Tuesday, May 31, 2016 

The absurdity of it all.

I take it all back. The EU referendum is brilliant.  How could it not be when it results in such delicious absurdities as have taken place over the past couple of days?  First, mere weeks after accusing him of palling around with extremists, David Cameron appears on the same platform as to Sadiq Khan to big him up as though he was the winning Tory candidate.  A proud Muslim!  A smasher of glass ceilings!  A thoroughly delightful chap!  Oh, and he thinks it'd be swell if you would now vote to stay in the EU.

Khan can of course do as he likes.  He now has a mandate of his own, to the extent where he can pretty much shut Labour out if he so wishes.  If he wants to share a platform so soon after the election with one of those chiefly responsible for a campaign he said was putting off other Muslims from going into politics, that's up to him.  Clearly he thinks the ends justify the means.  Which again, is fine.

Some of us though are far more petty.  Far as I'm concerned, all things considered, Cameron got himself into this mess, and Cameron can get himself out of it.  Sure, this means if he manages to pull it off he gets the glory, but equally if he fails then he gets the Gene Wilder/Willy Wonka treatment.  Add in how Cameron implied Khan was an extremist not to be trusted as far as he can be thrown, and my response were I in his position would be to tell Dave to GTFO.

This is also the view of John McDonnell, who equally rightly thinks sharing a platform with the Tories full stop is a bad idea.  Which it is.  If Labour must campaign to stay in the EU, leaving it to Alan Johnson in the main while McDonnell and others pootle around not getting much in the way of attention is definitely the way to go.  Anyone saying Labour has to do this or that first has to explain whether their proposed plan of action will bring any benefit to the party whatsoever, because as we saw with Scotland, the public seem more than prepared to decide for themselves as to whether or not a particular party acted in their best interests.

The horror with which the results of focus groups saying they didn't know whether Labour was in favour of leave or remain, backed up with a further poll, just demonstrates that politicians don't always think the worst of the public; often the public amply do that themselves.  What it does show is that first, the vast majority aren't the slightest bit interested in the internal machinations of political parties.  Duh.  Second, not knowing whether Labour is for leave or remain is a good thing, as at the moment the party should be graceful for small mercies.  Third, that again, the vast majority also aren't the least bit interested in the referendum, otherwise they would know that Labour is overwhelmingly in favour of remain.  Fourth, they also don't know what the Tory position is.  Because, just to rub this in, they don't freaking care.

Labour politicians attacking each other for sharing platforms with the Tories isn't the most absurd thing of the last couple of days though, oh no.  Two examples merely from today beat it.  Chris Grayling, the berk's berk, the journeyman's journeyman, the bone in the spicy wing, the tits on the bull, said this morning that voters shouldn't be making their minds up based on the EU of today, but on the EU of the future.  Again, either this is a politician having a surprisingly high opinion of the average voter, most of whom haven't the slightest clue about practically anything the EU does beyond exist and that it's bad, or it's a politician with not even the beginnings of knowing how to make a case.  Can you imagine if parties tried applying this to any other election?  Voter!  Don't make up your mind up on how the government is performing today!  Just think how it will be in 10 years' time, even though we're not providing you with even the most basic facts of how it is currently!  Manifesto?  You want a manifesto?  You're joking!

And then there was Boris, Gove and err, Gisela Stuart, making clear we have entered the handjob, or moon on a stick phase of the campaign.  Despite telling us for eons that the £350m going to the EU each week could instead be sent straight to the NHS, now here come the most unlikely threesome since REMOVED ON LEGAL ADVICE to claim that if we left the EU we could dispense with VAT on fuel as it disproportionately hits the poorest households.  Put another way, Boris, Gove and Stuart are offering happy endings if you vote leave, as it's about as likely they would put any savings genuinely left at the end of the process on lifting the burden on the poors as they would on a state body of sex workers.  It's completely transparent, and yet what else is Leave to do?  Admit that once we've left any money coming back will instead be spent on reintroducing the subsidies and funds the EU currently distributes in the UK?  Absurd doesn't really begin to cover it.

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Monday, October 20, 2014 

Poisoning national life? That'll be two years.

Gosh, was it really but two weeks ago some of the internet world was up in arms over the apparent suicide of Brenda Leyland, aka Sweepyface, aka one of those meanies still obsessed with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and still insisting her parents might have had something to do with it, or at least bear some responsibility?  Unpopular opinions certainly, but not illegal, and probably not really deserving of a doorstepping from a Sky reporter.

How fast things move these days.  Just as we saw in the aftermath of the riots, when some judges took it upon themselves to hand down harsher sentences to those who didn't riot but suggested they might than to some of those who did, so now Chris Grayling promises the maximum sentence for "trolls" will be lengthened from the current six months to 2 years.  Anyone would have thought we don't have a prison system in crisis, one where the debate over whether Ched Evans should be allowed to play football again ought to have been delayed until he'd served the full 5 years he was given after being found guilty of rape, but no, space can always be found for those who "poison our national life".

Apparently Chloe Madeley was last week subjected to "online terrorism".  I say apparently as I really, truly, don't care enough to look any deeper.  One suspects the rape threats she received amounted to what they usually do, a handful of people, sometimes not even that, reaching for the most obvious weapon in their verbal arsenal, either sexual assault and/or death.  Back in the day, we called the people whose first response to getting bested in argument was to say the equivalent of "I'd beat u up m8" internet tough guys.  Because in the majority of examples, that's all they are: cocky and arrogant online but likely to shit themselves if someone took them up on the offer and arrived on their doorstep.

This isn't always the case, as #gamergate has (somewhat) demonstrated.  Madeley doesn't seem to have had her personal information posted online, as Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian have.  #Gamergate has also now been going for two months, an incredibly long time by internet standards for a drama to still be developing.  For those who've missed the whole farrago up to now, in microcosm #gamergate is either one of two things: a crusade against corrupt videogame journalism, or a dying, backwards community trying desperately to keep its domain in aspic, without politics, especially left-wing politics and feminism, gaining a foothold.

As you might expect, in reality it's neither.  Both sides doth protest too much: despite how gaming journalists have tried to argue there was no truth behind the claims of corruption from Quinn's ex-boyfriend, who detailed how she had slept with journalists and others in the wider industry while still in a relationship with him, there has long been a problem with cronyism at best and outright corruption at worst in gaming media.  Rather than face up to the initial outcry following the spreading of Eron Gjoni's allegations, one of the first responses came in the shape of multiple news and review sites declaring the "gamer" label itself dead, all on the same day.  You know, exactly the sort of collusion and refusing to listen the old media used to indulge in and still does, albeit on a smaller scale than before.

Then again, you can't exactly blame them considering some of the abuse directed their way.  Think the trolling of Caroline Criado-Perez et al except multiplied many times over.  Nearly everyone with even a passing role has been "doxed", items really have been sent through the post, and so on.  It has also been to a certain extent orchestrated, one internet subculture organising for all out war on another.  Their enemy is "SJWs", social justice warriors, imposing their values and standards on others whether they like it or not, and anonymous most certainly does not like it.

You'd think being something of a left-winger, believing wholeheartedly in equality and so on I would be in alliance with those criticising games and gamers for their continued Neanderthal ways.  And I would be, if that first response hadn't been so woefully constructed, the backlash against the mere asking of questions so vehement.  The reason this has gone on so long without burning itself it out is precisely because those on the side of Quinn and Saarkesian have risen to the bait over and over and over, just as Criado-Perez and those supporting her did.  Moreover, just as the coverage of the banknote campaign and its aftermath made clear how journalists themselves ramped it up due to how they knew those involved, or indeed, how they were being targeted themselves, so any semblance of objectivity went almost immediately.  It's shone a light on the vulnerabilities and insecurities of both sides, highlighting groupthink and the way narratives are constructed in this extremely new media landscape.

