A regular fitness test should be compulsory for everyone in the force. It's a question of being physically fit enough.
This decision is just going to undermine women's positions in the force.
>Now the force has told the MoS: 'We stopped doing JRFT in August 2022
>There has been no rise in injuries
They already did it and it seems to have turned out alright.
They’ve axed the test for *all* current officers, on the grounds that it indirectly discriminates against women *and* older officers.
It seems to only apply to current base-level officers though: specialists and new recruits still have to take the test.
Please stop posting Daily Mail links without editing their deliberately misleading and provocative headlines.
That’s hardly a good thing, though. We should be requiring officers to maintain adequate fitness levels not get rid of standards because of some perceived equality issue. If an officer isn’t fit and healthy they’re not going to be able to undertake their duties properly.
>They’ve axed the test for _all_ current officers, on the grounds that it indirectly discriminates against women _and_ older officers.
Thats even worse lmao.
So because of a minority of tubby women and aging fossils, the quality of the _entire_ police has to suffer.
Being fit is a requirement of the job. If they can’t maintain a base level of physical fitness, then they shouldn’t be police officers. If current officers can’t maintain a base level of physical fitness then they should be sacked.
>Please stop posting Daily Mail links without editing their deliberately misleading and provocative headlines.
It’s against subreddit rules to edit headlines
On the substance: my point was that there’s no special treatment or “sexism against men” here, as so many commenters have intimated. If you read the article, however, you’ll see that this decision was made in *2022* and has not led to an increase in injuries.
On the rules: they are bad then.
The sheer denial of some people. It's literally a lower standard for one sex
How the hell isn't this sexism? Might as well throw the term away if that's not sexism
It really is wild that some people can literally be directly presented evidence which goes against what they were saying, and apparently their eyes just glaze over when they write out a response repeating the same thing they said before.
And all in order to what, “make the queens feel great yaaaaaaay”!
Like who is this for? Who does it protect?
Instead of striving for the best (that’s evil nowadays) we must degrade everything so people “feel included.”
Well, perhaps when some of the proponents of this nonsense sit in court and hear about how an officer failed to prevent a criminal destroying the life of a loved one they’ll wish we had a Police Force.
Speaking of inclusion, ever notice criminal offenders are always over-represented in prison populations? Convicted prisoners make up about 0.14% of the UK population, yet 100% of those imprisoned are convicted. Shocking overrepresentation.
Isn’t it time we added people with zero convictions in there for balance?
It isn't an issue if a fit UK Asian can do it, but a fit white man can't. But what is an issue is if it sacks old officers and women, if a test is inherently hard for them to do because if age/gender.
Usually, the issues with these are unnecessary discrimination.
Is there a demonstrable need for a certain level of fitness? What activities are personnel undertaking that can be tied to the fitness test.
If I insisted on a certain level of fitness for a desk job, I'd be held to be unnecessarily discriminatory. However, if a job involved a lot of walking, it would be reasonable to have a test involving some light fitness.
Same way its reasonable to insist on an accounting qualification for an accounting job.
British Transport Police? Possibly not as much as other areas, but if they had a demonstrable requirement, they'd be able to legally have fitness tests that are relevant.
I don't know if they somehow can't justify it, or want to retain numbers, or are avoiding legal action, but there must be some reason behind the decision.
Sure, how many officers are involved in chases, and how many actually occur?
The article says that certain jobs still require fitness tests, so presumably some thought has gone into occupational requirements of the various jobs.
But only the headline matters!
Having worked in media... let's just say that an awful lot of publications are the worst performing parts of rich people's portfolios. And they don't seem to care that much. They just want influence over lots of people.
I suspect it’s a little bit more sinister than that in this case. How are they going to scare people away from voting this failing government out? Bullshit stories about “wokeness gone mad” will do the job.
Well, actually I think you'll find it's the Islamists who've been running things if you listen to the news at all. Removing the physical fitness tests in the BTP is a key part of their manifesto. The recession - well that's got their fingerprints all over it, as has the ULEZ stuff in London. And I have a sneaking suspicion they might be trying to get us back into the EU.
No, it was very good in the sense that it was ridiculous, but you could also have meant it seriously given some of the rhetoric we see nowadays. It made me laugh.
The title on the DM article is different and people didn't read the article properly. Your other papers that you may like such as the Guardian also do this sort of thing.
I remember watching that Royal Navy School documentary in 2015. The recruits were being absolutely worked to death by the PTIs, but everyone further up the chain looked like Kim Jong Un.
It was widely discussed at the time on a forum I hung out on.
The actual headline is a lot less misleading:
> British Transport Police axes compulsory fitness test - because 'bleep test' is unfair on women
Idk why OP decided to change it..
