A gentle reminder… – The Sleepy Policeman
Posted by nakedcop on February 8, 2007
Copyright © The Sleepy Policeman – View this article and others HERE
First published Monday 5th February 2007:
A gentle reminder…
This blog recently passed its one year anniversary. I was going to write a piece about a year of how I’ve found a way to pour my vitriol out into the public domain, but then I kind of forgot.
For what it’s worth I have thought about giving this thing up quite a few times and the anniversary semed as good a time as any to draw a discreet veil over things and retire to my modest mansion in Sleepy Hollow.
But then every now and then I see something that reminds me why I need this blog and how it is sometimes the only way I’ve got of stopping that twitch I get in my left eye when I want to destroy things and tread on kittens.
This is one of those times.
I rarely read newspapers. I like to get the news from a source that doesn’t try to make my mind up for me or make me feel like I’m reading an editorial by someone who was banging their fist on the table and foaming at the mouth while they wrote.
I especially never read The Daily Mail. I’m not one for stereotypes, but if I wanted to read that sort of stuff I’d buy a copy of Mein Kampf.
But tonight, as I wandered through Tesco’s, wondering what sad-bastard microwave meal-for-one tickled my fancy, I saw a copy of The Mail displayed as I passed the comic section.
The headline blared “Hour a day police officers”. Or something.
I gave into my baser instincts and had a look.
Today, The Mail is getting into a strop about police who go off work sick or injured and then return to work on reduced hours to ease themselves back into the normal routine. The Mail grabs some impressive-looking figure out of the air that has the word “million” in it and goes on to express moral outrage that officers on these reduced hours are paid the same amount as full-time officers, “at an average of £30,000″.
I refuse to post a link to The Mail on here, mainly for the same reasons as I would never post a link to the BNP website, so you’ll have to trust me on the content.
But let me make the following points to any eagle-eyed Mail “journalists” reading:
1 – I’ve been in the job almost 5 years and I’m one of the most experienced officers on my shift. I don’t earn anything near £30 grand a year, so I have no idea where you plucked that figure from.
2 – People go sick. If the offices of the Daily Mail are some illness-free utopia then good luck to you. But if that is the case then you clearly aren’t living in the real world, although I suspect that applies on many levels.
3 – Your article suggests that officers that return on reduced hours should not be paid the same as those officers on full-time. So what is your preferred option?
a) Officers return full time when they’re not ready for it, so they can make mistakes that your rag can then write more stories about?
b) Officers just stay on full time sick for longer?
c) Officers return to work, having been injured on duty, on reduced pay and are thus punished for getting injured doing their job?
I imagine it’s easy to write stories abou how lazy the police are when you’re sat on your arse in a comfy office in Wapping, where the only danger is from getting your tie caught in the shredder or drowning in your own sense of smugness and self-worth.
But I, like a lot of my colleagues, do a job where getting injured is part of a very real daily risk. And we do it so that people like you can sleep safe at night in your bed and write your articles dripping in outrage.
If you want to serve a year in uniform and then return to your nice office jobs then you get to write about people in that manner. Until then, you can stay sat in your office while we take the risks for you.
And if it’s alright with you, we’d quite like to get paid while we’re doing it.
PS: My eye’s stopped twitching now.
