A "Massive Shock" - by Richard... Thursday, August 04, 2011

A "Massive Shock" - by Richard... Thursday, August 04, 2011

Never in the history of British policing has there ever been an instance where both a chief constableand his deputy have been arrested.

That is an indication of the magnitude of events in Cleveland Police yesterday, where Sean Price (pictured) and Derek Bonnard, respectively chief and deputy were arrested by officers under the leadership of Keith Bristow, chief constable of Warwickshire Police, in conjunction with officers and staff from North Yorkshire Police.

The pair were arrested a part of an investigation into suspicions of fraud and corruption, with indications that massive sums are involved. A third person was also arrested, the former force solicitor Caroline Llewellyn, who recently received £213,379 in a voluntary redundancy payoff.

Subsequently, the Cleveland Police Authority (CPA) - the force's governing body - suspended the two officers. Local sources say that this had been done speedily in anticipation of the Authority itself being suspended, as part of the investigation which has trawled in its two most senior officers. The chairman of the authority resigned three months ago when it too came under investigation.

Media reports suggest that there has been an investigation current since May, initiated by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and conducted by Warwickshire Police. Local sources, however, suggest that the inquiries started informally about February.

Interestingly, the slogan for the Cleveland Police is "putting people first", although it was not until now understood that the "people" to whom the slogan referred were Price and Bonnard, the latter allegedly holding open the till while his boss raided it.

This was in spite of Price being paid a salary of £191,905 last year, including, we are told, a payment of £54,421, which the police authority agreed to pay him to stop him being poached by other forces. Rather than poached, it now looks as if he will be fried – along with the reputation of his police force and the police in general.

The Police Federation locally has been quick to respond, its spokesman describing the news of the arrests as a "massive shock", expressing the view that the matter will be concluded "as quickly as possible". That is unlikely.

Price, who has headed Cleveland police for eight years, was already being investigated by the IPCC over the allegation that he used "undue influence" to shoehorn into a police job the daughter of the CPA's former chairman, Dave McLuckie.

With the criminal investigation now coming to a head, the chances of the affair dying down quickly are slight, especially as the arrests come only two weeks after the resignation of the head of the London Met, and an investigation into the former Met terror chief.

On top of that, Grahame Maxwell, the chief constable of North Yorkshire police, was given a written warning in May after admitting to gross misconduct for trying to help a relative get a job in his own force.

A former police chief constable is said to have told a newspaper that the arrests would raise "understandable public concern" over serious issues in the running of police forces. That, it must be said, has to be considered as the understatement of the century. Public confidence in the police – already fragile – now plummets to a new low.

These are our masters, and this is how they behave. If the allegations are proved, there must be a serious reckoning ... the rot has gone too far.

COMMENT THREAD

4Share

Print ready

None so blind.. - by Pete... Wednesday, August 03, 2011

This is a post to discuss the institutional myopia of the BBC. My state of boredem has reached such depths as to be trawling BBC iplayer for something even vaguely watchable. I know, I know. A futile gesture if ever there were one.

But I did come across this. This is a spin-off from the Coast series, unimaginatively named "Town". In the final ten minutes, the presenter digs under the picturesque facade of Ludlow to explore the depressingly impoverished council estates. At time index 51:04 the presenter talks to what some might call a chav. A twenty two year old, relatively eloquent, man who would otherwise have a good life as a chef, were it not for state subsidized poverty.

He tells the camera that an apprenticeship at the age of 16, straight after school was the highlight of his life in which he discovered something he was good at. But it has got him nowhere. And what we have here is a classic mindset problem. That work will come to him rather than him going to find work.

No doubt this poor man has been through the Job Centre mill of placement schemes and long been fed false promises. And the thing that will keep this man poor? More of the same along with subsidized housing. Once a slave, always a slave.

"All that countryside used to create a lot of jobs. Not anymore" the presenter laments. But it has not done that for a very long time. So we have to now ask why there is a housing estate full of useless people. Because we pay for them to be there.

So on the one had we see the dead hand of the EU and the CAP and the other, the equally deadweight policy of social welfare. And not once does this get a mention in the programme. The programme feels more like a Red Nose Day appeal slot.

These poeple are the victims of everything the BBC has sought to push on us over the last (arguably) five decades and now the chickens have come home to roost, there is not a hint of introspection or illumination. It is simply just another problem we must throw more money at.

Thus I am forced to conclude that things will be no different until the truth is told and the mindset changed. The problem is not simply one of the EU. It is our own people who have been brainwashed to believe the Easter bunny can and will resolve all that ails them.

