So who should get fired for such a waste of police resources?

According to Google the average salary of a police man in England is £30,000 and they work about 40 hours per week. So it should cost £126,000 station one person for 24/7. Now I understand that real costs will be higher for various reasons, but 100x?

Why am I being downvoted? Seriously, this math calculates to me differently in my head - so I am going to put a spreadsheet together to see if these costs are real.

Ill assume the avg salary stated above, plus the hours and schedules.

I can't believe that some beat officer is going to inflate costs 2x for doing reporting. I HIGHLY doubt there is that much paperwork for a simple shift change.

Further, the "cost" could be highly falsely inflated to justify the stopping of guarding Assange as they may see it a waste - and want to inflate how much waste there is so as to get easy agreement that "its not worth it"

Hahahahaha - "beat" officers

I hadn't thought of the officers as being some elite force -- though I have no idea if they are, although assuming they may be lowly "beat"-like types is not a good assumption. :-)

I'm not sure why 8 officers would be required to keep an eye on one door for one person, but that's a tangential question...

The guard most likely wasn't to keep him safe, but to keep him in the embassy at all time, this is the same kind of guard that a US diplomat would've gotten while visiting the USSR and probably still gets when they visit Russia and vice versa.

And most importantly he's been held up in the Ecuadorian embassy not the Russian one, Ecuador is the 4th largest receiver of US Economic and Military aid in South America the US also provides loan guarantees for most of Ecuadors loans including the recent 10bln USD loan from China which was secured through the IIC which is a US body.

It would be an enormous risk and an even bigger disaster of international diplomacy to kill an Australian without trial. Grow up.

People who are far less well known are routinely arrested by the police for failure to turn up in court. There was no need for this expensive 24 hour guard.

If you don't know when your target is going to move, how do you stop him from leaving UK waters before you even realize he isn't there anymore? Monitor every single boat moving on the Thames, 24/7? Search every ship leaving your jurisdiction?

Getting out probably isn't easy, but I would be surprised if there weren't quite a few people/organizations capable of doing it.

This outcome was predictable from day 1, yet they still spent £12M. It wasn't to seek justice, it was to maintain appearances.

If you posed the question, "How much would you want society to spend if someone raped you?" it would have carried a different connotation. But by asking "whats the limit on how much society should spend..." implies society knows for a fact that you were raped by someone.

Sorry if it's not the meaning you intended, but you made it sound like we should all believe Assange is guilty. I don't believe that's a reasonable conclusion.

I believe such argument have a place and time, but at least dissociate them from the original point ...

First, I'm not entirely sure this person is a he. In the absence of an indicator of which gender a person is, I typically don't assume.

"Oh please, you absolutely understood" is not a justifiable statement here. What knowledge do you possess of what I do or do not understand?

And I'm not being pedantic here: I actually though that 'polack was trying to weasel in the suggestion that Assange is guilty without proving beyond a shadow of a doubt (which no Internet commentor really should be able to, barring a huge evidence mis-handling by the Swedish investigators).

As for the rest, what was meant higher up was that from the justice point of view at this stage of a case, whether the rape happened or not is not known nor required to make the decision, a complaint has been made and it is the job of the state offices (both police and justice) to ensure the case can go through unimpeded.

As such, the question asked clearly meant "if you make an accusation of rape against you, how much should the state be willing to pay to see the case go through if the person you accuse makes it difficult / what is the maximal amount after which they should stop".

Now, maybe english is not your first language, because this was sincerely very clear and evident that this is what was meant in the message.

Whether the person was really raped or whether that person makes it up does not change that amount, since the state does not know at that point and the amount is spent in order to see the case go through to figure it out.

Singular "they" works wonders.

> Now, maybe english is not your first language

Only non-programming language, actually.

> because this was sincerely very clear and evident that this is what was meant in the message.

I disagree, and that was the entirety of my point here.

> that number should be the same no matter who the victim (or perpetrator) is.

Meaning: if you are wealthy, law enforcement pays $20,000 to investigate and prosecute the person who raped you. If you are a hobo, law enforcement pays $20,000 to investigate and prosecute the person who raped you.

Exempli gratia, let's pretend I was raped. I should be able to reify my victimhood and sell it to a lawyer, thereby transferring to that lawyer the right to extract compensation from the perpetrator.

Now there's a market for it and the price is whatever a lawyer is willing to pay. You will quickly see a market form around it. This was done in Medieval Iceland for longer than the United States has been a country, so mind your glass ceiling when criticizing this idea.

Incidentally, you've just created a market for rape, and persuaded rich people that rape is just fine because they can afford pay off most victims.

For very rich people, that means practically all possible victims.

For poor people, that means practically all possible victims because they can't afford to pay anyone anyway.

Is this really a workable view of criminality and justice?

> Is this really a workable view of criminality and justice?

It worked for 400 years in Medieval Iceland. If you are interested in debating this I'd like to hear from you why you think that what you say would happen if this was in place, in fact did not happen when this was in place.

I think I may be misunderstanding the context of the terms.

I suppose it's the State who "presses charges" in this case, but I believed that term was only used for the victim(s).

I'm thinking more along the lines that there is a clear cut victim of the alleged crime that refuses to file charges and the state does it in their stead. It would seem that the lack of charges from the alleged victim is the first defense of the accused, even the victim disagrees with the state.

But there are important reasons why one wouldn't press charges despite having suffered the crime; a few of the obvious ones include fear of retaliation, being unwilling to be in the presence of the perpetrator(s), lying to protect them, etc. And despite that refusal, there still may there be enough evidence to prove it happened.

Edit: Can someone explain the downvote - the UK government spend 12M GBP to monitor a person that Sweden wanted. It is up to Sweden to decide if such prodigious waste of resources is warranted.

And by removing that police protection, perhaps they are trying to entice him to provide some £12m or more of information in light of the likelihood of that wetwork?

But then again, I like to see government incompetence used against itself rather than against innocent people, like what happens here in the US.

Some of the shenanigans that went on with diplomatic bags shows that some countries are prepared to do this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1132544.stm

The Soviets using one to transport a tractor shows the bags can be big enough to get a person out. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2234/is-there-such-...

A. interview him via Google Hangout / Skype / etc.

or

B. fly somebody to England to interview him at the Ecuadorian embassy?

B. Because the Ecuadorian government required guarantees the Swedish government cannot provide (because it'd be overriding the judiciary).

I had thought that one possible outcome of the interview with him would be a decision to not arrest him. If that's the case it seems they'd want to get the interview out of the way by any means, and then if the need to arrest him stands, deal with that then.

B. Because the Ecuadorian government required guarantees the Swedish government cannot provide (because it'd be overriding the judiciary).

Interesting, I don't remember that bit, but that sounds likely. Oh well... what can ya do? shrug

The argument that he's only wanted for interview was a large part of his defence prior to entering the embassy, and was entirely shot down by the courts.

...the MPS will deploy a number of overt and covert tactics to arrest him.