Thursday 19 March 2015

Autopilot

The blog is going to be on autopilot for a few days due to a combination of things including a dearth of something new to say, my mood reflecting that of many probation staff, some family matters to attend to, and finally the guest blog cupboard being completely bare. 

Please, dear readers, carry on doing what you've been doing for ages and ages; posting news, thoughts, observations and should anyone have the urge to write a guest blog, now would be as good a time as any. 

Look after each other and normal service should resume before long.

Cheers,

Jim   

19 comments:

  1. Shall we just post under this date ?

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    1. Yes post general stuff here and email any guest blogs to me. Contact details on profile page. Cheers.

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  2. Probation Officer19 March 2015 at 17:46

    I can think of two things.

    1. The probation institute partnership with uservoice. Question, is the probation institute a trojan horse for Grayling's plans for TR and 'old lags'?

    2. It turns out BIONIC is a registered trademark of company that recycles waste into fibre that can be used to make useful stuff.

    http://www.bionicyarn.com/

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  3. GENERAL ELECTION 2015: Independent candidate standing for election "to save the world from Chris Grayling's human rights regression"

    http://www.epsomguardian.co.uk/news/11862131.GENERAL_ELECTION_2015__Independent_candidate_standing_for_election__to_save_the_world_from_Chris_Grayling_s_human_rights_regression_/

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    1. A criminal lawyer and human rights champion has announced that he will be standing against Chris Grayling in the General Election to "save the world from a regression from international human rights and barbarity".

      Lionel Blackman, 54, a criminal defence solicitor who has lived in Epsom for 45 years, has thrown his hat into the ring as an independent candidate for the May 7 vote.

      He does not think he will win, but believes greater scrutiny must be brought to bear on Mr Grayling’s proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) and leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

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    2. I have worked many cases with.Lionel when I was a young PO in Epsom. This is thrilling news.

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  4. Take care Jim, and family. We are all exhausted too and as NPS now in purdah. How did it ever get to this. Come back stronger ' they' cannot be allowed to win. You and everyone else who has posted over the past 12 months or so, well most of those who have posted, have saved me and some others from throwing in the towel and not giving up.

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    1. Ditto Anon 20.14. We are better together and we shall not allow the CGs of this world to destroy us - better today and no matter what they do we shall stay together. Jim Brown & Family - take care of each other - enjoy a well earned rest and hopefully you've be back soon, stronger and ready to keep hearing our voices.

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  5. some levity, perhaps, from the Jan 2012 Justice Committee minutes. Ann Beasley is being asked about recovering monies owed. The relevant witnesses are Sir Suma Chakrabarti KCB, Permanent Secretary & the low wattage Ann Beasley CBE, Director General, Finance and Corporate Services (Antonia Romeo & Helen Edwards were also there that day). The scene needs to be set:

    "Q144 Mr Buckland: Fees, fines and confiscation orders under POCA or anything like that...

    Ann Beasley: I will start with fees. We have now agreed a fee income strategy that has two elements to it...The other thing we need to do is to look at our costs. If you were to go immediately to full cost recovery on family cases you are looking at private family cases such as access hearings for fathers wanting to see their children... As to fines, we have collected more fine income in the last year than before. As you say, the fines awarded are going up. We are looking at a new approach to fines. The Courts Service have centralised it now; it is the responsibility of a single director. They are having a number of initiatives, like payment blitzes... We are also doing some pilots looking at some of the aged debt.

    Q145 Mr Buckland: What is the time scale for this? It sounds as if it is going to take a long time.

    Ann Beasley: If you are looking at something like a public value partnership, it does take a while to procure it and set it up. It is not a completely quick fix. Meanwhile, the Courts Service is absolutely committed to these fine initiatives where we are trying to get better at getting the fine off somebody while they are still in the court rather than getting them to leave the premises. There are also these new nudge techniques such as, if you text somebody using their name, they are more likely to pay up. Obviously, do not tell anybody else that because we don’t want them to stop doing it.

    Sir Suma Chakrabarti: I think you just have."

    This is the same Ann Beasley who thinks that £4Million in agency staff costs was reasonable when some 6000 civil service staff had been "allowed to leave" as part of the early years Con-Dem annihilation of the public sector.

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  6. Sorry, Ann, but in the same minutes there is another corker that merits airing (my capitalisation of the text below):

    "Ann Beasley: We model the prison population regularly. We publish it annually through the Office for National Statistics, but we regularly monitor the trends in the prison population and forecast going ahead. At the moment, because we have new capacity coming on in April-we probably have another 2,500 places coming on-we are able to model the difference between what we expect the population to be and capacity with sufficient lead time for us to be able to take action to deal with it. Obviously, in extreme cases that is building new house blocks on prisons. There are other things we can do to bring in capacity in a slightly faster time than that. It is reasonably current in terms of what is happening. It does allow us to plan. FOR NEXT YEAR, FOR EXAMPLE, WE KNOW WHAT WE EXPECT TO HAPPEN TO THE PRISON POPULATION."

