Thoughts from an active pensioner who is now somewhat past his Biblical "Use-by date"

"Why just be difficult, when with a little more effort you can be bloody impossible?"



Sunday 11 July 2010

Raoul Moat - The Cost

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the cost of finding Raoul Moat was in the region of £4 million. One has to expect that such operations are, from time to time, totally necessary and that it is necessary for the taxpayer to bear the cost.
However, what seems totally unnecessary is all the consequential enquiries and their cost. Before the chase had hardly started, the Northumbria Police had referred themselves to the IPCC in case it was considered that they had not acted correctly in respect of the information received from Durham prison.
Then during the chase, they apparently received a 69 page rant from Moat about how he had been treated by the police and how they had ruined his life, presumably by trying to stop him from breaking the law and beating up people. As a result, it seems there will be a further enquiry to ascertain if there is any truth in this rant from a nut case.
It seems that there will also be a further enquiry as to why the police tasered  him just before he shot himself (or why they didn't, as the case may be).
These days the media and various activists seem to want enquiries into virtually everything that happens - why, what is the point? Can anyone name one recent enquiry which was worth the effort? The Hutton enquiry perhaps; the consensus seems to believe it was a cover up. What about Baby P? Well "Lessons will be learnt"!
I don't know what these enquiries cost, but they don't come cheap. If you take into account all the police time involved, the cost of lawyers, the cost of "experts" being wise after the event, as well as the disruption and inconvenience to police officers whom one can reasonably assume were doing their best, for absolutely no benefit except "Lessons to be learnt" there would seem to be far better things which could be done with the money.

A standard Coroner's Inquest should be more than enough.

If the powers that be want something to enquire into they should consider
  1. Enquiring into how Moat got two guns so quickly after coming out of prison.
  2. Enquiring into whether T/Chief Constable Sue Sim has a hairdresser, and if so how he/she remains in business.
It should cost very little to find the answer to the last question, and the answer will probably be as relevant as any the other questions likely to be asked by the enquiries

Personally, I was just wondering why on earth was an RAF Tornado involved, and where was all the fancy heat-seeking equipment we regularly see used by the police in "real" chases on TV?

1 comment:

  1. Sadly it seems, lessons are never learned. Otherwise situations like this would never be repeated.

    ReplyDelete