back to article Counter terror cops prep for recession funding squeeze

The UK's top counter terror cop is preparing to make cuts for the first time, as the recession hits the public sector, he revealed today. Assistant commisioner John Yates, head of the Met's counter terror command, said he didn't think even the most high profile police work will escape the knife after 2011 when the current …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    when did the MET start doing terrorism

    "the climate is grim, but the weather can change". since when did the meteorological office start doing terror forecasts?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    A round of yay for the entire bar

    Best news I've heard in ages.

    "Yates said he expected it could soon be reduced to "substantial" by MI5's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre."

    Now ... how does he expect that? Does he expect that the putative cause of any "highly likely" attack will soon be arrested, tried and taken off the streets? Or is the reading on the possibilometizer data miner slowly decreasing? Or is it all just so much political bullshit?

  3. Paul 25

    "Counter terror cops prep for recession funding squeeze"

    Counter terror cops prep for recession funding squeeze....

    by making sure there is the inevitable uproar in the press about government cutting funding for police terrorism squads, leading to firm commitments from the major parties that they are "thinking of doing no such thing, and will protect counter-terror funding", for fear of being labelled as "soft on terror".

    Seems like a nice bit of political manoeuvring by Yates of the Yard to protect his budget.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'soon be reduced to "substantial"'

    Does anyone ever expect the terrorometer to fall to 'normal'? Just like the Department of Homeland Security has never bother setting the threat level to blue or green.

    If things look dodgy for the police budget, expect them to leak a few stories about 'active plots', 'imminent threats' and 'intelligence sources' in the sympathetic parts of the media. Then they'll announce the threat level has been raised to 'trouser filling' as a precaution against Al Qaeda unleashing radioactive badgers on the Tube and the money will come flooding in.

  5. Tawakalna
    Big Brother

    so the connection is?

    the gravy train?

    when there's lots of money available for "security" projects, the threat is high or immediate or whatever they use to scare us.

    when there isn't so much money available to waste on silly projects, the threat isn't quite so high.

    I smell a rat and his name isn't Osama.....

  6. Andrew Penfold
    Flame

    @John Dee

    No, the alert level is primarily to keep the people afraid. It's currently near the top, so it must be reduced quietly now, so there is some head-room for an increase later. You know, when the next un-popular war needs to be pushed.

  7. spam 1
    Stop

    We wouldn't notice a 100% cut

    Apart from being a few billion a year better off.

    What have they done so far with the billions of quid funding?

    Captured a bag of fertilizer, deported some students, locked up a handful of nut cases who probably couldn't set a fart alight.

    More people die on our roads in a fortnight than have died from terrorism in the last decade. If you were given a big wad of money and told to go save lives with it using it to fight terror would be at the bottom of a very long list.

  8. elderlybloke
    Big Brother

    Wot about the IRA?

    When the Irish were blowing up your property a few decades again, and causing considerable casualties , you didn't need all the anti-terrorist laws and enormously expensive terror units.

  9. spiny norman

    Fatherland by Robert Harris

    I reread that recently. Set early 1960s in Berlin, Hitler having won the war. There is a perpetual high state of alert against "terrorists".

  10. Ted Treen
    Big Brother

    @elderlybloke

    No, we didn't need them 'cos the civvy population wasn't running around like a headless chickens convention, too scared to even fart.

    Our security forces managed as well as could be expected, but we were blessed with the enormous funding sent to the terrorists by our colonial cousins - the misty-eyed Sons of Erin whose families hadn't set foot in Ireland for 5 or 6 generations...

    Their judiciary also refused point-blank to send any escaped convicted felons back, claiming they were "just poor disadvantaged freedom fighters".

    Funny how their point of view changed somewhat after a) Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, and b) the events of 9/11.

    The Brits have, down the years, been just too bloody-minded and obstreperous for a terrorist campaign to really succeed, and it's that very fact which alarms our current apology for a government, and encourages them to institute a permanent state of alert (and, they hope, fear) in order to render us more malleable and controllable.

    We should ensure they never succeed.

    from ANOTHER elderly (well, 59-ish) bloke

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