Strrrrrrike!

Why is that however many strikes there are among crucial workers in this country, we know the strike will come to an end at some point? It seems that once the relevant strikers have had a couple of weeks off, they are happy to come back to work for less than they originally demanded.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to strike. Would I go and stand on a picket line somewhere, or just click onto lastminute.com? Police officers "can't" strike, whatever that is supposed to mean, so the biggest threat we can offer is to "work-to-rule", whatever THAT is supposed to mean.

According to the Federation, we police do a lot of things voluntarily at the moment, such as carrying firearms and riot shields, and driving over the speed limit (ie all the things that most of us joined up for). Working to rule means not doing anything that we don't have to (a policy by which I have survived a good few years in the police so far). Only joking.

Here are some things I currently do voluntarily:

• Arrive half an hour early for work so the shift before me can go off on time.
• Drive in my own car to court.
• Attend incidents that force policy says other departments should be attending.
• Go out single-crewed on a Friday night because there aren't enough of us.
• Receive telephone calls from the Duties or Finance departments, or the CPS, when I'm at home, without claiming four hours overtime for them.
• Use my own pen to sign things.
• Buy my own boots.
• Get prisoners in early for their bail just so we can count the detections towards this week's target.
• Check my email.

Sadly I don't think the public would notice if I stopped doing those things. Nor do I think they'd notice if we stopped carrying guns and speeding.

They might notice if we stopped coming out to arrest their children for throwing meringues at each other, or refused to charge their ex-partner with harassment for sending two text messages calling them a meanie. The bosses might notice that too.

Just on the subject of "can't" strike: we most certainly can - in a literal sense anyway. I wonder what they'd do if we all just didn't come into work one day. Probably nothing.

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