FED up with your job? Career plan going down the pan?

How about a gift of £10,000 from the taxpayer to make you feel better and persuade you to try your luck in another calling?

Don't scoff - this is a serious plan to wave the disillusioned officers in the police ranks a golden goodbye.

Amazingly, this scheme to pay off bored bobbies in their thirties is said to offer savings to the public by reducing the army of officers who leave by retiring early on health grounds - as part of the £1 billion-a-year public sector "sick" pension scam that's bleeding the taxpayer.

But isn't this alternative a surrender to the lead-swingers?

It acknowledges that they are not interested in the job, are unlikely to be doing it properly and are likely to see the suspect sick-note route to an early finish and a nice pension if they are not tempted with ten-grand to clear off.

Surely, the solution to the problem of the disaffected, under-performing bobby is what his or her counterpart in the private sector would rightly receive.

Not a £10,000 pay-off, but the manifestly-deserved sack.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.