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Our poll on London's policing shows that by a narrow margin, the capital has a positive view of the police - but public satisfaction is moving in the wrong direction following the widely viewed collapse of bystander Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests.
Although the incidents of violence at the G20 which are now being independently investigated were few relative to the numbers present that day, they have aroused fears of a return to an earlier era of much rougher police tactics.
The departure of Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick for his counter-terrorism blunder has drawn a line under the controversial arrest he authorised of the Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green, but it remains true that Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has a major task ahead of him in rebuilding confidence in the Met.
Only last week David Gilbertson, a former Met commander and assistant inspector of constabulary, called for better leadership in the police, reviving the old critique of the force that it has never replicated the ability of the armed services to train and develop senior ranks to the highest level.
That said, last night's gang fight in Stockwell, involving up to 30 youths and at least two stabbings, one of them fatal, is a reminder of the challenges the police face.
Civil liberties concerns around the policing of protests like those against the G20 are important but everyday law and order is what most people care about most of the time.
The Mayor claims to have taken more than 4,000 weapons off the streets since he intensified the use of scanners and search powers to tackle knife crime, but there is much more to be done. Sir Paul now needs to show that far from treating the fight to contain teenage violence as won, he is focusing on it as never before.
Failure rewarded
The amount of £180,000 to be paid to Ken Boston, outgoing chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, is a prime case of a reward for failure.
Dr Boston offered his resignation from the troubled school exams watchdog in December after 1.2 million children failed to get their SATs results on time. A record number had to be re-marked, and the Government was forced to drop its entire provision of school league table for 14-year-olds as a result.
Dr Boston told a parliamentary select committee last week that the Schools Secretary Ed Balls was partly to blame for setting an unrealistic timetable, but the fact remains, as Dr Boston admitted, that the QCA "failed and I resigned".
Yet until June, nearly a year after more than a million children sat the tests that so let them down, Mr Boston's contractual payments will continue - even though he was suspended last December.
Officials say they have no choice in these cases but to pay what the contracts demand. But why do they sign up to such a poor deal for the taxpayer in the first place? Where public money is involved, rewards for failure are simply wrong.
They cannot be tolerated now that Britain has entered an era of vast public debt. Ministers must no longer copy the employment terms and conditions that have allowed so many in the private sector to emerge from corporate disaster clutching big contractual entitlements.
If the taxpayer is paying, the deal must be different. Senior public servants paid public money should no longer be able to walk away with any of it when they let us down.
Bus silverware
We are delighted to see that the Mayor hopes to adopt aspects of designs for a new Routemaster which have just won an innovation award.
But this is not as good as actually getting the bus onto the streets.
What we really want to see, Boris, is Londoners hopping on and off a fast, easy-to-board vehicle, not Mayors gathering designer silverware at awards events.
Reader views (2)
I was at Kings Cross station on Saturday, in the main tube hall i noticed several pairs of Met police officers stood viewing the scene with their arms firmly folded. They looked so stern and threatening - i was tempted to say to them 'cheer up, it's not that bad' but i recalled people being assaulted by them in the streets for no reason so i thought better of it. I feel the Met have lost their way, they all need a crash course on public relations, they need to smile more for starters!
- Mark Burton, St Ives. Cambs, 29/04/2009 09:38
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The only people who have any idea of how good our police used to be, in the days when coppers were encouraged to walk the streets, are older folk. I can speak about it as I was a serving policeman, and believe me, until thery had this rapid promotion, whereby entrants were given promotion without doing much real poilce work, we were only allowed into stations for a short grub period or for urgent work. These rapid promotion men were not really relied on for doing work with the public, cos they didnt know anything about mixing outside the ststion.
- John Hamilton, st.ives Cornwall, 28/04/2009 16:23
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