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Originally Posted by Pierre
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Originally Posted by Graham
So, you have two options: [...]
I know which I'd go for...!
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Fair enough, but I'm willing to give it try. |
Fine. Where are you going to get the money? More taxes? Or take it from some other area that also wants the cash.
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you have certain degree of freedom and choice with Health and Education, you pick and choose hospitals and schools or choose to go private.
You can't do that with the police, you can't decide to use another police force or use a private police force.
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You can hire private security or private investigators.
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Your stuck with them, and if they are not coming up with the goods they're not accountable - to you at least.
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No, they're accountable to our *already* elected representatives.
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I was talking about *your* claim that young women would feel "safer" [...] the fact of the matter is that such a perception is false.
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True, statistically, it is a false perception. But as I say the same resources would be put into an investigation like that whether there was public mass hysteria or not. [/QUOTE]
I never said they wouldn't. I said people wouldn't *be* safer which you have now acknowledged.
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I don't see why. Care to expand?
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You brought up the matter of people "feeling safer". You then imply that I'm suggesting that the actual allocation of resources would be different depending on public interest/ media coverage. I said nothing of the sort.
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And, once again, you resort to political style rhetoric and false assumptions, demonstrating that you do not understand what I am talking about.
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Firstly, as seen as you don't even know any details about this proposal you're the one making most of the the assumptions.
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Sorry what was this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4252275.stm link in the very first post in this thread talking about, then?
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Secondly, I wish you'd stop trying to propose that I do not understand what your talking about. It's not that intellectual.
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Yet in the quote above I had to counter your claim that I was suggesting the allocation of resources would be different and in the one immediately below I had to counter your suggestion that I was saying "do nothing".
Had you read and understood my points those would not have been necessary.
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I did not, nor would I say "change nothing because the risk is so small".
Yes, checks should be made, yes, sex offenders should not get jobs working or near children, however the sort of panicky knee-jerk "we must be seen to be doing something" political reaction that followed Soham was *not* an efficient nor sensible use of resources and caused all sorts of problems because it was ill thought out.
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It may have been Knee-Jerk, but they had to implement some measures immediately.
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Why? Because there was an *imminent* danger of another murder or murders taking place or because (to quote from further down this thread):
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Originally Posted by Pierre
**Warning** emotive political rhetoric - However unlikely, if another tragedy had occurred due to this system post Soham, they would have been strung up, and rightly so, for failing to act on a known issue.
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And I don't at all agree that this is "rightly so", but I will address this later.
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Again, political rhetoric. Neither a single high-profile case nor emotive arguments should *not* determine policy.
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Not emotive, maybe political. Sometimes a single case may change policy, whats wrong with that? If due to this case serious flaws were found in the system.
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Yes, a single case may change policy. And if there are flaws, they should be fixed. I entirely agree.
However it is the *mechanism* of change which is important and, once again, I point out that knee-jerk reactions or attempts to pander to public feelings are *not* the way to go.
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Fine, I agree, but fix it in a *sensible* way, not with a knee-jerk that causes all sorts of other difficulties.
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Sometimes you don't have the time
**Warning** emotive political rhetoric - However unlikely, if another tragedy had occurred due to this system post Soham, they would have been strung up, and rightly so, for failing to act on a known issue.
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As I said above, was there an *imminent* danger of another murder? Well, no, actually there wasn't.
It may also have been the case that the mess that was cobbled together to provide for checks could actually have left chilren *more* at risk!
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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/polit...780564,00.html
Schools are trying to bypass official checks on whether new staff have criminal records because they are so desperate to cover teacher shortages before the start of the new school year.
Schools complain that the checks - designed to protect pupils from child abusers - take too long and that backog at the Criminal Records Bureau, which undertakes the work, means that requests are not dealt with for months.
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Rubbish! Many more children are abused by family and friends than by strangers and many more could be protected from abuse and harm by targetting resources into Social Services to *stop* it from happening in the first place.
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It is rubbish, you introduced this into the discussion and it has nothing to do with it.
We're talking about the police not Social Services, if they were proposing a Social Services commissioner then fair enough. There are lot of public services were resources are an issue but that is a wider discussion away from this particular issue.
