this will be old enough to remember the time, around 1987 or 1988, when then-Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke referred to paramedics in ambulances as "professional drivers". This moment, is right up there alongside Clarke in terms of bare faced cheek and outright ignorance. Is it no coincidence that Clarke is now the Justice Secretary?

Much of the media attention is, regrettably, currently focused on the issue of fitness tests and the BMI of police officers. I agree with the basic proposal that where possible, fitness should be assessed and maintained regularly. At present, there is a basic fitness test on application and it's never looked at again. However, there's a lot more to this issue that simply "fat coppers eating doughnuts". The sheer practical facts of a life spent working shift patterns, with the constant pressure to be publicly visible, means that a large number of officers will be eating from convenience stores, petrol stations, and kebab or burger vans. It's a proven fact that long-term shift work increases the likelihood of serious ailments.

In addition, there will be some officers who wish to continue working even after sustaining an injury in the line of duty. What about them? I can only imagine what would have happened to PC David Rathband if these proposals had been implemented during his working life. Presumably, he would have been sacked before the sound of gunfire had died away. In fact, its March 2012, so we are fast approaching the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The crew of the Titanic, whether they died or not, had their wages stopped as soon as the ship sank. You really would think, 100 years later, that we were past that sort of thinking. Apparently, Tom Winsor isn't.

These issues are indeed serious, and merit examination in the press. The problem is that the mainstream media are fixated on it, and this is allowing Winsor and the Government to perpetrate a distraction burglary on the Police service. Whilst all the discussion about fitness takes place at the front door, the other more insidious proposals are sneaking in the back and making off with the TV.

Let's not forget that this stupid, naive, dishonest and disingenuous report also suggests direct entry to the rank of Inspector or even, God forbid, Superintendent. Police officers in supervisory ranks absolutely must have the bedrock of experience that starting as a probationary PC, and working your way through the system gives. It is the only way of gaining the necessary skills and knowledge of the tasks required. Cognitive knowledge is not sufficient. Otherwise, medical students would be able to qualify from University as surgeons.

Winsor complains that vacancies are currently too "over-subscribed" (meaning too many people apply) so his insightful solution is to reduce the starting wage for constables to a lower level than PCSOs. Yet at the same time, Winsor says that he wants the police service to attract "the brightest and the best". Really? Recently, within the last year or two, MPs said that the wages for an MP had to be set at £64k so as "to make sure we attract the right calibre of people into politics". Confused? Yes, me too.

You might wonder what my part in all of this is. I served in the Special Constabulary from 1998-2006, so I have a reasonable idea what goes on within the police service, yet I've also had a career in engineering which is now entering its 21st year. I like to think that my own viewpoint is a good one; I have the insights to know what the job is like, without being "institutionalised" into the current police way of life where sometimes people feel that the current way is the only way. I've had a life and career outside of the police too, making me arguably a more rounded person. I feel perfectly placed to see the sheer undiluted folly in Winsor's report.

Yet, despite my experience and qualifications, I would not be eligible for entry in Winsor's police service. I don't have any A levels, and Winsor says I ought to have three of them. Unfortunately for me, from school I did semi-vocational qualifications of National Diploma and Higher National Diploma.

I'm no longer actively involved in the police service, but I still feel very affectionately towards it. At the moment, I feel as though I'm watching the vet put down a favourite pet.

Peter, Dilbert and Institutional Incompetence

You've probably never heard of Dr. Laurence J. Peter, but his work goes a long way to explaining why almost every large organisation, including Governments, are totally useless and operate in spite of their upper management and "leaders".

I've been in and out of various hospitals over the last five or six years because of issues with my wife's health, in different areas and different counties, and they're all useless. Don't get me wrong - the people at the front line, so to speak, are nearly always brilliant. Polite, capable and willing, and really well qualified. The problem is the systems that they work in are not fit for purpose. On several occasions, we have arrived for appointments to discuss the results of the latest scan, only to find that the consultant doesn't have the images. If we're lucky, they'll have a written report of the scan, describing the results - but no actual image. A couple of months ago, we saw an endocrinologist who said he would like my wife to have an ultrasound scan, and then a visit to his clinic to discuss the scan.

