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Boris Johnson has suggested huge parts of the Metropolitan Police could be privatised to cut costs.
The Mayor said an “irreducible core” of duties would be protected but claimed private firms could run some Scotland Yard services “without making the thin blue line any thinner”.
The Met is struggling to fill a budget black hole of £250 million. Mr Johnson’s new deputy mayor for policing, Stephen Greenhalgh, is tasked with cutting costs.
Mr Johnson’s comments come after the West Midlands and Surrey forces set out radical plans for private firms to take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighbourhoods and even detaining suspects. But in a written answer, the Mayor said any private contracts would be more likely to involve back-office jobs.
“However, I do believe that competitive tendering of contracts beyond this provides a means of cutting costs considerably without making the thin blue line any thinner. It is therefore something that should be explored.”
Patrolling by community support officers, developing cases, responding to incidents, victim and witness support, managing high-risk individuals or intelligence and engagement with the public, as well as managing forensics and the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources could all be up for grabs.
Originally posted by skuly
as well as managing forensics
Originally posted by mee30
We can not keep going down the road we are, it just doesn't work
It's not FREE, we pay for it via tax and national insurance. And it DID used to work.
Originally posted by mee30
What it really comes down to is the fact that people want stuff for FREE!
Thats the social engineering that I refered to.
Originally posted by mee30
As it stands now your children will be paying for your free stuff! How do you feel about that? Can you do that with a clear conscience?
It's not FREE, we pay for it via tax and national insurance. And it DID used to work.
Thats the social engineering that I refered to.
Originally posted by mee30
reply to post by skuly
I'm sorry to tell you this but the freebies are coming to an end one way or the other! I am anti government personally and I'm very vocal about it! But privatization has to occur! It's just the deregulation we need to look at now! We need the free market!
Privatisation does not work in this day and age because competition is a myth. The big guys, backed by unlimited resources, eat up the little guys on the block. Once that is allowed to happen, consumers are held hostage by a handful of competitors with the same prices. You keep arguing that policing is a freebie, but yet any tax payer can easily discredit your argument. Therefore, I question your motives for constantly posting such an easily proven lie.
The single worse thing that a 'free society' could do is to place public policing in to the hands of private companies. If you've ever experienced a private bouncer at a nightclub, you would understand that a private police officer no longer works for the "public" but rather a private corporation. Private corporations set targets because they are profit driven entities. If you cannot see the huge red flag, I'm truly sorry.
No, it's VoidHawk who has this right. What you are saying is the basis of Friedman economics. (As in Milton Friedman) That's what created this mess, the mess before this one the mess before that one so on and so on etc.... It's proven again and again. Watch the movie The Shock Doctrine . After viewing it, the clouds of deceit will be cleared.