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We are talking about the sensible allocation and usage of resources. And the Police and Social Services do *not* act in isolation from each other.
If Social Services could get the resources and funding to do their jobs better, the Police may well have *less* work to do dealing with delinquent teenagers, vandalism etc etc.
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And what about the "duty of care" to all those children being abused "in private"? It seems to be a case of "out of sight, out of mind"...
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Again irrelevant, oh and emotional politcal rhetoric as well.
If the abuse was brought to the polices attention and they failed to act, then you'd have a point
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Entirely relevant! The point is to deal with the problem *before* the Police have to expend their resources on it!!
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What has this to do with the proposal? Going off on meaningless tangents like this does not help.
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Trying to consider problems in isolation instead of seeing them as part of an entire system also does not help.
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There is nothing "emotional" about it. It is a simple fact of logic. And that commissioner would most probably be more interested in exploiting emotion than facts, just like many other politicians.
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Yes there is, you were asking me to consider all these other people who will be mugged and burgled because resources are being used on a high profile case i.e. Soham.
But you cannot know if this would be the case. For a person who usually likes to be so factual you have no way at all of substantiating your point.
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No, of course I cannot *know* this would be the case, nor can I demonstrate the truth of the proposition, however there *is* a logical connection that can be seen by anyone who cares to think about it.
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What was that line from Douglas Adams (or possibly Arthur C Clarke)? Those who seek public office and are capable of getting themselves elected to it are, ipso facto, entirely *unsuited* to the position...?!
The point is you would *NOT* get the "best person for the job", you'd get whoever could *convince* the public that they were best for the job which is an *entirely* different matter!
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I take your point but you don't know that. You might get somebody very good, who does a very good job.
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Ok, you *might* get someone who does a very good job, but I think that is less likely than getting a pseudo-politician who is more interested in pandering to public opinion to make themselves look better than actually concentrating on what the public needs (which is *not* the same as what they want!)
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If there are fallacies in my arguments, please, point them out, but don't just use vague implication to suggest they are there without actually backing it up with proof.
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I thought I had been pointing out the weaknesses in you argument, and there are plenty of them.
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I cannot help what you think, however I have yet to see any evidence of this.
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"The Public" as a whole has a tendency to "mob mentality" and that benefits nobody.
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True, but I'm failed to be convinced that they would be romanced by a failing Police Commissioner if he happened to solve a high profile crime just before polling day.
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Then please excuse me if I am somewhat more cynical than you, especially where The Public's short term memory is concerned.
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As I said previously:
"The public in general do not think about these things in a non-emotional manner and putting up an official for election who *will* exploit public emotion to get the job is *not* a good idea."
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Well at last a well reasoned paragraph.
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Gosh, that's *so* kind of you...
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We'll just have to wait and see. Chances are it'll never happen anyway.
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Which is my fervant hope.
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In case you really don't understand, what timewarrior and I mean by "leaving well alone" is *getting rid of* large amounts of the paperwork and red tape that successive Governments have dumped on the Police so they can *get on* with the job of dealing with criminals instead of Government "targets".
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Well if that's what he meant he didn't articulate it very well. I was just pointing out the conflict in his opening paragraphs.[/quote]
It looked more like an attempt to score a cheap point.
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I agree that red tape and paperwork has to be reduced, whose to say that this proposal will not be the catalyst for that?
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By *introducing* another elected official and another set of hoops for the Police to jump through, you're going to *reduce* red tape and paperwork? Somehow I can't see that happening...
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Originally Posted by Xaccers
Graham, the police do not do checks on people working with children, therefore your claim that police resources would be used is factually incorrect.
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If I had *said* that "the Police do checks on people working with children" you would have been right.
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Claiming the commisioner would be influenced by political parties,
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Where did I say that? Oh, it appears I didn't say that either.
I used the word "politician" (with a small "p" to distinguish between them and MPs) to refer to someone who has to campaign to get their position and, as such, will be more concerned about how what they are doing *looks* to the Public, instead of whether they're necessarily doing the job well.