Has Britain become more unequal in the last thirty years is a reasonable question to ask given the huge social changes which have evolved since the onset of the revolution of Thatcher’s premiership, through Blair’s radical revamp of the Labour party to New Labour and now enshrined in the warring Coalition and the constant mantra of all of them of their drive to improve “social mobility”. Given the wealth of equality legislation nationally and supported by the European legislation and attendant case law in the European courts the answer should be a resounding yes, what however is the true answer?
I believe there are five major measurements of in/equality in society and the opportunities that are available to people to access them is the key :-
• Housing
• Jobs
• Education
• Tax Distribution
• Class

Housing
At a time when it is statistically proven that the housing stock is at an all time low, less and less houses are being built, the government no longer sees itself as an agency of affordable housing but still requires Local Authorities to house the homeless, clearly the access to affordable housing in the rented sector for those unable to buy is dire.
The consequences of a policy by the Thatcher government and further pursued by New Labour of selling council housing and not building replacements clearly disenfranchises a large section of society and leaves them open to an insecure future and sends a message from government of rented housing provided by Local Authorities is a transitory dumping ground for people whilst they improve their lot and if they do not then that’s tough and we don’t care what happens to you.

Jobs
Jobs and the type of work available to people outside of the “professions” over thirty years of government policy against Trade Unions and manufacturing businesses by both Thatcher and New Labour has changed considerably from a strong manufacturing base to the service sector which has resulted in jobs where people are less secure with flexible and often unsocial hours, less pension and sickness arrangements if any and no redress due to lack of collective ability to challenge unfair practices by the employer over wages and terms and conditions.
Go to any Call Centre, large retail outlet or service industry hospitality venue and ask those who work there what their experience is and the answer may well be “Well what else can I do round here?” That will almost certainly be the only work available to a large section of our society.

Education
Successive governments over thirty years have advocated more and more people going to university and the figure quoted was 50% by Brown when he was the unelected Prime Minister. Why?
The answer given was “We need a strong, highly educated workforce to compete in the world markets. Undoubtedly this is correct, but what constitutes a highly educated workforce? A university education is the only one it seems.
Statistically the top universities still overwhelmingly have people from the same strands of society attending them and your chances of a top university education are extremely slim if you belong to certain sections of society. Public schools disproportionately are represented in those universities.
Top university graduates overwhelmingly are represented across the board at the highest levels nationally in Politics, Law, Academia, Business, Civil Service, Religion, The Armed Forces and the other august institutions where power is exercised and influenced in our society.
So, a public school background combined with an Oxbridge university education still means that you are most likely to have a successful life no matter what and purely, because you are tapped into all the networks of influence and control of wealth and opportunity that are available to you.
Access by others to these networks is limited and restricted just by the school you attended.

Tax Distribution.
I hate to quote statistics because someone will always provide other research which suggests they are wrong or manipulated but here are a couple.
1. Benefit Fraud costs the exchequer £1BN per annum
2. Tax evasion/avoidance costs the exchequer in the region of £40BN per annum
3. In 2009/10 there were 5 prosecutions for direct tax evasion/avoidance per £1BN of fraud
4. In 2009/10 there were 9000 prosecutions for benefit fraud per £1BN of fraud.

You do the maths, but it is obvious to me where the biggest cost to the country lies and the myth perpetuated by irresponsible media and government of huge swathes of people defrauding the exchequer is right, but it isn’t in benefit fraud.Clearly there are some still in our society who continue to believe in the temporary nature of tax since it’s first introduction by William Pitt the Younger in 1799 and you are more likely to pay a greater proportion of your income in tax the less you earn and as a large corporation it is your duty to your shareholders, who of course come before anyone else to avoid as much tax as possible, often aided by some of the biggest accountancy firms in the world.

Class.
Class is probably one of the most contentious subjects to approach in our society in a dispassionate and measured way. We are all middle class is one famous politicians outpouring. How wrong could they be?
Class is always difficult to define and should best be left to the individual and the spread of the Thamesian accent amongst the rich and famous is perhaps an indicator that we all aspire to the working class. “I work therefore I am working class” to paraphrase Descartes.
Owen Jones in his “ Chavs-The Demonisation of the Working Class” defines working class as :-
1. Working for others
2. Having little or no autonomy in the work you do
3. Receiving less than the national median wage
4. Looking for work and claiming benefits

You could add others such as Terms and Conditions, Pension and Sickness arrangements, Wage scales and job security etc which are all indicators of the work you do but basically if you work for someone else, are told how to do it and have no power over your work life or you are looking for work and claiming benefits (which is often a job in itself!) you are working class. This class is more diverse than any other as is visible in society today. The “higher” you look in society the more mainstream and less diverse it becomes. This has changed little in over thirty years and is an instant picture of in/equality in society if you are looking for one.
So the legal characteristics of difference are more highly concentrated in the working class and may add to the disadvantage and lack of opportunity in individuals but all people in this class suffer a disadvantage to some degree or another.