We cannot hope to challenge either the EU or domestic government until people are asking the right questions. Until that day, I feel our primary aim should be the wholesale destruction of the BBC by whatever means at our disposal.

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

Cut-price failure - by Richard...

The pull-quote is from Sky News. Other media outlets are on the case. What seems to have escaped the Defence Committee and the media pundits is that for much of the past decade, the military have been unable to deliver. The escapade in Southern Iraq was an egregious military as well as a political failure, and the operation in Afghanistan is following a similar pattern.

What we need to confront it that the British Armed forces have the highest per capita spending of all the forces in the world – three times the spend per person than the US military. And for that, we get serial failures. It would be too much to expect that either the Defence Committee or the present administration could improve our performance with the existing budget – neither have the capability nor understanding so to do.

But at least, under this regime, our failures come cheaper, something which could, with advantage,be replicated elsewhere.

COMMENT THREAD

Share

Print ready

With weary predictability - by Richard...

... we gaze upon the report by the Daily Mail and its glad tidings that The Boy's much vaunted "bonfire of the quangos" has been a dismal failure ... like so much else he has touched. At least 4,500 civil servants have been taken on since the election in May last year by Government departments and quangos – three times the number that have been handed compulsory redundancy notices.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and the Committee on Climate Change are among the quangos which have been busy recruiting. Extra staff have been taken on while many parts of the public sector are making swingeing cuts to front-line services.

And, of course, we predicted this, back in September last year when we observed that there was no sign of any attempt to address the root cause of excessive regulation and officialdom, which gives rise to excessive civil service employment. That probably meant, we said, that this highly publicised initiative was just window dressing.

We revisited the subject in April when we reminded readers about the brave new world of Major's deregulation initiative, going back to the Conservative Party Conference on 9th October 1992. I put my heart and soul into that ... going down to London at my own expense (always at my own expense ... never a penny in expenses) to see officials at the "deregulation unit", writing reports (in my own time), and endless discussions, talks with MPs and ministers. Been there, done that one, got the tee-shirt.

You know, what people very often dismiss as cynicism and negativity on this blog really isn't. There comes a time when you've seen it before, seen it done badly, seen the same mistakes being made, and the same inadequacies paraded, and you know it's going to fail. That isn't cynicism. It's realism.

Now, one could launch in and explain why, in very great detail – but they are no more prepared to listen now than they did last time and the time before that. Having spent thousands of pounds of my own money and invested huge amounts of my time, one is simply not prepared to go through the same thing all over again, to exactly the same effect.

But that does not mean that we have to sit on the sidelines whingeing. This blog, at least, is a vehicle for projecting thoughts, the forum for discussing ideals and airing criticisms. There has to be a better way, and we are stumbling towards it.

During that original round of deregulation, in Major's time, I recall talking to a minister (I can't remember whom), who said it was all about money. Cut the money and you cut the activity. That, in itself, curtails the amount of regulation and interference.

What was happening at that time, though, was the creation of the Sefra, the Self-financing regulatory agency. Booker and I coined the term to describe this new type of agency. A lot of the so-called "quangos" are not quangos at all – they are Sefras.

The idea got some political traction at the time. But it was quietly squeezed out and forgotten. The bureaucrats had discovered an endless source of wealth. They were not going to give it up lightly. We revisited the subject on the blog, but look up Sefra on Google and you will struggle to find any references.

This in part drives Referism. Don't get bogged down in detail. The civil servants are good at that – they excel in it. They'll suck you in, exhaust you and then spit you out, dispirited and poorer, without having achieved a thing. Go for the money.

Interestingly, we see here in the Mail article, a reference to Redwood, who is fronting the story. Booker and I spent a lot of time with him back in the 90s, recruiting what we thought was an ally, trying to explain how to get the deregulation movement off the ground.

Then, as now, we found a man unutterably vain, interested in the issues only for what he could get out of them, in terms of personal publicity and career progression. You might wonder why a man who is so capable is not in high office in government – and that is the reason. None of his contemporaries trust him to, for that very reason - confide in him and it'll be all over the newspapers the next day, with his name on it.

And so, the wheel goes round and round. With weary predictability, these initiatives fail ... they always fail, because they are ill-founded. But we are coming to an end game. We can no longer afford it, and the public mood is changing – slowly, all too slowly. But there is reduced tolerance for the "parasite class" and all that goes with it.

Eventually, therefore, the system will crash and burn. It has to. Even now though, this could be avoided, if people only listened. But they don't. The mistakes of the past they insist on repeating, and will continue until they bring themselves down. All we can do is help them on their way.

COMMENT THREAD

Share