Stephen Ports crimes were wicked and cruel deserving of a whole life tariff but why stop at Port? Im still mythed ten years later how authorities in South Yorkshire failed to stop child grooming in places like Rotherham for fear of racism. I've no doubt the situation was for more complexed than a leyman would understand. But there still remains serious questions how it was allowed to go on for years. - failing to protect children is a shame on all of us.
I've not heard about the Lambeth cases. I've read plenty on the Rotherham cases and in those particular case I think the government should have prosecuted on the grounds of child rape. Grooming children for sex should carry a whole life tarriff. It is right that we no longer have the death penalty but we do need to increase the use of whole life tariffs. The couple who tortured the six year old should have got whole life orders last week.
The stepmother did get a whole life tariff. She will not even be considered for release until 29 years have passed.
On Rotherham I do wonder whether some policemen knew what was happening and turned a blind eye - not just because of the fear of racism - but because they were ...*ahem* .... benefiting, either in kind or money, from what was happening.
No evidence for this but a line of inquiry which ought to have been pursued.
Most of the victims were living chaotic lifestyles in or on the fringes of the care system. They weren't believed and if they were, they must have been going along with it.
What seems to be forgotten is how connected the criminals were. Jahangir Akhtar....
The web is deep and tangled. Ensnaring many. Rather than unpick it we choose fear of racism/lack of funding/chaotic lifestyles/nasty immigrants and their weird religion/ oversexualisation of children/prejudice against the WWC and care Leavers / institutional corruption among many others as simple explanations of a sickness in our society. Delete as appropriate to your prejudices. It was all of these and more. The deeper we look into the abyss, the more it screams back at us. So we fall back on easy answers and slogans. Rather than having a close look.
Oh absolutely - the various factors turned the "problem" into "don't touch that, it's a toxic swamp, it's always been that way, you can't change it and you'll just damage your career if you look into it too hard. Lunch?"
On topic there is a problem within the gay community of chemsex parties with web sites like Grinder fuelling this. It is not just the killings that Port executed it is the sexual thrill that thousands of gay men are chasing with dangerous consequences. The internet and the easily availability of drugs today make it a toxic environment for those chasing that "thrill" no government can stop this - the problem will go more and more underground
Stephen Ports crimes were wicked and cruel deserving of a whole life tariff but why stop at Port? Im still mythed ten years later how authorities in South Yorkshire failed to stop child grooming in places like Rotherham for fear of racism. I've no doubt the situation was for more complexed than a leyman would understand. But there still remains serious questions how it was allowed to go on for years. - failing to protect children is a shame on all of us.
I've not heard about the Lambeth cases. I've read plenty on the Rotherham cases and in those particular case I think the government should have prosecuted on the grounds of child rape. Grooming children for sex should carry a whole life tarriff. It is right that we no longer have the death penalty but we do need to increase the use of whole life tariffs. The couple who tortured the six year old should have got whole life orders last week.
The stepmother did get a whole life tariff. She will not even be considered for release until 29 years have passed.
On Rotherham I do wonder whether some policemen knew what was happening and turned a blind eye - not just because of the fear of racism - but because they were ...*ahem* .... benefiting, either in kind or money, from what was happening.
No evidence for this but a line of inquiry which ought to have been pursued.
Most of the victims were living chaotic lifestyles in or on the fringes of the care system. They weren't believed and if they were, they must have been going along with it.
What seems to be forgotten is how connected the criminals were. Jahangir Akhtar....
The web is deep and tangled. Ensnaring many. Rather than unpick it we choose fear of racism/lack of funding/chaotic lifestyles/nasty immigrants and their weird religion/ oversexualisation of children/prejudice against the WWC and care Leavers / institutional corruption among many others as simple explanations of a sickness in our society. Delete as appropriate to your prejudices. It was all of these and more. The deeper we look into the abyss, the more it screams back at us. So we fall back on easy answers and slogans. Rather than having a close look.
Oh absolutely - the various factors turned the "problem" into "don't touch that, it's a toxic swamp, it's always been that way, you can't change it and you'll just damage your career if you look into it too hard. Lunch?"
That's why I don't work in Child Protection any more. Lunch was never enjoyable.
