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You do realize most of these stories are from the UK right? RIGHT?

yep, but that film aabout the lawer and the cop where from the U.S.

Far too much paperwork, not enough time ready to respond to calls.

PCSO’s are a bit of a strange animal. As far as I aware they where introduced because there allot of votes to be had in having police officers patrol the seats, but there is practically no evidence that ‘bobbies on the beat’ have any actual affect on crime.

Basically their purpose is to free up real policemen to areas where they can be more effective by employing PCSO's in this largely symbolic role. Though stories like this do make me question how effective this has been. Of course anecdotes are not actual evidence.

I have had no dealing with PCSO’s personally so cannot comment.

LuciusAR wrote:Far too much paperwork, not enough time ready to respond to calls.

PCSO’s are a bit of a strange animal. As far as I aware they where introduced because there allot of votes to be had in having police officers patrol the seats, but there is practically no evidence that ‘bobbies on the beat’ have any actual affect on crime.

Basically their purpose is to free up real policemen to areas where they can be more effective by employing PCSO's in this largely symbolic role. Though stories like this do make me question how effective this has been. Of course anecdotes are not actual evidence.

I have had no dealing with PCSO’s personally so cannot comment.

I have
Working on my van at the side of the road (outside my house).
Two of the pillocks came down and threatened to arrest me, as working on vehicles at the side of the road is illegal.
I then pointed out they should arrest all the AA, RAC,Greenflag people aswell.
They then said I should stop, or they would arrest me on the spot.
I said ok, but you must put in writing, that your telling me to use my vehicle in a unroadworthy condition. At which point they left.

No cops, but sort of relevant.

A married couple I'm friends with was helping the wife's sister and brother-in-law move into a new suburb. Most of their stuff had been moved in a few weeks before, and they jsut were shifting all those ends and odds you seem to collect over the years. Anyway the sister (who is pregnant at the time) walked around to the back door to spot a guy climbing out of the window with a DVD player under his arm. She screamed, he dropped the DVD player and ran for it. Hubby and brother-in-law heard the scream and saw the guy run so they start chasing him up the street screaming all the foul words they can muster.

After yelling for a while, the husband had an idea. He stopped cursing and started saying, while sprinting, things like: "We don't wanna hurt ya mate, we just wanna talk". Regardless the thief kept running until he tried to jump the fence of a school, clipped his foot on the fence, and slammed into the concrete. Hubby and Brother-in-law caught up and pinned him to the ground, the Brother-in-law was about to beat the thief stupid when Hubby stopped him, and got a confused look in return. He turned to the crook, and calmly asked him if he was alright. After this he asks him why he stole from them, and then explained that his sister-in-law was quite upset. The thief agrees to return with them to apologise.

After apologising and some more talk, I gak you not they invited him to stay for dinner. By this stage the thief has no idea what kind of strange people he's dealing with but he accepted, and over dinner confessed that he'd robbed their new home twice before and that he'd sold their laptop on ebay.

They forgave him, and to this day they are good friends.

Well Im from South Africa...If any of you dudes/dudets want to swop with me be my guess.

You know, one thing to keep in mind when you cry "the cops never showed up!" is to ask if the cops ever even got dispatched! Just because you called the police and someone answered, that does not translate to an officer being immediately sent to you at that exact nano-second. Your call goes to whatever emergency services answering set-up you have locally where they take your information, decided its relevance and importance and then dispatch the services they deam appropriate with whatever information they pass on. Even in the best of times it can take several minutes for the dispatcher to collect all the relevant information they need before passing it on. Having been in a 911 call center I can say I have personally witnessed and been ashamed to see this system fail badly due to simple human error and lack of judgement.

