I wasn't intending to retire.
After being injured on duty I reluctantly carved a new career in CID and would gave happily remained long past my 30.
Then along came that prat Tom Winsor who decided it would be a good idea to save money by dismissing bobbies thet weren't fully fit.
So hundreds of bobbies in my position, ie, seriously and permanently injured protecting the public, jumped ship and went and very expensive IoD pensions, meaning Winsor's idea to save a few quid cost the government an absolute fortune.
That was nearly 9 years ago now and had I stayed I'd probably only be looking at retiring at about now. Still, if that's what the HMIC thinks of brave men and women who made such a sacrifice in the line of duty then he can go and foxtrot himself.
When I started as a teacher people told me they had had a similar stupid idea about teachers
decided it would be best to get rid of a load of old fuddy-duddy teachers who clearly could never adapt to the "new ways of teaching"
partly because they were all at the top of the pay scale
and replace them with young keen and malleable young teachers who would spear-head the new changes to teachering
and would be at the bottom of the pay scale
problem was that thsi mean that the Local Education Authorities were makeing people redundant on pensions boosted to be at teh same level as they would have been if they had stayed teaching until 60 - but the retired at 50
so 10 years of boosted pension to be paid until they died
which cost a damn sight more than the savings from having the younger people coming in
and they discovered that the older ones were the ones that knew how the schools and departments worked and most of them would have been able to adapt perfectly well
and in doing so would have noticed the glaring set of stupid idea and worked round them
which the "keen young blood" just walked into happily and cocked it all up
Most of my colleagues were either new - or older teachers who were annoyed that they had just been too young to take the golder handshake
a lot of the new blood left after a few years anyway as the behaviour in school went to pot in a lot of places as the old teacher that kept order were happily walking dogs and riding bikes all day ( or whatever)
sorry - went on a bit there - but anyway governments do daft things