Not surprised she's still smiling with a pension of £160k on top of a half million quid payoff.

I fail to understand these days how someone does a crap job, gets the sack and a huge payment to leave. It almost seems you're better off to do a lousy job than an outstanding one.

Bit different from when I was out earning a crust.

Dad and I watched games standing on the muddy slope of the Holmesdale Road end. He cheered and I rattled.

I’ll look into JHJ.

I’m not sure the counter terrorism, and protection of parliament aspects of the Met should be part of their remit at all. That would potentially lighten the load. Whether you would go further and split again geographically to reduce size of the job, well…

She’s run it like a her own private fiefdom, batted off any suggestion that they have got things wrong, or need to improve on specifics. She has also been allowed to police herself by successive Home Secretaries, and the Mayor, being straight out to smother the narrative, with any direct attempt to question decision making, becoming subject to internal investigations that trump immediate political scrutiny.

Like all her immediate predecessors she should count herself lucky to have received such protection, and to have already received the accolades of state before completing the job. As of right now it looks rather foolish to have granted her any more than an OBE.

Your highlighted point has merit. Counterterrorism and many of the specialist departments, bomb squad, fire investigation etc etc could be taken out of the Met however officers will continue to require information or input from these departments and as with all big organisations that split up. It doesn’t make them cheaper it just hides the cost in different cost centres.

The national serious crime squad moved away from mainstream Met support however they took a lot of the top quality officers with them. So whilst diversification of the various roles may ultimately help concentrate the Met on core policing it will come at a cost and I see no colour of government supporting that.

If you want to improve the Met generally you need to get more officers on the streets and we have failed to do that for years and years. I worked for them through both labour and conservative govmts and on both occasions staff were instructed to continually cut costs, sell property, reduce staffing. There was always going to be a point where failures would occur and unfortunately they appear to be occurring more often.

The rest is your own unsupported opinion which I don’t agree with so I’ll leave it at that.

There are a lot of committees that sit in the background and shape the way the Met is run. The officers don’t necessarily agree and it is understandable how politics gets forced into policing. The Commissioner along with the Receiver (he is in charge of the support staff) are very high ranking civil servants and they used to hold more power than they do now. I just think they no longer have the guts to fight for what is right for policing in general.

I fully agree and I would say that if the Police were free of political interference my respect would no doubt return.

But as it is we can't deny the damage these changes have had for many people, especially on the right. People who are naturally lawful have watched with horror the commentary that now comes from the governing Police institutions let alone twitter accounts and these changes have had the effect of lowering both trust and assurance that Police actions aren't affected....well we know they are as they have to enforce, willingly or not some ridiculous laws.

Edited by Stirlingsays (12 Feb 2022 1.27pm)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Well, those are actual crimes.

If that's what's called politically driven I don't know many who are that bothered about it.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)