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The police need their budget cut. Cheshire police has a 2010 BMW X5. What possible need can they have for a luxury SUV?? Then there's the final salary pensions. Virtually no one in the private sector enjoys final salary pensions-why should the Police?
Healthy living fanatics have been so keen to extol their merits of their lifestyle choices, and so sanctimonious in punishing habits of which they do not approve that they have failed to spot that it is not fiscally desirable for everyone to live to a ripe old age. The chickens are coming home to roost. The Tory government is merely reflecting economic reality-an area in which Gordon Brown manfestly failed
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Im not interested in any of that, all i know is its stuck up Tory b******s screwing the little man. The Police budget isnt going to cut their purchasing of vehicles, its going to result in sackings and less officers, to the point where when you need the police's help one day they wont be able to help you. Ive said for a long time if the Tories insist on scrapping the Police we may as well all tool up, they struggle as it is, less officers = more crime, end of. Why should the Police get those pensions? Well private sector people generally dont risk being stabbed or shot every day of their lives, having 15 year olds in hoodies spit in their faces and gangs jumping out on them and smashing them over the head, people have no respect or fear of police anymore so the only way to police now is by sheer weight of numbers, we need more, not less, if most private sector whingers had to put up with what the Police do they'd quit inside a week. Police do the hardest job in the country for a relativley modest wage as it is, if anybody deserves big pensions its them, not private sector t****s earning 50k a year in "human resources." So that answers your question, virtually nobody in the private sector does a job as difficult or dangerous as they do, so thats why nobody in the private sector deserves such a pension. Teachers on the other hand i have no sympathy for, barely do any work as it is, get all summers off, finish work at 4 (dont give me b******s about marking) and now they're complaining,be gone with them.
Back to the subject of the car insurance fiasco the fact is this legislation wont solve the problem. Do they think all the criminals with uninsured cars will now run out and insure them? No, of course they wont. They already know their car will get seized, will get crushed and they will get fines they wont pay and points on licences they dont have already if they're caught with it on the road, if that doesnt make them buy insurance then this wont either. The only people who will be scared into buying the insurance will be the ones who arent causing the trouble, the ones who dont drive said uninsured vehicles, it'll be the car enthusiast who brings his 68 Lotus Cortina out once a year who gets scared into paying it, not the uninsured scumbag drug dealers who you see on these fly on the wall police shows. As you said earlier the existing legislation is already there to deal with uninsured cars on the roads so this will change nothing. All that'll happen is honest hard working people pay extra for insurance they dont need on cars they dont drive while the uninsured scumbags continue as they always have done with reducing police numbers to enforce both existing and new laws as they'll stillbe out there causing accidents, driving without licences and generally nothing will change.
The only thing which will change is the innocent normal people will have less money, thats what i mean by typical Tory policy.
Edited by jamie745 on 05/07/2011 at 03:10
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"Teachers on the other hand i have no sympathy for, barely do any work as it is, get all summers off, finish work at 4 (dont give me b******s about marking) and now they're complaining,be gone with them."
Well, you certainly cast your net wide, don't you, in your defence of "the little man" or "the innocent normal people" getting screwed by... well, everyone else, I suppose? And I thought the thread was about insurance laws.
As it seems you can read and write, Jamie, thank a teacher for that.
I know I won't convince you, but when I was a teacher of English I did actually do a lot of marking. Have you ever stopped to consider, for example, how long it takes to mark 120 essays produced by Year 12 in their mock GCSE exams?
As Head of English I was in school most evenings until 6:00, attending meetings and doing other work-related stuff. I was in school some term-time Saturday mornings for the same reason. I spent quite a lot of time in the school holidays managing book stock (how many books do you think a secondary English Department has?) and preparing texts for teaching (how easy is it to teach Shakespeare's Hamlet for A.L.? Or how about Chaucer?).
And don't even get me started on the standards of student behaviour.
Believe it or not, my experience was not untypical. But I don't expect to be believed, still less thanked, by some people.
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Teachers on the other hand i have no sympathy for, barely do any work as it is, get all summers off, finish work at 4 (dont give me b******s about marking) and now they're complaining,be gone with them.
<looks at course info for September: "new teacher, you will have very little work to do at all, lucky you">
Oh dear Jamie, oh dear.
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The police need their budget cut. Cheshire police has a 2010 BMW X5. What possible need can they have for a luxury SUV??
In Cheshire, where every other person drives a luxury SUV (check out the Tesco car part at Handforth Dean on a Saturday afternoon!) then I don't think the Police would have much luck keeping up in an Astra 1.3.
