WASTED MONEY AND NATIONAL PRIDE

I was somewhat astounded to see a policeman drive past me today in a brand spanking new 07 reg BMW X5. Police forces across the country are regularly complaining that budget constraints prevent them from doing their jobs and providing necessary resources yet Sussex Police have managed to add yet another luxury vehicle to their ever expanding fleet of luxury Sports saloons/estates and SUV's. An X5 is not a cheap vehicle in standard road trim and I shudder to think how much public money has been wasted on purchasing this bazza'd up Bavarian Land Rover rip-off. I suspect that it isn't the only X5 to have been added to the Sussex Police fleet either. I can understand that Sussex Police will have a need for a certain amount of off-road vehicles but they are already in possession of Land Rover Defenders for that kind of work. A BMW X5 is a symbol of how much money you've got to waste on a vehicle to go posing around the town, and Sussex Police don't have any money to waste.

I think it is fair to say right now that I have a problem with local authorities spending public money on over-priced, German-made vehicles. Call me jingoistic if you will but we had a national car manufacturer in the shape of MG Rover who built a car that was considered by the people in the "know" to be quite a good car, and that was the "75". The Touring estate was an ideal base for a general purpose emergency response vehicle that would have been usable by all three emergency services. To be fair to the Fire And Rescue, and the Ambulance Service, they both seem to run fleets of quite ordinary cars like Ford Mondeos and Vauxhall Vectras but the Plod seem to consider themselves special and have to have the most expensive luxury cars they can lay their bent hands on.

Central Government could have saved MG Rover if the Home Office had had control of the budgets for new police vehicles instead of allowing the umpteen police forces across the country to spunk money away like it doesn't matter. If you go to Germany you will find that the Polizei drive German-made vehicles, go to France and the Gendarmes drive French-made vehicles, go to Italy and the Polizia drive Fiats. Come to Great Britain and you will find we are not so great after all because the Plod drive round in cars made anywhere but Great Britain, and we don't have a national car manufacturer anymore. "And why not?" I hear you ask. Because our glorious leaders took what was left of our national motoring heritage and sold it down the river to a German rival, specifically BMW who asset-stripped MG Rover and left it to the wolves.

Just to finish up, I put the evening News on the television after I started writing this, just in time to see Mr Des Browne MP (Government Minister for Pathetic Excuses) climbing into the back of a nice new ministerial car. Surprisingly enough it was a BMW. It is not surprising that the people of this Country have very little national pride when even our egotistical Leaders don't have any.