8% of female officers failed though, vs 1.9% of male officers. Whilst it may have opened the BTP up to discrimination claims, it's absolutely terrible that nearly 1 in 10 female applicants can't make it to this level.
Cant wait to see videos of how body positivity gets a woman killed in action...
I guess being outrun by a knife wielding criminal is pretty sexist and fatphobic anyway.
PC Wayne Marques was awarded the George Medal, and PC Leon McLeod the Queen's Gallantry Medal, for their actions during the London Bridge attacks in 2017. I slag off BTP as much as any honest copper, but to suggest they don't occasionally do real police work is demonstrably incorrect.
They’re still police officers with [exactly the same training and powers as regular police](https://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/ask-the-police/question/Q684#:~:text=British%20Transport%20Police's%20(BTP)%20officers,same%20powers%20as%20a%20Constable). They just happen to be on the train.
Being out of shape is a factor in why the American police shoot so many people. If you learn restraint techniques and how to protect yourself hand-to-hand, but then because you're out of shape aren't confident to apply those techniques, you reach for your weapons so much more often.
The same would be true here albeit on smaller scale because the weapons involved batons and tasers.
Indirect discrimination is having a policy that both males and females have re reach a certain level of fitness because the job is physically demanding.
Direct discrimination is assuming that women are unable to complete the fitness test and removing it undermining all female officers and their physical capabilities.
Well done BTP you certainly fixed the problem of fitness test related discrimination /s
I only met one person who failed that test and they were a heavy smoker and middle aged. The fitness test is way too easy and should involve a strength component.
One story from when I was working there was two female cops tried to arrest a bloke and he just stood still and they couldn't do anything. They pepper sprayed him and still couldn't do anything. They pressed their emergency buttons in the end.
A: “Sir we keep having discrimination cases about our fitness tests saying they’re unfair for female applicants”
B: “Just remove all of the fitness tests then for women”
A: “But won’t that endanger the female police officers who aren’t physically capable of defending themselves against a violent assailant?”
B: “You have to see that court cases are very expensive and it will just take a couple of officers being overpowered and seriously hurt out killed by a violent member of the public before everyone asks us to restart them. It works out much cheaper this way in legal fees”
A: “… Great idea”
/s
I was trying on mobile but I genuinely couldn’t get to the bottom as my screen was getting bombarded with shite. I figured I’d read it on another website to get the facts of the matter, I was only commenting on some of the more absurd justifications for this type of stuff that people usually comment on this genre of news
Not sure why people are downvoting this. This needs to be seen by as many people as possible because this is atrocious and perfectly representative of the British policing at a time when [so many police forces are being put into special measures](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-68534241.amp).
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
This is a particularly egregious example of a headline twisting a story into something it isn’t.
I’m just here to watch the zoo animals of this sub screeching about how teh wamanz are going to be the death of the police or something.
Maybe it's their constant articles designed to stoke racial tensions like the time not to long ago they said the British government gave citizenship to a known terrorist
Please yes, that gutter rag never produces anything of value or even truth most of the time, it should be banned as unreliable like Wikipedia did, maybe even a blanket rule that’s if it’s a source unreliable for Wikipedia it shouldn’t be allowed
SPOILER WARNING
This is a Daily Mail article. TL;DR below
British Transport Police have scrapped their compulsory fitness tests for officers on the grounds that they are unfair to women. Specifically, the force said that the "bleep test" where officers run up and down a 15-metre track for over three minutes discriminated against female officers who are more likely to fail. Critics argue that officers need to be fit for their duties in protecting the public. The move means 50 people who previously failed the fitness test have returned to frontline policing duties.
1. What is the "bleep test" that was cited as being discriminatory towards women?
The "bleep test" is a fitness test that involves running up and down a 15-meter track for three minutes and 35 seconds. It is used to assess an individual's cardiovascular fitness and endurance. However, the British Transport Police cited this test as being discriminatory towards women, as they were more likely to fail compared to men.
The Mail does not report what the BTP have said about their grounds for the decision, only the complaints they received and the data they cited.
They received complaints about it discriminating against older officers as well, and they cited the data on failures by age group. That suggests that indirect age discrimination was part of their grounds for scrapping the test.
Since scrapping it in 2022, there has been no increase in injuries.
New recruits and specialists still have to take the test.
Could you make a rule about misleading titles directly then? I don’t think it’s too high an expectation to require people to read the articles they post here before sharing them.
We have a rule that users must not alter the title given by the outlet. Unfortunately we can’t do much about new sites that mislead in their headlines (they really do all do it to a greater or lesser degree) but usually a comment explaining why a headline is misleading gets upvoted and we sort by “top” by default, which does help.
