Sunday 28 June 2009

Met Police Senior Management Don't Like Bloggers


As we know, the Times don't like Bloggers and actively move to destroy them

Well of course its worth remembering that the Met Police Senior Management don't like Bloggers either, especially ones that don't toady to them and tell the bad side of how it is.

It seems there was an awful lot to complain about when that awful weasel Sir Ian Blair was in charge - thankfully now he's been binned.

Its a real shame that this anti-democratic tendency in the MPS killed off World Weary Detective for example. However, his posts remain at http://worldwearydetective.blogspot.com/

Saturday 27 June 2009

Reminder : MPs aren't full time!

What with all this expenses stuff, the other interesting thing which hasn't quite blown up yet but might, is the subject of MPs other jobs. On July the 1st MPs have to 'detail the time they spend on outside jobs' according to the Times(boo!). (*1)

A couple of examples of Conservatives who work for other employers apart from their constituents on Parliamentary time are John Redwood and Oliver Letwin.


I am in two minds about this, i.e. whether this is a good thing or not. I have to say I am inclined towards the 'not' though maybe an exception could be made when Parliament is not sitting.

Letwin spends eight hours a week on his extra job, netting him £60k/yr - and he's supposed to be cooking up the Cons' election manifesto! Most people don't have enough time to do their jobs in an ordinary working week, and OL's main job is extremely important.


Everyone else has to work for their employer exclusively and gets 20 to 25 days holiday a year. MP dont have to work for their constituents all year and get a notional 'holiday' rather longer than that.

I can appreciate there is a need to withdraw from politics for a good period each year to recoup. However, demands from an external job during parliamentary time is unacceptable as far as I am concerned. The public have a right to expect a full time MP when Parliament is sitting.

I expect there is some sense in the notion of MPs retaining paid links with some organisations though i am not sure the 'keeping in touch with reality' excuse is very valid. Do MPs not have enough contact with non Political types aready? Is that contact not somehow not 'real' enough?

The difficult one for me is while supply and demand has an important role in setting salary level so does the 'if you pay peanuts you get monkeys' notion. Both Oliver Letwin and John Redwood could earn a massive amount more in the private sector and external pay must help keep them in politics where we need them.

There's only so far you can take altruism.

*1 - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6571901.ece

Wednesday 17 June 2009

Screw the Times!




Following a post about a fave journalist, here's a post about one who deserves little or no respect. I am insensed that the imbeciles at the Times have wrecked NightJack's blog and his career by outing him.

Journalists often wax lyrical about going to prison to protect their sources and this kind of thing. Enter modern times and the phenomenon of the Blogger. We have a situation where an individual has cut out the middle man and taken the reality of Policing in 21st century Britain straight to the people.

This was clearly too much for the Times and one of their hacks called Patrick Foster.

NightJack went to court to try and protect himself from the Times and lost.

No doubt Journalists would cite a lofty public interest defence in not disclosing their sources. But when someone has cut out the middle man, i.e. Journalists, it would seem these same journalists don't care any more about the public interest.

With this kind of hypocrisy, and these kinds of Journalists and Newpapers - who can blame someone for wanting to cut them out of the process of talking directly to the public in a blog?

Patrick Foster and the Times deserve your comments on their actions - feel free to email Foster at Patrick.Foster@newsint.co.uk. Remember to tell him what a complete tosser he is.

Monday 15 June 2009

Jeff Randall is a legend




You've got to love Jeff Randall. Amongst a desert of myopic liberal left Journos he stands out, decisively telling it how it is.

He wrote a great piece this week in the Telegraph - here's some highlights :

In a recent YouGov poll for The Economist, the proportion of people who thought that Britain's membership of the European Union was a good thing was down to 31 per cent, from 43 per cent 25 years ago.

Those who saw it as a bad thing rose in the same period from 30 per cent to 37 per cent. Support for loosening Britain's ties jumped from 36 per cent to 51 per cent, and those in favour of complete withdrawal rose from 12 per cent to 21 per cent.

