Masking paucity of police funding
THIS time next week, if you or I want to go to the shops, we’ll have to wear a mask - or in government speak, a face covering - to be able to do so.
I don’t particularly like the idea of wearing a mask, and as seen with so many countries (including the four nations of the UK) all taking a different position on masks, the scientific evidence that they actually play a role in stopping the spread of Covid-19 is far from certain.
That said, there has never been a more crucial time for us to support the local economy, so it’s mask on and to the shops I go. Out of respect for those working to keep our local services and businesses going, I certainly don’t subscribe to the ‘make me wear a mask and I won’t go to the shops’ club which I’ve seen throughout social media in recent days.
It feels like a distraction by a government which has made multiple mistakes in its handling of the Coronavirus crisis and which seems very reluctant to talk about them. And those mistakes have had consequences felt here in Rossendale.
And it will be the local police who feel the impact of this latest about turn on masks too. The Government has insisted up front that the police will have the power to fine people £100 if they are in shops without a mask, and without a good reason for not having a mask.
Haven’t the police got enough to do already? Rossendale’s thin blue line has become progressively thinner in recent years as a decade of budget cuts, all supported in annual budgets by our local MP Jake Berry, have forced painful spending decisions by Lancashire Police.
We’ve lost police stations and police officers. There is not a single public counter in Rossendale where you or I can go to report a crime. Local Conservatives - councillors and Mr Berry - all railed against this decision, but have done little to vocally support the (Labour) police and crime commissioner in his calls for more funding to keep Lancashire safe.
So this idea that a depleted force of hardworking officers, who have already had to take on the responsibility of enforcing lockdown this year, are now going to spend their time in Tescos in Haslingden, Morrisons in Bacup, the bakery in Edenfield or the butchers on Bacup Road in Rawtenstall checking people have their masks on is a nonsense, and an insulting nonsense at that.
The very fact the government has had to provide a stick - the fine - to go with the carrot - helping keep us safe - shows the government knows it is losing the public’s trust on its handling of Coronavirus.
You only have to look at the Government’s abject failure to look after care homes, the places where our most vulnerable, often the same people who did the Government’s work in seeing off the Nazis in the 1940s, to get a painful local reminder of how local people have been let down.
A lack of protective equipment, a lack of testing, and last week the insult from the prime minister that it was somehow the fault of care homes that people died from Covid-19 in them. This from a Government which promised a ring of protection around each and every care home.
Any ring of protection was home-made by each care home, where managers and staff have fought Coronavirus day-by-day.
Lancashire’s care homes were not better equipped to fight Coronavirus because of decades of under-investment by the Government in social care.
Now Lancashire’s police are to be expected to police a policy which doesn’t have universal support - after a decade of cuts. Sound familiar?
We can all help the police by doing our bit and following the rules - and aim our objections at the politicians we expect to protect us.