Also, the costs of converting to a police spec are not inconsiderable, making the cost of the car less important.
Finally, I have it on good authority that the X5 is a great police car, able to soak up 150,000 miles in 18 months without needing the major works other cars do.
I'm not saying you're wrong... but there are two sides to the argument!
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I don't see it as any issue for law-abiding citizens - either your car is taxed and insured - or - it's SORN'd.
The only people affected by the new insurance laws are those who flout the law - same as being the only ones affected by the continuous taxation change.
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Obvious answer for uninsured drivers: fine drivers 5 times the average insurance quote for each year of non insurance.. Of course if you are on benefits, then you pay nowt. Solution: dedcut from benefits on the basis of each year of uninsured fine is taken off a year's benefits.
Of course it is not going to happen .. those nasty Tories with their Human Rights Act :-)
The fines for uninsured driving should be at levels which make it punitive to drive uninsured vs paying a premium.. at present it's cheaper. Must be the fault of the Tories last 13 years of Government...
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typical Tory policy
This was originally Labour policy - the consultation was back in January 2009.
Don't see why it's a big deal, if your car is off the road then declare it SORN, you can do it online in a couple of minutes.
Edited by tmjs on 05/07/2011 at 12:26
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Sid, those arguments are terrible!
1.) The Cheshire SUV brigade is centred around Alderley Edge-there aren't that many elsewhere!
2.) The argument about 'keeping up with criminals' is tosh. For a start every good road comes to a -T-junction and, allied with congestion, means that your ultimate speed is seldom governmed by the power of your car.
3.) The police are not supposed to be indulging in car chases anyway because of the risks posed to other members of thre public.
4.) 150,000 miles tough miles? So less than virtually every minicab then. Funnily enough most taxi drovers seem to manage without luxury SUVs-perhaps because they buy their cars out of their own pocket...
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Of course Cheshire police need an X5. How else are the senior officers going to keep up with the Joneses if they can't take it home to impress?
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Then they can buy one out of their own pockets!
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Most minicabs dont do 150,000 miles at pursuit speeds going over speedbumps at 90mph (the sort of thing which used to smash the old Omega's to pieces, costing them a fortune). Police used to spend fortunes on the Omega's in particular to get them up to Police spec, if using an X5, being a more robust car helps cut that down then its a good thing long term.
unthrottled i think you should join the police and do the job, because until you do i dont think you should be allowed to comment. "indulging in car chases" pursuing criminals is their f***ing job you moron! There are rules of when to abort a pursuit if its too risky but their job is to catch criminals, not sit there and go "well it'd be dangerous to chase them so we'll let them go" because due to reducing police powers, law knowing scrotes and endless loopholes designed to let criminals go free means unless you catch them in the act red handed theres virtually nothing you can do to them. If you approve of having no police, no police cars, no police force, no police service then i really hope you dont need their help one day. Some people dont deserve it. You are clearly someone who is talking about something they know absolutely nothing about, you might know useless technical information about crankshafts but someone with your attitude wouldnt last 5 minutes in the police.
And it is a Tory policy because its a Tory Government, Labour ended up in power when alot of daft Tory policies came in and i bet you didnt let Blair get away with it so why should Posh t*** and Teaboy get away with it?
nobody is commenting on my point that its not actually going to solve the problem is it? They're dressing it up as a measure to get uninsured cars off the road but the real uninsured, the drivers with no licences etc are not going to be scared by this legislation, those are the ones causing the trouble, yet the ones affected will be law abiding motorists who might have a classic car they bring out twice a year.
And has anybody found out if returning your tax disc means you lose the value of it? and bringing it out three times a year means you have to buy three tax discs in a year?
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Jamie-Wannabe hot rodders can't be a***d to plough through all the 'useless technical information about crankshafts' because they'd rather jump straight into the exciting stuff like big cams and big turbos. That's why their engines fall apart after 5000 miles or are horrible to drive. You need the 'useless technical information' to understand why a stock engine is the way it is.
It's similar to Police work. No doubt the Gene Hunt/Harry Callaghan style stuff is more exciting than mundane burglary investigation, but in the real world, it's the latter that really matters. We don't need plod marauding round our streets in SUVs breaking all the rules that the rest of us must follow for, supposedly for our own protection. That's why we dont routinely arm our police Jamie. The principal is that he police enforce the law by consent-not force. It's an important principal.
In the rare times that they need to 'chase a suspect', they can call out the chopper which is a far safer method of pursuit than a car.
