Andrew Mitchell needs to resign.

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Honestly he does......calliing a serving police officer "a pleb".
What an utter twat of the highest order....spoilt rich scumbag.

Why should he resign!!!! Has anyone resigned over Hillsborough? Has anyone resigned over the shooting of Charles de Menzes? I agree with last poster noone will come up smelling of roses.

Poor old MPs - can't ever makes can they.

Can't ever make mistakes can they - I mean!

I don't want him to resign. I despise this Government and he's yet another example of its incompetence and evidence of Dave's propensity of making friends of weasels and inept bullies

Mitchell has no credibility as a chief whip any more, if a chief whip whose main weapon is to shout obscenities ever had. The nickname 'Thrasher' doesn't exactly conjure up a silky Machiavelli.

Let Dave and Mitchell twist in the wind.

But as I said, the police do not come out of this terribly well either.

It is very depressing the way many of the posters on this thread view the police.

The truth is the met police is being horrendously squuezed, they have to may 500m savings by 2014. Officers are losing jobs, having to work longer hours for less money, have annual leave cancelled at last minute. The majority of officers have just been on high alert for the last 3 months for the Olympic rota which means my DH has literally worked constantly over the summer with no increase in pay and no thanks. Promotion prospects have been cut and morale is at a horrendously low ebb.

Then 2 police officers are lured to their murder with a grenade & gun attack. . .

Then a high level government official feels it is acceptable to speak in such an inappropriate & disparaging way to a police officer - can you understand why the police fed are so pissed off?

This government shows no respect for the police force and this is unfortunately indicative of society as a whole (many disparaging remarks about police officers have been posted on this thread - not understanding the word pleb/ not reading certain newspapers/ working class etc)

Mitchell should resign and people should fight against the obvious lack of respect the government has for the police. The budget cuts are massive and are going to have a massive impact on policing in London no matter what they say.

The met police is so under funded at the moment that they still use cassette tapes in interviews - and they want to cut that funding by another 500million.

Mostof us admire and respect the police but the fact your husband has worked all summer is no different from the rest of us expect he will also get a pension unlike many of us and has a right to retire after 30 y ears of service even if that is age 49 rather thanworking to 67+ as many of us will be doing.

The fact is that police officers are both better paid, and have a much lower risk of occupational death or injury than many other professions.

There are 50 people a year killed in the construction industry. A slightly smaller number in agriculture. How many in the police?

2012: 3
2011: 0
2010: 0
2009: 1
2008: 0

It is absolutely ridiculous to say that because two police were shot in Manchester, that that should affect how you talk to someone in London.

You wouldn't get a builder saying that someone got killed in Liverpool yesterday so he's not going to do his job in Plymouth.

There are many shitty jobs which don't get public respect. I am not convinced that being a police officer is one of them.

Xenia you have no idea.

My SIL worked pretty much a whole month without a break (no weekends of days off) because of the Olympics.

Officially she had a "day off" between two massive shift patterns, but the timings of the shifts meant it wasn't a full day, and all she had time to do was sleep. Some day off!

I don't care how stressful you think your job is in the financial world, it has nothing on what the police can experience day in and day out.

And I expect you have weekends off, no?

I'm not someone who blindly stands up for the police btw! In my hometown they've got a reputation for being corrupt and I certainly don't trust them blindly. Skippy makes a good point also.

However Xenia your comments are very out of touch IMO.

I want the police to be well rested and able to make good decisions, not stretched to their limits. How does that help anyone?

Actually I often work 7 days a week and I take 2 weeks holiday a year and have done that over 30 years and without maternity leaves either, but I am sure it is very very different from the work of the police and I am certainly not in competition in who works the hardest.

Market forces will always prevail. When the police pay and conditions are worse than police can find in jobs available in the private sector then the state will have to improve the terms again. At the moment there are no jobs to be had for love nor money in just about any sector sop there is very little we can do to public sector pay and conditions which is likely to cause too many people to leave.

