7 ms·

Whenever big numbers are thrown around, there is a need to put them in perspective. However, I don't think "number of meals" or "teachers hired" are good or rel

Whenever big numbers are thrown around, there is a need to put them in perspective. However, I don't think "number of meals" or "teachers hired" are good or relevant perspectives. The UK police budget is about £3.5 billion. So this expense is about 0.3% of that. The UK budget is about £700 trillion, if I remember correctly. So this expense is about 0.0000014% of that.

arethuza 12y ago
£700 billion - not £700 trillion!
- psykovsky 12y ago
  American billions or European billions?
ObviousScience 12y ago
To put your numbers in perspective: the cost of Julian Assange being kept in the embassy is not policing all of the UK for a day or so. That is, the cost of keeping Assange under watch is the same as what would be spent on 1 average day of policing for the entire country. If I were a UK citizen concerned about local crime rates, I'd be mildly ticked off they were spending 1 nationwide police day on some guy rather than dealing with crimes over the entire rest of the country.
- dublinclontarf 12y ago
  What are they supposed to do? Just not enforce the law?
  - draugadrotten 12y ago
    They should bring the Swedish Prosecutors to the Embassy and conduct the interview there, as is done in other cases. This case is not about enforcing the law, it appears to be about using the letter of the law to intimidate one of USAs most wanted individuals and keeping him detained without a fair trial. Like using tax laws against Capone. Doing a s/Gitmo/Embassy/.
  - sago 12y ago
    There are many, many laws, that if it cost £10m to catch one violator, would not be enforced (well, would not be aggressively pursued, it isn't like they'd say "no, you're fine, go about your life"). Police make priority judgements all the time about where to allocate their resources. The concern in this case is that the allocation is not being made on reasonable grounds based on the nature of the crime and normal policing priorities, but on political grounds because of who the accused person is.
    - matthewmacleod 12y ago
      I don't agree. In reality, there are very few situations in which ew are fully aware of a criminal's location, but for diplomatic reasons we can't actually apprehend them. That's why this is different. Can you imagine the uproar if we allowed targets of arrest warrants to walk free despite knowing their location, and having it surrounded? This is an exceptional case.
      - sago 12y ago
        Seems a false dichotomy. I wouldn't suggest we "let him go free", but when any public service has resource limits, you have assign them reasonably to the public benefit. As for whether this would happen for another person in the same situation who wasn't a major political bogeyman figure? I suspect not. I suspect they'd wait until intelligence suggested he had left, and apprehend him then. Or he'd just be on general no-travel lists at ports and airports. It strains my belief to think that this kind of theatre isn't in large part because he's Julian Assange, source of significant political embarrassment for the UK and its ally across the pond.
        matthewmacleod 12y ago
        I don't think that follows – surely if the target was a source of 'significant political embarrassment', the last thing you'd want to do is draw attention to the matter! Honestly, I don't know what would happen if he weren't a political hot potato. Much like Abu Hamza, I imagine the British establishment would rather he was just none of their problem. Unfortunately, that's not something they can do in this case.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - vdaniuk 12y ago
    It is absolutely unthinkable for UK Government not to prosecute sexual crimes, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_paedophile_dossier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_paedophile_dossier
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - ObviousScience 12y ago
    Enforce which law? The police already don't have the resources to enforce every infraction, every time, so we're already discussing which cases we should be enforcing and how much effort we should be putting in to each. In this particular case, I think that the public would be better served by simply letting the foreign government move him to their nation and allowing the two foreign governments to sort the issue out between themselves (since he was granted amnesty AND the government who seeks his arrest to interview him refuses to interview him in the UK, as has been done with other cases, which suggests an ulterior motive to wanting him in custody). I think the enforcement effort would be better spent stopping crimes against UK citizens, instead of playing middle-man in an international conflict between Sweden, Ecuador, and likely the US. Heck, if you really wanted to spend your police money on international drama, there are plenty of financial crimes committed in the UK against UK citizens that they could be investigating, nevermind that policing street level crime would likely do more for the average citizen than big drama cases like this. (Of course, that's speaking from the perspective of a citizen. Politicians have other reasons they'd like to trade favors like this.)
sago 12y ago
> The UK budget is about £700 trillion, if I remember correctly. Almost, but the GDP of the entire world is less than 10% of £700t. You're remembering £700b, which is roughly the UK gov't spending. Whatever the number, a huge chunk of government spending is allocated to this bit of theatre, aimed -- as far as I can see -- at making sure the UK looks like a good ally to the US. Anyone who thinks this has anything to do with an extradition to Sweden on sex-crime charges is a tool. The UK police don't just drop £10m on extradition compliance for one suspect.
- arethuza 12y ago
  Our entire defence policy since Suez has arguably been based on being an ally to the US even when it has required actions that were very unpopular with the public and extremely expensive. A few million is a rounding error in that context.
  - sago 12y ago
    I agree. The most damning thing I heard on this was a story about the military planning in the US after 9/11. During the practice roleplaying in the state department, in advance of its diplomatic efforts, the staffer 'playing' the UK ambassador was told to say or do whatever he thought would ingratiate him the most to the US. As insulting to the UK as that is, I can't actually think of an example which would suggest they were wrong. However, on the last point, true it is a rounding error, but ten million here, ten million there, if you're not careful, after a while it will add up to real money.
    - mercer 12y ago
      This is one of the central themes of In The Loop, a feature film spin-off from the excellent The Thick Of It (UK TV show), and a funny and possibly pretty accurate depiction of the USA-UK relationship.
ra 12y ago
If the UK population is 64 million [1] and the annual national policing budget is 3.5 billion, that's a per person budget of £54 per year. So £10,000,000 on one accused person is the equivalent of the annual policing budget of 185,000 people. Spent on one person yet to be trialled. You'd have to say this is a disproportional response. Why? [1] https://www.google.com.au/search?q=uk+population https://www.google.com.au/search?q=uk+population
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  That's not a reasonable argument, though. You can't generalise police spending over the population because criminals make up a relatively small proportion. Is it a disproportionate response then to spend £10m on one guy? The fact that he's not been tried yet is irrelevant – there's a warrant for his arrest, and for a pretty serious crime. I struggle to see what the alternative would be.
  - ra 12y ago
    Relatively small, yes. But I'd guess somewhere between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 people are criminal? 1 in 185,000? That's not criminal it's targeted.
    - matthewmacleod 12y ago
      1 in 185,000? That's not criminal it's targeted. Like I said, it doesn't work like that. We don't decide in advance how to apportion resources on the basis of how many people are likely to commit a crime this year, do we? No, of course it's targeted. There's a warrant out for Assange; he went into hiding. We know where he is, but for diplomatic reasons we can't arrest him. This is a very unusual situation.
  - unfamiliar 12y ago
    >Is it a disproportionate response then to spend £10m on one guy? Yes I think it is. But that is not my point. There are much bigger wastes in the budget, yet here we are getting upset about the (relatively) small excess that is spent on Assange. People are complaining about the expense, when what they are really incredulous about is the fact that Assange is locked up.
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "So this expense is about 0.3% of that." That seems like enough perspective. 0.3% of the UK police budget to stand outside the residence of one man? If we did this for everyone we could monitor 333 people per year and get nowhere.