There is of course no defence for threats, for "doxing" people, for scaring them to the extent they feel compelled to leave their homes.  Concerted, sustained trolling has to be tackled in some way, and if that means involving the authorities, so be it.  You don't have to be a cynic however to note it's only some victims the media cares for, and there are plenty of journalists who have never taken to their writing becoming so open to criticism.  We've already seen people imprisoned for making tasteless jokes, or given community service for daring to make angry political statements. Handing judges the power to impose longer sentences for going beyond what we consider the bounds of free speech, will, as it always does, encourage them to use it, just as publicity also makes them believe they have to set an example the next time a spotty herbert with a miserable life and a hateful online alter ego appears before them.  The only people who ever truly poison national life are those in positions of power, and the vast majority of keyboard denizens have none.

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Monday, March 31, 2014 

50 shades of Grayling.

(I am really, really sorry for the title.)

Isn't Chris Grayling brilliant?  Most other politicians would have realised within a week they were fighting a losing battle over something so petty and self-defeating as preventing prisoners from having books and clothing sent into them by their relatives, and backed down, setting say a limit of one parcel allowed every six weeks.  Grayling instead has decided to resort to every excuse possible as to why such a scheme couldn't be established, even if his choice reason is one he didn't even mention in his first missive on why prisoners have to earn the right to everything under his new tough rehabilitation/privileges regime.

Yes, the real reason why prisoners can't be sent books from outside is, of course, drugs, with a side order of not allowing in extremist or pornographic material.  Grayling didn't mention a thing about illegal substances in his first response for politics.co.uk, only that allowing in unlimited parcels would never be secure.  No one had suggested such a thing, but let's put that to one side.  Next, in a piece for Conservative Home, Grayling did open his case by asking whether it should be made easier to smuggle drugs into prison, yet he then spends much of the rest of his article complaining about how a "left-wing pressure group" (not the most accurate description of the Howard League) and other opponents are liberal lunatics for daring to disagree with him in general.  Lastly, in an open letter to the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who took part in a protest outside Pentonville prison last Friday against the ban, he strikes a far more emollient tone, while sticking to the whole drugs argument.

The obvious problem with Grayling's it's the drugs, stupid rhetoric, apart from how he's only grasped for it once everyone realised even some of the most ruthless governments on the planet still allow those they incarcerate to read as much or as little as they want, is that it's so easily solved.  Until recently Send Books to Prisoners acted as an intermediary through which relatives could send packages, making the chances of anyone trying to get banned materials through far more remote.  Rolling out such a system across the prison estate would be fairly simple.  In any case, the idea that the main way drugs get into prisons is in parcels is a nonsense: they're either brought in by the prison officers themselves or chucked over a wall, although visitors have also long chanced their arm.  In any case, more recently the most smuggled items by visitors have been mobile phones rather than drugs.

Still, you can't be too careful even if it is just books and not drugs, hence why Grayling also brings up the spectre of paedophiles "accessing illegal written pornographic material" if books aren't properly checked as to their content.  This seems to ignore how people will masturbate to almost anything if they can't get their hands on their favoured stuff, or indeed how the more ingenious will write their own such stories to be shared if they have no intention of addressing their behaviour.  Nor should the prison librarians themselves have to put up with slurs on their work, again despite no one suggesting they were at fault.  It's just that as library provision outside prison has been cut back, with local authorities also being in charge of their equivalents behind closed walls, it's hardly going to be surprising if the offering isn't as comprehensive as it could be.

Throughout his responses, the one question Grayling has failed to answer is why the privileges scheme can't be altered to allow such vital, humanising items as books, underwear and homemade cards from relatives to be sent in, while still leaving the rest of his changes unaffected.  Is it because cuts to the Ministry of Justice/Home Office have left prisons with too few staff to possibly process anything other than letters?  Is it down to how he really does believe denying prisoners the most basic things that make life worth living, unless they are earned, builds character and helps rehabilitation?  Or is it this has all been bluff, and that once the furore has died down, Grayling will allow a compromise whereby books and other items can be sent through an intermediary every so many weeks?

You have to hope it's the third and Grayling can be embarrassed into doing the right thing.  It does however speak volumes that not so much as a peep has been heard from backbench Liberal Democrat MPs on the matter, while Simon Hughes has supported Grayling.  If the intention has been to prevent any other former jailbirds from getting a Graun column on release though, perhaps we shouldn't be quite so hasty.

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Monday, March 24, 2014 

If hospitals cure...

There's been much comment, understandably, following the blog post from Frances Crook setting out how the new privileges regime in prisons means that the sending in of books, or indeed, almost anything other than a letter or a bought as opposed to homemade card has been banned.

This also covers magazines, and in my view, most outrageously, clothes.  At the discretion of the governor, as the prison service instructions on incentives and earned privileges set out (DOC), prisoners may be allowed to receive a "one-off clothing parcel" after conviction.  Otherwise, that's that.  Unless they're one of the few lucky enough to get a job in the prison and earn money to buy themselves some extra apparel, they'll be stuck wearing prison issue clothes, most likely worn by dozens of inmates before them.  Just how draconian these new restrictions are is made clear by the exception for unconvicted prisoners, who must be allowed to have "sufficient clean clothing sent into them from outside" (page 45).  In other words, those convicted may be stuck wearing the same, dirty clothes for much of their time inside.  As one of the conditions for getting on to even the standard level of privileges is to have "due regard for personal hygiene and health (including appearance, neatness and suitability of clothing)", this seems to have been designed specifically to make life as miserable as possible.

Suitably excised by all the liberal do-gooders demanding that prisoners have the right to read books when most have no intention of doing so, Chris Grayling has duly responded.  Why, the idea prisoners cannot have books is a nonsense!  They are allowed to have up to 12 in their cell at one time, so long that is as they brought them in to start with, as trips to the prison library are infrequent and there's no guarantee they'll have something the inmate will want to read.  Besides, they can also buy books with the money they earn from their job while detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure.  Those with a job are guaranteed the princely sum of at least £4.00 per week, meaning that if they don't buy anything else they can afford a paperback every two weeks.  That is if the paperback is £5.99, as those with a television set in their cell have to pay £1.00 a week rent for that privilege.  Those who don't have a job are guaranteed at least £2.50 a week, which with the £1 taken off for TV rent leaves them with £1.50 to spend as they please.  They're also not allowed to watch the TV when they could be working, even if there aren't any jobs or programmes for them to attend.  Grayling also says prisoners were never allowed unlimited parcels, which they certainly weren't.  To completely deny them anything other than letters and cards sent by friends or relatives however is a new and drastic change.

The reasoning behind all this is supposedly to decrease reoffending.  For years we heard of how "cushy" prisons had become, with even certain Sky channels allowed in private sector prisons.  Stop allowing inmates to lounge around watching daytime TV, get them either working or learning, and soon the astronomical recidivism rate will come down.  Except the reality is that even before the cuts made to the prison system there weren't enough jobs to go round, nor can every minute be spent either on specific programmes or in education (spot checks found an average of 25% of a prison's population locked up during the day).  Those not doing either are banged up, and deprived of TV or reading material the obvious result is boredom.  Boredom leading to depression, or alternatively, aggression.  How this is meant to reduce reoffending is not explained, nor does it seem there is any actual evidence suggesting a stricter privileges regime could help.  The PSI certainly doesn't suggest this is an attempt to reduce reoffending; the desired outcome section only sets out that "prisoners will engage with their rehabilitation".  Engaging is meaningless if their circumstances are much the same on release, which for most they will be.

