Tuesday 28 August 2012

Good God, its Gove

I normally dont write on these pages very much, due to weight of illness and studying. But I feel that I must put pen to paper about the antics of Michael Gove, otherwise known as the Secretary of State for Education. Whilst he claims that he is not directly responsible for the downgrading of students taking exactly the same summer examinations as those students took in January, we need to take a raincheck on his claims. Thats because Gove has famously pronounced upon grade inflation; he has claimed himself to be the enemy of grade inflation. So whether or not he has directly influenced Ofqual and AQA, its an odds on chance that someone, somewhere, has listened to him and has moved the grade boundaries mid-way through a cadre of students. Whats politically interesting about this, looking at things in the round, is that this is a political attempt to put the clocks back educationally, to stop pupils in their tracks, very much as the Tories consistently tried to do during the 1950's and 1960's where only students from grammar or public schools ever went to university. He wants to turn back the clock on the progress which has been made, of actually giving the young people something when they leave school, which people of my generation never had. Those of us who went to secondary moderns were not allowed to gain O and A Levels and its a sheer fluke that I ever did. I dont want Gove and other Tories putting back the clock forty years and keeping on trying to be elitist. Thats the trouble with putting public school boys in the House of Commons; they carry on their elitist predelictions. I am sorry to say that if Gove is so unknowledgeable about the very real efforts of our youth to gain qualifications, then he needs to resign and take his bigoted views with him.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

The RBS scandal

I think that the whole thing is a seminal event in terms of morality, ethical behaviour and responsibility. The fact that this bank has been allowed to grow and leverage its balance sheet to the tune of £1.2TN, the same as the entire GDP of the United Kingdom means that here is a corporation wishing to encompass riches, power and influence far beyond the dreams of avarice. This is something out of a fairy story, or something that would have been encompassed in one of Shakespeare's tragedies. The fact that RBS wished or wanted to be bigger than everyone and everything around it, is very worrying, especially for those of us (and that means everyone) who had to pick up the bits when RBS developed a spanner in the works. Of course one could use a bank to buy up every bad debt, useless customer and subprime asset that one could and then hook it up to that bank's balance sheet. This is what in effect RBS have done, with very little constraint. They in fact do not possess sufficient sense of morality and ethics to do the opposite. Nonetheless, I dont think it is hysterical for the public to pick up on the wide sense of dis-ease that this situation has caused. This is an institution which shows that it simply does not care for the traditions and mores that have made the United Kingdom what it is. This is an institution that wants to be more than the sum of any morality or decency with which it was created. In short, it is an institution that wants to own everything, to boss everything and ultimately to get its own way so that it is bigger than any developed nation on earth. If people dont find that sense of meglomania extremely worrying, than I do; thats why comparisons with Mussolini and others are being made at this time. The truth of the matter (if thoroughly examined) is that the banks, instead of being the servant, now seek to become the master. We cant let them do it and thats why the stripping of Fred Goodwin's knighthood was an extremely good thing in the sense that we should not be pinning gongs to the pompous breasts of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Thursday 21 July 2011

The Great Press Scandal (or not) as you may think




The Great Press Scandal (or not) as you may think…….

The Great Press Scandal of 2011, or not, as you may think. This story starts somewhere in April 2011 and carries on kicking and screaming, until the prorogation of the Parliaments in July 2011. It has its seeds in the imprisonment of two gentlemen from the News of the World in 2008, or thereabouts, after having been convicted of phone hacking. Following an investigation headed by John Yates, AC Counter Terrorism at the yard, there was, he stated, no further need to investigate these matters. Everybody thought that was the end of the scenario but the Guardian newspaper kept on delving into the matter and eventually unearthed the factoid that many thousands had had their voicemails intercepted, including Milly Dowler, a schoolgirl from Surrey, who had been abducted and tragically murdered. To make the story that bit more complex, the editor of the newspaper News of the World had secured a position at 10 Downing Street after having retired from that newspaper and an AC from New Scotland Yard had gone on to be a journalist with this, or a similar newspaper. As more and more revelations came out, there was a worry that the Prime Minister David Cameron had made a mistake in not checking out Andy Coulson, former editor of the News of the World, before employing him at 10 Downing Street.