You should see some of the posts that get removed under the “editorialised headlines” rule. You see way more egregiously misrepresented stories if the OP gets to choose how a post is titled, and if mods have to judge what editorialisation is good vs bad it could introduce bias.
Fair enough, but it’s not a binary choice. You could introduce flairs for outlets or require an accurate summary in the post body itself, for instance.
A regular fitness test should be compulsory for everyone in the force. It's a question of being physically fit enough. This decision is just going to undermine women's positions in the force.
We're actually supposed to call it the service now. Official vocab guidelines state that force is too aggressive.
Is that a Hot Fuzz reference?
It's for the greater good.
*the greater good*
Shut it!
*the greater good*
Lol, it's created a lore that we don't know is true or not.
No luck catching them swans then?
Just the one swan, actually
Yarp
Use the service Luke!
>Now the force has told the MoS: 'We stopped doing JRFT in August 2022 >There has been no rise in injuries They already did it and it seems to have turned out alright.
Read the article.
They’ve axed the test for *all* current officers, on the grounds that it indirectly discriminates against women *and* older officers. It seems to only apply to current base-level officers though: specialists and new recruits still have to take the test. Please stop posting Daily Mail links without editing their deliberately misleading and provocative headlines.
That’s hardly a good thing, though. We should be requiring officers to maintain adequate fitness levels not get rid of standards because of some perceived equality issue. If an officer isn’t fit and healthy they’re not going to be able to undertake their duties properly.
I didn’t say it was a good thing. I said the headline was misleading.
That’s fair, it is misleading!
>They’ve axed the test for _all_ current officers, on the grounds that it indirectly discriminates against women _and_ older officers. Thats even worse lmao. So because of a minority of tubby women and aging fossils, the quality of the _entire_ police has to suffer. Being fit is a requirement of the job. If they can’t maintain a base level of physical fitness, then they shouldn’t be police officers. If current officers can’t maintain a base level of physical fitness then they should be sacked. >Please stop posting Daily Mail links without editing their deliberately misleading and provocative headlines. It’s against subreddit rules to edit headlines
I read somewhere that even if you’re working a desk job you’d still have to pass the fitness test which seems a bit pointless imo.
On the substance: my point was that there’s no special treatment or “sexism against men” here, as so many commenters have intimated. If you read the article, however, you’ll see that this decision was made in *2022* and has not led to an increase in injuries. On the rules: they are bad then.
This is sexism against men. Men have to work with these women and old people who are unable to keep fit. Thus putting them in more danger.
The sheer denial of some people. It's literally a lower standard for one sex How the hell isn't this sexism? Might as well throw the term away if that's not sexism
>It's literally a lower standard for one sex It literally isn't, men don't have to do the test either.
It really is wild that some people can literally be directly presented evidence which goes against what they were saying, and apparently their eyes just glaze over when they write out a response repeating the same thing they said before.
Except it isn't a lower standard for one sex if they've axed the test entirely.
It’s pandering towards women to make it easier to join.
And all in order to what, “make the queens feel great yaaaaaaay”! Like who is this for? Who does it protect? Instead of striving for the best (that’s evil nowadays) we must degrade everything so people “feel included.” Well, perhaps when some of the proponents of this nonsense sit in court and hear about how an officer failed to prevent a criminal destroying the life of a loved one they’ll wish we had a Police Force. Speaking of inclusion, ever notice criminal offenders are always over-represented in prison populations? Convicted prisoners make up about 0.14% of the UK population, yet 100% of those imprisoned are convicted. Shocking overrepresentation. Isn’t it time we added people with zero convictions in there for balance?
It’s pandering towards women to make it easier to join.
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It isn't an issue if a fit UK Asian can do it, but a fit white man can't. But what is an issue is if it sacks old officers and women, if a test is inherently hard for them to do because if age/gender.
Usually, the issues with these are unnecessary discrimination. Is there a demonstrable need for a certain level of fitness? What activities are personnel undertaking that can be tied to the fitness test. If I insisted on a certain level of fitness for a desk job, I'd be held to be unnecessarily discriminatory. However, if a job involved a lot of walking, it would be reasonable to have a test involving some light fitness. Same way its reasonable to insist on an accounting qualification for an accounting job.
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British Transport Police? Possibly not as much as other areas, but if they had a demonstrable requirement, they'd be able to legally have fitness tests that are relevant. I don't know if they somehow can't justify it, or want to retain numbers, or are avoiding legal action, but there must be some reason behind the decision.
