Pay restraint

I've just come across this story about plans to cut police pay.

It seems to me that the Government needs to think about what is important to the people and therefore what is important to it.

If I am in dire fiscal straits then I must consider whether I pay off my bills in any particular order.  I could pay all my credit cards and over draft off first while ignoring my mortgage.  The end result might be that I end up with no debt quickly because my personal debts are covered and the bank takes my house away to pay off the mortgage I owe them.  But, the problem is that I am now homeless.  A better solution seems to be to decide what is important to me.  Maybe it is better that I pay my debts slowly but have somewhere to live at the end of it.

This is the same problem as the Government faces.  Does it slash all public spending to the bone, pay all the debts but risk leaving the country in an appalling state at the end of it?  Or does it have a realistic look at what is important to the country, ensure that those important services are looked after and then pay off the debts over a longer period of time?

If the Government wants to cut police pay (either in real terms or literally) then they may find it is harder to recruit.  London and BTP officers are quite well paid, but outside of London and the pay is pretty piss poor from what I am told.

For what it's worth, I happen to think that the police, like the fire brigade and some people in the NHS (sorry but I cannot accept that all the managers and non-medical staff are necessary) are important to this country and that the Government should not destroy those services now to save a few pennies.

This is what they call a penny wise, pound foolish.

Comments

  1. Old Codger2 March 2011 at 20:44

    For what it is worth I agree. However this government is not that much different from the last and certainly no more competent so we are both probably asking for a miracle.

    ReplyDelete
  2. London PC3 March 2011 at 01:43

    Defense Brief , yet again you show yourself to be something special in the volatile polarized world of blogging.

    I consider you ( legal aid folk) to be public servants too and i see your cuts to be equally as harmful as those made upon the police. I do remember the days of brief remaining at the police station for 8 hours which i'm glad to say are gone. But I'm SICK of under qualified legal reps giving poor advice such as blanket no comment for offences that are suitable for a caution ( with overwhelming evidence). The offender losses. The taxpayer looses but the legal rep is too stupid to get it.

    The truth is ALL police officers will be desperate for a defense brief when an allegation is made allegation them. And I will dig into the savings to ensure that I'm advised by a real solicitor rather than a legal rep. I think it's unfair that those without savings cannot access this.

    Keep calm and carry on. You have my support.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous3 March 2011 at 08:20

    I may be wrong, and I'm sure I'll be told if I am, but isn't it their bonuses that are beng scrapped? Why are police paid a bonus for doing their job? There is a wailing and gnashing of teeth over the payment of bonuses to bankers, so why are public sector bonuses accepted so readily? Their bonus is my council tax bill. And I don't accept the myth of poor pay, I am a public sector worker.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Defence Brief3 March 2011 at 14:43

    Old Codger, I voted for the Liberal half of this lot and am now refusing to speak to my MP (Vince Cable) for fear I'll be arrested when I smack him in the chops for. Have now decided not to bother voting next time around.

    LondonPC, strange as it may sound things have moved on a little with qualifications. When I started out you didn't have to have any qualifications whatsoever and once in custody PACE said you had to be treated as if you were a solicitor!! At least now you have to pass an exam in law and giving advice (even if they are basic levels). You'll be glad to hear that if you ever are arrested your Fed Rep will usually insist that a solicitor rather than a rep attends.

    Anon, I think the plan is to freeze wages causing a reduction in pay in real terms as inflation continues to rise. The bonuses are paid to senior officers for meeting various targets as I understand it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Old Codger3 March 2011 at 21:05

    I voted for the real conservatives. Dave's election as leader worried me. I did hope they might do as he said and I certainly believed they could not be worse than the last lot. I wouldn't take bets on that now.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous10 March 2011 at 00:22

    Defence Brief, I think you'll find the rank and file got between £3000 and £5000 per year purely for turning up for work. It was a bonus introduced by NuLabour to try and cut down on sickies.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are items referred to in s.9’s as exhibits bound to be served?

  Background - CPS served a witness statement on me that exhibited two BWV clips that are potentially relevant to the Crown’s case and may have some relevance to the defence case insofar as they are likely to show the lighting and weather at the time events happened. Somebody has listed the clips as unused material rather than putting them in the exhibits folder that accompanies the served evidence. This raised an interesting (to me anyway) question about whether a party who exhibits an item in a statement is bound to serve it on their opponent. At court the judge took the view that the Crown were at liberty to classify items exhibited in s9s as unused material if they chose not to rely upon them in evidence. I took the view that if they are exhibited then they must be served along with the witness statement that exhibits the item and that the solution to a situation where the Crown say they are now unused is to edit the witness statement to remove the reference, by agreement with ...
More gibberish >>

Is there twice as much violent crime in the UK versus the USA?

Image
The tweet from Charlie Kirk I came across a screenshot of a Twitter post while on Facebook this morning. The original post now has 11,000 retweets and 23,000 likes on Twitter. As you can see from the picture somebody called Charlie Kirk, who is a right-wing American commentator, claims that there are 933 violent crimes in the UK per 100,000 people. This is more than double the rate he claims for the USA where he says there are only 399 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The UK doesn’t feel that violent to me, so is it true? We’re all gonna die According to the FBI, in 2016 there were 1,248,185 violent crimes committed across the whole of the USA. That is an increase of 4.1% on the 2015 figure but still represented only 386.3 violent crimes per 100,000 people . So, Mr Kirk appears to be slightly overestimating the violent crime in the USA. I should say that I am using the 2016 figures as those are the latest available on the FBI website, so maybe he has slightly differe...
More gibberish >>

Driving without insurance

Image
Insurance is a contract that remains in force until it expires or is cancelled As you may, or may not, know I specialise in motoring law and most of my work involves defending people accused of drink driving . With the drink driving often come other road traffic offences such as driving while disqualified and driving without insurance. It’s driving without insurance I want to talk about today because I think far too many police officers, solicitors, barristers and judges miss a key legal point when looking at these cases. I’ve received prosecution papers today for somebody accused of driving while disqualified and driving without insurance. The no insurance element is claim that the suspect did not tell the insurer about the disqualification. In his statement, the police officers says, “ [I] contacted [the insurer] who called me back informing me they would not consider the insurance policy valid as there were no convictions disclosed.” Looks like an open an...
More gibberish >>