Thursday 26 November 2020

Russell on the Future

So, how did Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service do yesterday in the Spending Review? It's a pay freeze for probation staff and £4billion over four years for 18,000 new prison places - to create jobs of course. This forced marriage really isn't working too well on any level is it? Whilst the reality sinks in, HMI Justin Russell recently gave an interview to Civil Service World:-  

Probation inspector Justin Russell on coronavirus, Transforming Rehabilitation and the Spending Review

After years of funding cuts and the looming renationalisation of outsourced probation services, Russell calls for extra funding to be “baked into the baseline” for the Spending Review

This summer, HM Inspectorate of Probation did something it had never done before: it began conducting entirely remote inspections of probation services for the first time. The change came around a year after Justin Russell was appointed to lead the inspectorate – for the first few months of which, the job was pretty much what he expected. “And then obviously, Covid happened”

When Russell speaks to CSW, the inspectorate has just published its first entirely-remote report on the North Yorkshire Youth Offending Team. It’s now inspecting several other youth-offending services, as well as thematic inspections of the impact of coronavirus on probation services. “We’ve found we can do that – we can do the focus groups and analyse the case remotely,” he says.

And HMIP has been looking at how probation services are adapting to the pandemic, having gone into six local areas over the summer to see how both public and outsourced services were coping. After examining around 60 cases in detail, Russell says “we were positive about how they reacted”.

“They've had to react at a very great pace, they've had to completely switch their operating model. So apart from a small number of high-risk people, everyone is being contacted by phone. They have had to suspend some basic services – certainly during lockdown, they weren't providing any unpaid work sentences for the courts, and they weren't able to start accredited behaviour programmes. They are now starting to be able to do those, but it's been a slow process of recovery.”

And the new arrangements have worked for some people, he says. Many of the probation staff that inspectors spoke to were happy about the arrangements, as well as service users who had a “reasonably stable home life – some of them actually, in some ways, preferred being supervised by phone because it meant I didn't have to sort out childcare or find public transport”.

But the changes have been harder for more vulnerable users, including those with mental health problems. “They definitely struggled a bit more and missed having that personal, face-to-face contact with the probation officer.”

One of the happier consequences of this that Russell has seen is that coordination between public agencies seemed to improve during lockdown. Probation services had more check-ins with police and social services to share information about call-outs they had had, and attendance at multi-agency risk panel meetings went up when they were held virtually. “So that felt like a positive thing.”

And providers are finding other ways to adapt to the pandemic, restarting services they had to cancel during lockdown, using smaller groups and online courses where they can.

But the inspectorate is also aware that the effectiveness of remote supervision in probation is not well understood. A literature review it did a couple of years ago found “there hadn't been any robust research” on the subject, Russell says. There have been no randomised trials exploring whether it provides better outcomes than face-to-face supervision, for example. “So we really didn't know whether phone supervision would be effective or not – and to be honest, we still don't know.”

But while feedback from both probation staff and service users has been “reasonably positive”, problems can arise when the two haven’t met before. “So where professionals have already met someone face to face and done the initial assessment, it’s easier to continue liaising with them over the phone; where you've never met and you’re doing the whole thing over the phone, I think people find that a bit more difficult. So that's where the gap is.”

Many probation services have tried to address this by having an initial meeting in an office before moving to remote supervision, and keeping up in-person appointments for people who have just left prison. Asked if he thinks there should be a standard policy, Russell says it’s for probation services to decide. “What we will continue to do is inspect the quality of the work they're doing, whether they do that face to face, or by telephone.” As it inspects more cases, the inspectorate will be able to build up some of the evidence it lacks on how the mode of delivery affects services, he says.

In fact, HMIP began a two-month study at the end of September on how probation services are recovering from lockdown. The national inspection is looking at six local areas and 250 cases – some that started before and others after lockdown measures were introduced – to see how well services’ planning and recovery is panning out.