Why then do it, when the risk surely is that even if not directly, the new restrictions might lead to the opposite of what is intended, even to riots?  The answer that it appeals to both the tabloids and to those who believe, more than reasonably, that prison is meant to be harsh and unpleasant doesn't really cover it.  That hardly anyone apart from those affected and their relatives knew is testament to the tiny impact it would have on the overall impression of the government, Grayling, or the prison system.

Instead, it's hard to shake the impression that Grayling gave the OK to such changes precisely because he could.  As with Iain Duncan Smith and his unshakeable belief that he is right and all of his critics are wrong or far worse, Grayling gives the impression of a man who always knows best.  We don't need any trials of probation privatisation, it just needs to be done.  Prisoners have wronged society, therefore allowing them new, clean underwear apart from that bought with their own money is a luxury they have forfeited.  Depriving someone who enjoyed reading outside with the means to keep up their habit is a punishment.  That some will have read to improve their literacy skills is irrelevant.  Posing as tough rarely costs votes, as long as that stance doesn't lead to prisoners on roofs.  And let's hope for Grayling's sake that doesn't happen.

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3/24/2014 11:36:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, May 09, 2013 

Probation policies exchanged.

If the constituent parts of the coalition seem determined to do one over on their enemies within purely out of spite just at the moment, for which see the Tory backbench attempt to get a vote on the EU referendum next week, designed to make things even more difficult for poor old Dave, as well as Clegg doing the equivalent of poking his finger into the eye of Liz Truss over her beloved childcare plans, it's worth remembering that elsewhere relations seem just as cosy as ever.

Take the Home Office and Ministry of Justice.  Apart from Clegg's attempt to kibosh the "snooper's charter", the Lib Dems have barely raised a squeak over anything that's from the departments helmed by Theresa May and Chris Grayling.  True, they've made clear their opposition to any Tory attempt to withdraw from the ECHR, but then that has never been considered a serious option.

The latest policy they seem to be at one on is Grayling's pet privatising of the probation service.  As is so often the case in government, it involves one idea that could be a genuinely good reform, introducing probation for those serving short sentences in an attempt to reduce re-offending, and then covers it with two others that completely negate any potential benefit, in this instance putting the likes of G4S and Serco in charge and making life for those under supervision even more miserable than it may have been inside. Think of it as a shit sandwich reversed, which underlines just how stupid the Lib Dems have been to take a bite.

Grayling's only justification for not allowing the state to bid for the new contracts (unless the local bodies set themselves up as co-operatives, in which case their bids will be considered and then rejected) is that due to the cuts, more has to be done with less. While there is always the potential for waste to be identified, it's mostly found in the back office rather than at the stretched front line. Indeed, that the state will continue to have a monopoly in supervising the most serious offenders and those under MAPPA rather suggests that on the whole the current system is working. Why not extend that expertise rather than rely on companies and third sector organisations that are either untested or have had poor results in other payment by results schemes?

The answer is that this is another of those off the rack policies provided by Policy Exchange. Their spokesman today spoke of vested interests, but at least we know why NAPO is opposed. Policy Exchange by contrast is one of those think-tanks that refuses to say where its funding comes from, although we can make a few educated guesses based on the reports it's churned out over the years. PE has been instrumental in the pushing of the payments by results model, which so far has led to much in the way of payments (although not enough to keep some of those sub-contracted from going bust) but little in the way of results, the latest set of Work programme figures having been delayed repeatedly in the hope something will turn up (see recent Private Eyes).

Lest it be forgot, the Lib Dem position at the election was for short sentences to be all but abolished. That was never going to happen unless judges and magistrates had their discretion further eroded, which would have been a retrograde step, yet it looks as though we've somehow ended up with a system that will combine the questionable parts of community service with the alienation of prison life. It could well help some, while making things even more problematic for the majority.  Which is a perfectly good summary of what the coalition as a whole has achieved so far.

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Tuesday, April 30, 2013 

Let's be beastly to crims (and dole bludgers).

It's the week of the local elections, which means it's the absolute opportune time to announce a new round of unpleasantness to those considered to be unpleasant.  Moving away from the usual targets, benefit claimants (on whom more in a moment), Chris Grayling has pounced upon the only people less popular with politicians, those convicted of crime rather than just deemed guilty of a moral one.

Out then go the old soft regimes where it was somewhat left up to prison governors how they operated the privileges system in their respective nicks, and in comes a new tougher scheme which seems focused on making the first two weeks in prison even more uncomfortable and depersonalising than it was already.  No longer will prisoners be allowed to wear their own clothes to begin with, have a TV in their cell (Ben Gunn says those on the basic level don't as it stands now; they also have to pay for them, contrary to popular belief), an increased number of visits or access to private cash; all must instead be earned.  Plenty of people will look at that and think that all sounds perfectly reasonable, and on one level it is.  The problem though is that it's the first few days in prison when those who are new to the experience are at their most vulnerable, both from other prisoners and themselves.  If the purpose of prison is to both punish and rehabilitate, then it helps no one if further avoidable harm is done to the individual at the very outset of their sentence.

As with so much of our policy on prisons, a little honesty and humility would go a long way.  Again, few are going to protest at prisoners being made to work a longer day, but they might if they knew there aren't enough jobs to go round in the first place, or what prisoners get in return for their labour.  There are a few schemes where they can earn in the region of £30 a week, although far more usual is pay of £4 to £10.  This is often work of the most menial kind, as a recent Howard League for Penal Reform report set out, and which hardly gives the kind of experience likely to impress employers on the outside.  For those who can't be found a job, they're likely to spend most of their time banged-up. While it's not explained exactly how prisoners can be stopped from watching TV in the daytime if they're on the higher privilege level and have one, what else are they expected to do? Read, if they haven't already finished those books they've got? Continue with any education programmes they're on, regardless of the lack of access to a tutor? Just kick their heels? Imposing boredom might be considered a punishment, but it brings with it its own set of obvious problems.

Nor do these changes take into consideration those who continue to maintain their innocence.  As admitting guilt is the first thing you have to do in order to take part in the rehabilitation programmes designed to prove your readiness to be released, those who refuse to do so will forever be stuck on the basic level, something that seems bound to lead to a legal challenge.  Then there are just the silly inconsistencies: prisoners won't be allowed 18 rated DVDs (they've long been prohibited items in medium or low security hospital wards), but will presumably be able to watch such films if they're shown on television.

The ultimate test of such changes ought to be whether they improve behaviour while in prison or decrease recidivism upon release.  One expects that studies will be established once the changes start in November to measure if this turns out to be the case.  Otherwise you could be forgiven for thinking the entire episode was designed as a purely populist measure to win a few votes during the traditional period of purdah.

Definitely not designed to win votes is the latest imposition on those without a job, a questionnaire apparently put together by the government's behavioural science unit, which must be completed on pain of the loss of benefits.  Those looking for work are presented with 48 statements, some of which are patently ridiculous ("I have not created anything of beauty in the last year"), and then asked whether they agree or disagree.  Any possibility this might help those lacking self-esteem or self-confidence is only slightly undermined by how the results at the end are largely identical regardless of whether you fill in the boxes or not.  For those worried about the creepiness of a test that bears more than a resemblance to the Oxford Capability Analysis carried out by Scientologists, it doesn't seem as though the results are recorded, which nonetheless isn't much of a reassurance.  Nor is it apparent what the point of it is, although that seems a perfectly adequate summary of the work of the "nudge" unit thus far.

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Wednesday, January 09, 2013 

Couldn't organise an audit in an accountants.

