A pledge to put an additional 10,000 police officers on the beat is in the Labour manifesto Imps. I'd stop wriggling if I were you.
Lord Carlile in the Telegraph wrote: "The assertion that cuts to beat police officers have diminished the ability to fight terrorism is untrue, as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, made clear yesterday. “I have watched closely the resourcing of MI5, counterterrorism policing units and others in the years since 9/11 and I believe Labour, Coalition and Tory governments have provided the resources needed.” You can argue about police cuts being a bad thing but the problem here is that it is jumping on one issue to talk about another. That is politics whether it be politicians, unions or other associations using this issue to argue about something else. Do I think there should be more police on the streets? Yes Makes me feel safer. Is that anything to do with the terrorist incidents we have seen recently? Not according to Cressida Dick or Lord Carlile and I can;t really assess from my sofa what effect cuts to police numbers have on our ability to deal with terrorists.
I know it is now. Great stuff. However they are criticising the government for cuts that he supported at the time they were being made!!! And cuts that were less than his shadow secretary of the time suggested could be made. Not wriggling at all. I have already said I would like to see more police on the street.
The only reason there were enough police on the streets to look after the thousands at the One Love event in Manchester is that all police leave was cancelled. This was also true in the wake of the 3 terrorist attacks in the last 75 days. If you have to rely on already overstretched resources to control a problem sooner or later something will crack.
Why are they overstretched when Crime has apparently fallen at a faster rate than the police numbers? It's fine to say that there are less police per capita but why are they overstretched when there is less crime? And crime HAS been falling while these cuts have been made as well: please log in to view this image I like to see police on the street. It does give more of a sense of safety but at the same time why are they overstretched? Surely less crime (despite all manner of new offences being created in the past couple of decades) = less work? To me as a layman this seems more a battle of Police vs Security services as to who gets the money! And Politicians (political or representatives of police bodies) utilising the terror attacks to argue they should have a bigger share due to the public's lack of understanding of the difference between the security services and the Police. Where the security services get to spend their money is another can of worms because then we are getting into snooping etc and what that entails.
Perhaps because More Police = Less Crime, and Less Police = More Crime? Not sure a graph is really required to work that one out.
So why has crime fallen year by year DESPITE the cuts since 2010? Funny Labour people wanting police increasing. I thought that was a right wing thing? Even Blair was cutting the police until 9/11
Because there is a lag between reducing police numbers and seeing the inevitable corresponding increase in crime, I expect. Just as it took some time for the increases in police resources under each of Blair's governments to translate to a reduction in crime. Why would you assume that Labour supporters would want to see less police?
There are significantly more police per head of population now than there were in 1961 (shortly before police beat patrols started to be phased out) and yet crime figures are now much higher (5 times higher?) than they were then. So yeah, crime (including these attacks) isn't a simple question of police numbers. It's also about police practice and our criminal justice system. Failing to integrate some communities is also part of the problem.
If you look at the first graph I put up there crime started falling in.............1996!! That is the reverse of lag. And the police numbers started to drop in 1995 and continued under Blair until in 2001 Blair started to increase numbers after 9/11 reaching a peak in 2005!! Which was the year of 7/7!! So crime has constantly dropped (bar some small rises at the financial crisis and then at the recession) despite the cuts from 95 - 2001 and despite the cuts from 2010 onward!! It is just normally a right wing "law and order" thing. Since the courts ruled against control orders we went to TPIMs which we are too scared to use as well because the public prefers human rights for all rather than human safety for the vast majority!
In what far-off universe was Tony Blair ever "left wing"? You're forgetting the first thing he did as Labour leader was to ditch Clause 4, thus removing social ownership of the means of production from Labour's constitution.
This has been put up at the white cliffs of Dover: please log in to view this image How ****ing sad http://www.kentnews.co.uk/news/huge...pe-appears-on-white-cliffs-of-dover-1-5048496
So Labour change policy over a couple of years, bad? Tories change policy twice in a couple of weeks, good? Hmmmm....
Apparently that May statue thing was The Sun. Disgusting to put **** up like that with what has gone on recently.