“That will start to give us some insights into the quality of work that they're doing, as well as the quantity of it,” Russell says. “It's a big enough sample that we'll be able to hopefully start to get into what's the quality of work that's been done over that period. You know, recovery is a slow process. I think all the regional directors I'm talking to are saying, ‘This isn't going to happen overnight’.”

In the last couple of months, services have started increasing their face-to-face delivery, starting up unpaid work placements, and opening up behaviour programmes again. And with the courts now sitting again, new community sentences are coming through that the inspectorate will have to keep an eye on. But Russell acknowledges that the delivery of in-person services could start “going backwards a bit” now that the second wave of coronavirus has hit.

All this is forming the backdrop to services’ preparations for some massive reforms that will come into play next year when the National Probation Service regains responsibility for low and medium-risk offenders, which was handed to private Community Rehabilitation Companies in 2012. The Transforming Rehabilitation outsourcing programme is widely acknowledged to have been a failure – Russell’s predecessor, Dame Glenys Stacey, concluded last summer that it was “irredeemably flawed”.

But Russell says preparing for the transition next June is a “really big challenge for probation leaders and directors” already dealing with the consequences of the pandemic. The inspectorate will be following their progress closely and will be doing an inspection on transition planning by the end of this year.

He also warns that bringing services back under public control is no easy fix because “structural change by itself very rarely solves all of your problems – you need the resources to back it up.” Probation officers in both CRCs and the NPS have been struggling with huge caseloads due to a lack of resources, and services have suffered as staff have become more and more stretched – but HMIP’s inspection reports of CRCs have been particularly critical.

While there are signs of improvement in some areas – some CRCs have improved their performance in the most recent round of inspections – some just aren’t getting better. He says a “three-tier” probation service has emerged, “with the NPS continuing to perform okay – although it's got its own issues; two or three providers actually do reasonably okay now; and then some that are still really struggling.” Of particular concern are those in the Midlands and some of the Purple Futures partnerships, which are led by Interserve, the contracting giant that was sold last year after financial trouble threatened it with collapse.

Russell is concerned that shifting the CRCs’ massive caseloads to the public sector without a serious funding injection to hire more staff and spread the load is “not necessarily going to improve quality”.

“And you're going to potentially have issues as people are transferring over, there might also be a loss of focus during that transition process,” he adds. CRC staff moving over to the NPS must get adequate training before they take on high-risk service users.

As with most things, Russell says the success of the latest reforms rests in no small part on whether they are properly funded, noting that “the history of probation funding over the last 10, 20 years has been one of increasing cuts.” For one thing, the Ministry of Justice’s budget has not been protected under the austerity measures that began in 2010. The impact on violence in prisons has been well documented, but Russell says there have been some “big impacts” on probation too.

In fact, there has been a 40% real-terms drop in probation funding per case since 2003 – as HMIP’s submission to the Treasury for the upcoming Spending Review points out. “That's a big gap to make up going forward, and that's why it's so important that the Spending Review does start to address that gap.”

That funding is critical because when probation officers are having to supervise 70 or 80 people at a time, it doesn’t just affect staff wellbeing – although Russell notes the inspectorate has seen very high sickness rates. “It just becomes unsustainable if you're trying to keep an eye on what's happening in their lives,” he says. Things can get missed – things like if a service user changes their address, meets a new partner or moves in with someone who has children, or if the police fail to share the information about an arrest.

“In every service, we look at a sample of the cases they’re supervising and we are consistently finding the area of weakest performance is around managing the risk of harm to people's families or to the wider community,” Russell says. At private providers, fewer than half of cases are being satisfactorily supervised in relation to risk of harm. That figure is slightly lower at the NPS, but still too high.

As well as the funding issue, services are finding it hard to fill vacancies. HMIP has no nationwide data for CRCs, but found the NPS had 600 vacancies in June 2019, and was having to use agency staff to plug the gaps.

Does Russell believe ministers have grasped the enormity of the problems in front of them? “Very much so, and the HMPPS leadership certainly does as well.” He points to a £150m funding increase for probation this year, as well as a capital funding boost that he hopes will address the “pretty shocking” conditions on some premises. And HMPPS has meanwhile committed to hiring 1,000 probation-officer trainees by January.