It says something about just what a pig's ear the coalition is making of almost everything at the moment that it can't even get the launch of an audit into itself right.  If you thought that Monday's mid-term review was pointless and self-indulgent rather than illuminating of what the government's achieved over the past two and a half years, then this is the political equivalent of Peter Jackson imagining that everyone would dearly love to see a short book extended into not 2 but 3 separate films.  Monday's review was 52 pages no one was ever going to read; today's audit is 122, and it's effectively a re-hash of the review except with a little more often completely irrelevant detail.  

You can understand completely why there was discussion within Downing Street as to whether it should be released or not, as it seems designed to annoy everyone.  For a start it doesn't keep a tally of which pledges have broken, as this would apparently have been "too simplistic"; translated that means would have given hacks an easy negative headline.  Not doing so though has just pissed them off instead, as they've had to do it themselves, with differing results.  The Telegraph this morning claimed 70 pledges hadn't been kept, while Andrew Sparrow has calculated it at around 33.  Either way it's meaningless as this is the coalition marking its own work, hence why there is again no mention of the double-dip recession or the lack of growth, while it brushes over the failure to meet the "supplementary element" of the fiscal mandate, that debt as a proportion of GDP should be falling by 2015-16.  In fact, as Jonathan Portes has argued, "Plan A" as a whole is effectively dead, Osborne and friends just haven't admitted as much.  

When Cameron then claimed that the audit would be "full, frank and unvarnished" he was as per usual, talking out of his hole.  The whole idea of this pledge system was foolish in the first place, especially when in all the government made hundreds of the damn things.  It was especially pointless when the coalition had no intention whatsoever of keeping some of them: look at the one pledging no further top-down reorganisations of the NHS, which was promptly broken within weeks.  And as you might expect, the ones that have to be marked as failures are mostly the major ones, whether it be on civil liberties where the government is doing the opposite to bringing an end to the keep of internet records without good reason, on child poverty, protecting those on low incomes, Europe, or increasing capital gains tax to a level similar to that of income tax.

What use the document will have beyond this initial sniggering, as that is frankly all it's produced, is dubious in the extreme.  An MP can't direct a constituent to it as they'll wonder what on earth it is they've been told to read, while it's far too subjective to be used by anyone else.  More to the point is that pledges are worthless when they're pledges to introduce bad policy, something the coalition has done to abundance, a case in point being the police commissioners no one wanted and almost no one voted for. 

Much the same can be said of today's announcement from Chris Grayling on the privatisation of the probation service.  Anyone who isn't Grayling looking at the problems this is bound to throw up would think a major pilot scheme (the long-standing scheme at Peterborough jail is no indication of how how it would work nationwide, with many different providers) would be in order, not least because of the failures both of the Pathways to Work scheme under Labour and Grayling's own Work programme, neither of which bode well for the success of further payment by results schemes.  Add in that we're dealing with public protection, which in the past has been the downfall of many past home secretaries, and caution would be the obvious option.
 
Not for Grayling though.  There are times when you simply have to do something, and this apparently is one of those.  It's certainly true that re-offending rates are far too high, yet there isn't the slightest indication that private firms will be any better at stopping those out after serving a short sentence from re-offending than the state is currently.  Indeed, that the probation service will continue to look after the most serious and high risk offenders is hardly a vote of confidence in the capabilities of those that will shortly be submitting bids, and you can guarantee it'll be the same old companies that have cocked it up so marvellously in the past: G4S, Serco and Capita will almost certainly be first in the queue.

As Harry Fletcher argues, it's difficult not to see this both as purely ideological and to cut costs to the bone.  If it wasn't the former, then Grayling would have expanded the pilot scheme; if it isn't the latter, then there's no reason whatsoever why the probation service can't also take control of the new requirement to monitor those out after serving less than 12 months.  Regardless of the motive, the responsibility will still lie with the secretary of state, and anything with the potential to bring Grayling down can't be all bad.

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1/09/2013 11:38:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 22, 2012 

David Cameron is duly invited to the vomitorium.

All things considered, there are relatively few things I find so anathema that they make me feel physically ill.  Coming from someone who was so often throwing up at one point that I was ironically nicknamed "sick", factor in I barely feel comfortable in my own skin at most times, and this is quite the statement.  Compare me to David Cameron for instance, who finds the mere prospect of prisoners gaining the right to vote so terrible that he gets the urge to purge, and it's apparent my constitution is positively cast iron.

Cameron is by no means the only politician moved to blow chunks at having to give the franchise to those currently detained at her majesty's pleasure.  Truth be told, I'd wager the vast majority couldn't care less or quite probably even privately support giving some behind bars the opportunity if they so wish to vote.  It's that this is something being forced on them by the European Court of Human Rights.  If there's one thing politicians can't stand it's being told that they have to do something, unless of course it's the Daily Mail or the Sun doing the ordering, in which case they immediately hop to it.  Combine this with how it's the European court saying we have to change the law, even if the ECHR doesn't have anything to do with the European Union, as well as how this is about the supposed human rights of those who some on the right feel should count themselves lucky they aren't given just bread and water and left with only a bucket to piss and shit in, and it's a no brainer.  If they can't pontificate about this at pompous length, just what can they hiss and moan about?

Sadly, like it or not, the government has to look as though it's at least starting the process of changing the law or the Council of Europe might start imposing a few tiny fines over our intransigence.  In reality it's not so much the Council the government's worried about as it is prisoners starting legal action demanding compensation for being denied their rights, something that will almost certainly cost far more than any fines from Europe.

In line with the deadline set by the ECHR expiring tomorrow, the coalition has then duly set out the earliest possible draft of its prospective legislation (PDF).  In clear defiance of the court is that one of the options available to MPs will be to vote against any prisoners gaining the franchise, with the other choices to extend it to those serving sentences of less than 6 months and 4 years respectively.  Since the last skirmish over these proposals, the legal situation has changed slightly, as the draft bill sets out.  The grand chamber of the ECHR found in the case of Scoppola v. Italy (No.3) that it wasn't necessary for the judge at the time of sentencing to specifically remove the right to vote from the guilty party.  It did however reaffirm the principle that a blanket ban was discriminatory, so the inclusion of the do nothing option in the draft bill is the equivalent of sticking two fingers up to the court.

As Joshua Rozenberg (always worth remembering Rozenberg is married to Melanie Phillips, so he must have had a really enjoyable past week) sets out though, the government does still have significant leeway.  The ECHR doesn't demand that the law be changed immediately; merely that they set in motion the process of altering it.  This it has duly done, albeit at the last possible moment.  Whether the eventual published bill will make its way to the statute book before the next election is therefore highly doubtful.

Nonetheless, by including the status quo option at all the government seems to be setting itself up for a fall.  If it had really wanted to make things difficult for the ECHR while still complying with successive rulings, it could have gone for an even shorter limit than 6 months; why not 3 months, or 4 weeks?  It may well be that the joint committee will subsequently reject the option of offering no change in the bill, but that seems unlikely considering the strength of feeling among MPs.  The thinking appears to be that as long as the issue is defined in law, regardless of how, the court will have to bow to the will of parliament.

Not only is this foolish considering the legal advice, it's at odds with the coalition's somewhat enlightened views on attempting to reduce the level of reoffending.  Only this week Chris Grayling announced that all those sentenced to a year or less would be given a mentor on release who would try to guide them away from a return to crime, a sound idea, albeit one that needs resources and ingenuity the government and its favoured private sector contractors tend not to have.  Recognising that cutting those serving short sentences off from society until the day they're dumped back on the street is damaging rather than beneficial ought to be the first step towards designing a rehabilitation programme that truly works.  By allowing those serving under a year to vote if they so wish would be a further sign that regardless of what they've done, they will shortly be a member of their local community again, with all the rights and responsibilities (ugh) that entails.  Plus, if it means David Cameron and Tory backbenchers heaving as they go through the division lobbies, that's an incalculable bonus.

