{"id":41103,"date":"2018-03-22T06:03:51","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T06:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=41103"},"modified":"2018-03-22T06:03:51","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T06:03:51","slug":"austerity-is-now-gutting-the-very-core-of-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/03\/22\/austerity-is-now-gutting-the-very-core-of-the-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Austerity is now gutting the very core of the state"},"content":{"rendered":"

My perception of what the state is and should be is, I admit, somewhat different to that of some right wing thinkers. I am unashamed of \u00a0that. But where we do have rare common ground is in believing that it is the duty of the state to protect its citizens and, come to that, their property. In that context a report from the Guardian this morning<\/a> is worrying. They say:<\/p>\n

Under-pressure police forces are taking days to respond to 999 calls that should be dealt with in an hour, the policing watchdog has said, as they come under \u201csignificant stress\u201d from slashed budgets and increased demand.<\/p>\n

Almost a quarter of forces in England and Wales are struggling to deal with emergency calls in a timely way, Her Majesty\u2019s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) has said in a report on police effectiveness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And they add:<\/p>\n

In some cases, crimes that require a \u201cprompt\u201d response \u2014 that is, police attending within an hour of the call \u2014 are not dealt with for days. In Cambridgeshire, for example, the average \u201cprompt\u201d response time was 15 hours. This could include cases of serious assault, including sexual violence, inspectors said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In case of doubt as to fault they note:<\/p>\n

The inspectorate put the delays down to a lack of police officers available to attend the emergencies, ruling out a problem with the call handlers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, a twenty per cent cut in real terms funding for the police since 2010 has not produced efficiencies or increased productivity. It has instead simply gutted their capacity to do the job society expects of them.<\/p>\n

No one should be surprised by this. The vast majority of the work in question requires the presence of a person who has been trained to undertake both the task in hand and to deal with the stresses that it has created for the victim of the reported crime. There is remarkably little you can do to cut the time required to achieve this result barring getting to the victim on a timely basis to a) collect evidence when it is most readily recalled and b) to minimise the victim\u2019s stress. Since neither of these can now happen productivity is bound to fall as a result.<\/p>\n

But worse, one of the core functions of the state is simply ceasing to operate.<\/p>\n

And that happened entirely on Theresa May\u2019s watch.<\/p>\n

When a prime minister cannot serve the interests given highest priority by her own ideology her time really is up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My perception of what the state is and should be is, I admit, somewhat different to that of some right wing thinkers. I am unashamed
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}