Assistant Commissioner at the Met, John Yates (left) heard Home Sec, Theresa May's speech on Tuesday and, like the rest of us, realised huge cuts to our police forces were inevitable.
She said quite unequivocably, "cuts will fall on the police as they will on other public services, " they would be expected to, "make sacrifices" and mirror the "ruthless cutting [of] waste" in the Home Office.
The projected cuts are staggering; not just down to the bone but effectively removing limbs.
Yates, anticipates his budget on counter-terrorism to be slashed by £65-87m and I think it was his duty to reflect how this would impact on the overall policing capability of keeping the country safe from terrorism.
Step forward the old crocodile, Francis Maude, Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office, to give Yates a public dressing-down for daring to speak the bleedin' obvious. Maude savaged Yeats for, "alarming the public" and "shroud waving." Well it was hardly Yates's idea to shift counter-terrorism from the category of 'necessary' to that of 'preferable'.
The first aspect this febrile spat reveals is the Tories' wholly different attitude to the police service. While Labour was rather fawning and genuflecting, Tories expect deference from mere "public servants."
Secondly, the need to slash public spending to pay for the banks' economic crash is now considered beyond question. Anyone who doubts the sense of reducing what yesterday we thought as essential public services, can expect vilification.
Five years ago tomorrow were the 7 July bombings in London where 52 people were murdered.
At the time, I would never have thought it possible any Government, even a Tory one, could consider measures to prevent such carnage and bloody killings should be just like any other budgetary issue, like whether to build more laybys on the A12.
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