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11/22/2012 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, October 09, 2012 

Osborne delivers in the race to the bottom.

One of the best positions to start from in politics is that if almost everyone agrees on something, either they or the principle itself is wrong.  Obviously, this isn't universal; all the mainstream political parties are opposed to capital punishment, or making abortion illegal, even if there's disagreement on the limitations on the latter, which is a Very Good Thing.  All the mainstream parties are though at least ostensibly in favour of continuing both the war on drugs and the war in Afghanistan, and these are Very Bad Things indeed.

Which brings us in a very round about way to saying that Ed Miliband last week was rather good, despite everyone agreeing that he was.  I do find the whole making a speech without notes and wandering about the stage thing rather tiresome, the equivalent of riding a bike without using your hands, something that is easy to do with plenty of practice, but it was a very decent speech by a man who has been the victim as much of an ever more impatient media and also party than someone clearly not up to the job.  He started off slowly, it's true, but he's been improving ever since.  Derided by the right-wing press last year for his "predator capitalism" speech, which was shaky in both content and delivery yet soon being ripped off by the coalition, there was even less actual content this year and and yet it was lapped up universally.

Once he'd finally finished labouring on about his comprehensive (yes, Ed, most of us went to them as well and were equally scarred by the process) and finally got to the One Nation bit it was perfectly fine.  It was though just a little underwhelming; yes, the Tories have moved so far to the right that they've vacated their old one nation territory and therefore there's plenty of space for Labour to move into, but it isn't much of a rallying cry.  The fact is that most of those old one nation people have shifted to the right with the Tories, and therefore they aren't going to move back. Where then does that leave those of us on the left who want a redistributing but non-nanny state, an adequate safety net without the likes of ATOS deciding who's deserving or not, a publicly owned and controlled NHS and a foreign policy that doesn't involve us either directly funding armed gangs or intervening on their side?  Inside the tent certainly, but with only slightly more say than we had under Blair.

All this though is for another day, as indeed are any definite policies.  Which is fine, as it's utterly pointless for Labour to say what they'd do if they won in 2015 when the coalition doesn't know what it's doing tomorrow.  The contrast between last week's conference and this week's Tory soiree in Birmingham is stark: one was a party finding its feet again as a direct consequence of the coalition's disastrous policies, while the other is, err, a party uncertain of what's to come as a direct consequence of their disastrous policies.  

The old classic of conference time is, if in doubt, bring out the batter a burglar policy.  New Labour did it countless times, briefing to the ever gullible right-wing press that this time they really would be changing the "reasonable force" law to one which would allow you to carry out the most vile torture imaginable on an intruder without PC Plod (or should that be Pleb?) laying a finger on you.  Every time the answer came back that the "reasonable force" rule was working perfectly fine as it already allows you to do anything other than lie in wait for and then shoot burglars in the back as they run away (or alternatively, calling up your friends and family and then battering your assailants to within an inch of their lives once they've reached the road outside your house) and nothing changed.  Regardless of the ever more ridiculous headlines ("new right to attack burglars", says Torygraph), I'm willing to wager that once again nothing will come of Chris Grayling's wheeze.

If only the same could be said for the ordure presented for the conference's delectation by George Osborne.  Osborne is a fairly unique politician in that he actually seems to enjoy being hated: some thought they saw in the Paralympics booing clip his anger and bewilderment at being even less popular than John Terry and Ashley Cole combined.  My view was that his cackle and then laugh was the sign of him loving it.  Osborne wants to be loathed, as in his mind that means his medicine is working; short-term pain will turn into long-term gain.  Not for him the namby-pamby nonsense from of all people, Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome, who recommends an end to the attacks on the poorest as they're the real reason why the party is disliked.  

No, here comes another £16bn of welfare cuts, apparently agreed by Iain Duncan Smith, and directed straight at the children of the unemployed, as though those out of work don't think exactly the same way about having another child as those in work do and whether they can afford it, as though the extra child benefit payment they receive somehow make all the difference.  The same applies to restricting housing benefit to the over 25s, as though everyone under that age claiming it is out of work when the latest figures suggest that 50% are not.  Osborne asked how anyone could justify the incomes of those out of work rising faster than those in work; simple, George.  When those out of work are struggling by on their £70 a week through no fault of their own, a rise in line with inflation is more than justifiable when the average full-time working wage last year was £26,200.  5% of not a lot is still not a lot, while 1.6% of considerably more is, err, considerably more.

Much of it was all too predictable.   Osborne didn't so much as deign to mention growth, or recognise that there had been a double-dip recession, or even that there was such a thing as the unemployed as opposed to scroungers, all while at the same time criticising Ed Miliband for not mentioning the deficit.  That Alistair Darling's plan for reducing the deficit would have eliminated it before Osborne will now manage also went by the by.  Instead we got not reheated old Thatcherism, but the equivalent of pie in the sky: workers of the world hand over your rights and don't unite!  £2,000 in worthless shares in exchange for complete job insecurity; who could possibly object to such a scheme, except, oh, perhaps anyone with half a brain or the European Union?  The only way in which Osborne's brainwave could possibly be attractive is if there isn't any other option, and with the prospect of low to non-existent growth and the introduction of the universal credit, which it seems will demand that part-time workers find full-time jobs or else, desperation might well win out.  

It really isn't over the top to suggest this is like something out of Atlas Shrugged: according to Osborne and the Adrian Beecrofts of the world, it's the John Galts, the strivers and the creators, not the humble workers without whom the business wouldn't be able to function that are deserving of reward and rights.  Britain can deliver, but only it seems in the race to the bottom.

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10/09/2012 07:03:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, August 02, 2012 

ATOS and Chris Grayling continue to not give a toss.

Right on cue, up pops Chris Grayling in the Graun to argue that white is actually black and that even though you can see he's pissing on you it's in fact raining. Despite the BBC and Channel 4 doing their level best to bury their separate investigations into Atos Healthcare's helming of the work capability assessment, the Dispatches revelation that those administering the system are told if they put any more than around 12-13% of the cases they review into the support group of Employment and Support Allowance they're liable to have their decisions as a whole reviewed by management seems to have rattled the Department for Workfare and Penury (surely Work and Pensions? Ed.).

Since it's not worth engaging with much of Grayling's piece, as it's mostly the same old story reheated with a new anecdote, in this instance a woman who having been found fit for work was "hysterical" on her first day on the ill-named Work programme only to soon be volunteering for work in the community and applying for part-time jobs, the key word being applying, we'll instead focus on the untruths. Grayling claims that those called in for the assessment now "get telephone calls to explain the process". Not true. You still have to call them. He also says that there's now a new stage where Jobcentre Plus can reconsider a decision before claimants have to make a formal appeal to the tribunal service have been deemed fit for work. While this is the case, this is the way it's always been since the introduction of the WCA, and all it involves is the person on the other end of the phone line looking at the decision and OKing it. If you've already presented every piece of evidence that supports your claim at the assessment and still been deemed fit for work, then it's a complete waste of time even bothering.

