This morning's piece by the BBC's Danny Shaw and carried on the 'Today' Programme at 8.35am rather neatly serves to highlight the latest set of problems probation faces. Firstly there's the age-old problem of no one really being clear what we do. Danny Shaw obviously knows, but Martha Kearney introduced the subject incorrectly as being about release from prison when actually it's about all aspects of probation supervision.
Then there's the complete absence of any word from NPS, obviously, because that has all disappeared behind a solid wall of silence imposed by the command and control ethos dictated by the nature of Civil Service bureaucracy. Rather conveniently for politicians, we won't be hearing of any problems from the likes of NPS management - why everything's just hunky dory according to their Twitter feeds!
So it's left to the disgruntled CRC's that are about to be dispensed with, such as Seetec, to stir up a bit of a story with their concerns and we hear from former London CRC Chief Yvonne Thomas warn of greater bureaucracy, together with current Deputy Director Aveen Gardiner who summed the situation up basically as likely to heap 'more chaos on top of chaos'.
It was good to hear from recently retired HM Chief Inspector Dame Glenys Stacey, even if she started off saying she felt the proposed changes were to be welcomed. The longer she spoke and got into her stride and realising no longer subject of MoJ influence, it became clear she felt the proposed changes will be different, but likely to be just as bad and especially if not properly funded.
For those who know anything about the plight of probation and it's near-destruction by Chris Grayling and TR, the days of the old 'Trusts', however flawed, were far preferable - a situation confirmed by Clinks, the voice of the Third Sector, bemoaning the demise of the old-style grant system of funding for local services and demanding their return.
Basically a confusing piece, seemingly out of nowhere, but at least it was something especially as the 'silly season' is obviously cancelled this year, what with all the real silly stuff going on.
Hope you don't mind if I repost this under today's blog:
ReplyDeleteBy Michael Rosen, Sunday, 18 May 2014
Fascism: I sometimes fear...
I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.
Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you...
It doesn't walk in saying,
"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."
For example: https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/full-text-boris-johnsons-tory-fringe-speech/
DeleteBoris Johnson, 2 October 2018
We cannot must not and will not let this weaselly cabal of superannuated Marxists and Hugo Chavez-admiring anti-Semitism-condoning Kremlin apologists anywhere near the government of this country. And that means, instead of aping Corbyn, we have to take our basic Conservative ideas and fit them to the problems of today...
... look at the record of the previous Mayor of London – something the Chancellor might care to consult – you will see that not only did crime come down by 20 per cent and the murder rate by 50 per cent. Deaths by fire down 50 per cent. Road KSIs down 50 per cent. Tube delays down 30 per cent. Beautiful new buses, beautiful bikes, millions of trees planted. Two new river crossings. Crossrail started. Record investment, new museums in East London. Council tax cut by 20 per cent...
...And you will see that now under useless Khan the number of new builds is slumping, because Labour gets tangled in its cynical political objectives, and it is the Conservative approach that gets things done...
... So let’s follow our Conservative instincts, and give millions more young people the chance to become owner-occupiers...
And let’s give councils the incentives they need to encourage growth, and give planning permissions – on those brownfield sites, with long overdue fiscal devolution. Give the councils the ability to retain stamp duty, council tax, business rates, and annual tax on enveloped dwellings, and they will have a motive to go for growth."
Or this right-wing rhetoric from The Sun's Trevor Kavanagh:
Delete"Once Boris has sorted out Brexit and won the next general election, his priority must be to clean up Britain’s politically-motivated cops and prosecutors.
Redoubtable new Home Secretary Priti Patel has a momentous job on her hands. She won’t need much encouragement.
While police chiefs scream about cuts and austerity, tens of millions of pounds have been squandered on bungled persecutions and compensation pay-outs to innocent citizens.
Crime is now seen through a political filter.
It appears as though you can’t be racist if you are black. Equally, it seems you can’t be a criminal unless you are a hideous Tory.
We have become a country where crime is just another way of life, where police do not patrol certain streets, investigate offences or prosecute cases of rape, violence or burglary.
They turn a blind eye to drugs and clown along with anarchist students who paralyse our capital city.
Politically correct cops stay indoors while knife crime explodes and sex slave gangs run riot because chief constables are terrified of being branded racist."
The UK is being spoon-fed this shit through every media outlet & people are lapping it up.
Taking back control? Yep, the wealthy & the uber-priveleged are certainly doing just that:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/welcome-to-boris-johnsons-government-of-all-the-lobbyists/
"Boris Johnson’s campaign manager was the former Tory MP James Wharton. Wharton is an employee of the lobbying giant Hume Brophy, a firm which has talked up its ability to shape Brexit on behalf of big business, and whose clients have included the hedge fund industry, sugar giant Tate and Lyle, and Meat and Livestock Australia: all industries that have much to gain from the deregulation that Brexit will permit.