    That sounds like manipulation, not modelling.

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  7. Again, same minutes - goodness they are a goldmine. This time, lets consider TR, i.e. slicing & dicing probation provision, selling it off to the private sector and in the process losing many qualified & experienced staff. This seems to be at odds with the obviously delighted Sir Suma Chakrabarti in this brief exchange with an equally enthusiastic Ben Gummer. (NB - Gummer is the eldest child of former Conservative Cabinet Minister John Gummer, Baron Deben, and Penelope Jane Gardner. John Gummer was MP for Suffolk Coastal until the 2010 general election, when he moved to the House of Lords. Ben Gummer is the Member of Parliament for Ipswich - in, er, Suffolk).

    "Q188 Ben Gummer: I have a few questions on staffing and talking about skills again. Paragraph 19 on page 9 of the NAO report says that you achieved very considerable improvements in your financial management within the Ministry itself and achieved these benefits "while reducing the number of finance staff by a quarter". Is that a ratio that could be rolled out across the Department?

    Sir Suma Chakrabarti: That is better for less; there you are. That is what is going on elsewhere. If you look at the policy side and the corporate side, we are delivering very good outcomes. I have the score cards all here in front of me, which show we are achieving as good outcomes, if not better in some areas, with fewer staff. The key thing on the finance side is how many qualified staff we have. Again, this was an area where 10 years ago you would have found loads of people who were unqualified working in the finance area. That is not the case any more. We know the numbers of people who are qualified. Even if we were reducing, the question is, are those 75% who are left able to do the job better? I think they are."

    So he's clearly in favour of clearing out the unqualified staff, leaving the qualified staff to perform a more cost effective service.

    Grayling, however, has cleared out (shafted) the vast majority of qualified and experienced staff, handing 70% of the service provision to cosy collaborators who have no idea what they're doing, whilst the remaining 30% i.e. NPS is massively understaffed in terms of experience/qualified people.

    There is evidently, in Hansard and everywhere else, absolutely NO evidence that this omnishambles could ever work, and that the ideological practices of demolishing the public sector operate irrespective of logic or structure.

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  8. From the March 2015 edition of SurreyScout magazine - for no particular reason other than its the only news story that Grayling seems to have appeared in for some time...

    "On a cold and blustery morning, 3rd Epsom Scouts welcomed
    dignitaries and VIPs to the Epsom Grandstand, including Dame
    Sarah Goad the Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey, the Rt Hon Chris Grayling
    MP for Epsom and Ewell, Councillor Robert Foote the Mayor of Epsom
    and Ewell, Mr Bruno Marien the Head of Consular and
    Administrative Affairs at the Belgium Consul and Major Charles
    Wasilewski from the Royal Engineers."

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  9. It's an intense, busy, professional atmosphere in our crcs at the moment. Real people tackling real issues. Quite refreshing. Some recent blogs seem a bit out of touch? This isn't about data protection or napo. And there's a lot of misinformation about ttg. Loads of operational good work going on. Of course it's not easy. But get real. We're paid by the public to deliver good service irrespective of whether we're nps or crc. It's not about us!

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    1. I recommend Listerine. Should get that nasty taste out of your mouth.

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    2. You sold out then.

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    3. I don't wish to be unkind but, 00:02, your post reads like a CRC/MoJ press release or one of those misguided attempts at motivational management that clog up my email account on a daily basis.

      And believe it or not, until NOMS and the political class stuck their snotty noses into the world of probation it was never about 'us' - it was only ever about working with clients. I'm not arrogant or stupid enough to argue it was perfect, and some changes were needed; but the wilful & malicious damage inflicted upon the probation service has been a disgraceful example of political hooliganism by the NOMS firm, headed by Spurr & bankrolled by the right wing. Yes, that includes you Jack 'five grand a time' Straw.

      So please do not presume to be on the moral high ground with deeply patronising sound bites such as "get real" or "real people tackling real issues"...

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  10. Trevor Phillips tonight. Any thoughts?. Reminded me of the Prevent training. Jihadists being completely glossed over and 80s skinhead culture from the film This Is England being used as training material. Am I a racist for dragging that up?. According to Trevor, no. But you?...

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    1. I thought our Prevent training was excellent and the officers really believe in what they are doing and making a good job of it. Perhaps a little naïve but doing their best.

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    2. So did the authorities in Rotherham.

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