The government is not listening to police officers, the Police Federation’s chair says – UK Politics – UK – The Independent
Oh dear, how sad.
Everyone knew this was coming when David Cameron said he wanted to privatise everything apart from the courts and certain areas of national defence.
But the police have become so used to taking enhanced pay-and-perks deals from successive Conservative governments that they didn’t feel the knife going into their collective back until the Tories started twisting it.
To the police: The Conservatives never considered you to be colleagues; they saw you as useful political pawns, to put down unrest from the people – which is a perversion of your original purpose, which was to be “of the people” yourselves.
Next time a demonstration takes place against the Tory Government, instead of doing your best to undermine it and bring it into disrepute, perhaps you should consider joining it.
The Government is not listening to police officers and should begin to do so, the chair of the Police Federation has said.
Steve White argued that a recent fall in crime was “despite” government policy, not because of it.
A bit of the what goes around comes around, as they say in the good old USA. Reminds me of the old Neimoller speech “First they came”…..”and there was no one left to speak for me”. When I was younger I remember policemen standing back and obviously supporting pickets. For decades n ow, though, they have been quite willing to support Thatcher and her successors, treating lawful protesters as criminals. While I feel a bit sorry for the average bobby on the beat, many of them, especially the top rankers, deserve all they get.
I’m reading a chapter about the police in Owen Jones’ The Establishment at the moment, and it reminds the reader of some extremely telling information to do with the ways the Conservatives, in particular, have bribed the police and changed their conditions of employment to suit the purposes of the government of the day. They aren’t supposed to be political tools; they are private citizens like the rest of us, trained to protect society from criminality.