C|T Group is the company which ran Johnson’s campaign. Most famously associated with its co-founder, the Australian public relations guru Lynton Crosby, the firm was until recently working for coal mining giant Glencore to undermine renewable energy and environmental activists.
Days after the Brexit vote, C|T Group set up an office in Washington DC – with a website bragging about its access to British politicians and ability to shape Brexit for US corporations.
Esther McVey, the new secretary of state for housing, lost her seat in 2015 before winning another in 2017. During her two years out of Parliament she worked as a senior consultant at lobbying firm Hume Brophy, which now employs James Wharton, and as a special advisor to the company Floreat Group.
Floreat also offers its ultra-high-net-worth individuals a “private range of discreet services”, such as “services in areas including multi-jurisdictional legal and tax compliance” as well as “reputation management, art services, estate and horse stud management, aircraft and ship management and private concierge services”.
Floreat lists real estate as one of its major investment areas, including major property in west London. As housing minister, McVey will have significant power over real-estate markets
The new home secretary, Priti Patel, used to be a lobbyist for the firm Weber Shandwick, where her clients included British American Tobacco.
Weber Shandwick’s clients also include the government of Bahrain, which has been widely criticised for its brutal human rights record. Only months after she was first elected an MP, the Bahraini ministry of foreign affairs flew her to meet a number of its ministers.
Her trips to the Gulf didn’t stop there. In 2012, the government of the United Arab Emirates paid for her to go on a trip to meet the country's ministers as part of the UK-Bahrain all-party parliamentary group. In both 2013 and 2014, she returned to the UAE, with all-expenses-paid visits to Dubai courtesy of the World Consulting and Research Corporation in New Delhi and a firm called Sun Mark, a food, drink and tobacco firm previously known as Sun Oil.
In 2017, she was forced to resign as international development secretary because of off-the-books meetings with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanjahu – a client of the Israeli subsidiary of Weber Shandwick.
When Dominic Raab, the new foreign secretary, was appointed Brexit minister, we at openDemocracy asked if he was “the IEA’s man in government”. The Institute for Economic Affairs, perhaps Britain’s most influential think tank, refuses to reveal its funding, but is known to have taken cash from British American Tobacco and BP, and to have been funded by a conservative foundation in the US to promote the privatisation of the NHS.
Matt Hancock, who stays on as secretary of state for health and social care, also has close links to the IEA, which openly advocates privatisation of the NHS:
Raab has not responded to our request for comment."
Part of the reason why we suffer as a service is because we don't have a clear identity - which means that the public don't understand, politicians don't understand, and the treasury doesn't put us as priority. They can go on and on about the problems and how concerned they are - but put your money where your mouth is and do something about it.
ReplyDeleteI disagree, Anon@22:59. People do understand, politicians do understand - they just aren't interested because it doesn't matter to them.
DeleteI would suggest the ONLY reason that barely anyone in Britain gives a single shit about probation, social services, CAMHS, adult mental health & psychological services, & the 'caring' professions in general is...
... that through school, the media, our communities & our own personal ambitions we've all been taught, encouraged, enticed & deceived into believing that money matters above all else.
Who's done that to us? We have. We've allowed it to happen. We've allowed ourselves to be seduced by a 21st century 'what-the-butler-saw' magic lantern show peering through our 65-inch screens at the lifestyles of the rich & famous, the priveleged & the wealthy, the beautiful & the buff.
Our envy of untold riches, our desire for designer this & that, our appetite for the exclusive VIP experience & our pride at enjoying vicarious celebrity status has made us immune to our own humanity.
The sick, the homeless, the mad, the bad - they can all go rot in hell just so long as we can have our expensive cars, our expensive homes, our expensive holidays, our expensive clothes...
And more often than not what is at the heart of the madness, the badness, the sickness or the homelessness? Money & status - or the lack of it, or even the perceived lack of it.
We are ALL guilty.
Probation wouldn't be fucked if it was generating £billions for someone in a tax haven; the NHS will continue to be fucked until its in the hands of some sharp-suited sharks; mental health services will continue to be fucked unless it becomes a cash-cow for some 'visionary entrepreneur'.
I'm waiting for the chain of Branson Maternity Units to open - "Virgin Births"
With all due respect, I don't accept the argument that we let it happen because of a neo-liberal agenda/culture. Although I'm equally critical of it. You ask any general member of the public who we are and what we do, you won't get a definitive answer. I've been asked whether I'm a psychologist, police, court worker before...
Delete