Police Pay

Lets get a few vested interest points out of the way first:

1. I'm a public sector worker
2. My pay award for June 2007-May 2008 is overdue (by quite a bit)
3. I don't anticipate it being much (again)
4. I work for a Trading Fund so my salary is not paid for by taxation
5. The Trading Fund I work for has met all its performance and finance targets (again) and has ample funds to cover a larger pay rise than the government will allow (again)
6. It is anticipated our pay deal will be implemented (and back paid) at the end of January
7. For the last two years our pay deals have been implemented late but we've received the back pay in time for Christmas

So having established why I personally am a bit concerned about this Police pay issue, I'd now like to voice my disgust.

I think the Home Secretary is under the impression that Middle England see her as being very clever and prudent. I can't speak for all of Middle England but I think she's come out of it looking like an idiot.

If an arbitration panel says 2.5% and then you only give that 2.5% over 9 months instead of 12 then you haven't given 2.5%.
So you haven't managed to abide to the arbitration panel's judgement.
So making big speeches about how you've magically given them the pay rise and kept to your targets makes you look at best disillusioned and at worst stupid.

If I could sum up the last 10+ years of labour rule I would sum it up as these two phrases:

Tax more, Get less

Appearing competent > Being competent

I wish I'd never voted for them.*

It's not about whether the police do a good job or not - some comments on other sites rant about the miner's strikes. I was barely out of nappies when that happened so why should I give a sh!t? Ancient history.

It's not about what other members of the public sector are getting. It doesn't matter.

It's not about whether 2.5% is more costly to the tax-payer than 1.9%.

It's about the underhanded method that has been used.

You wouldn't order a three course meal and then refuse to pay the full cost of the starter after you've eaten it.

I know it's an overused phrase but it's the principle that's at stake here.

The government should abide by the arbitration panel and pay the 2.5% over 12 months including the back-pay. If they gave a rats-arse about inflation then maybe they should have spent less money elsewhere on overpriced construction projects, illegal wars and lousy computer systems.

*I'm not a 'loyal' voter. In my view a political party is not like a football team that you support regardless of what it is doing. I vote for the party that I believe has the best policies at the time. I currently have no idea which party that would be but I now know which one it isn't.

Data Protection

Now that the dust has settled on the whole missing disks fiasco I'd like to reflect on some of the outcomes.

For one I can't believe how most of the media has absolved the government (and in particular Gordon Brown) of any blame in this.

How can he be held into account for the actions of a junior civil servant?

is what they've been saying.

Well I would agree, if a junior civil servant acted inappropriately then it would be unfair to hold the Prime Minister responsible.

The trouble is I don't think the Administrative Officer (AO) did act inappropriately. I think they were doing as they were told.

They might have cocked up the postage type but unless it's a one off you shouldn't be sending confidential data through the post.
The government agency I work for has to periodically send data to the treasury. It too has to do so via posted disks. This is not only risky but it is also costly.

Consider this: If you want to get from A to B once and you could either use a £200 taxi or buy a £10,000 car then you'd hire the taxi. However if you want to regularly get from A to B then the car would end up being more economically viable.

The most expensive and risky factors in a computer system are always the people that use it and the point of input/output. The more automated you can make something, the more robust it is and the less it will cost you in the long term.

However a decision was made that instead of enabling the treasury system to automatically communicate with other government systems and vice-versa, they would do it by manually exchanging disks. This was no doubt done to save money as the set up costs for this kind of connectivity are high.

Who would have been in a position to make such important budgetary decisions in the treasury over the last few years?

Not that AO, that's for sure.