arethuza 12y ago

£700 billion - not £700 trillion!

psykovsky 12y ago
American billions or European billions?

ObviousScience 12y ago

To put your numbers in perspective: the cost of Julian Assange being kept in the embassy is not policing all of the UK for a day or so. That is, the cost of keeping Assange under watch is the same as what would be spent on 1 average day of policing for the entire country. If I were a UK citizen concerned about local crime rates, I'd be mildly ticked off they were spending 1 nationwide police day on some guy rather than dealing with crimes over the entire rest of the country.

dublinclontarf 12y ago
What are they supposed to do? Just not enforce the law?
- draugadrotten 12y ago
  They should bring the Swedish Prosecutors to the Embassy and conduct the interview there, as is done in other cases. This case is not about enforcing the law, it appears to be about using the letter of the law to intimidate one of USAs most wanted individuals and keeping him detained without a fair trial. Like using tax laws against Capone. Doing a s/Gitmo/Embassy/.
- sago 12y ago
  There are many, many laws, that if it cost £10m to catch one violator, would not be enforced (well, would not be aggressively pursued, it isn't like they'd say "no, you're fine, go about your life"). Police make priority judgements all the time about where to allocate their resources. The concern in this case is that the allocation is not being made on reasonable grounds based on the nature of the crime and normal policing priorities, but on political grounds because of who the accused person is.
  - matthewmacleod 12y ago
    I don't agree. In reality, there are very few situations in which ew are fully aware of a criminal's location, but for diplomatic reasons we can't actually apprehend them. That's why this is different. Can you imagine the uproar if we allowed targets of arrest warrants to walk free despite knowing their location, and having it surrounded? This is an exceptional case.
    - sago 12y ago
      Seems a false dichotomy. I wouldn't suggest we "let him go free", but when any public service has resource limits, you have assign them reasonably to the public benefit. As for whether this would happen for another person in the same situation who wasn't a major political bogeyman figure? I suspect not. I suspect they'd wait until intelligence suggested he had left, and apprehend him then. Or he'd just be on general no-travel lists at ports and airports. It strains my belief to think that this kind of theatre isn't in large part because he's Julian Assange, source of significant political embarrassment for the UK and its ally across the pond.
      - matthewmacleod 12y ago
        I don't think that follows – surely if the target was a source of 'significant political embarrassment', the last thing you'd want to do is draw attention to the matter! Honestly, I don't know what would happen if he weren't a political hot potato. Much like Abu Hamza, I imagine the British establishment would rather he was just none of their problem. Unfortunately, that's not something they can do in this case.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- vdaniuk 12y ago
  It is absolutely unthinkable for UK Government not to prosecute sexual crimes, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_paedophile_dossier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_paedophile_dossier
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ObviousScience 12y ago
  Enforce which law? The police already don't have the resources to enforce every infraction, every time, so we're already discussing which cases we should be enforcing and how much effort we should be putting in to each. In this particular case, I think that the public would be better served by simply letting the foreign government move him to their nation and allowing the two foreign governments to sort the issue out between themselves (since he was granted amnesty AND the government who seeks his arrest to interview him refuses to interview him in the UK, as has been done with other cases, which suggests an ulterior motive to wanting him in custody). I think the enforcement effort would be better spent stopping crimes against UK citizens, instead of playing middle-man in an international conflict between Sweden, Ecuador, and likely the US. Heck, if you really wanted to spend your police money on international drama, there are plenty of financial crimes committed in the UK against UK citizens that they could be investigating, nevermind that policing street level crime would likely do more for the average citizen than big drama cases like this. (Of course, that's speaking from the perspective of a citizen. Politicians have other reasons they'd like to trade favors like this.)

