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I know I would far prefer that you just lay out your arguments like every other normal person. We get it. You don't like Labour, you don't like the Lib Dems - and it seems that you don't like the Tories much either. Cool. We get it.
And you can't for a minute compare your vacuous ramblings with Aladdin. He does use the 'c' word (as I have done from time to time) BUT he uses it sparingly.
http://vbulletin.thesite.org/search.php?searchid=2374638
Lol! And a lot of old posts have been deleted or archived as part of board housekeeping.
Thats what I thought
i'm a police community support officer.
the conservatives hate us and will probably get rid of us very soon.
everyone in work today was making jokes about how we don't won't have a job for much longer and should get down the job centre. sighhh
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8678282.stm
Wow, the wheels of power really can shift when they want to!
I like this coalition government malarky already
He does, well kind of. Putney is a tiny bit south of the flight path and thus a bit south of me, but yeah, he's pretty close to it.
And if they keep their other promise to introduce a high speed train network in the country, I'd be very happy indeed.
The high-speed train network was always their policy as the alternative to the third runway, but don't expect it any time soon; we are still in a pickle. Only Labour were in favour of the third runway.
Did I just imagine that you're in favour of the first decision that the new government, spearheaded by the Tories, has made? I must be dreaming
I think this is the best possible outcome. Labour are out! That means we should have less nanny state and less big government. Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats want to scrap Labour's plans for ID cards. That will do for a start. Cut the government's advertising budget, slash the quangos, end the "government knows best" attitude!
Having said that, I'm disappointed they seem to have continued Labour's academy BS though. It's gonna mean more selective schools, more religious schools and more competition among parents to get kids into the best school. But I at least hope they'll be slower to interfere with teachers doing their jobs.
Just talking about your post with my husband (retired Old Bill). He thinks you're safe. True, the police aren't exactly overly enthusiastic about their PCSO colleagues, and the Tories criticised their creation. But David Cameron has pledged not to make cuts to front-line services, and you can't get much more front-line than the police. There would be uproar if they did away with you lot.
no we aren't and we don't pretend to be (well, the odd idiot pretends to be but i most certainly don't and nobody i know does!). our role is completely different but without us, nobody would ever see any sort of police presence on the streets...even if they brought in a load more police officers, i don't reckon you'd actually see much more on the streets purely because of the amount of paperwork they have to do...
where i work, its only us PCSOs that actually get out of the office really. police officers never get a chance. according to this policing pledge, they are meant to be out on their beat 80% of the time. the reality is, they are stuck in the office doing paperwork 80% of the time. i don't reckon employing more police officers would change that as each individual police officer is ALWAYS going to have their own paperwork to do. its just how the job is.
i honestly do think that if they got rid of PCSOs it would be a BIG mistake. i'm not just saying that because i am one. i'm saying that because i now appreciate how much work PCSOs actually do. without PCSOs, the public would see nobody on the streets. before i was one, like most members of the public, i was completely unaware of the work they actually did. we help out police officers a hell of alot. we do the work they basically don't have time to do. without us, they'd struggle but anyone who doesn't work for the police won't really understand or realise that.
If however they are used as reinforcements, then how is it a bad thing?
Frankly I'd rather real policemen are used for preventing and fighting serious crime. However I'm also pleased there are now good numbers of PCSOs about (at least in London) taking care of minor issues such as antisocial behaviour, cyclists riding on the pavement, etc.
But somehow or other the police managed pre-97. The obvious answer seems to be to cut the paperwork that police do
Did they? Ever since PACE came in during the 80's the tide of paperwork has got ever larger. Yes, some of it is pointless ticky box crap for the home office, the rest? Necessary thanks to the judicial and legal system.
I was talking about this the other day, our station has 5 PCs and 11 PCSOs. The PCs organise the warrants, deal with traffic issues and make the planned arrests. The PCSOs do everything else.
Looking at the incidents pages, 90% of people call up about kids causing a nuisance, mopeds being ridden dangerously, abandoned vehicles e.t.c If PCSOs vanished overnight the government wouldn't be able to afford to replace us with 16,000 cops. You'd get maybe half that.
Factor in promotions, pay rises, training and transfers to roles that are closed to PCSOs and you'll realise that having PCSOs to deal with the stuff that affects most of us is the most cost effective way.
As an example, after 7 years in post I earn just under £26,000. A PC with the same service is already on £30,000. Any PC who gets promoted to sergeant automatically gets £32,000 regardless of what their previous wage was. PCs who work in specialist roles, including beat officers get paid an extra £1000-£3000 depending on the role and their length of service.
If that PC gets promoted or leaves to another role or force then you're left with another gap that needs to be filled. So for having a cop instead of a PCSO, if a gap appears you could potentially be paying out £64,000 a year on the salaries of 2 officers. Whereas if a PCSO leaves, they stop getting paid and you get another PCSO on £20,000-£26,000 a year depending where you are.
Now the misconception is that PCSOs are totally incapable when compared to Police Officers. Now in some cases that will be true, there are a lot of things, mostly to do with paperwork that I wouldn't have a clue how to do. There are also a lot of things to do with powers around antisocial behaviour, abandoned vehicles and minor crimes where I've had Sergeants and Inspectors asking me for advice because whilst they have a theoretical knowledge it's something they've never had to deal with before.
Now back to paperwork, yes there is a lot of paperwork. There are also a lot of cops who use paperwork as an excuse. A good, efficient officer will do their paperwork quickly and will be back out on patrol as soon as they can (my mate for example). Others, it seems to take them days to write up a simple statement.....
Quite right. Unfortunately, I went back in to edit my original message and accidentally deleted a sentence without noticing. My original point was that, whatever the Police and the Tory party may have thought about the creation of PCSOs, they do represent a cheap way to increase 'police' presence on our streets. That's why I don't think the Tories will be too quick to get rid.
which is good as the Libdem policy on immigration was too liberal
i was in favour of it and im guessing so were the people who voted for him.
Yeah, i worry about Tory economic policies. Bad memories of late 1980s and early 1990s housing madness and repossessions
I imagine if they were thinking along these lines, the more likely route would be to hire more admin staff, and free up the PCs. I don't know how well that would work practically though. But admin staff are cheaper again, so if you replaced every PCSO with what are essentially PAs for the police officers, you'd still have money left over. But the overall effect would probably still be a smaller police presence. And let's face it, PCSOs should be more about preventing crime by simply being there than actually dealing with it once it's happened. People often talk about the loss of figures like bus conductors to deal with nobheads, and I think PCSOs go a long way to restoring that sort of thing. But by there very nature, they're going to get the lion's share of headlines for pettiness, so I'm still gonna complain about them the most.
Incidentally, it also hopefully does a good job of filtering out the shit police officers before they get a chance to become one. In fact, I wouldn't particularly object to it being a necessary precursor to applying for a PC job.
This is something that always niggles away at the back of my mind. But the reality is that mortgage rates have a direct relationship to the Bank of England base rate, which is set by the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee - not by the Government. The Deputy Governor of the Bank of England said in February that the Bank might have to maintain low interest rates long term "to compensate for strains in the banking system." Indeed, the Bank of England issued a statement last week to say that, because inflation remained lower than predicted, there was no pressure to increase interest rates in the near future. Fingers crossed, then.