There is it should be noted absolutely nothing wrong with wanting, as Grayling claims is the government's intention, to help those currently on ESA back into the work if indeed they're capable of doing so. The first problem with this noble aim is reality: there are already 2.58 million people unemployed, and the number of vacancies remains stubbornly just below 500,000. There are simply not enough jobs to go round. Second is that the Work programme Grayling continues to laud, bound together as it is with the other various Jobcentre schemes, is failing. Third is that Grayling and the government as a whole continue with the blanket statement that if it wasn't for the WCA millions would be left to languish for the rest of their lives on sickness benefits, when reassessment has been a part of the system since the introduction of incapacity benefit, not to mention how people do get better on their own and take up work of their own accord. Finally, if as Grayling and ATOS insist there are no targets set for how many claimants have to be found fit for work, or "statistical norms" meaning essentially the same thing, then they should have no objection to the contract between the government and the company being published, suitably redacted.

Instead, in a none too subtle fuck you, ATOS have been awarded most of the contracts to administer the replacement for Disability Living Allowance, the Personal Independence Payment. The only bright spot is that there look to be changes to the WCA on the horizon, in the form of alterations to the descriptors on the self-assessment form. Whether this will make much difference when it seems more than likely that only slightly more than 10% of those reassessed can be put into the support group remains to be seen.

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8/02/2012 09:08:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, June 13, 2012 

Mandatory humiliation activity.

So now we know. The government's workfare programme, known as mandatory work activity, has nothing whatsoever to do with getting the long-term unemployed back into work. Counter-intuitive as this sounds, this is exactly what the research commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions has found (PDF). The study, which compared the outcomes between 3,000 of those put onto MWA and 125,000 on Jobseeker's Allowance who were not referred during the first three months the scheme was running, and was peer reviewed by The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, reached predictable conclusions: that only 55% of those referred onto the scheme actually started it, with 29% dropping their claim, while 17% temporarily lost their benefits for refusing to take part.

Far from this being evidence that "up to a third" of the jobless are in fact working, as has been briefed to the Sun, if anything it suggests the opposite: that the sick and disabled are being forced into working for their benefit, having wrongly been declared fit for work. As Jonathan Portes, director of the NIESR writes, after 13 weeks the impact on claiming had disappeared; instead, those referred were 3 percentage points more likely to be claiming Employment and Support Allowance rather than JSA. Either that, or the experience of being forced to work for up to 30 hours for a meagre £71 on JSA is so dispiriting and humiliating for some that their previously unsympathetic advisers at the jobcentre, as all are referred onto the scheme from there, have decided en masse that their "clients" aren't ready for work after all.

Any minister prepared to change their policy based upon evidence would have taken a look at these results, and either cancelled the scheme or announced a major overhaul of it. After all, it isn't just failing; it's actually costing the department more money because of the increase in those claiming ESA, which pays out more than JSA. Far from doing this, Chris Grayling has actually announced an increase in the number of places available by 9,000, meaning that a further 9,000 unfortunate people will on the pain of losing their benefit be forced to work for companies such as Close Protection UK, as those stewarding the jubilee were. Even if we give Grayling the benefit of the doubt and accept that the lack of impact is down to "teething problems" with the scheme, such as some gaming the system by signing off and then back on to avoid MWA, this doesn't excuse him from refusing to commission further research which would ascertain whether this is really the case.

Mandatory work activity clearly isn't then about preparing the long term unemployed for work by giving them the chance to experience it again, or at the very least it isn't for the vast majority. It's rather punishment for some of the most vulnerable in society, who haven't been able to find a job because there simply aren't any, or indeed, because as we've seen, certain companies are taking such advantage of the various work experience schemes set up by the DWP that they've cut back on the hours of their permanent staff. It helps that cracking down on "scroungers" is so overwhelmingly popular, the benefits cap of £26,000 apparently the coalition's most supported policy, but it doesn't begin to excuse Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan Smith's extreme heartlessness and refusal to accept what's staring them in the face, even when it's potentially costing their department money. Humiliating the desperate to the point of sickness is now officially the business of the government.

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6/13/2012 07:43:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, November 08, 2010 

Workfare then and now.

How times change. A little over two years ago, before it became apparent that there was a recession waiting in the wings, Chris Grayling, the then shadow work and pensions secretary set out his party's plans for how they would deal with youth unemployment. For those few aged 18 to 21 who qualified for jobseeker's allowance, should they have failed to find a job within 3 months they would have found themselves either on a compulsory "community service programme" or a "boot camp" training course. Much about the plan was inadequately sketched out - it wasn't apparent how long these programmes or courses would have lasted, nor how something could be described as both a boot camp and a training course, as the two tend to be mutually exclusive, yet the implications could hardly have been more certain. There was no excuse for being young and unemployed, and if you were, you clearly needed to be shown some very tough love until you stopped being jobless. How you were supposed to find work if you were permanently on a community service programme, as would be the case if you didn't find a job after being on JSA for a year was equally unclear, or perhaps was besides the point. If you hadn't found a job after a year you clearly weren't going to, hence being forced into either permanent "unpaid" labour or into taking no money whatsoever from the state.

The plans for what amounts to something approaching "workfare" mooted by Iain Duncan Smith yesterday are a development on Grayling's original plan. Some of the rougher, sharper edges have been filed down; the "permanent" element seems to have abandoned, while the scheme has been expanded to cover everyone who has been claiming JSA for over a year, not just the young. There's no longer any talk of "boot camps", while rather than community service the four-week placements would be intended to give some experience of work to those who might have got out of the routine. That does however rather mask the fact that the work likely to be carried out - "gardening and litter clearing" - are mainstays of "community payback" schemes and perhaps also that the very same contractors could be involved in both. Add in the notion that such placements could be used to flush out those who are signing on but working cash in hand or just not trying to find a job, which confuses the issue somewhat, and you have a policy which is a mess from the very start.

Coming as it does only a couple of weeks after IDS said that those out of work in Methyr Tydfil (1,670 unemployed; 39 vacancies) should "get on the bus" to Cardiff (15,000 unemployed; 1,700 vacancies) to find work it does suggest that for someone who claims to have studied and understood the realities of living on benefits he could do with some remedial classes. While prior to the recession the obvious Tory assumption was that the young and unemployed were simply scroungers or completely incapable of work for whatever the reason and so needed to be treated relatively harshly, it's difficult to know what the real thinking behind this is now. For one thing, the numbers of those on JSA for over a year are a low percentage of the total currently claiming, at 266,000. The vast majority of those are going to know full well what the world of work is like and will be desperate to get back into it, not least as JSA pays so little. Equally likely is even if they're no longer working, they'll have other responsibilities which mean they keep relatively similar hours to those in work, whether it's getting children ready for school or otherwise, not to mention how being on JSA means they have to be actively seeking work. It's then not just patronising for a politician to suggest that some of them need to be reminded of what it is to clock in at 9 and go home at 5 (as if some of those now unemployed ever kept such hours in the first place), it's actively insulting, as is the idea that the manual work apparently on offer will instantly make the jobseeker more attractive to employers once they've been cutting the grass or picking up crisp packets for four weeks. It completely ignores the individual behind the figure and imagines that a short, sharp shock will have some impact on them.

The intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, suggesting that such measures can lead to a "downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair" will hardly be welcomed, not least because his analysis was acute but also because ministers will remember the Faith in the City report and the criticism from Thatcherite true believers which followed the Church of England's intervention in politics. Certainly, that no one from the coalition responded to his critique (as far as I'm aware) seems telling of not wanting history to repeat. It also helps that there's very little arguing with him, as only those few genuinely trying not to work or who are claiming while working cash in hand will despair for the right reasons. For those who have been out of work for a year, finding themselves surplus to requirements, unable to provide for their families as before and forced to rely on the state can be humiliating and depressing enough. To then have to report for manual work for far below the minimum wage in the name of providing you with "skills" employers will want or getting you back used to work could be the last straw.