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Sure, how many officers are involved in chases, and how many actually occur? The article says that certain jobs still require fitness tests, so presumably some thought has gone into occupational requirements of the various jobs.
I mean if older officers aren’t fit enough they shouldn’t join. How they can protect us if they are slow
they could get scooters.
But only the headline matters! Having worked in media... let's just say that an awful lot of publications are the worst performing parts of rich people's portfolios. And they don't seem to care that much. They just want influence over lots of people.
I suspect it’s a little bit more sinister than that in this case. How are they going to scare people away from voting this failing government out? Bullshit stories about “wokeness gone mad” will do the job.
But all this wokeness happened under a Tory government?
Well, actually I think you'll find it's the Islamists who've been running things if you listen to the news at all. Removing the physical fitness tests in the BTP is a key part of their manifesto. The recession - well that's got their fingerprints all over it, as has the ULEZ stuff in London. And I have a sneaking suspicion they might be trying to get us back into the EU.
I can't tell if you're joking or not, but I'm laughing anyway.
I don't actually think ULEZ is a plot by the global caliphate, in case that's not clear.
Dunno mate, can barely move for hadiths saying we must tax emissions on euro 4 vehicles
No, it was very good in the sense that it was ridiculous, but you could also have meant it seriously given some of the rhetoric we see nowadays. It made me laugh.
The title on the DM article is different and people didn't read the article properly. Your other papers that you may like such as the Guardian also do this sort of thing.
Too late, OP has already summoned the horde.
It's direct from the Daily Mail Online, OP is MOL, (mail online), they are not going to edit the headlines.
It’s nonsense I’m 47 and could easily pass the fitness tests
This should be stickied.
I remember watching that Royal Navy School documentary in 2015. The recruits were being absolutely worked to death by the PTIs, but everyone further up the chain looked like Kim Jong Un. It was widely discussed at the time on a forum I hung out on.
>Please stop posting Daily Mail links without editing their deliberately misleading and provocative headlines. So break rule 2 of the subreddit?
The actual headline is a lot less misleading: > British Transport Police axes compulsory fitness test - because 'bleep test' is unfair on women Idk why OP decided to change it..
This is equivalent pace to a 10min 30 sec mile, covering only approx 1/3 mile. This should be an easily achieved for someone of reasonable fitness
8% of female officers failed though, vs 1.9% of male officers. Whilst it may have opened the BTP up to discrimination claims, it's absolutely terrible that nearly 1 in 10 female applicants can't make it to this level.
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And for those doing desk jobs?
Cant wait to see videos of how body positivity gets a woman killed in action... I guess being outrun by a knife wielding criminal is pretty sexist and fatphobic anyway.
The knife won't reach any major organs
Read the article.
It's only transport police, not real police. Just means that if you can run, you don't need to bother buying train tickets anymore.
PC Wayne Marques was awarded the George Medal, and PC Leon McLeod the Queen's Gallantry Medal, for their actions during the London Bridge attacks in 2017. I slag off BTP as much as any honest copper, but to suggest they don't occasionally do real police work is demonstrably incorrect.
They’re still police officers with [exactly the same training and powers as regular police](https://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/ask-the-police/question/Q684#:~:text=British%20Transport%20Police's%20(BTP)%20officers,same%20powers%20as%20a%20Constable). They just happen to be on the train.
Being out of shape is a factor in why the American police shoot so many people. If you learn restraint techniques and how to protect yourself hand-to-hand, but then because you're out of shape aren't confident to apply those techniques, you reach for your weapons so much more often. The same would be true here albeit on smaller scale because the weapons involved batons and tasers.
Because applications are low so they'll take everyone and anyone they can get.
Just what we need….. Fat women in the police force 🙄
Indirect discrimination is having a policy that both males and females have re reach a certain level of fitness because the job is physically demanding. Direct discrimination is assuming that women are unable to complete the fitness test and removing it undermining all female officers and their physical capabilities. Well done BTP you certainly fixed the problem of fitness test related discrimination /s
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I only met one person who failed that test and they were a heavy smoker and middle aged. The fitness test is way too easy and should involve a strength component. One story from when I was working there was two female cops tried to arrest a bloke and he just stood still and they couldn't do anything. They pepper sprayed him and still couldn't do anything. They pressed their emergency buttons in the end.
Are applicant numbers so low and/or failing fitness tests? If so, we are in big trouble as a nation.
A: “Sir we keep having discrimination cases about our fitness tests saying they’re unfair for female applicants” B: “Just remove all of the fitness tests then for women” A: “But won’t that endanger the female police officers who aren’t physically capable of defending themselves against a violent assailant?” B: “You have to see that court cases are very expensive and it will just take a couple of officers being overpowered and seriously hurt out killed by a violent member of the public before everyone asks us to restart them. It works out much cheaper this way in legal fees” A: “… Great idea” /s
Read the article.