Conclusion.
It is clear that society is more unequal than ever and in my work in other countries I often hear from my colleagues that those countries are corrupt and corruption is endemic. I am not suggesting that UK is more corrupt than other countries but what is the society that we want and how fair do we want it to be?
How do we define corruption?
We have had scandal after scandal in politics (Expenses and Lobbying), business (Libor etc), The BBC (Savile) and other media institutions and the Police (Leveson), the NHS (Staffordshire), The Armed Forces (Camp Bastion detainees) and still we hear always “We need to learn the lessons from this make sure it doesn’t happen again and move on”
Move on to where? Where we can conveniently forget about it?

How can we reduce inequality and do we want to?
• Build more affordable rented housing under the management of Local Authorities
• Invest in Manufacturing
• Collect the tax due to the Exchequer
• Improve State Education
• Improve working conditions through legislation

This is ultimately a question of leadership and if we have a leadership which continues to put self interest before ethics, things will remain the same for another thirty years and beyond.

I have deliberately not referred to the wealth of statistics available to support these arguments because they are out there if you want them.
Some of my references are:-

The Great Tax Robbery- Richard Brooks 2013
Chavs- The Demonisation of the Working Classes- Owen Jones 2012
The Downing Street Years- Margaret Thatcher 1993
The Hierarchy of Human Needs- Abraham Maslow 1954

This burning question begins to trouble us all once again with this new and horrific event perpetrated on a quiet Woolwich street in london on that fateful day in May 2013
It is of course all too easy for commentators to inevitably launch into the kind of rhetoric which is unhelpful and inflammatory at this point which has once again happened but the question still remains hanging in the air unanswered despite all the public recriminations
Consider for a moment a window in time and what brings the lives of two disparate young people together
One has the benefit of a loving home life, a good education, health happiness, the respect of friends and colleagues, an honourable calling and expectations of success.
Another has none of these things,in fact quite the opposite, their home life may have constantly described them as useless and stupid, this was reinforced in a school where results, results and more results were the holy grail and teachers excluded them on that basis, this then minimised their chances of worthwhile and valuable work whilst all around them were pictures and examples of rampant consumerism which they are financially excluded from.
Let’s now describe how they might see themselves. The first is proud , has self esteem, confidence and their personal values and beliefs give them a positive world view which says if I work hard I will achieve all I want in my life and I am valued by society at large.
The other however is not able to say any of those things about themselves and in fact may say I am valueless. I am not valued or respected by others or society at large, I am denigrated as a person in the popular media and the groups I belong to are openly despised and ridiculed, but I also want the same things the other person has but when I look forward to the rest of my life I see I may never have those things in this society into which I was born.
This is not necessarily defined by social characteristics such as race, gender, religion, socio economic conditions, one political group or a different class although it maybe exacerbated by any or several of them in each individual case and can apply to anyone who finds themselves excluded, disenfranchised and unwanted by others, with no sense of belonging. Belonging being one of the most powerful and important emotions that we as human beings can feel giving us a raison d’etre and the glue that holds groups together no matter how small or large.
As in the case of a soldier who will feel all of the things in the first case and a murderer who will feel all of the things in the second case which then collide horrifically in a suburban London street.
How did the murderer begin to think he may feel all the honourable feelings imbued in the soldier by acting in this heinous way.
Was it the siren voices of others which said but we want you, we love and value you, we have an honourable calling which will make you somebody who matters and can be proud of in our world, just maybe those siren voices eventually begin to resonate in this disenfranchised young person and the blurring of the moral and ethical positions in that young person’s mind become a visual reality.
I know this maybe an uncomfortable truth but perhaps we are looking at this phenomenon in too superficial a way.
This maybe a problem of inequality and injustice and not any of the common and obvious hooks we like to use to rationalise this uncivilised behaviour, maybe just maybe we might start to approach the issue in a more lateral and broad minded way across society’s tranches of those disillusioned and excluded from what we call “society” and they call “them”
Perhaps the questions as a society we should be asking as did that brave woman who confronted the murderers is not only “What do you want?'” but also Why?

