Home Secretary steals police oficers pay rise

[David Bailey]

I loved the way our Prime Minister Gordon Brown supported his Home Secretary by insinuating that paying the police award in full would adversely affect the national economy. What a load of bunkum!

It's called playing the man not the ball.

If you're caught out doing something clearly and unarguably dodgy, your best option is to shift the goalposts - firstly by trying to portray the police as grasping by implying they're been handed loads of money over the past 10 years (yesterday's argument) and now by saying that the massive cost (£30 million) will lead to national bankruptcy and cost us all our homes or something.

I imagine tomorrow's argument will be something along the same lines - for example, they're already saying that the difference could fund an extra 800 officers or something. New Labour in full spin, basically.

Anything to actually avoid the actual issue - which is that the Government reneged on the deal to save a few quid.

[TurboTomato]

I imagine tomorrow's argument will be something along the same lines - for example, they're already saying that the difference could fund an extra 800 officers or something. New Labour in full spin, basically.

That's a load of *******s. Why don't they stop their pay rises every year then, and just get 1000 more officers instead? Idiots.

[David Bailey]

That's a load of *******s.

Well, yeah. Obviously. And MPs aren't exactly shy about their own pay rises, either.

It's basically an incredibly bad call by Jacqui Smith - why create such a large political row over something so relatively trivial? It's not even like it's a principled, pre-planned stand or anything, they seem to have just stumbled into this one. Idiots, the lot of them.