Angry Police Vow To Hit Protesters Even Harder

Rank-and-file police officers angrily condemned proposals to slash £60m off their jollies, as announced in Tom Winsor’s independent review of their pay and conditions published today, and warned that they would be forced to vent their rage by hitting protesting students, trade unionists and particularly the disabled even harder than they do already.

Make their day

“For silly reasons of law and order, Britain’s police are cruelly denied the basic human right to mount public protests or go out on strike,” pointed out a spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers. “This explains our natural antipathy towards anyone who not only does have the right to protest, but has the bloody cheek to exercise it right under our noses.”

“It’s provocation, that’s what it is,” he added, “And when some lah-di-dah prick in a suit tells our lads they can forget claiming a night’s overtime just for answering a phone call, well, they’re going to be a mite peeved and ramp their already rather generous definition of ‘minimum force’ up another notch or two. It’s only human nature.”

Until their demands for continued freebies and treats are met in full, officers will be implementing the following set of on-the-spot penalties to be applied to demonstrators whose sole aim is to piss off a copper:

- For protesters standing on the edge of a moving crowd of placard-wielding lefties: ‘steely glare’ to be upgraded to ‘pointing at troublemaker, baring teeth and repeatedly slapping truncheon into palm of hand’;

- As above, but crowd is kettled: from ‘shouting “Step the fuck back now, Trotsky”’ to ‘removing offending article’s front teeth with edge of riot shield’;

- As above, but protester is unable to move: from ‘administering light taps with truncheon’ to ‘attempting ad-hoc lobotomy with truncheon and, once patient is unconscious, steel-capped boot’;

- As above, but protester is also disabled: from ‘drag sponger across cleared road’ to ‘drag sponger to nearest busy road and leave in path of oncoming bus’;

- Protester dies from injuries just to spite police: from ‘repeating stock platitude “lessons will be learned” whilst crying with the aid of an onion in court’ to ‘fitting explosive belt to corpse of deceased and planting kiddie porn on their computer’.

“I’m sure the public will be behind us 100% on this one,” said the spokesman. “In fact, the lads are all hoping people will take to the streets to show their solidarity with us.”

Pay Restraint for Kettles, Urges Chancellor Pot

Alistair Darling has urged pay restraint, following the settlement of the Shell tanker dispute by the offer of a pay rise thought to be in excess of 7%.

On the day after consumer inflation leapt to a ten-year high, the Chancellor said: “We have got to be vigilant in relation to all pay settlements, public and private. If we get back into that spiral, it will take years to get out of it.”

Meanwhile, the Daily Express claims that senior backbench MPs are demanding a 21% pay increase in order to “catch up” with other professionals, according to a memo it attributes to Sir Stuart Bell, Tim Harvey and David Maclean. The increase would give MPs a £75,000 salary. The story was only slightly spoiled by the fact that there is no such MP as Tim Harvey.

“If you don’t pay MPs the same rates as, say, company directors, then people will choose to be company directors and not MPs,” said the fictitious Mr Harvey. “Of course, some ignorant people might think that you need skills and abilities to become a director, rather than simply pinning on a rosette once every few years, but this is a gross oversimplification. You certainly do need qualifications to join the board of a merchant bank, defence contractor, IT supplier or consultancy firm – and, in my experience, the best qualification you can possibly have is to be an MP. No MPs - no company directors. If we don’t get our pay rise, then every business in Britain will stumble swiftly into oblivion. Is that what you communists want?”

Mr Harvey later accepted that there may have been some minor flaws, contradictions, leaps of faith and bare-faced lies in his logic, but argued that he wasn’t doing badly for an imaginary character.

“Of course, I would probably have come up with a better argument if I was better paid,” he claimed.