More and more revelations came out; the senior police officers involved in the scenario were invited to attend a Select Committee for Home Affairs – Sir Paul Stephenson, Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police appeared before that committee. He resigned his position in July 2011. John Yates, AC Counter Terrorism also appeared before that committee. He also resigned. Various people also resigned from News International, the conglomerate who produced the news of the world. One gentleman resigned from the Wall Street Journal after 52 years service. Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International in London, also resigned. Rupert Murdoch flew into London and closed the News of the World after 168 years.

After a series of smoke and fires within the precincts of Parliament, including hours of televised select committees, we are now no nearer into knowing, who, how, what reasons for, when, or how many? These are all forensic things that need to be known before one can make any judgment on what really happened. The Police (MPS) are further investigating the matter. They now have 50 officers on the case, although only 136 of the victims hacked have been notified and there are many thousands of victims yet to be spoken to by police. For all the sound and fury of this matter, there has been precious little progress made and it is quite significantly worrying that this is supposed to be one of the biggest scandals in British life since 1936, yet so little has been done, apart from a parade of MPs lining up to do a circus act within the chamber or the Select Committees. Oh and amusingly enough, Rupert Murdoch was assaulted with a custard pie made of shaving foam whilst speaking in the committee rooms. He stated that his appearance was the most humbling day of his life.

Nonetheless, what progress? None that I can discern; no forensic questioning on the part of anybody. No real attempt to establish a global version of the scenario with facts – who did what, what happened, when did it happened, where did it happen, who were the principals involved. All this is meat and drink to a police investigation, yet everybody else decided to turn Sherlock Holmes to try and investigate the matter, without any legal qualifications, or forensic training in police interview and investigation techniques. It makes me so sad that we as a country could have been so silly as not to know that this was all bread and circuses. Someone has said that all of these “investigations” such as the speeches in Parliament and the select committees have been a put up job so that the establishment could jump out of the way of the boulder which was coming towards them. Is there more than a grain of truth in what this person has said. Only you can decide.

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Of bread and circuses




The questions have been asked: should the Murdochs resign? I dont know about the Murdochs resigning; I have not seen one of any of the people involved doing anything sensible about anything really, except create bread and circuses.

We are no further forward in getting to the root of this matter than we were years ago when this first started. Thats because no-one is taking a long forensic look at it and asking the relevant probing questions and then drilling down until the evidence points in a direction, then following that direction.

All thats been achieved has been a few MPs saying "Please James and Rupert, did you know anything". Answer "No, I did not". "Oh, okay then, thanks awfully!"

Isn't there something so terribly British about the polite but consistent way we fail within our Parliament and Press to get to the vital points of evidence that underpin these enquiries. But the search for truth is not a circus, nor a zoo. These past two weeks have been a spectacle in truth evasion and no-one acquainted with the search for real evidence would be fooled by it in any way whatsoever.

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Lack of forensic skilling lets down Parliamentary Select Committee




Various commentators have said that a lack of forensic questioning let down the Parliamentary Select Committees to day, in dealing with Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Yates, Brooks and the two Murdochs. I am inclined to agree with this view.

Everyone involved in these sorts of processes knows that when such an interview is taking place, you start first with a global scenario of facts; then you break that scenario down into separate strands, where you pursue the line of questioning down the strand where-ever the evidence goes, or create sub strands and go down those as far as the evidence goes. Eventually what you get is a series of spidergraphs with an answer at the end of each one. Then you join up the spidergraphs to get the whole of a reconstructed picture which you have obtained by interview evidence. And each of these spidergraphs are started off by asking the key questions.

I noticed this failure of forensic intensity especially when they were interviewing AC John Yates; I kept waiting for them to ask him what he did with the evidence that he had before him. He never answer that questioned because it was not asked.

Example: Assistant Commissioner, dealing with the bags of evidence which were kept at New Scotland Yard, in Room 233 and pertaining to the phone hacking, can you tell me what happened to those bags of evidence?

You are showing that you know where the bags are, what room they were in and at what time and what action was taken? And you know that because you draw together previous strands of the interview to get to that point.

