Or, more accurately, unemployment by a single cut, for 1,800 CPS employees.
The Government, perhaps wisely, has told the CPS to cut costs by 25%. The guff in the leaked memo aside, the vast bulk of cutting costs will come, as usual, from sacking people.
Senior Crown Prosecutors making 50-60K a year, who are still knocking about in the mags courts, are extremely high-cost. I can phone chambers and get a third six pupil or junior to cover a court for a hundred and fifty quid. 5 days a week = 750 a week, and if court sits for 48 weeks a year, that's 36K. People earning that much need to be in the Crown Court, saving fees if they are to justify their existence.
But no sick pay, no pension, no training costs, no travel and subsistence. The Bar is starting to look like good value again.
If the budget cut is 40%, however, it's not just 1,800 jobs, it's 3,300, which will cost £70M...
Yours,
the Anonymous Soon-To-Be-Ex-Prosecutor
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"the Anonymous Soon-To-Be-Ex-Prosecutor"
ReplyDeleteif the axe were to fall, what would you do?
I thought about becoming an exotic dancer, but there's only so much money a man can spend.
ReplyDeleteMore seriously, I'd hopefully be one of the ones forced to go, so I could negotiate a package of some sort. I guess I'd have to start calling in favours from the clerks to whom I sent a shed load of work.
I confidently predict, on the basis of nothing but a vague feeling, that I will be absolutely fine, and my future will be filled with the finest tea, the creamiest milk, and the chocolatiest biscuits.
If the prosecutor who stumbled and mumbled before me today is redeployed to work of greater national importance it will be a mercy to this JP and to justice in general. As for severance, a couple of hundred quid would be more than plenty.
ReplyDeleteHa, if I was in charge, the severance would be an ironic last cup of tea and a biscuit. Even that would be too much for some of my feckless colleagues. I truly hope that the CPS will seize the opportunity to rid itself of dead wood, and to keep the decent ones (like me).
ReplyDeleteQuite a bit of money in exotic dancing- you might like to try lap dancing, I'm told it can be very entertaining.
ReplyDeleteOn a serious note, I remember a few years back working in a a team of prosecutors, there was 3 of us , we dealt with a busy city centre area and had the whole gambit of work from bog standard thefts through to the odd murder and regular friday/sat night allegations of rape. We went to court, we did Old -style committals, drafted briefed counsel - ran our own cases. We actually had a bit of control. We bumbled on but got things done. Then the KPI bullshit brigade took over and there are now about 12 doing the same job, they have no control, very little experience and no control.
The justice system is a joke from top to bottom. It has been ruined by the target culture and the constant fiddling whilst with no clear aim.
The whole thing is a pile of shite and I'm glad to be out of it. I only hope you get your pay off before the government fuck the pension pay-off.
Don't worry about me, I've been nicking staplers and paper clips since I took the Queen's shilling, I'm about sixty grand up, even after eBay take their pound of flesh. And yes, that's a lot of staplers. I used a truck.
ReplyDeleteIs that why papers are so often missing?
ReplyDelete