This isn't to deny that in certain circumstances it could be useful, if given as an option to the employment advisers working for Jobcentre Plus who think it could be applicable. Even then though the problems are still obvious, as Don Paskins has set out: there are plenty who are already employed to do the work that those placed on the schemes are meant to be doing, not counting the others doing community service which can often duplicate it. Fundamentally, the biggest objection should be that this will be punishing the wrong people: if in a year's time the economy is still in the doldrums, the private sector not creating enough new jobs as the public sector cuts start to bite, then it will not be the fault of those who are supposedly too lazy to get off their backsides but rather the politicians who have gambled on introducing austerity measures when stimulus is still what is needed. Iain Duncan Smith is meant to be both cleverer and more compassionate than this, and will have to be if his plans for a universal benefit are going to pay.

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11/08/2010 10:49:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, April 05, 2010 

The freedom to be a horrible bigot.

Somewhat predictably, Chris Grayling's secretly recorded comments on how he felt that the owners of B&Bs should be allowed to freely discriminate against anyone they don't like the look of have caused, in that newspaper cliché, a pre-election storm.

As it goes, this is probably one of the less stupid of Grayling's gaffes, his past greatest hits involving describing parts of our septic isle as reminiscent of the Wire, manipulation of violent crime statistics in an effort to claim that it has sky-rocketed under Labour when the British Crime Survey says the opposite, and his policies on law and order in general (with the exception, for the most part, of the Tories' stance on civil liberties such as the DNA database, ID cards etc). Most embarrassing is that he's been found out to not be in tune with Cameron's "some of my best friends are gays" policy, trying to banish all those memories of far more insidious anti-gay legislation like Section 28, which Cameron himself voted in favour of keeping.

The coverage is also somewhat unfair because it is clearly only Grayling's personal view, having voted for the legislation in question when it came before parliament. That does make him a terrific hypocrite, but at least a honest one when questioned on it and he doesn't think the media's around. Doubly though, Grayling has something approaching a point: while he would doubtless not make the full libertarian argument for why the owners of a bed and breakfast should be allowed to refuse entry to a gay couple, there's one freedom that has been increasingly encroached upon in recent years, and that's the freedom to be a horrible bigot. Iain Dale and Claude both argue as to why you shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on such grounds, Dale saying that you're providing a service and that your house ceases to be public once you invite paying guests into it, Claude comparing the ban to health and safety legislation. Devil's Kitchen however makes what I think to be the best comparison: the smoking ban. While it's difficult to argue that the smoking ban hasn't been a general success and that it's lovely to come back from either a pub or club and not have your clothes absolutely reek of tobacco fumes, I see absolutely no reason why certain establishments shouldn't be allowed to deign themselves as places where you are allowed to smoke, and that if you don't wish to breathe it in, then you can go elsewhere.

The same should be able to apply to small businesses like B&Bs. If you're such a horrendous bigot that your conscience won't allow you to permit entry to two gay men, presumably on the grounds that as they're gay men and all gay men are sex mad and can't possibly resist the temptation to indulge in anal intercourse in-between your clean white sheets, then you should be perfectly within your rights to do so. The general public however though will then be perfectly within their rights to be told about your petty little irrational prejudices at every possible opportunity, hopefully resulting in your business either failing or only similarly clean-minded Christians or members of other religions patronising you. Would this result in, as some have also mentioned, the return of the likes of "no blacks, no Irish, no dogs" signs? Possibly. Can we seriously though not handle that returning, and not actually further put it down to their ignorance and let them get on with it, with perhaps similar consequences to the above? In any case, we already have establishments where it's well known that certain people are either not welcome or conversely are welcome, and that few not belonging to those cliques therefore venture to them. At least with this option we have open discrimination rather than covering it with a veil; let the bigots be bigots and let everyone else mock them. Perhaps we can start with, err, Chris Grayling?

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4/05/2010 08:55:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 

The electoral war over crime.

Up until now there's been something of a phony war instead of anything approaching all-out combat between Labour and the Conservatives in the fledgling election campaign. Sure, there have been skirmishes over Ashcroft which have involved plenty of claim and counter-claim, as well as more than a little obfuscation, and individual launches on policy from both parties, especially from the Tories, which for the most part seem to have failed miserably but we've thankfully yet to see anything on the scale of say, Jennifer's ear, although there's still more than enough time for such low skulduggery masquerading as a serious issue to come to the fore yet.

The closest we've probably come has been the Tory insistence on using statistics on violent crime which are strictly non-comparable. This started when Tory candidates were sent information from Conservative Central Office which compared the number of recorded violence against the person stats of a decade ago with those of 2008-09. These packs failed to make clear that the way the police recorded violent crime changed in 2002 - whereas then the police decided what was and what wasn't a violent crime, which led to accusations that they were fiddling the figures, this was changed to the victim deciding whether or not the incident they were subject to was a violent offence. This, predictably, has led to a huge inflation in the number of recorded violent offences, as any such subjective change is likely to. According to the stats given to the local media by Tory MP Mark Lancaster, there had been a 236% rise in violence against the person in Milton Keynes, going from 1,790 offences in 1999-2000 to a staggering 6,015 in 2008-2009, or as Mark Easton noted, a violent attack every 90 minutes. Thames Valley police themselves objected to this crude comparison, pointing out that the figures were now incomparable, as well as illustrating how the change in recording has ludicrously boosted the figures: they judged that there had been just 81 victims of serious violence in MK, with around 2,000 victims of low-level assaults where a minor injury had occurred, while the violence against the person stats quoted by Lancaster included a dog being out of control in a public area.

Despite a reprimand from the UK Statistics Authority that using incomparable statistics in such a way was "likely to mislead the public", the Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Grayling was unrepentant and has come up with a novel way to get around such minor quibbling: he asked the Commons library to take the violent crime stats from 1998-99 and apply the new counting methods, which he then compared with those from 2008-09. Quite how they performed such a trick when, as noted above, it's the public themselves that now decide what is and what isn't a violent offence is unclear, and it seems destined to remain opaque as the Tories have failed to publish their research in full, instead giving it only to sympathetic newspapers. The library's conclusion was that the new figure for 1998-99 would be 618,417, as compared to 2008-09's 887,942, or a rise of 44%. Certainly not as startling a rise as the 236% in Milton Keynes or the previously claimed 77%, which was also based on statistics which expressly said they were not to be compared and which were also misleading, but still a very serious one.

Naturally, these figures have been ridiculed by Alan Johnson during Labour's own press conference today on crime policy, but it's hard not to conclude that both parties are, as usual, equally guilty. This is after all the same Labour party which produced the knife crime figures just over a year ago which were heavily criticised by the same UK Statistics Authority which has lambasted Chris Grayling. While the British Crime Survey is by far the most authoratitive source on crime statistics with its huge 40,000+ sample, and which the Tories almost never quote from because it suggests that crime and especially violent crime has dropped off a cliff since a peak in the early 90s, both sides only cherry-pick the figures which suit their needs best. There are flaws in the BCS, such as only recently specifically recording incidents with knives, and how again it has only just started interviewing 10 to 15-year-olds, but it remains superior to the police recorded stats both because it records offences which were never reported to the police or which they missed, while also remaining almost completely free of potential bias. It may rely on the honesty of the respondents, but with a sample the size of 40,000 any attempts to deliberately interfere with it are hardly likely to be significant. After exchanging more letters with Grayling over his newly obtained figures, the UKSA pointed out that while his new research is from a body which provides "professional statistical advice", he'd still be advised to make reference to the BCS, something which Grayling has not done when sharing his new findings.