Professor Tim Spector, from King’s College London, examined UK Omicron super-spreader events involving older people — and found the patients mainly suffered “sniffles”.
He said: “What we’re seeing so far is that symptoms are very, very mild.
“Most of my information comes from one big event, a 60th birthday party where 18 people aged 60 to 75 spent the night together in a hotel.
"Most of them had symptoms of a cold — sniffles, sore throat and fatigue were common.
"Only two had classic symptoms of Covid, fever and loss of smell or taste.
“Nobody had to see their doctor or go to hospital.”
He added all those at the party had been double-jabbed and some had had a booster.
---
If this was the case, we should all just have big parties asap, get it over and done with!
Well indeed. I'd be one of the two. But it still wasn't a great experience. If you're thinking of it clear at least a week off.
Just like the flu.
But a week in bed is still better than six months behind the bedsheets in lockdown.
I hope you're feeling better now.
It is strange. Not like the flu at all. Nor like a cold, but summat different. Sorry if I've been a bit chippy with you lately. But it really is something I'd rather not have had. And you give off the impression at least that it isn't much at all. Truth is. It isn't nice. And I would prefer no one got it. I have some sympathy with your position, in that I think we are past the place of preventing people getting it, but minimising it as an illness isn't the way to go.
Hey if I had a magic wish I'd prefer no one got it.
I'd also love to have world peace, a genie that grants more wishes, magic beans and England to win the Ashes.
The problem is that people will get it, regardless of what we'd prefer. So how we handle that is the thing to be debated.
Bucheon in South Korea will use AI, facial recognition and 10,000 CCTV cameras to track COVID-19 cases, their close contacts, and whether they were wearing a mask https://t.co/sQvAbTQ8Yk
This is getting very close to 1984, however good the intentions may be.
I thought facial recognition was ineffective if people wore masks.....?
Professor Tim Spector, from King’s College London, examined UK Omicron super-spreader events involving older people — and found the patients mainly suffered “sniffles”.
He said: “What we’re seeing so far is that symptoms are very, very mild.
“Most of my information comes from one big event, a 60th birthday party where 18 people aged 60 to 75 spent the night together in a hotel.
"Most of them had symptoms of a cold — sniffles, sore throat and fatigue were common.
"Only two had classic symptoms of Covid, fever and loss of smell or taste.
“Nobody had to see their doctor or go to hospital.”
He added all those at the party had been double-jabbed and some had had a booster.
---
If this was the case, we should all just have big parties asap, get it over and done with!
Hopefully this "wave" will be just what people need to snap out of the fear of Covid. If we have a wave of lots of people getting the sniffles, maybe they'll finally snap out of treating Covid like its some sort of evil pox.
Covid post-vaccines isn't the same thing as the virus that hit a naïve population.
From my experience. It isn't the sniffles. Nor is it the evil pox. It is an unpleasant illness that we aren't experienced in treating yet. I still don't understand why you haven't shacked up with someone positive if that is really your view. You don't seem to be putting much effort in.
In all seriousness, I am slightly concerned by this mild narrative. It feels like a repeat of the Wuhan, 90% only get mild disease. Not because I am personally scared, I am triple boosted, right age, fit, but more it just encourages reckless behaviour, especially when interacting with much more vulnerable people, when we aren't 100% sure it is even milder.
Both my parents are elderly and vulnerable, I will be seeing them over Christmas, but I will do LFT and try and keep out of circulation for a couple of days before I go to see them just to be on the safe side.
I don't think the PM saying it once today that no proof it is milder and you need to careful will override 2 weeks of daily media interviews with people saying nothing to see here.
There's mild and there's mild. Both of my colleagues would have come in and worked through but for their lat flows. Not evdn a headache between them
I had really shit side effects with my two jabs, and if it's a choice between getting a booster every three months and 8 days of feeling awful VS risking a mild Covid variant and 14 days of quarantine, I'd take the quarantine in a heartbeat.
I had really shit side effects with my two jabs, and if it's a choice between getting a booster every three months and 8 days of feeling awful VS risking a mild Covid variant and 14 days of quarantine, I'd take the quarantine in a heartbeat.
Been awake all night with sweats and aches on top of jetlag. Hope it doesn’t last 8 nights — last time was just one day. And nothing on the first jab.