Many decent people, who are not xenophobic but feel under siege by alien cultures, want an end to mass immigration before the melting pot boils over.In a different YouGov poll, this one for the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, 35 per cent cited immigration as an issue that influenced their voting decisions. That compares with 12 per cent for the NHS, 12 per cent for crime and seven per cent for education.

As the architect of a policy that has dismantled border controls and allowed a quadrupling of net inward migration since 1997, it would have to admit to a catastrophic error. That will not happen because, as we know, Mr Brown doesn't do contrition.
Very few British people are happy with the prospect of immigration adding seven million to our population by 2028. We were never consulted; it was foisted upon us. This is the democratic deficit that the BNP exploits.

In a well-timed report for the think tank Civitas, Mervyn Stone, professor of statistics at University College London, accuses the Government of "sidelining honesty and truth in some of its major policy-making decisions".

He highlights the "research", if it can be so dignified, that led the Home Office in 2004 to predict between 5,000 and 13,000 arrivals a year from the EU's eight new nations. In fact, 600,000 turned up within the first 24 months.
As its authority crumbles, Labour's leadership is resorting to what George Orwell called "political language". This, he said, was "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind".
In effect, the Prime Minister was trying to repeat the scare tactic that had worked so well for Labour at the last election in 2005, ie the Tories will obliterate our public services.

Mr Brown's use of the word "investment" that was so telling. In truth, much of Labour's spending is naked consumption, money burned in the pursuit of votes, with no return for the taxpayer.

Source article here.

Monday 8 June 2009

A link worth clicking on




'Unsung and underappreciated, the British Army deserves a country more worthy of its valor. '

An American article about the British Military past and present. Well worth a read - unusual for an American article on such a subject.

Thursday 4 June 2009

Life is too short to be strung out



I think there is way too much stress in society. We seem to have kind of problem in acknowledging the psychological side of fulfilment and happiness in the South East of England especially, people just seem to be interested in self aggrandizement and money,money,money.

The importance of money can't be understated, we live in a financial world and always will. However, there is much much more to life than money alone.

I think we need to be much more focussed on maintaining a level of stress in our lives which is optimal, rather than excessive which seems to be the norm.
Hopefully one day we'll have grown up enough to recognise life is too import to spend rushing around from one pseudo calamity to another.

Its so easy to live life at 100mph and then one day realise you never had the time to do the things that really would have satisfied you.

Bear in mind that I am speakling mainly to myself here, but i expect it applies to lots of others too.

Wednesday 3 June 2009

Modern policing summarised

... or so the Police bloggers would have you believe and i for one wouldn't seek to disagree with them. Reams of meaningless management gobbledigook is going to be par for the course considering what an awful mess Labour make of just about everything.

So here it is, it may prove useful to an incoming home secretary - the principles of modern policing summarised :



Well nearly summarised, theres nothing in there about criminalising the generally law abiding,policing to hit Whitehall targets, or endless paperwork of course.

Good bosses are gold dust




What is it about management? Why oh why does it seem that as soon as you give someone a little bit of authority over other people then it goes to their heads and they can’t deal with it.


I’m not under any illusions, having responsibility is difficult – you have to deal with the interpersonal and personal issues of staff, you have to account for your staff’s actions to your own manager and beyond. However I am not sure that on a personal level many new managers especially have the maturity to deal with their new found ‘power’.


When will organisations, and I am sure this must be just as bad in the public sector as private, get their asses in gear and train people to be human beings as well as managers.

I am tired of the inflated egos of overpromoted ink monitors. I really can’t be doing with condescending arrogance.


Previously I have found it very hard and stressful to contain my thoughts where I have very little but contempt for the organisation I work for. Its not quite that bad at the moment, fingers crossed it stays that way.


One day maybe British management culture will change. I really think the use of 360 feedback would help in this regard, then people will really get to know where they have 'opportunities to improve'!


As and when I am management again I’ll have to put my money where my mouth is on this one I suppose, and not get sucked in to the ‘We’re superior to the little people’ idea that titillates so many immature egos.