You seem surprised but when the need arises it has always been the case - so why the big fuss now and why the delay in deployment?




I run my own business so I usually fit in after everyone else and am happy to accept this. However when I was an employee I accepted the terms of the appointment and didn’t complain afterwards.. When joining the police (or military) you accept these terms as part of the package, like they accept an excellent sickness and pension scheme and early retirement, so no more grumbles on this score please.

Well thats you and David Cameron who seem to think that you can easily cut 20% from a budget and yet actually increase services (as he is calling for today), I wish him well for it could be his Waterloo.

William Bratton is of the opinion that "arrests won't solve the issue" and part (if not all) of his solution is more of what you may call "softer policing", specifically the recruitment of a more ethnically/racially balanced police force to interact with local communities better.

How he will do this with no budget and a freeze on recruitment these past two years is unknown, Mr Cameron has already made it abundantly clear that there is to be no backtracking on the budget.

Yes, I suppose they would, if I want an opinion on policing I'd probably ask a chief constable rather than a career politician, but thats just stupid me.

So pretty much the same way Sir Norman and the West Yorkshire plod have been going in recent years then? Interesting that London, Birmingham and Manchester all saw widespread civil unrest, yet Leeds (where community policing has been given a major push, particularly in areas with a high ethnic minority population) seemed to escape relatively unscathed.

More Specials ?

Which section of society is "socially deprived" and what does that mean anyway?

My view is that what happened was down to spontaneous outbursts of pure criminality/greed. Those sections of society you generalise include members of the same communities that rallied against and suffered at the hands of the rioters.

The young Islamic boys killed defending their mosque probably suffered the same social deprivation as the rioters.

Not just me and the PM. Most business people would accept 20% over 4/5 years is quite reasonable particularly for a public service that has had a a long run of getting what they want.

We have just had an example of what softer policing can achieve. It has allowed 170 criminal gangs to flourish in London alone. I am sure this wake up call for the Met will bring about a much needed refocus on priorities.



The new government has only been in power for 18 mths and the proposed police budget cuts start in 2012/13

But whose opinion do you ask when the police senior officers get things so badly wrong?

Yes, the focus is to bring in a "specialist" who is making it quite clear what his solution is - a type of policing which integrates with the local ethnic mix and not one that goes around cracking heads, this will of course mean recruiting more officers of the correct ethnicity which in itself is always controversial, moreso if extra funding and fast tracking is made available for these (as it will have to be) - that is of course if David Cameron is serious about applying the LA and New York solutions to gang crime and not just using Bratton as a posturing platform.

I couldn't care less who enforced the initial police freeze on recruitment, party political love-ins aren't my bag, the era of Red vs Blue politics are long gone with barely enough room to slip a rizla paper between the three parties.

You ask them for the facts and you listen to their explanations and assess their options and consider whether you tied their hands some years ago - you certainly don't jump in with both feet two days after the event and start a "It was all their fault" campaign as some MP's are happy to do.

It was only a few short months ago that the Met were under criticism for their procedure known as "kettling" when violent disorder was seen on the streets, pressure from MPs which brought a promise not to use that procedure again - there is nowhere else to go when your hands are tied in that way.

I think you will find the "specialist" will have some other tougher ideas as well.

I don't think we have a police force that goes round cracking heads, but already we are hearing that there is a need for the Met to re-focus which is what I have been saying. If the ethnic balance of officers in the Met (and elswhere) is still wrong after so much history then this is just another example of the need for a change in direction for our biggest police force.




If this were really so then we would be hearing from you much more balanced political opinions than we do.

Look, as I have stated several times, I think the police have a very difficult job to do and by and large the public (including myself) are right behind them. I saw nothing wrong with "kettling" as a means of protecting the public. I agree too much is done on the hoof without calm thought.

MP's do have a mandate to express opinions which often represent their constituents so long as it doesn't undermine the police.

Having said all that, we all did see a cock up by the police and the acting commissioner has had the decency to admit they got it wrong for the first few days.

The public also have the right to point out serious errors when and where they occur. The police lost control of the streets where murder, theft and mayhem occured. We have to urgently make sure this cannot happen again and the police have to prove to the public that they will never again just stand by and watch serious, violent criminal behaviour happening on this scale for so long.

The criminal gangs are now a real serious problem and current police methods to stop them has failed.

Tackling the reasons for the behaviour will take much, much more time as we have deep seated, long standing social problems to address.

Im not sure why people think that the 'social deprivation' and 'pure criminality/greed' argument are mutually exclusive.

My personal theory is that people choose to be part of a society, they choose to adhere (in the most part) to its rules and its norms. Conversely they sometimes choose not to. In this case, people chose not to. Yes what they did was pure criminality, there was no protest in it, and yes it was greed, you dont make a point by stealing high-end electrical goods and trainers other than you like high-end electrical goods and trainers, but the question we should be asking is why now? why have these people (and lets not pretend it is all a criminal underclass, it wasnt, it was a wide range of people from diverse backgrounds) now chosen, at this point, not to adhere to societies rules and norms?

As for 'who' is socially deprived? Huge sections of society are. Not just the poor 'chavs' on sink estates, but many young people from middle class families, families David Cameron would describe as good, hard working, honest, parents. Good role models and all that jazz.

The reality is, for a lot of young people, they simply dont have the opportunities to follow their role models. The average house price is a ridiculous multiple of the average wage, especially for a young person. The cost of a university education now is 6 times what my dad paid for his first house in the mid-80's, and kids and young people cant go in to a trade or into industry because the jobs and apprenticeships simply arent there. It is very very difficult, and only getting harder and harder for kids to become young adults and start to take, and contribute to this society. It is exceptional these days for a kid to leave school, get a career, get a good wage, be able to afford a house, a car and a decent standard of living. The police force who do and have treated kids who protest and kids in general with a profound lack of respect, authority figures who themselves have far from clean faces, Police officers taking bribes, the media offering them, MP's taking what they can in expenses (and other stuff) big business which has economically raped about 3 different generations. These are people being told that they will need to pay of billions to keep banks afloat so other people dont lose their savings, when they spend their lives living in their overdraft from paycheque to paycheque or dole cheque to dole cheque wishing they had savings to lose.

Im not saying what happened was right or trying to mitigate it, im just saying im not surprised people said f@ck it, by hook or by crook im going to take what I want, everyone else is doing it, and Im also saying that if we dont address these fundamental problems then I wont be surprised when it happens again and again.