Professor Tim Spector, from King’s College London, examined UK Omicron super-spreader events involving older people — and found the patients mainly suffered “sniffles”.
He said: “What we’re seeing so far is that symptoms are very, very mild.
“Most of my information comes from one big event, a 60th birthday party where 18 people aged 60 to 75 spent the night together in a hotel.
"Most of them had symptoms of a cold — sniffles, sore throat and fatigue were common.
"Only two had classic symptoms of Covid, fever and loss of smell or taste.
“Nobody had to see their doctor or go to hospital.”
He added all those at the party had been double-jabbed and some had had a booster.
---
If this was the case, we should all just have big parties asap, get it over and done with!
This is good news, and Tim Spector is one of the best experts on the subject. Why isn't it being more widely reported?
Professor Tim Spector, from King’s College London, examined UK Omicron super-spreader events involving older people — and found the patients mainly suffered “sniffles”.
He said: “What we’re seeing so far is that symptoms are very, very mild.
“Most of my information comes from one big event, a 60th birthday party where 18 people aged 60 to 75 spent the night together in a hotel.
"Most of them had symptoms of a cold — sniffles, sore throat and fatigue were common.
"Only two had classic symptoms of Covid, fever and loss of smell or taste.
“Nobody had to see their doctor or go to hospital.”
He added all those at the party had been double-jabbed and some had had a booster.
---
If this was the case, we should all just have big parties asap, get it over and done with!
This is good news, and Tim Spector is one of the best experts on the subject. Why isn't it being more widely reported?
Because Covid has different effects and different outcomes on each individual. This was the same with the original strain, same with Delta and it will be the same with Omicron.
I have worked with people who had pretty much no symptoms at all, some had cold like symptoms, some it has hit then like an absolute truck and they were off work for many weeks including a stint in hospital.
Covid IS and always has been mild in the majority, but there are people out there with underlying health conditions and other unknown factors that suffer more. Even a milder strain still has the potential to put people into hospital in large numbers and put a huge strain on our health services
Pushing this narrative that Omicron is universally mild is extremely dangerous. Especially when it's clearly way more infectious than any other strain before it and people out there are vulnerable. It doesn't help at all with trying to get people to have boosters so we can protect the most vulnerable in society who face a real danger of severe disease if they catch it.
Tim Stanley @timothy_stanley · 1h I know internet people think I live in the 19th century, but it is inappropriate to give a pre-recorded statement to camera. Commons is correct place to do it, & in a proper statement he could face questions from MPs.
On this occasion, no. I think he needed to get on with it - it's already a week later than it should have been.
Everone here knows my views on politics, but I thought tonight's statement was good - focused, firm and with a simple message unclouded by rhetorical tricks. I don't actually care about his hairstyle.
I agree. Remain and Corbynite Twitter are furious because they wanted the media to skewer him on the parties, which highlights why it was essential for him to do an address to the nation and to make it plain. It's an urgent public health message without any real policy requiring a Parliamentary vote so saying it to Parliament would likely have washed out the strength of the message.
Only a fool would think that the party story is going to wither away from this announcement. It's still got legs if Case is going to report soon on it and The Mirror might have something else tucked up their sleeve.
Everybody likes to get their work done before the work Christmas do on the last full Friday before Christmas.
Case couldn't investigate his way into his own trousers. No offence but this is not what senior civil servants are trained to or good at doing. He is also likely conflicted. If they want a proper investigation get a proper investigator. If ....
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
Bucheon in South Korea will use AI, facial recognition and 10,000 CCTV cameras to track COVID-19 cases, their close contacts, and whether they were wearing a mask https://t.co/sQvAbTQ8Yk
This is getting very close to 1984, however good the intentions may be.
I thought facial recognition was ineffective if people wore masks.....?
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Morning all. So we get home very late, to find out that the end of the race was a whole lot more controversial than it appeared from the stands.
Have Betfair settled their race markets on the podium ceremony as usual, and are the Championship markets still running pending appeals? I see that PP have done their usual trick of paying out both sides of a controversial event, which is great publicity for them but not an option open to exchanges.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
Possibly. But we had limited resources too, even fewer than the police. It's more the attitude that interests me - you don't need a huge amount of specialisation to investigate burglary for instance. That's a choice.
