IT APPEARS THAT ONLY one in every four crimes are being solved by the police. Last year 3.1 million offenders were able to cheat the system. Only 1.2million of the 4.3million cases investigated by the police were cleared up, yet we are being told by this ‘Unity’ government that it plans cuts to the police services of the order, according to one report, of 60,000 to help bring down the deficit.
The crime statistics have always been controversial. They can foster any argument if someone is prepared to delve deeply and creatively into them, from whatever party source is highlighting them for their own benefit.
One thing is for sure however; the police service faces cuts to its numbers. Whether they be front-line officers, civilian workers or the comical community officers. Wherever they come from, jobs will be lost.
The community officers will not be missed by anyone. They were the creation of a cash-strapped government who found it too expensive to recruit more expensive and properly trained police officers. These counterfeit officers were never taken seriously by the public and should go - but if this government plans on reducing properly trained policemen from the payroll then they must think again.
If this government’s plans for further public sector cuts are to hurt many people, then they had better have a fully functioning police force to be on hand to deal with the potential social unrest that usually follows such economies. Already the public sector unions are preparing to ballot their members when these cuts take effect.
It seems to me somewhat premature and masochistic for a government to ring-fence the oversees spending budget while making cuts to the police budget. Does David Cameron have a death wish. If so he deserves it to become a reality.
POLICE AND DEFENCE NEED the same protection given them as oversees aid was given as an almost reflex action by this administration upon taking office. In protecting oversees aid and forcing cuts on homeland defence and security, should, and I hope will, eventually reach the UK tax payer and cause them to demand from their government a redistribution from oversees aid to these two primary sources of our nation’s defence and security until the economy picks up and we can once more continue with the taxpayer’s largesse - but until such an outcome we must form an economic laager.
Any politician’s duty in this country’s straightened circumstance, must be toward the people they represent and who elected them. By even talking about cuts to the police budget, defence budget, NHS budget or the educational budget, while leaving intact the oversees’ aid budget will only increase, one truly hopes, the anger of the majority of the British people.
This government has already embarked upon much needed reforms of the public sector and I agree with their ambition. But not for personal prejudicial reasons, but for reasons of resurrecting our nation to the first rank of nation states.
However, by exempting the Oversees Aid Budge (OAB) from their calculations, this partnership of a government is only delaying the controversy that will overtake them when their demands upon public spending reaches its apotheosis.
No one has put forward the argument as to why oversees aid should be protected and be allowed to ride roughshod over other vital services to our people. If the people cannot have the confidence in the politicians they elect to represent their views, then where are they to turn but to an articulate despot.
Why should the OAB be exempt from the cuts? What possible reason should there be to exempt this part of public expenditure? After all the people who work and pay taxes in this country who are being told to expect to pay more, one way or another, for the mess this country has landed itself with, should not be expected to continue contributing to the OAB.
If the workers of this country have to pay more taxes, then those taxes should be used to rid this country of its deficit rather than benefitting that of another’s. They should be used on the NHS, defence and education. Nothing should leave this country’s wallet bound for oversees aid.
The OAB should be the first part of public expenditure to face a cut, and not to be ring-fenced to avoid it. For politicians to ring fence the Oversees Aid Budget tells us where their priorities lay.
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