sago 12y ago

> The UK budget is about £700 trillion, if I remember correctly. Almost, but the GDP of the entire world is less than 10% of £700t. You're remembering £700b, which is roughly the UK gov't spending. Whatever the number, a huge chunk of government spending is allocated to this bit of theatre, aimed -- as far as I can see -- at making sure the UK looks like a good ally to the US. Anyone who thinks this has anything to do with an extradition to Sweden on sex-crime charges is a tool. The UK police don't just drop £10m on extradition compliance for one suspect.

arethuza 12y ago
Our entire defence policy since Suez has arguably been based on being an ally to the US even when it has required actions that were very unpopular with the public and extremely expensive. A few million is a rounding error in that context.
- sago 12y ago
  I agree. The most damning thing I heard on this was a story about the military planning in the US after 9/11. During the practice roleplaying in the state department, in advance of its diplomatic efforts, the staffer 'playing' the UK ambassador was told to say or do whatever he thought would ingratiate him the most to the US. As insulting to the UK as that is, I can't actually think of an example which would suggest they were wrong. However, on the last point, true it is a rounding error, but ten million here, ten million there, if you're not careful, after a while it will add up to real money.
  - mercer 12y ago
    This is one of the central themes of In The Loop, a feature film spin-off from the excellent The Thick Of It (UK TV show), and a funny and possibly pretty accurate depiction of the USA-UK relationship.

ra 12y ago

If the UK population is 64 million [1] and the annual national policing budget is 3.5 billion, that's a per person budget of £54 per year. So £10,000,000 on one accused person is the equivalent of the annual policing budget of 185,000 people. Spent on one person yet to be trialled. You'd have to say this is a disproportional response. Why? [1] https://www.google.com.au/search?q=uk+population https://www.google.com.au/search?q=uk+population

matthewmacleod 12y ago
That's not a reasonable argument, though. You can't generalise police spending over the population because criminals make up a relatively small proportion. Is it a disproportionate response then to spend £10m on one guy? The fact that he's not been tried yet is irrelevant – there's a warrant for his arrest, and for a pretty serious crime. I struggle to see what the alternative would be.
- ra 12y ago
  Relatively small, yes. But I'd guess somewhere between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 people are criminal? 1 in 185,000? That's not criminal it's targeted.
  - matthewmacleod 12y ago
    1 in 185,000? That's not criminal it's targeted. Like I said, it doesn't work like that. We don't decide in advance how to apportion resources on the basis of how many people are likely to commit a crime this year, do we? No, of course it's targeted. There's a warrant out for Assange; he went into hiding. We know where he is, but for diplomatic reasons we can't arrest him. This is a very unusual situation.
- unfamiliar 12y ago
  >Is it a disproportionate response then to spend £10m on one guy? Yes I think it is. But that is not my point. There are much bigger wastes in the budget, yet here we are getting upset about the (relatively) small excess that is spent on Assange. People are complaining about the expense, when what they are really incredulous about is the fact that Assange is locked up.

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> "So this expense is about 0.3% of that." That seems like enough perspective. 0.3% of the UK police budget to stand outside the residence of one man? If we did this for everyone we could monitor 333 people per year and get nowhere.