This is a phenomenon which you may be lucky enough to experience in your life. When it happened to me I realised that this felt like a very different but more intense love for a child than I had ever experienced before, even surpassing the love of my own children, who it must be said I adore beyond belief, warts and all as they say.
Why the intensity? Why so different?
Well, I guess after many months of reflection, it probably boils down to one thing, immortality.
As a leader and in the maelstrom of life with all it’s high and low points I was always intent on the now. How is my career progressing? How are the relationships and love that I value progressing? Does my partner still love me? Do my children love me? Am I earning enough to live the lifestyle that I want for all of us? Am I keeping us all safe and secure?
These things embroiled me in the day to day, often not allowing me to always consider not just tomorrow but also when I am gone. I am much better at not doing that now. I suppose that the ultimate icon of all I have achieved is embodied in my grandchild and the grandchildren who are still to come. I may never meet them or those that I do I may never see them finally grow up and form lifelong partners and have their own children. That is irrelevant, I know deep in my heart they will be there.
If only we could capture that during our lives and give ourselves the opportunity to step back from the fray of life sometimes and recognise the beauty of this life and all it has to offer.
The poem is my message to my grandchildren both now and in the future. Stand back and capture the moments you are given and create, because they will never be repeated.

The Tale of the Garrilygar

The garrilygump is a very big fish who lives at the bottom of the sea
He has great big eyes and a great big mouth
And he eats all his friends for tea
The garrilygar and the garrilygee love the garrilygump for free
But hide in the rocks and the caves everyday
So they don’t get eaten for tea
The garrilygar and the garrilygee are not such big fishes as he
They have smaller eyes and smaller mouths
And they eat all their friends for tea
And the garrilybish and the garrilygosh are very small fish indeed
Who live at the bottom of the sea
They have tiny eyes and tiny mouths
And all their friends eat them for tea
So they hide in the rocks and the little caves every day
Always at quarter to three
So always beware little fish ee dee dee
the garrilygump, the garrilygar and the garrilygee,
If you are a little fish and live at the bottom of the sea
For they’ll be out and about everyday
looking for little fishes like you
As a snack for their afternoon tea.

For my grand-daughter Ava O’Brien 4 and half months old
Tod O’Brien March 2013

The enigma that was Margaret Thatcher was an unrelenting force of nature. I have just finished watching the parliamentary debate and it is right that tribute is paid to her enormous personal and political achievements. She was a pioneer for her gender, a conviction politician who spoke directly and bluntly in terms of her own values and beliefs. She was an enduring towering figure on the world stage that influenced the political grid lines in all of the major dominant countries of the world to this day and for the foreseeable future. It is absolutely right and proper that she will be honoured with a ceremonial public funeral at St Paul’s cathedral in the heart of our great capital city for her leadership during the Falklands campaign.
However, it is the very personal impact that she had on people for which she will be most remembered and which divides opinion so radically in the current media furore which has been prompted by her recent demise.
Her personal convictions of pragmatism, hard work, thrift, commitment, politeness and care for others are hard to disagree with, people agree with those essential characteristics and most try to behave in that way and ensure that their children do so as well. When these were translated into her political convictions and resulted in denationalisation, share ownership and in her words the creation of a capital owning democracy she applied those principles in a very linear fashion across the political and social divides. In a way a leadership style which says “I know what you need better than you know what you need” which was odd given that she was a great exponent of “individualism” hence the oft quoted remark of “There is no such thing as society”
Therein lays the enigma of Margaret Thatcher. She felt that by applying one leadership style to all people based purely on her personal convictions was right and to hell with the consequences.
The result due to the economic landscape of the country where most state owned industries were based, was devastation for the north of England and increased prosperity for the south. This consequence is still deeply apparent today.
Those policies are still being pursued by the current government who also do not recognise the cultural differences that exist between north and south of mainly state public services as a majority employer in the north, this being a naive policy pursued by the previous Labour government to reduce the impact of Thatcherism in the north and now once again the north is being disproportionately effected by the austerity cuts of today.
The country cannot be treated like a grocer’s shop where a balance sheet rules the actions of government. There are people involved in how that balance sheet is managed and therefore proportionality must play a part.
When my school milk vanished from my playground I went hungrier than ever.
This was the understanding that Margaret never grasped and so when she closed national industries there was nothing to replace them, industry did not move in and replace those jobs because there was no incentive to do so. The bottom line is the arbiter in business. When she sold council houses there were no new ones built and so now there is a shortage of affordable housing for people and the rented sector is now dominated by private landlords who own the previous council houses and are renting them out at extortionate rates which make them unaffordable for so many people.
Instead of creating a capital owning democracy which was her intent we are now living with greater inequality and injustice than ever. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. She did not foresee this and current politicians are not as visionary as she was and so this continues. That is her legacy.
To summarise, leadership is more than dogmatically pursuing an agenda, it is also about being flexible, having vision, understanding the global vista and adapting to it when necessary. It is mostly though about inspiring others to identify and share common goals and willingly pursue them. Unfortunately Margaret only did half a job but what a good job she made of it.