A few weeks later, we received the two appointments through the post. The appointment for the specialist had been made before the scan. My wife realised that this was not right, so she rang the office and got the appointments rearranged. She had the scan, and we turned up for the consultant's appointment. The scan results had not been sent to the consultant's office. Nursing staff had to spend precious time phoning around and arranging for the results to be sent. We got there in the end, but not by design. We had a similar experience when my wife had an MRI. We arrived to see the neurologist only to find that no images had been sent. Again, some frantic searching bore fruit and we eventually had the images that we needed.

Virtually every other company has stories or experiences like this. The staff at the lowest levels in the organisation are busting a gut to do a useful day's work in the face of incompetence and ignorance in the levels above them. One explanation for this was provided by Dr Peter in 1969. It became known as "The Peter Principle".

This explanation holds that when someone is good (competent) at the job that they do, they get promoted to the next level up. If they do well there, they get promoted again. Eventually, they get to a position where their performance at that level does not warrant further promotion. Thus they are no longer competent. This is the general thrust of the Peter Principle - that people get promoted to the level of their incompetence. My own experience bears this out. In nearly every company I've worked for (some more than others!) most of the management positions are filled with people who are incompetent at management, leadership or both.

There is a variation on this hypothesis - "The Dilbert Principle". This was created by the author Scott Adams. His version is that people who are incompetent are promoted further up the organisation where they can do less damage. Adams' character Dogbert explained it as "nature's way of removing morons from the productive flow". I am personally aware of one such example, in a previous company, of someone who was so useless at the task at hand, that he was transferred to management where he could do less damage.

If either of these points are even half true - then most of the people in any given management position are there either because they aren't good enough to be promoted further, or they've been promoted to their current position to get them out of the way of the productive people. Not inspiring, is it?

The other reason that most large companies are institutionally useless, is that the people making decisions and policy are so far removed from reality, by which I mean the reality of what's actually happening, that they couldn't possibly do an effective job. If you've ever had the misfortune of being on one of those cringeworthy team building courses where someone has to drive a car blindfolded whilst being verbally directed by a colleague, you'll know exactly what I mean. The senior managers are so distant that by the time their latest policy is implemented, the circumstances that lead to it in the first place have shifted, and it's no longer relevant.

This is why politics is almost always a totally futile exercise from the public's point of view. It genuinely doesn't make any difference who you vote for. For a start, most politicians know next to nothing about the business of their area of responsibility. Some of them (I'm tempted to say most of them) have never done a real day's work in their lives and so can't relate to us to begin with. If, as happens rarely, you get a politician who for some inexplicable reason, does know something about their area of responsibility, all of the above applies; they're so far from the shop floor that they can't effectively manage any situation.

As I said earlier, some organisations work despite their political leads and senior management. The NHS and the Police are perfect examples. A lot of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) have not been on patrol for so long that I'd be surprised if they could even remember the caution. The nature of policing has changed so much in that time, they wouldn't have a clue if they were forced to go on active duty again. It used to be the same in the military - the reasons that so many lives were lost in the First World War was that the generals were implementing strategies from their previous war experience, which were no longer effective and were actually counter productive.

The unfortunate thing for a lot of the public services is that all of these things overlap disastrously - managed by people with decades of experience, and little of it relevant, and led by politicians who know nothing about that service anyway. The current debacle over the cuts to the NHS and Police services illustrates this perfectly. The Government of the day thinks it knows all about these services, being given information and assurances by upper structures which are twenty years out of date. The result is the complete and utter shambles that we find ourselves in.

As I write this, it's Sunday evening. That means tomorrow is Monday morning. Enjoy your week at work everyone.

The Systematic De-skilling of the Police

The current coalition Government is receiving a lot of criticism at the moment for cuts and proposed changes to the Police service in the UK. Sitting Governments always get the most stick but, as with a lot of things, there is a bigger picture to this. In an earlier blog I described how my own politics have evolved as I've got older. I no longer believe that any of the political parties hold the keys to Utopia; they're all as flawed as each other. The truth is, that the political system is slowly but surely de-skilling the Police service, and it's been happening for some time.