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Nothing to discuss if people did not bother with insurance before this law they are hardly likely to bother now.To many loop holes in the UK insurance and other rules regarding registration.
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And has anybody found out if returning your tax disc means you lose the value of it? and bringing it out three times a year means you have to buy three tax discs in a year?
The refund is calculated in the usual way, using the monthly rate from a 6-monthly disc for each complete or partial month on the road.
Bringing the car out 3 times a year does mean buying 3 discs - but you also get 3 refunds!
It seems blindingly obvious that if the police spend less time looking for "casual" defaulters - because they just get a printout of owners/addresses to go to and impound the car - then they actually have more time to go chasing the real criminals, including serial evaders on driving licences, VED and insurance.
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It's not an issue for most motorists who simply renew insurance and tax on an annual basis, but with cars that are on and off the road on a regular basis, this is a hassle that the owners can well do without. These owners are often hard up , but not law breakers.
With ANPR there is simply no need for this sort of heavy handed rubbish. VED evasion is solved quite simply by scrapping VED or making it a nominal fee. I've argued before that it is a useless tax, equivalent to the 18th century window tax. It raises revenue on a very arbitrary basis.
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"Most minicabs dont do 150,000 miles at pursuit speeds going over speedbumps at 90mph"
They do around our way!
I take it you are a police officer then Jamie, as you believe that only people who have been there should be able to judge (be interested if you ever contracted syphilis, would you insist that your physician had had it too?)
I do agree with your point about criminals who play the system, though. The likes of people who scam insurers by fronting is a particular problem, you could call them the real uninsured morons who aren't intimidated by legislation.
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Jamie745,
Most English Police appear to be quite unsuitable to be allowed out in a fast car.
From the evidence of "Police Camera Action" & my own eyes.
Some of the Police driving as filimed was totally unacceptable.
The accidents & deaths attrituable to pursuit driving unfortunately testify to this.
I knew a local Ex RCU man who ruefully said that unless one could "kick it", "break it" or "f..k" it should not be in use the Police Service, he was not joking, it is all that testerone at work.
I also know some very very decent RUC/Police officers
The Police are merely a reflection of Society as a whole, unfortunately including the criminal elements and the nutters who like to drive fast, when they get an excuse.
I would too iffen I had an excuse to switch the "blues & twos" on.
There is the odd sound one lurking in there too I can only presume.
Like Westpig?.
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Send a maniac to catch a maniac.
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The police need their budget cut. Cheshire police has a 2010 BMW X5. What possible need can they have for a luxury SUV?? Then there's the final salary pensions. Virtually no one in the private sector enjoys final salary pensions-why should the Police?
Very true, but then nobody in the private sector pays 11% of their salary in pension contributions either !
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Very true, but then nobody in the private sector pays 11% of their salary in pension contributions either !
You missed out the fact that the employer contribution is 24%, and that some police officiers only pay 9%. So the employer contributes £2.18-£2.67 for every £1 the employee puts in. In a typical defined benefits stakeholder pension the employer matches £1 for £1 up to about 5%. Nowhere near as generous.
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The existing legislation is fine...
Leaving aside your political rants, from what I see, the existing legislation is not fine.
I hear that some parts of Bradford are now uninsurable due to the number of uninsured cars and cash for scams rackets going on.
If the police don't see the car being driven, nothing gets done. At least the new rules mean the car can be seized (eventually) without anyone needing to see it being driven.
I get really angry when I see a report in the paper that someone was fined £100 for no insurance, when some of the law-abiding local lads are paying £2000.
I don't think the new rules go far enough. But they do move in the right direction. SORN it or insure it.
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I wonder if all the criminals sorning their uninsured cars will be a way of staying off the radar for some time because then you'll only be caught if its seen on the road by police (the same as before), if they cotton on to that we'll be back in the same position we are now, instead of uninsured cars, it'll be SORNed cars lol. Because surely SORNing it means the database shows it as off road so it wont be seized, so the only way they'll be caught is if its seen on the public road, just the same as it has been for years. Even if it is seen they wont be able to take it later off private land with no evidence of someone driving it if it is registered SORN. Im shocked the Government have been stupid enough to leave such an alarming loophole. The semantics will change, the realities wont.
And i put to you, is it the vintage car owners who bring their cars out once a year (insured for that day) who are pushing the premiums up and making Bradford uninsurable? Or is it the criminal scrotes who havent been deterred by seize and crush measures already and wont take any notice of this either who will continue to drive without licences, without insurance, in stolen cars, getting points on licences they dont have and getting fines they wont pay?
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