Lets get down to brass tacks, our public sector is an absolute shambles. Just like the last time the labour party fethed the country up. I left the green berets 18 months ago and im now working for the city council. A good 30% of the workforce is on long term sick (6 months on full pay) for such terrible injuries as 'depression' and 'bad back' but funny thing, they get better after 6 months and they have to go on half pay. Would any private sector worker get such benefits? The NHS is as bad, my mate works there and just took 8 weeks off at full pay for depression. His nurse partner has had paid leave for depression 3 times in the last 2 years. The fire service are ridiculously overpaid. Teachers, firemen, policemen, nhs staff, prison staff, council staff, social workers, they all take the piss outrageously. It fills me with rage seeing what goes on here to the point that i would re-join my brothers in the RM at the drop of a hat if my missus wasnt so stressed about it. We have policemen and women getting suspended on full pay for disgusting abuses of power, or taking 12 months paid leave for 'stress' because 'i didnt join the police to deal with stress'. The police are no worse than anyone else in the public sector, they want as much money as they can get their mitts on, but they want as little work and as much holiday as possible. And therein lies the problem. They arent interested in crime, they are interested in money and holidays and their cast iron pensions. The only way to fix the police is to fix the public sector and that means salary cuts, less benefits, more gruelling training and a better standard of recruit. We need a hatchet man to crush the public sector and get them back in line, and i hope Cameron is up to the job. Notice, i AM in the public sector, and i want this, because i am no hypocrite. I work hard, i dont chuck sickies, i play for my team, and as a result i do not fear any such cuts or culls. Can the toady little weasels that make up a sizeable portion of our public sector say the same? Crush them under your iron heel David, and i may well finally feel it is not morally beneath me to join the police. :-)

I'm with you to an extent mattyrm; I work in a hospital and some of the staff here (especially in the admin side, not nearly so much in the clinical side) really take the wee, doing next to no work. So much so that there is a constant stream of temps coming in to deal with the huge backlogs of clinical typing the medical secretaries are too busy gossiping about to actually deal with. Not to mention the millions of managers who are so busy managing their own little management worlds that they don't seemingly have time to actually do anything constructive.

Having said that, both my parents are teachers and they work damn hard at their jobs. I don't think they have had more than a handful of days off work in the entire time they have been working. Then again they work in the private sector, so that might influence them as they don't have to put up with the crap the state sector throws at teachers all day long.

@Silver - Yeah, I'd have to back you up as far as Teachers are concerned - my missus is a teacher and she works fething hard. She definitely earns her money (which isn't great for a graduate really).

My wife is training to be a teacher at the moment. Don't quite know why - some people are just naturally crazy

mattyrm wrote:A good 30% of the workforce is on long term sick (6 months on full pay) for such terrible injuries as 'depression' and 'bad back' but funny thing, they get better after 6 months and they have to go on half pay.

Any evidence to back this up?

Well said Matty.

It always amazes me that public sector workers are always complaining about how tough their jobs are, it's quite simple if you aren't happy with where you are and what you are doing then look for something else rather than constantly bitching about it. In reality as they are working for the government they are extended every right and courtesy available because the rule makers have to be seen to be adhering to there own codes, shame this isn't extended to everyone else. (or maybe just as well incase we can't do any work until we have completed at least 7 risk assessments)

The missus is a secondary school teacher and she hates the mentality of those she works with. It strikes me that rather than people joining the Teaching profession, Police, Fire brigade or whatever because it is a vocation they feel passionate about, because of all the perks, it is attracting those seeking high pay for what they perceive as an easy life, then once they show up they start to complain about having to work. I am not saying any of these professions are easy, more that there are a large amount of people out there who are comparitively lazy when you look at the work they do have to do.

I have the mis-fortune of working in an office environment and whilst there are some decent lads and lasses about the majority are whinging malingerers who look for the slightest excuse to get time off or complain that their chair isn't the right colour and this is causing them to suffer with acute nervouse hypertension

PCSO's were designed to free up normal coppers so that they could respond to reports of crime, if at 6.00pm on a Tuesday a truckload of potentialy stollen electrical goods and illegal imigrants isn't on their priority list then feth knows what was, clearly I missed the earthquake, terrorist attack and 3 bank roberies which weren't reported on Points West!

