Runnymede Institute

Our mole at Price Waterhouse Coopers is nervous, he’s done his sums and cross-checked the inside charts on public sector pensions, not good. Political book-cookery and acrobatic accounting method has dug a deep chasm between reality and the true state of the state’s affairs. Worse still, the mandarins of money in every sector have maintained a pretence worthy of a dozen BAFTAs to make sure their gilt-lined twilight years unfold without a hitch.

The mainstream media may be sharpening the blades to slice up fat-cat NHS honchos that they’re outing yet this is anything but a public service. Sit through 50 seconds of the “Greedy Andrew Lansley” clip on Youtube and prepare yourself for an eye-opening experience of dastardly double-dealing. The controlled press is merely laying out the emotional groundwork to help Number 10 privatise the NHS, hand it all over to their nefarious partners in neo-crime.

UPDATE: June 2nd, Lansley thinks he can cover his tracks, predicts Doom!

Police pensions haven’t received such exposure but there have been blips on the radar such as last September’s announcement that they had a shortfall of £114 million, which in 2011 has risen to a figure we shudder to document here. George Osborne says it’s unsustainable and maintains a safe distance from bothersome inquisitors but somehow, he found the money to keep the old ex-coppers off the protest phalanx and out of the way of the Jackboot Brigade.

How you ask can this charade go on ad infinitum and maintain a respectable police force on the streets of England and Wales? The sad truth is that it can’t and some of the crop of new recruits are as bad or worse than the thuggish knuckle-dragger who murdered Ian Tomlinson in cold blood. You won’t be reading it in the broadsheets but becoming a policeman is less attractive by the second and the day may come when they’ll be enticing recruits with payment for riot squads by the stitch.

The Police Federation’s Ian Rennie recently sent out a missive reminding members that pension rules had changed as of April 2011 and went on to outline the same;

“please note that, as some of the revised commutation factors are now higher than 20:1, there may be tax implications for some members. This is because the value of the commuted lump sum may now exceed the maximum permitted by HMRC, which is currently 25% of the total value of benefits vested. If the commuted lump sum does exceed the HMRC limit of 25%, the amount of the lump sum in excess of that limit will be deemed an unauthorised payment and subject to a 40% tax charge.”

In plain English, government policy planners mean to frustrate every officer with a streak of decency and make certain those who accept this new deal hate their job and demonstrate it daily. The same overpaid functionaries whose notions of law and order ensured crime’s tenfold increase now endorse a policy certain to attract the worst type of people to the uniform.

They’re quite difficult to argue with on any point and if some hapless PC ventures as far as to ask a sensible question, he’s met with the usual pre-conceived, shot from the hip insults rather than logical response. Twisting the rules to serve a political agenda rather than the public good is what ails us today but the office walls of any given apparatchik are littered with sheepskins from all the right ‘institutions’ purporting they know what they’re talking about.

The difference between seeming clever and behaving intelligently isn’t always glaringly apparent in these initial years of our new century. A one-week course through a PR and Neuro-Linguistic Programming expert is enough to make the most hopeless deficient a powerhouse manipulator of mankind. If they have a less than average university degree, all the easier as they’d likely kill their mother for a grandiose job title.

On the other hand, it takes around five years to become competent in a skilled trade and another four to become a master but since that doesn’t come with pompous credentials and garlands, we discount the most valuable people in our society as somewhat lesser by default. There’s evidence galore if you only look around but the powers that be drum on about the need for no child to be left behind in ‘their’ system because it instills them with pride, which in our experience is the best route to a bitchslap when flaunted and rarely conjures a decent job.

It’s like the old joke about the plastic surgeon with the leaky faucet. Plumber arrives, changes a rubber bit and leaves within three minutes. When a very expensive invoice arrives, the doctor calls the plumber to complain that in his professional capacity, he could never charge such a sum. And the plumber replies; “Neither could I when I was a plastic surgeon”.

That’s probably not the best example but it does illustrate the source of modern society’s problems, that a man whose work only serves to satisfy people’s vanity is considered more beneficial than one who’ll ensure your house doesn’t overflow with sewage. Perhaps it’s an overused cliche to describe a policeman’s role in the same way but politicians have without doubt converted Britain into a no-cost public toilet and posted the flush lever to Strasbourg.

Before laws were co-opted and superseded by EU edicts, cops had a dirty job but they also had proper tools and the skills to use them, yes, rubber hoses too. With the demise of habeas corpus, a dangerous precedent has been set that will surely translate into more belligerent criminality that police have to deal with;

“If they hang you for a sheep, might as well take the whole flock!” ?

Many officers made a safe exit in time for full benefits but there’s no rest for the wicked whackers of the public purse. At a ballpark cost of £2 million per day, police pensions aren’t merely unsustainable, they’re perfectly ripe for a newfangled fraud to tax already retired recipients on the back end. But they can only pay that tax if they keep receiving a cheque while we’re entering deeper into the banker-engineered economic quagmire.

The retiree’s association is there to give helpful advice but in the long run, they only serve to console the inconsolable and keep their tempers from flaring at the gates of Parliament. We foresee the day when numerous, well-aged, fit and feisty Gene Hunt types join the protesting crowds to croon for Cameron’s autochtonic stormtroopers.

Runnymede Institute’s mole at New Scotland Yard tells us it goes like this;

“No Future, You’re Next!”