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For their complete and utter cock-up over the Charles de Menezes killing:-
"The Met was fined £175,000 and ordered to pay £385,000 costs, which will be met by the taxpayer."
MET BY THE TAXPAYER!!!!!! Why f@@@@@@ng bother?
Seems like the Met can do whatever it likes but the tab will be picked up by you and me. Ian Blair should resign if he had any concept of honour and dignity.
Perhaps the fine should be paid out of his salary or pension potIts maybe worth while remembering that it’s just one government department fining another one .. money won’t actually change hands.
Ian Blair should go, if not for the killing but then for the terrible picture they tried to paint of the victim afterwards.
Police is funded from Local Government ie Council Tax. The courts are funded by Income Tax as they are a civil service department. So technically it isn’t exactly the same.
Blair’s position is untennable – if this was a public company the head of the Chief Executive would roll.
In terms of responsibility – as head of the Met he must shoulder the blame. It isn’t as if this is the first cloud to hang over his tenure. He should have resigned after the first IPCC report where it was revealed he did not know what his senior managers were doing in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
I have every sympathy with the police in the fight they are facing against terrorism – it is unenviable, however they have messed up and as the chief Blair has to go.
bollocks
Thanks for the constructive reply their straw.
As the council tax is collected by local council therefore the government never saw it in the first place so it is £?m better off from fining the police if the police were funded as a governement department then it would be them swopping money between departments.
As it is its local people who are worse off because the met will have to reduce its spending to cover the fine.
Imposing a fine does seem a ridiculous (and potentially counter-productive) penalty.
If the Met are to cover it themselves (which they should, given that it is them being penalised) then it will result in a reduction in policing quality or resource. Great. If the problem resulted from systemic failure, then this might even be exacerbated.
It is akin to a judge imposing a fine on a drug-addicted burglar who has breached his bail conditions. It leads directly to more problems…
What should have happened? That’s more difficult to answer. An independent public report highlighting the failings with clear recommendations and requirements for change would be a start.
And yes, the position of senior managers has to come into question. I expect that the next few days may be spent planning for changes, whatever has been said thus far…
To me it takes a great leap of imagination to separate one government department from another .. it’s all the government, it all tax. Its a mind game pretending its not.
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