25 years ago the Civil Service and local government were regarded as steady, unexciting jobs which were undemanding (at the lower level) and not well paid but offered good benefits in terms of security, holidays and pension.

Since then, everything has got screwed up.

Now they get all the above but get paid substantially than the private sector for the same work, and actually work substantially less.

Aye thats the point Squil, the perks we get here is crazy, were paid till 3 every day yet we almost always finish at about 1. Today i was home for 12:30, but still 90% of my co workers bitch. They would be in for a shock if they actually did a proper job.

Teachers, Firemen and Policemen very rarely join up because they really want to do it. They join because of the benefits and because it will benefit them, and this is why our public sector is a shambles.

And the starting salary for a fireman is 30 grand. I am truly stunned by this. Nurses, Teachers and Policemen all do more than them. In fact, its fair to say they probably do less work than anyone else in the public sector, they are delluged with applicants for every place (which allows you to be picky surely?) and still they strike.

I dont know a single serving Royal Marine who wouldnt happily do a firemans job for half that.

And no Lucius i dont. Save to say that from about 40 staff members i think we have now got 11 agency guys filling in because we have so many on long term sick. 3 with depression, 3 with stress, two with weird back things (i was talking to one of these guys the other day and he said it was a "mental" thing where he thinks his back hurts when it really doesnt?!) one with a dodgy knee....

The point is, if they only got paid a week or two's sick pay, they would fething get to work. The system is broken, and we need to get these fething slackers back to the grindstone.

Frazzled wrote:Now they get all the above but get paid substantially than the private sector for the same work, and actually work substantially less.

If only that were true...

I work in a state Employment Security office (the "Unemployment Office" of old), and we work 50-hour weeks that are frantic, balls-to-the-wall unpleasantness from 8AM to 7 PM Monday through Friday. I'm no "spring chicken" - I've had corporate jobs, sales jobs, and even done manual labor, and I've never been so poorly paid or so over-worked in the 24 years that I've been part of the workforce. I bust my ass every day to find people work, to re-train them for less trade-impacted industries, and to wrestle with a 23-year-old computer system in order to get them the Unemployment Insurance benefits they need to keep food on the table and a roof over their head while they look for work. The unemployment rate in my city is outrageous - fully 30% of the people who live within city limits are currently receiving UI benefits...

Even without knowing what you do for a living, I would probably swap jobs with you in a freaking MINUTE, Frazz. State services haven't been in demand this badly in thirty years, while state budgets are being slashed to the bone - and we're the ones who have to deliver!

No you wouldn't. If you wanted to you would have done so.

I wish I worked 50 hours a week. More precisely my associates wish they worked 50 hours a week

Yeah Frazz is right mate, if it sucks that badly, why dont you quit and find a new job?

Most people complain but never have any intention of leaving, i didnt want to leave the Royal Marines, but i went ahead and did when they stopped giving a fair sized cheque to my badly wounded friends or dead comrades families.

If it sucks so badly, leave.

I dont know about the USA, but over here the public sector love to complain (including almost all of my workmates) but none of them would ever quit. I love calling them on their bs after they have whined at me for twenty minutes.

Same with the fire department, if the government had any balls at all they would have just said "feth off. Your not getting any more money, if you dont like it, get a new job"

How many would have quit?

About Zero.

mattyrm wrote:Yeah Frazz is right mate, if it sucks that badly, why dont you quit and find a new job?

Because our unemployment rate is 30% in our city and 14% for our county over-all? Y'all do realize that we're in the worst job market since the Reagan recession in 1982, right?

...And you're telling me to quit my job and look for work?

Everyone knows it is much easier to find a job when you already have one.

Kilkrazy wrote:Everyone knows it is much easier to find a job when you already have one.

