Labour's thin blue line on pay

Lee Jakeman

I notice you avoided mentioning tht the Scottish police have been given the full increase and that it's the English police who are being denied. Another nail in the Unionist coffin?

Tiberius

The government will play to the gallery with initial resistance to the pay claim, but there will be a fudged settlement in favour of the workforce in the end. Trade Union funding and electoral support are important issues, and we have already seen the cave-in over public sector pensions from Alan Johnson. In the economic terms pertinent to a Labour goverment, the cost is manageable (ie. up the stealth taxes on the too-busy-to-notice middle class of England).

W Lambeth

The Police are undermanned and have difficulty recruiting at current pay levels. There is no shortage of applicants for MP as every election or bye election has at least three applicants for each vacancy. The answer would appear, now that we have a Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, to abolish the Westminster Parliament, concentrate on the regional Assemblies and MEPs that have already been created and sign the EU Treaty/Constitution.

David Lindsay

The Police tend to forget this, but they are civilians, paid to do full-time what, should the circumstances arise, we would all do, and be entitled to do, for free. So they have a moral right to strike, which they voluntarily forgo in return for certain other arrangements, including the traditional pay deal that the Government is denying them this year. If they all call in sick on the same day, or whatever, then they should enjoy the full support of the labour movement, however magnanimous that would require some sections of it to be. No one has been more loyal to New Labour than the Police, yet look how they are being repaid. I hope that they will hit back as hard as they can, and that their doing so will finally spur those in the unions who have remained loyal to Labour in return for nothing but scorn and abuse to start hitting back too, without fear of the Police response. Indeed, a new Triple Alliance of the Police Federation, the Fire Brigades Union and the Prison Officers' Association is already visibly emerging: not just economically leftish, but also morally and socially conservative, and patriotic. The return of the Old Labour Right? Now that really would be the end of New Labour. So watch that space.

KIRSTY

W LAMBETH WHY IS IT YOU DIDNT SAY ENGLISH PARLIMENT? HOW COME THERE CAN BE A SCOTTISH PARLIMENT AND WELSH ASSEMBLY BUT ENGLAND CAN ONLY HAVE REGIONAL ASSEMBLY'S, MOST PEOPLE IN ENGLAND ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WANT REGIONAL ASSEMBLY'S THEY WANT AN ENGLISH PARLIMENT!

HJ

The posters above should not a couple of points:

1. The police are getting the full pay rise - it is just not being backdated.
2. There is NO shortage of applicants to the police on account of the fact that it already pays very well. An 18 year old new recruit gets £21,009 rising to £23,354 (source: West Midlands Police web site) after 30 weeks training. Contrast this with new graduate salaries for electronics engineers (we are always told there is a shortage of engineers) which are £22,500 on average (source: Engineering Technology Board UK Engineering 2007 report).

Why would anyone slave away for years to become an engineer to get paid less than a school leaver police recruit?

Nicholas Millman

David Lindsay: it is with some alarm that I find myself almost in agreement with you!

HJ: comparing the day-to-day problems engineers face with the mentally and physically daunting and damaging situations faced by the majority of police officers is trite. As a society we expect them to provide largely unarmed protection against growing and increasingly tooled-up criminal classes. At the same time their most basic roles (patrolling our streets, maintaining the Queen's Peace, enforcing Law and Order) have been undermined and diverted by a government delirious with PC, centralised bureaucracy of stifling stupidity and other assorted barmyness. Further, their training, senior management support and supervision are often poor. Nice work if you can get it? I don't think so.

HJ

Nicholas Millman: I find your reasoning trite in the extreme. I know several policemen and women and not one of them has ever faced a weapon. This is not to denigrate what they do, but the fact that school leavers with not very high educational qualifications can command higher salaries than some of the brightest graduates in the country who have worked for years (and have huge debts incurred through their education) tells you that they are not, by any measure, underpaid. The basic ranks also get paid overtime - something that no professional engineer ever gets.

The police are not hard done by when it comes to salary. Incidentally, one of my police friends has just retired on a pension of half pay (index linked). He is 48.

ExPat

@ W Lambeth The regional assemblies have no constitutional, geographical or popular legitimacy. Most people in England identify with shires or England or the UK. The regions are 100% fiction. As is the EU.

Frank Leader

The police should stop acting as Brown's bodyguard. No point in protecting rubbish is there.

HJ

What's interesting is that the starting salary of a policeman in this country is £6000 more than that in New York. What exactly is their complaint?