I'm sure there are readers out there older and more experienced than me that remember other examples. The first one I'm aware of was the role of Scenes of Crime Officer (SOCO). This was gradually removed from police officers and non-sworn police employees took on these tasks.

My own personal involvement with the Police service began with my attestation as a Special Constable in October 1998. The Special Constabulary is (or was) an important resource for most Constabularies. In case you are not familiar with the Special Constabulary, they are unpaid volunteers who are fully sworn and attested Police officers, with the same powers of arrest and by and large the same equipment. In most forces, the only way of distinguishing between a Special Constable and a PC is a small 'SC' insignia on the epaulettes, and sometimes a different cap badge.

Specials come from all parts of the community, and I would imagine that most of them volunteer for duties at evenings and weekends. This works well, as it allows forces to bolster their numbers at peak times such as Friday and Saturday nights, and for other special events such as Remembrance Sunday or concerts etc requiring additional police presence. The Police are thus able to meet peaks in demand without a large increase in overtime or without diverting officers away from routine and response duties. It's no exaggeration to say that some communities would not be patrolled regularly if it were not for volunteer Special Constables.

Specials receive out-of-pocket expenses for travelling and subsistence, but no payment. We as a group had long campaigned to be put of retainers in the same way that the Territorial Army (TA) and Retained Firefighters are. The Treasury refused to do this, claiming that it would be too expensive.

In the early part of the 2000s, the Labour Government took the decision to introduce Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). These are uniformed Police employees who undertake certain routine duties for the police such as statement taking, but do NOT have powers of arrest (other than Common Law "civilian arrest" powers that everyone has). However, and this is crucial, PCSOs also patrol areas. Sometimes with fully sworn Police Officers, but sometimes alone. PCSOs do an important job, but when it comes to patrol, it's basically Neighbourhood Watch with a police uniform and radio. They often don't carry handcuffs or other protective equipment. This was the cynical part of the process that ultimately lead to my departure from the Special Constabulary. The introduction of PCSOs to patrol duties was nothing but a trick, an illusion, to fool the general public into thinking that there were more uniformed police officers on duty that there really were.

The creation of the position of PCSOs must have cost the Home Office millions of pounds. I'd be interested to hear from anyone that has the exact figure. The legislation had to be drafted, training designed and delivered, not to mention the recruitment process. This money could have been spent properly rewarding existing an new Specials - for which there was no need to create additional legislation, training or administration. The basic premise of PCSOs might have been sound, but somewhere along the line, someone in the Home Office took the opportunity to trick the public and start the mass de-skilling of police duties. The thin end of the wedge was truly in progress.

So it comes as no surprise now that the latest wheeze out of such pinnacles of logical thinking as the Home Office, ACPO and Policy Exchange that we are now staring down the barrel of private patrol services. The fact that it's no surprise doesn't make it any less frightening though. We only have to look at most examples of Government procuring and outsourcing (not to mention privatisation of national services) to say that it's a racing certainty that it'll end in disaster. There's too many examples to mention. Railways, water and energy utilities, buses..... I could go on but I won't.

So what's behind it all? The most likely explanation (apart from some weird class thing going on) is cost. It costs a lot to employ a police officer. This is no surprise because most are vastly skilled and experienced at what they do. It's a difficult and stressful job. However, the likes of Blair Gibbs and Theresa May either don't understand this or don't want to. Their agenda is to dumb down the police service as much as possible to drive cost out of it, to lower the expectations of the public as to what they can expect from a police service, and reduce the skill sets "required". They are being aided and abetted in this by unscrupulous and dishonest elements of the media who are only too happy to get their revenge on the police who've recently dropped them right in it.

Would any of this be happening if Labour was in power? Probably, but maybe with certain subtle differences in execution. They wouldn't have the overall support of the press, that's for sure. But in the end, it makes no difference. Because Governments of all colours have been engaged in the systematic de-skilling of the police service for decades.