But he stresses that the extra funding cannot be a one-off, but has to be “baked into the baseline” for the Spending Review. Not only do services have a shortfall to make up after years of cuts, he adds; the government’s pledge to reverse cuts to police forces by recruiting 20,000 more officers in three years will generate extra work “over and above just closing existing funding gaps”.

He says it’s difficult to know whether the Spending Review will deliver that critical extra funding – and adds that it’s not only probation-specific funding that matters. “It's the funding for all of the other services that they work with. There's a whole ecosystem of support that goes around probation and mental health services, drug services and support services. And all of those suffered as well over recent years.”

Homelessness is one such area, he says. HMIP published a study earlier this year showing 11,000 people leave prison into homelessness, including 3,000 higher-risk offenders. It also found the proportion of people who got called back into prison or reconvicted was twice as high for people who didn't have stable accommodation after they left prison services, “so it’s potentially a really big driver of crime and reoffending”.

“So there's a huge need for decent and stable housing for people coming out of prison, which needs to be invested in. Ten or 15 years ago, the probation service actually had its own budget to commission its own accommodation for offenders. That's gone.” Instead, it can only commission a small number of so-called “approved premises beds” for the people at highest risk, which can only accommodate people for 12 weeks.

Another “really big gap” is support for substance abuse, he says. He points to Dame Carol Black’s ongoing review for the Home Office on the misuse of illegal drugs, which has shown funding for drug treatment had plummeted, while Class-A drug deaths are at a record high.

“So it's all very well funding probation, but you also need to fund the services they refer on to, to make a big difference,” Russell says. He hopes the cross-government group on crime and reoffending – which is chaired by the prime minister and is being given evidence on these matters – is a sign things could change.

This is a subject Russell knows well, having spent a year at the University of California Berkeley earlier in his career on a fellowship looking at substance-abuse treatment programmes for offenders in the US, and what could be learned for the UK. “That was a really key year in my career, where I went from being someone with a research interest to a much broader policy interest and realised the difference the government could make in some areas,” he says.

The ideas he brought back from that led directly to the introduction of the drug testing and treatment order, a community sentence including treatment and rehabilitation for people with a record of drug-related offending, in the 1998 Criminal Justice Act. Russell was a policy adviser to then-home secretary Jack Straw at the time. “So that's very satisfying to see that translate into a direct policy initiative,” he says.

“The reason that was so seminal a year was that it sparked off that interest in evidence-driven policymaking and looking at different innovations at the front line and thinking about how you can translate that into practice – and how things roll out, and the interaction of politics and government and evidence and social-policy experts... that ended up being what I've done in my career.”

Beckie Smith

26 comments:

  1. We're now a good five years in to a massively expensive 'transformation', so its a sad indictment - and something that should not be lost in the CSW interview - when the best that anyone with detailed knowledge of probation service provision in England & Wales says:

    "NPS continuing to perform okay – although it's got its own issues; two or three providers actually do reasonably okay now; and then some that are still really struggling."

    From Gold Standard to, in order of greatest merit:

    - Okay
    - Reasonably okay
    - Really struggling

    Makes me want to weep.

    It SHOULD make a whole raft of politicians, senior civil servants, probation leaders and directors ASHAMED.

    But no, they all think they've done a great job, awarding themselves bonuses & gongs & stay-at-home packages.

    Bastards!!!!

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  2. Do not weep the bastards do not deserve the tears! In the meantime they refuse to pay for our utility costs after enforced working from home. Bastards does not really cover it this morning....oh and shame assumes they are human and they are not!