If however Tory crime policy is indicative of Grayling's approach to statistics, being dishonest, crude and punitive, then as we've suffered over the past close to 13 years, Labour's reign of authoritarian solutions to far more subtle and complicated problems seems forever destined to continue. Johnson was today defending the government's indefensible position on the keeping of the genetic profiles of those arrested but not charged or found innocent of any offence for 6 years on the DNA database, the government's attempt at reaching a compromise following the European Court of Human Rights' ruling on the case of S and Marper. They claim that if the Tory policy of only 3 years was in place that 23 murderers and rapists "would have gone" free, a ludicrous and risible position to take which ignores that old fashioned police work would have had to have been used rather than just relying immediately on DNA records, and which does nothing to prove the efficacy of a database which is now the largest in the world. Alongside the ridiculous proposals to chip all dogs and make all owners insure their animals to tackle what is a tiny problem of dangerous breeds, a statist overreaction which only a Labour government which has been in power too long could possibly think was appropriate, the unworkable fantasy that there could be some sort of "alarm" when a known paedophile goes online, and the cynical ending of the early release scheme just before the election, the choice between one group of authoritarians and another, one of which will sadly gain power, is just one of the low points in what is shaping up to be a truly dismal couple of months.

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3/10/2010 12:07:00 am | | | links to this post

Thursday, October 08, 2009 

The shape of the Tories to come part 2.

The plan for the Tory conference has been both obvious and has worked: ensure that Osborne and Cameron get all the coverage and limelight and hope that the underlings stay in the shadows, or at best don't make any horrendous gaffes. This was clearly what was in action yesterday, hoping that only the faithful or interested would notice that both Michael Gove and Chris Grayling were making speeches on their specific areas and announcing either new or somewhat new policies. As it turned out, this was further helped when Grayling himself gaffed by describing the appointment of General Dannatt as an adviser as potentially a gimmick, not realising that it was err, his side, not Labour, that had done so.

It was Gove's proposals though which were clearly the more ghastly. Alix Mortimer thinks of him as a prep school teacher circa 1965 and it's clearly a description which fits. His proposals for what should be in and out of education when the Tories come in are so overblown it reads like a an old reactionary's wish-list. What's wrong with our school system, it seems, is that the kids aren't dressed archaically enough. Just as much of the rest of society decides that suit, blazer and tie aren't perhaps the most practical or comfortable of clothes, in comes Gove, who thinks that as adults are giving up on it, children should wear it instead. His other great wheeze, setting by ability, is just as old and hoary. Listening to Gove you'd think that state schools haven't so much as tried such a thing. I hate to break it to him, but at my bog-standard, at times failing comprehensive we had setting by ability, and all it did was further entrench those in the particular sets at that level of knowledge, not stretching them or helping them, just leaving them to get on with it, failing everyone. Adding to the sense of nostalgia, rote learning was the next thing to be mentioned. He also wants "the narrative of British history" taught, without mentioning whether or not history will be made compulsory post-14, and which in any case Alix Mortimer demolishes. Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, he also wants soldiers to be brought into instil discipline, which is just the thing that we need in general in schools: ex-military personnel with a high opinion of themselves thinking that all the children of today need is regimentalism and a shared bond which develops in the line of fire.

Chris Grayling didn't have much of a chance of living up to such a litany of pure bollocks. He did though have a go, further broadening the mind-bogglingly stupid policy of taxing strong lager and cider as well as "alcopops" because of their link to anti-social behaviour. There is a case for taxing the likes of Special Brew and the ultra-strong ciders which have never seen an apple for the simple reason that the only people who drink them are alcoholics and those looking to get drunk as quickly as possible, but the downsides are obvious: when an ordinary can of Wife-Beater isn't going to cost any more, you might as well just downgrade slightly, and it's what people will do. You have to challenge the behaviour, not the drink itself. I've also lost count of the number of times I've said it here, but it needs stating yet again: those meant to be targeted by this tax do not drink alcopops. The people who do are those might get drunk, but are not those who specifically go out looking for trouble; it can be best described as a tax on those who don't like the taste of other drinks. Despite all the mocking, Grayling also still believes in the "21st century clip round the ear", now examining "grounding" as an "instant punishment". We laughed when New Labour proposed taking yobs to ATMs; now the Tories, that party of the family, wants police officers to take over parenting. Finally, once again the Tories want to ban Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a group which although reprehensible and may have incited hatred in the past, most certainly does not incite violence. If we're going to ban every group alleged to do both, why focus on HuT and not the BNP or EDL, who are the number one current threat to community cohesion? Answer came there none.

All everyone was interested in though was the main event. There is one thing to be said for Cameron's speech, and that's at least that it was a speech rather than just a series of connected thoughts, as both Brown and Clegg's attempts were. It was also a good speech in another sense: that it at least partially showed what Cameron does believe and think, and quite how wrong his interpretation is of what has gone wrong, primarily with the economy:

And here is the big argument in British politics today, put plainly and simply. Labour say that to solve the country's problems, we need more government.

Don't they see? It is more government that got us into this mess.

Why is our economy broken? Not just because Labour wrongly thought they'd abolished boom and bust. But because government got too big, spent too much and doubled the national debt.


It is indeed putting it simply, and also not accurately. Labour may have massively increased the size and scope of the state, but to break this down to saying that Labour's only solution is more government is nonsense. If it was, it wouldn't have spent the last 12 years trying to insert the private sector into every public service or continued with the horrendously wasteful private finance initiative, to give but two examples. More gob-smacking though is that Cameron seems to be suggesting that the reason our economy's broken is because of the size of government and because it spent too much: this isn't just wrong, it's politically bankrupt. The reason the economy's broken is primarily because there was too little regulation of the financial sector, not too much. Even if we had saved for that "rainy day", we'd still be in the same recession even if the deficit could be dealt with quicker, and considering that the Tories would have hardly done anything different on the economy to Labour until very recently, this is hindsight of the lowest order. He continues:

Why is our society broken? Because government got too big, did too much and undermined responsibility.

This is even more nonsense. Even if you accept that big government has and does undermine responsibility, and even if you accept that society is broken, the real thing that broke it was the undermining and even open destruction of economic communities over 20 years ago. Labour has tried and mostly failed with its initiatives, but at least it has tried. All Cameron offers, and continues to offer in this speech, is the firm smack of responsibility and the recognition of marriage in the tax system, something just bound to cure problems at a stroke and not just provide the middle classes with a helpful cut. And so it goes on:

Why are our politics broken? Because government got too big, promised too much and pretended it had all the answers.

Cameron on the other hand doesn't pretend to have answers, as he doesn't offer any specific reform of politics in this speech except for the cutting of some ministerial salaries. All the talk of a new politics has completely evaporated, and who could possibly be surprised? Cameron doesn't need to change anything to win, and so the status quo is far more attractive.

Again, like Osborne on Tuesday, Cameron also offers precisely nothing on economic recovery. It's presumably just going to happen magically, while all we need to worry about is getting the deficit down. As Chris Dillow and an increasing numbers of others are now arguing, the preoccupation with the deficit is potentially dangerous when there are other threats and decisions to be taken. The Tories have focused on the deficit because this is one of their very few selling points, yet it's also a point on which they could be attacked if Labour was reasonably sure of itself, with even the potential to turn everything back around. While trying not to be triumphalist, what is clear is that the Tories themselves are now absolutely certain of their return to power. From his mention of Afghanistan at the very beginning to the condemnation of the EU at the end, this was also a speech written to touch every hot button on which the Sun newspaper has recently focused. Nothing is being left to chance. The irony of it all is that on the one thing that the Tories are significantly at odds with Labour on, they're wrong. The sad thing is that it seems it won't make any difference.

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10/08/2009 09:54:00 pm | | | links to this post

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