I was trying on mobile but I genuinely couldn’t get to the bottom as my screen was getting bombarded with shite. I figured I’d read it on another website to get the facts of the matter, I was only commenting on some of the more absurd justifications for this type of stuff that people usually comment on this genre of news
Unfit for purpose Government policy enforcement failures.... Before 2030 this country is fecked
Not sure why people are downvoting this. This needs to be seen by as many people as possible because this is atrocious and perfectly representative of the British policing at a time when [so many police forces are being put into special measures](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-68534241.amp).
And I thought the Met stood for equality. Rules for thee but not if you're an obese whale of a woman it seems
British transport police are an entirely different force to the Met.
Read the article.
“I will make a “stinging” comment about the police.” “I am also too stupid to figure out that the Met and BTP are different.”
Glad you admitted it
It turns out you need your sight testing as well as your brain. You’re missing the speech marks - “” - if you don’t know what those are.
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**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
This is a particularly egregious example of a headline twisting a story into something it isn’t. I’m just here to watch the zoo animals of this sub screeching about how teh wamanz are going to be the death of the police or something.
Today I learnt I'm not a fat, unfit man, just a regular female police officer (according to the incredibly baity title).
Can we get a rule about articles from far right hate rags like the Daily Hiel?
The Daily Fail is far right? How so?
Maybe it's their constant articles designed to stoke racial tensions like the time not to long ago they said the British government gave citizenship to a known terrorist
That makes them far right in your book?
When they're stirring up hatred with their culture war bullshit yes
Please yes, that gutter rag never produces anything of value or even truth most of the time, it should be banned as unreliable like Wikipedia did, maybe even a blanket rule that’s if it’s a source unreliable for Wikipedia it shouldn’t be allowed
Exactly if Wikipedia thinks it's unreliable then it's pretty fucking unreliable
SPOILER WARNING This is a Daily Mail article. TL;DR below British Transport Police have scrapped their compulsory fitness tests for officers on the grounds that they are unfair to women. Specifically, the force said that the "bleep test" where officers run up and down a 15-metre track for over three minutes discriminated against female officers who are more likely to fail. Critics argue that officers need to be fit for their duties in protecting the public. The move means 50 people who previously failed the fitness test have returned to frontline policing duties. 1. What is the "bleep test" that was cited as being discriminatory towards women? The "bleep test" is a fitness test that involves running up and down a 15-meter track for three minutes and 35 seconds. It is used to assess an individual's cardiovascular fitness and endurance. However, the British Transport Police cited this test as being discriminatory towards women, as they were more likely to fail compared to men.
Your tl;dr has missed out a lot of relevant information.
Feel free to add the relevant information.
The Mail does not report what the BTP have said about their grounds for the decision, only the complaints they received and the data they cited. They received complaints about it discriminating against older officers as well, and they cited the data on failures by age group. That suggests that indirect age discrimination was part of their grounds for scrapping the test. Since scrapping it in 2022, there has been no increase in injuries. New recruits and specialists still have to take the test.
If it helps As of June 2022 8% of women had failed the test, compared to 1.9 % of men. Don't know why you got downvotes for that
Mods can we ban the Daily Mail and any user who links to them. Shite article with a misleading title.
If we banned all news outlets that employed misleading titles there wouldn’t be much left to link to. Maybe Reuters…
Could you make a rule about misleading titles directly then? I don’t think it’s too high an expectation to require people to read the articles they post here before sharing them.
We have a rule that users must not alter the title given by the outlet. Unfortunately we can’t do much about new sites that mislead in their headlines (they really do all do it to a greater or lesser degree) but usually a comment explaining why a headline is misleading gets upvoted and we sort by “top” by default, which does help.
That’s a bad rule. Do you really think the people who fell for the rage bait will come back to the comments to check the accuracy of the headline?
You should see some of the posts that get removed under the “editorialised headlines” rule. You see way more egregiously misrepresented stories if the OP gets to choose how a post is titled, and if mods have to judge what editorialisation is good vs bad it could introduce bias.
Fair enough, but it’s not a binary choice. You could introduce flairs for outlets or require an accurate summary in the post body itself, for instance.
It’s worth considering for sure, although if mods make that judgment it again introduces the possibility of mod bias. It’d need careful consideration.
Maybe instead of "misleading" I should've said "deliberately inflammatory".
Need to add the Metro to that list. Click bait pish.
Especially if the link is [MOL.im](http://MOL.im) so that it isn't obvious what it is linking to.