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  3. It is a sad state of affairs when a good proportion of PSOs fall under earning under the national average of £24k this will fall eligable for the £250 one off payment for public sector workers. Are we going to continue to allow our standard of living to be inflated away whilst the government wastes billions on PPE and track and trace. Napo need to grow some balls and start representing its members

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    1. Napo and balls surely not. Courage is not what we need but intelligence and the post yesterday reflected the failings of Napo. Whatever happens in the coming financial shortfalls there will be some staffing cuts. It is inevitable. Volunteers early retirements and capability dismissals and the like. Senior manager will have to cut its cloth to the purse. All those anomalous appointments will have to go. CRC middle managers at band 5 not qualified will not have a role in the NPS. Downgrading in pay is certainly an option and Napo have already sold the vlos out on this issue. The appointments of an spo grade for vlos is a classic example of an overpaid and irrelevant job when 2 grades above the PSO vlo does not need a poorly place spo role as senior. These postings make no sense and if your a trained po back to proper casework the lot of these and use the qualification properly or more pressure on hard pressed low paid staff will continue.

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  4. So the recent long delayed salary scale payment was worthless then as cutting over fourthcoming years. Presume they will also not pay the measly other rise still outstanding from April now also. They are bastards and as for covid they expect more not less work. Newly qualified POs will soon become fed up with they way staff are treated.

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    1. Get real they as in the general thrust of that post. Why do you care anyway are you one of them.

      In relation to the commitment on the current unpaid 1 percent they will have to pay as it was a collectively made agreement.

      Delete
    2. I'll repeat my question, who are "they"? The government? The MOJ? HMPPS? NPS? CRCs? The Regional Directors? Who exactly?! You might think it's obvious but it's not!

      And what do you mean by the unpaid 1%? Most of the public sector got 3-4%, why should probation settle for 1%? And no agreement has been collectively made, NAPO haven't bothered to successfully negotiate anything yet!

      Delete
  5. For your entertainment:

    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/full-list-of-local-restriction-tiers-by-area

    https://www.gov.uk/find-coronavirus-local-restrictions

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    Replies
    1. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/local-restriction-tiers-what-you-need-to-know

      Delete
  6. "An acquaintance and former neighbour of Matt Hancock is supplying the government with tens of millions of vials for NHS Covid-19 tests despite having had no previous experience of producing medical supplies.

    Alex Bourne, who used to run a pub close to Hancock’s former constituency home in Suffolk, said he initially offered his services to the UK health secretary several months ago by sending him a personal WhatsApp message.

    Bourne’s company, Hinpack, was at that time producing plastic cups and takeaway boxes for the catering industry. It is now supplying about 2m medical grade vials a week to the government via a distributor contracted by the NHS.

    Bourne categorically denies he profited from his personal contact with Hancock."

    So, sending a whatsapp message to your old mate is not profiting from personal contact. Its all perfectly normal.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/26/matt-hancock-former-neighbour-won-covid-test-kit-contract-after-whatsapp-message

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    1. Even better:

      "The health secretary, Matt Hancock, is facing questions over the appointment of a close friend and lobbyist to a £15,000-a-year advisor role in his department.

      Gina Coladangelo, who met Mr Hancock when both were attending Oxford University, is a director at lobbying firm Luther Pendragon, which promises clients help to “navigate and influence complex legislation”.

      According to The Sunday Times, she was handed a job just as the country went into lockdown in the spring as an unpaid adviser on a six-month contract at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

      But in September, Ms Coladangelo was given a role as non-executive director at DHSC, earning at least £15,000 and placing her on the board that scrutinises the department. There was no public record of the appointment."

      Earlier this month, leaked documents seen by The Sunday Times revealed that the head of the UK's vaccine taskforce – Kate Bingham, who is married to a Tory MP – had hired eight public relations consultants at a cost to the taxpayer of £670,000.

      https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/matt-hancock-gina-coladangelo-health-advisor-b1760004.html

      Last week it was revealed a PR firm run by Lord Feldman represents a testing company handed a £28million Government contract after a meeting in which the former Tory chairman was advising Matt Hancock on Covid.

      Lord Feldman insists he had no involvement in the award of the multi-million pound contract despite his business now advising Oxford Nanopore after he worked for the Department of Health at the start of the pandemic.

