““Maintaining a profit is not a burden that was on the police force when they maintained the services in-house.”

While there’s no one more keen than me to see self serving public servants trimmed down to tolerable minimums…
However, the converse of this is that the profit motive becomes more important than offering an unbiased Police service. I could give some examples of this happening already, but I don’t feel comfortable in doing that on an open forum.

I am all for any farming out which enables the police to spend their time catching criminals. Central government set the budget but it is up to the PCC to determine the spending priorities in their area.

It won’t make a single jot of difference to how many real coppers are out there–or on the beat.
All it does is to layer in an extra strata of management.
The first thing G4S did in Lincs was to announce sixty redundancies. This was subsequently blocked by the Police Authority as unworkable due to the fact that many of the departments had been very severely cut in a previous round of redundancies and were considered to be at absolute minimums.

Since then there has been a lot of head scrtaching I think on the part of G4S, in relation to meeting minimum contract requirements–especially response times to triple nine calls–and minimum staffing to meet that.

The perception however is that to meet the financial targets (and thereby to win the contract) set out by central government, G4S cut their contract proposal far below what they could afford, to get the work.
I think in business, this is known as a loss leader.

Here’s a few ‘interesting’ pieces from Auntie Beeb.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-20053993

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-19543105

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-18439018

Andy.

It’s nothing to do with privatisation!:confused: You might argue that replacing a committee of 17 of the local “great and good” ( sense of irony intended) by one elected individual, might prove better in the long run.

It’s happened, the clock won’t be turned back, so I am now reserving judgement for the next 3/4 years to see how successful, or not, the change proves to be.

I was refering to the farming out of Police services.
That most certainly is privatisation and is being driven by central government.
The point I was making (probably not very well), following on from what Silver Fox said is that it doesn’t matter who is in charge locally (seventeen or one), those policies are being driven down from much higher up, and will no doubt be implemented.

After the dust has settled, tears dried, it doesn’t really matter a rats a##e whether it’s a senior policeman or PCC in charge, the real budget is decided in Westminster, all that this pantomime does is move some other poor sod into the firing line, to take the flak off politicians.

Can just see it, shortage of police, no action on certain issues, all the MPs sit back smugly and divert the queries to the PCC, the fact that PCC has no budget is down to MPs, but they have very nicely got out of the way.

The drive to privatise everything to G4S is certainly being driven (very) hard from central government.
Some faceless tw*t on a back hander is no doubt increasing his pension prospects on that little deal.

Well the way it looks to me is that the BBC were very keen to get the spotlight off themselves over Jimmy Saville. They saw a chance to throw the spotlight onto the Tories (the hated Tories some might say) and took a flyer. It backfired.
So what we end up with is two sections of the establishment–which is as far as I’m concerned the real enemy, fighting a turf war, and as usual, lawyers, politicians and other assorted ‘hangers on’ getting rich on taxpayers money.
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue paying tax–if we’re lucky enough to have a job, and get squeezed ever harder.
I say a pox on all their houses–there isn’t one of them worth a good w*nk.
I wouldn’t rely on any of them to sit the right way on a toilet seat–and when I’m swept to power on a wave of popular support, the most reliable work to get will be as part of a firing squad–because they’ll be working 24/7.

And seriously for once…
The very real victims of Saville, The Welsh care homes scandal, and no doubt a thousand other dark places where none of us have ever heard of (or would probably want to hear of) and where the smart-*rse reptiles of the media care not to poke around in, carry on getting b*ggered as ever.

Andy.

PS: My choice of words is very intentional.

I’ve not heard that in a while.

I know it’s old but it was good then and still is.
A.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJl5Vd_FK-M&feature=related

:):););):):)

Evening all !
Andy, how the devil are you, we don’t know each other by the way.

I’m very well thank you.
All things considered a very reasonable day.