The SCC has commenced for a new batch of aspiring ACPO representatives and is now making itself felt in social media and twitter in particular. The SCC has been around for many years now and prides itself on being one of the most prestigious programmes in the police service. Participants are subjected to a rigourous Extended Interview and need to demonstrate all the best potential qualities in order to attend and be considered for the highest leadership roles in the police service in the future for both warranted and unwarranted staff.

Even though now Bramshill is in it’s dying throes, having been earmarked for sale by the current Home Secretary, (perhaps a pernicious act, you decide) who has made The National Policing Improvement Agency a limited company and rebranded it The College of Policing and then immediately offered it for sale to the highest bidder, the new Chief Constable incumbent has publicly declared the SCC sacrosanct and saved it from any future loss. Declaring that the new CoP will continue to provide covert surveillance training and the SCC and all other training will be devolved to Forces. It will of course be interesting to see how future generations of frontline officers will be trained in terms of standards, quality and uniformity across the national training piste of the service and of course what long term impact this will have on the standard of service delivery and ultimately the standard of ACPO leadership.

The first Equality legislation appeared in this country almost 40 years ago and was brought together by the Single Equality Act at the turn of the century. Its purpose has always been fundamentally to ensure fair play, a quality which we often hear from the political pundits and media as a quality intrinsic to the British people. McPherson however debunked this myth in his report as a result of the Lawrence enquiry and suggested that all is not so fair and equitable in British society as we may like to think. There are clear indicators of this lack of equal opportunites in the police service in terms of recruitment, retention and promotion.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the historical and current demography of the SCC.

As a result of my research the most senior leadership of the police service has not changed and will not change in the future for generations as long as the current selection procedures continue. Institutional Discrimination is alive and well and is demonstrated in the demography of the current crop of SCC participants.

It is also interesting to note that no matter who I asked via social media not one person was willing to reply to my questions on the demography of the course. Why I wonder?

Perhaps the facts speak for themselves.
There are 42 people on the current course.

There are no Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) officers.

There are only 11 women on the course. 

There are no female BME officers on the course.

This is a scandal of epic proportions given the length of time the police service has been trying to improve representation of people in the service (40 years) and still no visible change has occurred at the top.

(There has been one BME Chief Constable in the last 40 years, there has never been a female BME Chief Constable.)

If one visits twitter, all we hear are very jolly salutations and bonhomie amongst the partcipants, they all seem completely blind to the issue that around them are only like minded people discussing like minded things and so the endemic culture continues to perpetuate itself very nicely thank you and only people like us will be able to join this very exclusive club.

Who then is responsible for grasping the nettle and ensuring the change is both sustained and embedded to the point that the visible face of the service will change. Certainly ACPO, but most definitely the SCC Staff and participants should be campaigning in innovative initiatives to ensure that they do not see the same type of people year after year, which is certainly happening now. Should they not be asking themselves why this is happening and instead of shrugging shoulders do something about it. Otherwise the whole programme loses it’s credibility as a genuine and authentic vehicle of leadership within the service but most importantly with the public. The public may not know the intricacies of the SCC procedures but they can certainly see the result of the people who lead in Criminal Justice and safety in their communities.

Lastly, the cost of this extravaganza is 250,00 pounds, this is for Tutors and some travel but excludes the cost of salaries of people attending, their abstraction from their workplace, the cost of accommodation and lastly their travel. So one can see that this could run into millions of pounds.

Is this a good use of taxpayers money or could it be used better by overhauling the whole process ? Is this improving the quality of the police service and ultimately service delivery to the many diverse communities we serve and lastly are there clear and obvious equal opportunities for advancement to all people in the service ?

I hope this at least opens a debate as to why this is happening.

We were the golden generation of “Baby Boomers” defined by the Second World War and the aspirations of our parents who served in it and wanted to cast off the sloth and shackles of class and deference.

Free schooling and University was our right and the world was our oyster, where we could create pearls which were only limited in size by how much grit we introduced to the shell.