      The list is seemingly endless...

      All power & support to Jolyon Maugham and others at The Good Law Project

      Delete
  7. uk don't-go-to-work-when-you're-sick-just-get-sacked-via-whatsapp-or-text-or-email govt covid-19 data 26/11/20

    cases: 17,555; 121,306 tested +ve in the last 7 days

    deaths: 498

    3,258 deaths in the last 7 days, which is 400 more than for the week ending 13 Nov

    But they're doing a world-beating job - more or less leading the world table in deaths per capita (first or fourth, depending on which data one uses).

    FranK.

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  8. Incompetence after incompetence after incompetence - yet still the contracts get handed out and those at the top pocket eyewatering sums of taxpayer money, right across the board:

    "The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's most recent estimate is that it will cost current and future generations of UK taxpayers £132bn to decommission the civil nuclear sites, with the work not being completed for another 120 years. Since 2017, the NDA’s upper estimate of the cost of the 12-15-year programme just to get the sites to the ”‘care and maintenance” stage has increased by £3.1bn to £8.7bn.... also... the failure of a 2014 contract the NDA signed with a private sector company to decommission the Magnox sites meant the government was forced to take back the contract in 2018, and the botched tender has now cost taxpayers £140m... (sound familiar?)

    In 2015, the government stripped another private consortium of a £9bn contract to clean up the nuclear waste site at Sellafield. The company had been heavily criticised for its executives’ expense claims which included a £714 bill for a “cat in a taxi”."

    Earlier this month:

    "Prime Minister Boris Johnson has backed the development of large and small scale nuclear energy projects in his 10 Point Plan for a “green industrial revolution” by committing £525M towards developing new reactors.

    source: guardian & engineering weekly & others

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    1. Monkey see, monkey do:

      "Three directors of Kingspan, the company that made combustible insulation used on Grenfell Tower, cashed in more than £6m in share options before allegations against the business were aired at the public inquiry into the disaster... The trades happened in September and October, before the inquiry started investigating the company’s role this month.

      Gene Murtagh, the chief executive of the Ireland-based company that made the Kooltherm-K15 foam boards used on the council block where a fire killed 72 people in 2017, took the biggest share, making a £3.1m profit, followed by Gilbert McCarthy and Peter Wilson, two executive directors who made £1.8m and £1.6m respectively."

      Its all perfectly normal.

      Delete
  9. Big Baby Updates. He must keep his phone in his bib:

    * "I gave a long news conference today after wishing the military a Happy Thanksgiving, & realized once again that the Fake News Media coordinates so that the real message of such a conference never gets out. Primary point made was that the 2020 Election was RIGGED, and that I WON!"

    * "Just saw the vote tabulations. There is NO WAY Biden got 80,000,000 votes!!! This was a 100% RIGGED ELECTION."

    And in response to a tweet about Fox News ratings falling:

    * "Will go down much further. Weekend daytime even worse, dead. They still don’t get it. Fantastic alternatives! The late/great Roger Ailes is seriously missed, but I still won LEGAL VOTES by a lot!!!"

    ReplyDelete
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    1. People have been talking about these issues with US elections for years. Republicans involved in voter supression and Democrats in voter fraud.

      Delete
    2. * "the 2020 Election was a total scam, we won by a lot (and will hopefully turn over the fraudulent result), but we must get out and help David and Kelly, two GREAT people. Otherwise we are playing right into the hands of some very sick people. I will be in Georgia on Saturday!"

      * "Big Tech and the Fake News Media have partnered to Suppress. Freedom of the Press is gone, a thing of the past. That’s why they refuse to report the real facts and figures of the 2020 Election"

      * "Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!"

      Alongside retweeting every news report of the assassination of Iran's top scientist near Tehran. I wonder if there will ever be evidence of who orchestrated & executed the operation...?

      Delete
  10. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/27/huge-wealth-of-sunaks-family-not-declared-in-ministerial-register

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Oh, my word, surely not! It can't be true! Dishi Rishi breaking the rules!?!

