Lies from Dorset OPCC Chief Executive Simon Bullock confirmed

The capacity for Dorset Police to keep demonstrating their dishonesty, incompetence and greed is starting to surprise even me, not a week seems to be passing at the moment without another blunder.

The problem with lying is that to get away with it you have to be consistent, but the reality is that sooner or later, even if you are incredibly careful, you will contradict yourself, or someone else will.

As a part of the coverup for other multiple lies about Road Safety, I heard from the OPCC Chief Exec Simon Bullock on the 20th September 2019:

"Driver awareness schemes are utilised for operational not financial reasons. Whilst the schemes do allow for cost recovery this simply means that the DAS fees must only be spent on the provision of the course (admin, venue, utilities, staff) and, insofar as it can be calculated, the specific cost of detection for the individual in attendance.

All this means that no police force makes money from its driver awareness scheme."  

Unfortunately, there has recently been news that "DORSET Police is more than £1.3 million over budget in its day to day spending so far this year"

https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18926579.dorset-police-1-3-million-budget-year/

and, "Among the figures is £500,000 in lost income from driver awareness courses which it has not been able to run, and other, smaller, income streams."

Oh dear!! If this was not so serious it would be starting to become a comedy.

And..

https://moderngov.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/documents/s22063/06%20-%20Q2%20Panel%20Finance%20Report.pdf

"R1. The Covid 19 Pandemic has significantly impacted on the receipts from the Driver Awareness Scheme and other income streams. A lost income claim of over £500,000 has been made for April to July which is due to be paid in December but this is not fully reflected in the forecast."

So the police (and significantly, the Dorset Police and Crime Panel), have the nerve to raid our taxes when due to some misfortune their money making activities sold to us as road safety have to be briefly suspended!!!!

And yes, that is a 1/2 £million income for just 4 months.

Let's just make a start at listing some of the implications of this:

1. Simon Bullock lied about what happens with course money.

2. The course income is used in conflict with the rules, even seeming to end up at "charities" of which Martyn Underhill and Chief Constable James Vaughan are on the board of trustees.

3. Dorset Police is dependent on that income, cannot manage without it and refuses to listen to the facts that the course does not save life. The financial motivations they tell us don't exist come before the concerns of reducing road death and serious injury and before the consideration of more suitable activities that might achieve it. This dishonesty and greed is costing life.

4. Dorset Police have not the slightest control or care about public money. A while ago PCC Martyn Underhill turned a simple question about where the course money goes into an expensive 2 year farce and yet more lies, for example that the course needed £71K for "desktops and peripherals" just for the course - enough the buy 150 laptops! This was later "corrected" to £14K And they still dodged the fact that the costs detailed to me were misrepresented. And in the echo article, no surprise, "The largest expenditure in the force capital budget is for information and communication technology which accounts for 38% of the budget (£3.49m)" If anyone would like to see how "transparent" Dorset Police is, send them and FOI about that and let me know how it goes in a couple of years.

5. Not only is the OPCC Chief exec and PCC behaving badly, so is the Dorset Police and Crime Panel (Dorset Council) 

6. With people like this running Dorset Police, there will not be a decent service no matter how much money is thrown at it, as I have said before, I would not trust Martyn Underhill or Simon Bullock to buy pencils for Dorset Police.

7. This is no mistake, no momentary lapse of integrity, oversight, etc. Just another step in persistent long-term mismanagement of the police and abuse of the public they are meant to serve, with perversely, those specifically appointed by the public to make the police accountable to the public persistently the worst.

I could go on but I'm sure I will be writing again soon,

Ian Belchamber