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Ian Blair is resigning

According to the Beeb

Well let me be the first...


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Good riddance.
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Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    He's taken his time about it
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    He's taken his time about it
    And he could have chosen one or two other more important issues to resign over, as well...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    He should be sacked and his pension withdrawn. His comments around the Stockwell incident were either shockingly incompetent or just out and out lies.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Apparently he's saying Boris Johnson forced him out.

    If that is true, and hereby withdraw all the bad things I've said about Boris and will buy him a pint if I ever bump into him.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    In my opinion he was a damn strong leader of the police, he refused to quit over the De Menezes incident which is to his credit, he did not let the others burn and took all the flak himself.

    He was not popular with the media or the public very much but he did his job which is to reduce crime and he did it well.
    If he resigned every time someone thought he should resign he would have been gone years ago and someone else would have had to resign over De Menezes and someone else would be resigning now.

    Resignations of policemen do not fix situations they simply put someone else in the firing line next time there is an almighty fuckup.

    He was not perfect, but he did a good job.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    In my opinion he was a damn strong leader of the police, he refused to quit over the De Menezes incident which is to his credit, he did not let the others burn and took all the flak himself.
    Well that's certainly one way to look at it.

    I myself prefer the more traditional approach to such situations: namely that the person ultimately in charge of something that goes disastrously wrong, and who, to add insult to injury, made things worse by feeding false information and refusing to acknowledge the mistake instead of apologising, should do the honourable thing and resign- or be made to.

    Blair should count himself lucky he's not in any one of a number of countries in the Continent and elsewhere, where he would have likely faced charges of manslaughter for the De Menezes atrocity.

    Then is the issue of ethnic minority officer after officer reporting racist bullying while he presided over all of it.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I can see your point and it is the general position when someone in a position of power makes a mistake but i really dont agree with it.

    The tradtitional approach is anyone who makes a mistake should resign gets us nowhere, how would anyone get anywhere without making mistakes?

    I am glad someone who actually had an opinion and the balls to come out with it was in charge of the police and not some sock puppet assbrain.

    On the continent they are held accountable for mistakes like manslaughter etc - but police corruption runs so deep in some parts of europe its barely a police force anymore - take the Berlin police force with an anti corruption office bigger than the police force itself!

    He may have given his friend some contracts which is a small part abusing his position, but its a petty crime compared to what MP's steal from us every day - 80k for 'research' done by a 20 year old student for example - which is out and out theft.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    There was an utter failure of Command, Control and Communications over Stockwell. Unlike others I don't hold the shooters responsible, nor do I think Blair is criminally responsible, but he was the top man at the time and he should have gone due to organisational failings. Either he lied or (more likely) his people didn't want to give him all the facts, either due to fear or incompetence on their part. In either case it doesn't speak of strong management on his part.

    He also got senior coppers being suspended. Again, if you decide to brief the media against your boss you need to go. But the fact it went that far shows that Blair couldn't manage a toothpick.

    He was handpicked by Labour as he made all the right sounds. It was an attempt to politicalise the peelers to make them lapdogs of the Labour Government. It failed.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    This week, there are two stories which have managed to get my attention. We hear endlessly about the credit crunch and its implications for all of us, but yesterday, I found cause to cheer. The hideous Cherie Blair popped up in a number of the newspapers, comparing her husband to the wartime leader Winston Churchill. Apparently, Tony will be right up there with Churchill in the history books. We may all laugh until we cry about this ludicrous comparison. Either way, Cherie certainly needs a long spell with a psychiatrist if she truly believes that. The other story that cheered me up was this. Nothing makes me happier than seeing a New Labour placeman being destroyed in this way, and Ian Blair (I refuse to call such a contemptible man by his title) had it coming.

    So he expects us to believe that he's being forced out by a bunch of Tories in city hall. Very appropriate coming from Jacqui Smith's puppet, but it doesn't fool anyone. As much as I like Boris Johnson and am impressed by his performance as London mayor, I suspect that this story in the Daily Mail had something to do with it. A waste of money if ever there was! And a certain race discrimination lawsuit by the disgraceful Tarique Ghaffur doesn't exactly help his case either. Like his namesake Tony, Ian is a loser who failed to realise that his time was up years ago. He won't be missed.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    There was an utter failure of Command, Control and Communications over Stockwell. Unlike others I don't hold the shooters responsible, nor do I think Blair is criminally responsible, but he was the top man at the time and he should have gone due to organisational failings. Either he lied or (more likely) his people didn't want to give him all the facts, either due to fear or incompetence on their part. In either case it doesn't speak of strong management on his part.

    Plus there was the other raid where a shot was fired by mistake, and on the day of the report into the shooting the Police just happened to arrest the completely innocent men of having child porn.

    The way the Police in London have repeatedly briefed the press against people they have wronged has been despicable.

    Personally I want the head of North Wales Police to get the job, but he's too much of an outsider.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    budda wrote: »
    Plus there was the other raid where a shot was fired by mistake, and on the day of the report into the shooting the Police just happened to arrest the completely innocent men of having child porn.
    Furthermore, they first tried to claim the shot was fired by the 'suspects', and then that the policemen felt in danger of their lives. Finally they said it was the thickness of the NCB gloves the copper were wearing that made one to accidentally shoot.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    Furthermore, they first tried to claim the shot was fired by the 'suspects', and then that the policemen felt in danger of their lives. Finally they said it was the thickness of the NCB gloves the copper were wearing that made one to accidentally shoot.

    Exactly, there have been a long list of situations like this which doesnt show that Blair had good (any?) management control over his own force.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It had been shown that he wasn't up to the job. The post had been politicised by Labour - and it seems Boris and the Tories might now be doing the same. Regardless, it was right for Ian Blair to go: he might have been well-meaning with some good ideas but he was evidently incompetent.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The last Met Chief who left part way down his tenure went because he'd lost the confidence of the politicos to catch Jack the Ripper. And that's the way its got to be - they need to be accountable to democratically elected politicians.

    That seems to be different from using peelers to be cheerleaders for a particular piece of legislation...
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