      "Sunak is bound by the ministerial code, which requires him to declare any financial interests that are “relevant” to his responsibilities, and which could conflict with his duty to the public. Ministers must also declare those interests of their close family, including siblings, parents, spouse and in-laws, which might give rise to a conflict... Sunak’s entry mentions no family members other than his wife, and only refers to her ownership of a small, UK-based venture capital company."

      So?

      "Akshata Murty, who married Sunak in 2009, is the daughter of one of India’s most successful entrepreneurs. Her father co-founded the technology giant Infosys, and her shares in the company are worth £430m, making her one of the wealthiest women in Britain... Murty and her family hold many other interests, including a combined £1.7bn shareholding in Infosys, which employs thousands of staff in the UK and has held contracts with government ministries and public bodies, a £900m-a-year joint venture with Amazon in India, through an investment vehicle owned by Murty’s father, a direct shareholding by Murty in a UK firm which runs Jamie Oliver and Wendy’s burger restaurants in India and five other UK companies where Murty is a director or direct shareholder, including a Mayfair outfitter that supplies the tailcoats worn by pupils at Eton College.... A Treasury spokesperson said the prime minister’s independent adviser on ministerial interests “confirmed he is completely satisfied with the chancellor’s propriety of arrangements and that he has followed the ministerial code to the letter in his declaration of interests”."

      What's the fuss? Its all perfectly normal. The prime minister’s independent adviser on ministerial interests “confirmed he is completely satisfied.

      Poor lad, leave him alone!

      Delete
  11. For all the fans... uk erm-er-erm-er-tiers-of-a-clown govt covid-19 data 27/11/20

    new cases: 16,000 and some

    deaths per 28 day rules: 521

    FranK.

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  12. What are vaccines for?

    "No 10 reportedly wanted union flag on Oxford coronavirus vaccine kits ... Plan is said to have been hatched by new ‘Union unit’ to counter rise in Scottish nationalism"

    FFS!!!

    ReplyDelete
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    1. apparently people are going apeshit for the Oxford virus

      Delete
  13. Some Friday night Cheer from Guardian:

    "In recent weeks all care home inspections carried out in the north of England have been of infected homes, including a facility where 38 of the 41 people receiving care and 30 staff – almost half of the workers – had tested positive, internal documents from the Care Quality Commission show.... BUT ... Health inspectors in England have been moving between care homes with high levels of Covid-19 infection without being tested"


    "Covid-19 infections 'could easily double' over Christmas, Sage experts say ... Modelling was presented to government BEFORE decision to allow three-household festive ‘bubbles’"


    The incompetence, the arrogance, the desperation - it weeps from every open sore of this ailing administration.

    Wonder what the Clown Prince thinks of the Iran assassination coup, where it puts the UK in terms of its relationship with the US & Israel [Donnie & Bibi are both well & truly in the frame for this] and the likelihood of deeply unpleasant recriminations.

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  14. The Bitter Baby is off again:

    * "Biden did poorly in big cities (Politico), except those of Detroit (more votes than people!), Philadelphia, Atlanta and Milwaukee, which he had to win. Not surprisingly, they are all located in the most important swing states, and are long known for being politically corrupt!"

    * "The restaurant business is being absolutely decimated. Congress should step up and help. Time is of the essence!"

    Are you aware, Mr President, that the population of the USA is being absolutely decimated. 264,000 deaths as a result of the coronavirus to date. You and your Administration should step up and help, rather than play golf, puff out your chest & fight a lost election.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oops!

      "Joe Biden gains votes in Wisconsin county after Trump-ordered recount

      Milwaukee recount, which cost Trump campaign $3m, boosts Democratic president-elect days before state must certify result"

      Delete
    2. The Baby wails again:

      * "The 1,126,940 votes were created out of thin air. I won Pennsylvania by a lot, perhaps more than anyone will ever know. The Pennsylvania votes were RIGGED. All other swing states also. The world is watching!"

      Delete