You're more attractive to employers, true. But it also means that you've got other obligations during the hours they generally want you to apply and interview...

this has gone pretty far Off Topic.

back ON topic

I've dealt with the police many times, mostly for traffic "violations" that weren't really violations, just discrimination because I ride a crotch-rocket and drive a pocket-rocket (04' Honda CBR 600F4i and 89' Honda CRX lowered and gutted with a larger motor swapped in)

I regularly go to the race track to get the go-fast-itch out of my system, but I'll get pulled over about once a month just to be harassed. Just last month I was on my bike going 45mph around a wide turn where the speed limit was 45mph, the car ahead of me started to speed up and there was a cop parked on the side of the road at the end of the turn. The cop waited for me to pass then pulled up behind me and pulled me over.

He starts his bitch-fest asking why I dont have insurance on my motorcycle (its not required in my state) I explain that to him... he then asks how fast I was going, I told him 45. He claimed that his radar clocked me at 65, I told him that either my speedometer or his radar must have been wrong then, my speedo said 45, he then proceeds to try and find things wrong with the bike "your license plate is dented, I can give you a $1000 fine for the first offence of having an improperly mounted plate" (it was mounted in the stock location, and not dented at all)
"your bike doesn't have turn signals" (they are integrated in the taillight housing)
he had me wait for about 30 mins while he dicked around in his car then he let me go without a warning because he has nothing to charge me with.



Another time I was delivering pizzas for a major chain in a segregated neighborhood, after making a delivery and starting to head back to work a cop pulled me over. I made no driving infractions, and when I asked him why he pulled me over he didnt say anything and just proceeded to ask why the car had no interior, "the only time ive ever seen a car like that is when they are stolen, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle" he proceeded to search the car without my consent, only to find a pizza-bag, a few reciepts, and a bag of tools. I was 45 mins late getting back to work after that delivery, I didnt get a ticket or a warning or anything because I didnt do anything wrong, it was just the car I drove and the place I was at.


so help the police? never.

Commissar Molotov wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Everyone knows it is much easier to find a job when you already have one.

You're more attractive to employers, true. But it also means that you've got other obligations during the hours they generally want you to apply and interview...

That is true, it can be difficult. Weeds out the nattering nabobs though who are just wasting your time. If they are interested they will work with you in interviewing.

Oh yeah back on topic, my mate works on a golf course, he said one day a bunch of gypo kids turned up on motorcycles (3 i think) and started ragging them all over the greens! Anyway, he said he called the police to say that, you know, thugs were fething wrecking the golf course on motorcycles and he said the guy on the phone said 'weve got no one mate' he said ' er.. What?' and the guy said 'sorry, its a match day! Ring back later!' haha! :-)

mattyrm wrote:Teachers, Firemen and Policemen very rarely join up because they really want to do it.

What are you actually basing this on? You keep lumping teachers in with other public sector workers, but the simple fact is, you have to be a graduate - which means getting a degree (in most cases), then a seperate teaching qualification. After which they can expect to earn less at entry level than both Firemen and Policemen. You don't just become a teacher on a whim, mate. Knowing you as I do, I know that YOU couldn't do it. Not enough patience.

It's not the same thing as being a Fireman or Policeman.

mattyrm wrote:They join because of the benefits and because it will benefit them

Like everyone...

Teachers are a mixed bag, in my experience. Some are great, some are awful, some in between.

According to my aunt, a 30 year veteran of primary school and now a school administrator, there is a predictable cycle to the quality of teachers.

New teachers are very enthusiastic, but quickly burn out. After they burn out, they either quit, or develop a calm cynicism which turns them into excellent instructors. Most quit.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Teachers are a mixed bag, in my experience. Some are great, some are awful, some in between.

...which is an altogether more balanced view than simply: 'Teachers...GRRRR! '


My opinion is pretty much the same as Orkeo's.

During my Youth (heck I sound old ) in Dubai, our house was broken into a number of times. It's different there though. When people break in, you know that they NEED the money. There's a difference between a man stealing what he can to buy bread and a druggee in suburban Australia hocking stuff to score his next hit.

Besides, I'm not even going to bother telling you about the police force in Dubai.
My father spent years there working with the police and founding much of the legal system and protocols. He even got a trophy from the police academy. When I asked him about it, and what he felt he had done there he responded that it was;

"A fething waste of time."