So Xenia this summer you have:

Worked literally everyday
Had your annual leave cancelled at a days notice
Worked the entire summer having had all annual leave from june to october cancelled
Put on a stab vest everyday
Worked with aggressive & violent members of the public
Been spat at and abused in your workplace
Put yourself in dangerous and aggressive situations
put yourself at risk of harm throughout each and everyday

Erm - no I though not. You said it's not a competition but you think that your summer has been the same - sod off!

Yes my husband gets a good pension (well it used to be, god knows what it will be like when he actually retires) but he works bloody hard for it and that is one of the reasons why he went into the police force. Nothing is stopping you from signing up is there - it should be a piece of cake given the work you do - what is it again?

Oh and thanks for the stats skippy I can sleep easily now I know that it's actually more dangerous to be a farmer than a policeman

Use your common sense lady

No I don't wear a stab vest. Obviously the market determines the worth of people so you can usually go by their pay as to their worth and value. Those jobs few can do are better paid. If policemen don't like their job they can try other jobs. Obviously most of us admire the hard work that they do but they are not on some kind of sainted platform.

We had a week abroad this summer. I have genuinely worked every other day but it is at a computer and often at home even if the hours are pretty long. Any policeman who thinks they can set up my business and run it is free to do so - it's a free country thankfully.

I don't want to be a policeman but many do a good job although obviously not all as in any profession. The country does not haev the money to pay for things. Frank Field on Radio 4 this morning was making that piont - that for decades, not just now, we have spent more than we have and that has to change.

'you can usually go on their pay as to their worth & value'

well I think that says everything about you that we need to know, what a digusting and very sad sentiment

I will leave you to your hard work in your wonderful home - I hope that if you ever really need the police you treat them with more respect

Cleaners are usually very badly paid but I would suggest that their worth and value in an organisation is rather high Xenia. Not everything and everyone can be given a monetary value you sad person.

I can guarantee that a policeman or nurse or teacher or librarian will be doing something of more value than you at your PC.

Anyway - back to that MP...

Poor Lad.

A right storm in a teacup if you ask me.

Everyone on this thread has chosen to live under capitalism. You could try to make your way in north Korea or Cuba or parts of South America if you do not like how capitalism values things. I simply say what is true - the market decides. The pretty girl gets the good looking rich man. The girl with nothing to offer finds it harder to find a man. Ditto with work and our talents. Most of us can clean a floor so the pay is pretty poor. Few can play football like Beckham hence the pay differential.

Socialism has been shown to have failed wherever it has been tried.

Marxists on this thread might like the final episode next week of this series as it will be about Marx www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01n2rpx/Masters_of_Money_Hayek/ The Hayek episode which I just watched of course is likely to be the best given my own free market views.

Xenia - oh for goodness sakes - go kiss your kids goodnight and read them a story!!

They are wonderful children but rather large. One is out at lacrosse so I can hardly cuddle her now. I have been lucky enough to spread motherhood over 28 years now but even I who adore bed time stories with them cannot quite manage it with teenage boys (the youngest). I was turned down when I offered to read a bit of the book of one's homework reading to him in bed when he was complaining about some tiny chunk of text to be read.

The Hayek programme was really interesting. Just as every good Communist on this thread would tell me we don't know if communism works as it's never been properly tried, nor have Hayek's free market ideas been tried. In 2001 we kept interest rates down, we interfered in markets, we never let them free. Whoever is in power want to have power and keep it.

Plenty of policemen go into private security and some forces people on retirement go off to Africa to provide security, arms, private armies - the free market and security is a fascinating issue. Perhaps we should add sale of guns and provision of private soliders in Africa to the ideas on the women who earn £1k a day thread.

You watched television, Xenia? How did you manage to find time for that, what with your oh-so-demanding job and everything?

I think there's a difference between name calling on a forum where the person isn't going to read it/be affected and that person has done something to cause people to have such opinions of him and name calling a person to their face simply for doing their normal job.

You can't really compare the two.

As I said upthread, my personal issue is that it looks like Mitchell isn't being upfront about what happened. If he'd just admitted it and said sorry that's one thing. But saying sorry whilst simultaneously fudging what he actually did and said just seems shallow.

You don't see mAny police officers on MN repeatedly telling us all day long that the best thing a mother can do for her children is become a police officer, do you?

You don't see many computer programmers doing that either.