We created music which changed the world and stopped wars through sheer dint of benign force. We helped people to understand that love was wholesome and could extend to others from different backgrounds and cultures. We would not accept anything less than equality for all. We invented the world wide web which you now take so much for granted when you talk directly and instantly to people you don’t even know,whenever you have a thought that you wish to share.   We wanted to ensure that people of the world were fed, housed and had the freedom to aspire to their own goals. We may come from council houses but then the majority did. Wherever we worked a pension was a right and rite of passage and loyalty paid dividends.Unbelievable as a child, we came to expect to buy our own quarter of an acre of god’s green land. Our children were well fed as food was plentiful, good for you and did not clog up our arteries. We discovered wine, summer holidays in the sun in exotic parts of the world, blazing a trail for our childrens gap years.We created the wealth which you now enjoy even though it has been temporarily stolen from you.

We now live in relative comfort, hated by the politicians and the political system we produced, defiled by the bankers and businesses we spawned and resented by the new generations, who see us as indolent and having had life easy.

All this has been created by us for you.

When will they learn? Thrift, hard work and committment are the factors of success not X.

In November PCC’S will be elected, this is a radical and completely different perspective to our traditional policing in this country for over a hundred years.

What is the current system of policing the police and managing their effectiveness and efficiency?

Briefly, The Chief Constable is ultimately responsible for the operational efficiency of the force and a group of people known as the Police Authority select the Chief Constable and provide oversight of the actions of the Chief and his/her team. The question of the diversity of top teams in terms of Female/ BME/ Gay etc is a subject for another discussion.  This has served us well and although not perfect, then as we can all appreciate nothing ever is and perhaps a previous criticism may have been that PA’s did not exercise the authority which was incumbent in them. I have personally trained lots of PA members and it constantly astounded me that when I said that they could sack a Chief Constable this fact often received the retort, Yes but we’d never do that.

Why the change? My understanding is that the coalition want to engage the community and let them feel that they have a stake in the running of their police service and what better way than to elect the person to provide an oversight of individual forces.

I believe this is fundamentally flawed.

Sir Robert Peel laid out nine fundamental principles on which our police service was born and are still relevant today. They are summarised as:-

Prevent Crime and Disorder with the consent and co-operation of the public which may diminish when excessive force is used.

The police act impartially and physical force is only used when persuasion, advice and warning is insufficient.

The police remain citizens and are paid to pay full time attention to duties which are incumbent on all citizens to maintain community welfare and existence.

The police must never usurp the judiciary in their actions and the test of effectiveness and efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder not police action.

These things are enshrined in Case Law.

” I hold it to be the duty of the Commissioner of Police, as it is to every Chief Constable  to enforce the law of the land.He must take steps to post his men that crimes may be detected and that honest citizens may go about their affairs in peace.He must decide whether or not suspected persons are to be prosecuted and if need be bring the prosecution or see that it is brought, but in all these things he is the servant of no-one save the law itself. No minister of the crown can tell him that he must or must not keep observation on this place or that or that he must or must not prosecute this man or that one. Nor can any Police Authority tell him so. The responsibility for law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to the law and the law alone.

(R v Metropolitan Police Commissioner at 769 ) Police Federation website.

We now have the situation which will happen in November this year and is anathema to impartial policing, of individuals allied to political parties having authority and governance over Chief Constables and Commissioners. The amelioration of political alliances which was achieved by the old Police Authority will now be in the hands of one person who will hold direct sway over the person who manages the operational effectiveness and efficiency of our local police service. In the same way that the Mayor of London managed to traduce Ian Blair and cause his resignation almost without recourse to the rest of the authority, this will be replicated throughout the country. (Whether you agreed with Blair or not his operational autonomy should have remained paramount and it’s the Authority’s job to manage him) 

ACPO are saying nothing to remonstrate against this change publicly and politicians are rubbing their hands with glee because for so long they have wanted this opportunity to politically influence the service in favour of their political aspirations and re-electability.

The turnout is fully expected to be very low for this poll and so we will be in the unenviable position of having politicians being elected with a lower mandate than they get to enter parliament dragging our service from pillar to post on each new political fad, in the inevitable name of the “people”. 

Lastly, there are over 40 Police Forces and each PCC costs over GBP50K p.a. This may be less than the cost of a police authority, I do not have the figures and would welcome a response, however it is still very expensive and the quality of candidates has not been of the best and I question the motives of some candidates such as John Prescott a Lord of the Realm applying to be a PCC. Why? Why? Why?

Perhaps you maybe able to tell me because the rhetoric just does not ring true.

In conclusion.

The case has not been made out to change other than political expediency.

The cost is too high.

The candidates are not of the appropriate calibre to modernise and innovate our service in the face of the extreme austerity change occurring.

This has not been approved by a formal Royal Commission but by an unelected coalition government. 

The Police Authorities can be improved to the point where this is unnecessary and I note recent improvements where Police Authorities are belatedly being far more robust with Chief Constables and disciplining  more effectively.