The Select Committee never got anywhere near it; sadly they just did not know how to question Yates. And thats just one example of how they failed to question.

So we can only hope that the police and the IPCC do a bit better than MPs. Thats my sincere hope?

Sir Paul Stephenson at the Select Committee





19 Jul 2011:
I have seen the Sir Paul Stephenson interview by the Select Committee. To be honest I think it was deeply flawed; I would have thought that an interview drew together lines of enquiry which had been well thought out and that there was a logical corollary between each strand of the enquiry and the next. But here was a scatter gun and accusative/confrontational approach by this committee which did not seem to get to the point of anything. Furthermore, they were asking him questions which required a greater grasp of detail that the Commissioner possessed and to be frank I dont think it was the Commissioner's fault. Even to the extent of the manpower numbers involved in MPS, which I think were nearer 45,000 and not the 50,000 which Sir Paul stated. I dont think overall that the Select Committee carried out a professional interrogation of the character. I dont think they are going to get any sort of overview of the police from what has been stated.

I am further disappointed to know that the Committee dont realise that the police are very highly trained, far more highly trained than any group of Members of Parliament; these are the people that we expect to extract details of serious crime. Having said that, I just think that Sir Paul bought them and sold them with a smile on his face and I am ashamed to say that I just dont think they are any further forward than when they started.

A shameful and amateurish performance on the part of our politicians. Why am I not surprised.

Monday 18 July 2011

Is this the end of the Metropolitan Police?







I so like the way these people speak with wide eyed innocence about what has happened; it comes as a surprise to many of them. Clearly Sir Paul has been most taken aback by what has happened.

I cant help feeling that within London at least, the decay of morality and ethical behaviour has been going on for some years now. I just cannot imagine that this sort of behaviour would have happenbed in the same way 40 years ago. But there again, we are talking about a situation in the 1960's and 1970's whereby the ganglords held sway and looked after anything going on within their patch. Whats happening now however is that I feel that a large number of these spin offs from the old East End and other places have now moved into white collar crime; therefore you now have a proliferation of blagging, hacking and scamming. I also believe that the dividing line between those who are investigating crime and those committing it has got a lot thinner. In that way, there's a possibility that they are all in it together. You dont know who is who; the chief of police who is at a press luncheon, or the journalist who is sharing information with police with a view to potential hacking.

So in lots of ways, the characters are the same - Sir Robert Mark investigated corruption after the scandals of the Krays and Richardsons. Now the scenario has changed but only in the way that information is still exchanged under the guise of co-operation and corporate hospitality. But there is no doubt that it is still corruption.

Its just that whats happening appears to be that much more respectable because its done under the guise of corporate movement. Those who used to be gangsters have now moved into the area of media and exercise their influence in that way.

Nonetheless, the similarity between the 1960's and 1970's is that there obviously appear to be this unhealthy closeness between those committing crime of whatever sort (in the corprate sense) and those investigating it. And whatever is being said, there is also an unhealthy alliance between those in SW1, the Police and the Media. Too much time is being spent on all these people in "Westminster Village" with the result that the rest of London is suffering. Way too many resources are being poured into this concentration.

Where am I going with this argument? I think we require a whole new system of policing within Inner London. I dont think that the Metropolitan Police are the people for the job anymore. Therefore I think that the City of London police should be tasked to take over the position of policing for London and the Met should be disbanded and reformed into the Outer London police service. That should solve the problem of the Met having lost their way. I dont think there should be a Met Police anymore because I think the culture is getting in the way of them making any more advances in policing. Their focus has become too narrow; they are not police for London anymore but merely police for small sectionalised interests. We need a force that is for Outer London and a more specialist one for inner London. Sorry but if we cant clear up this institutionalised corruption then to me its clear that the Met have to go.

Too much history there, for my liking. As a postscript, as I am writing this, the resignation of John Yates has also been announced, Yates being the Assistant Commissioner (or one of them). It is clear that their wide eyed innocence is no longer serving them well; that what they have become embroiled in has certainly engulfed all of them and that we would now be better off if the Metropolitan Police Service were replaced in its entirety along the lines I have defined in this piece.