Boris assaults own strategy on crime?
Remember one of Boris’ key points during the election campaign? He said he’d increase police presence on the streets in an attempt to tackle petty crime. And yet today, the Mayor announced swinging cuts of £12 million - including to the police, a move likely to reduce numbers. Tories on the Assembly defended the move thus:
“I understand the number of people employed by the met are at record levels and yet we still have problems with crime in London.
“We need to challenge the perception that has grown up in recent years that the solution is to just buy more and more people and to spend more and more money because that has not borne fruit in the past” (Richard Biggs AM)
Let’s cut that down - there have been more police on the streets for a short period as part of an attempt to tackle what everyone agrees is a deep-rooted problem. So, naturally, we should give up?
Increased police numbers won’t eradicate crime in London. Nor do they present a long term solution; they’re merely a sticking plaster over problems with deep socio-economic roots that need to be addressed. But, surely, they’re a necessary sticking plaster, to a certain extent? A cut in a force devised to protect the citizen during an attempt to tackle crime seems somewhat perverse. Especially when that attempt to tackle crime rather misses the point, and is largely based in police presence on the streets.
So much for increased spending on youth crime, then.
(Hat-tip: Tory Troll)
I wonder if all the fuckwits who voted BoJo in realise what they’ve done yet? It’s less than 3 months since his election, and the guy is just one great streak of piss-stained disaster.
In a year’s time, we should list all of Johnson’s decisions and their terrible consequences, every single decision he’s made that screws the average Londoner, put them on huge bill boards all around the city and at the top of each should just be written “happy now, London?”
Gobshite.