Tim Stanley @timothy_stanley · 1h I know internet people think I live in the 19th century, but it is inappropriate to give a pre-recorded statement to camera. Commons is correct place to do it, & in a proper statement he could face questions from MPs.
On this occasion, no. I think he needed to get on with it - it's already a week later than it should have been.
Everone here knows my views on politics, but I thought tonight's statement was good - focused, firm and with a simple message unclouded by rhetorical tricks. I don't actually care about his hairstyle.
I agree. Remain and Corbynite Twitter are furious because they wanted the media to skewer him on the parties, which highlights why it was essential for him to do an address to the nation and to make it plain. It's an urgent public health message without any real policy requiring a Parliamentary vote so saying it to Parliament would likely have washed out the strength of the message.
Only a fool would think that the party story is going to wither away from this announcement. It's still got legs if Case is going to report soon on it and The Mirror might have something else tucked up their sleeve.
Everybody likes to get their work done before the work Christmas do on the last full Friday before Christmas.
Case couldn't investigate his way into his own trousers. No offence but this is not what senior civil servants are trained to or good at doing. He is also likely conflicted. If they want a proper investigation get a proper investigator. If ....
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
God help us......
There is an outstanding 3-part series on the police in the sixties and seventies on iPlayer which shows how far back the problems go.
And yet there are clearly some very capable police around. In the Shipman documentary the policeman who investigated the doctor's drug offences in the early part of his career knew his job and was furious at how the GMC let the doctor off the hook. I suspect that these policemen are not the ones who get promoted. To get to the top you need to be good at politics rather than policing.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
Possibly. But we had limited resources too, even fewer than the police. It's more the attitude that interests me - you don't need a huge amount of specialisation to investigate burglary for instance. That's a choice.
I understand that. But if you have an already failing organisation, lump further tasks onto it, and squeeze resources, then it’s going to fail more.
I don’t know what the answer is. Perhaps have separate task specific services ? At least that way there might be a chance of introducing competence in individually areas. As it is, whether or not the problem is tractable, there seems to be no political will to even look at it.
"Raab is understood to be considering a new bill of rights or reform of the existing act. He is thought to want to remove the duty on British courts to adhere to European Court of Human Rights precedents."
And who's opposing this? Why the security services - MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
"Raab is understood to be considering a new bill of rights or reform of the existing act. He is thought to want to remove the duty on British courts to adhere to European Court of Human Rights precedents."
And who's opposing this? Why the security services - MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
What is it about this government and their desire to erode individual rights ? Well past time to kick them out.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
Possibly. But we had limited resources too, even fewer than the police. It's more the attitude that interests me - you don't need a huge amount of specialisation to investigate burglary for instance. That's a choice.
I understand that. But if you have an already failing organisation, lump further tasks onto it, and squeeze resources, then it’s going to fail more.
I don’t know what the answer is. Perhaps have separate task specific services ? At least that way there might be a chance of introducing competence in individually areas. As it is, whether or not the problem is tractable, there seems to be no political will to even look at it.
The last is the problem, I think.
There will be pockets of excellence but the leadership is poor, the demands are incessant and often incompatible and there isn't the sustained dedicated approach to change which is needed.
Plus there is a lot of resistance.
Misjudged loyalty to your tribe. Closing ranks against the person "speaking up". Feeling threatened by transparency. Not wanting to change. Finding reasons why it can't be done. This isn't exclusive to the police. It's seen in the the NHS, banking, politics, pretty much everywhere. It's why whistleblowing & culture change are so hard.
The first step is to accept you have a problem. The police don't really do that and politicians let them off the hook with all this support of the person at the top rubbish etc.
Take one small example: the City of London police focus on fraud but also cover normal policing duties for the City. So in the middle of the U.K.'s biggest fraud investigation, experienced fraud detectives were being diverted to police the Lord Mayor's show. That is daft.
"Raab is understood to be considering a new bill of rights or reform of the existing act. He is thought to want to remove the duty on British courts to adhere to European Court of Human Rights precedents."
And who's opposing this? Why the security services - MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
What is it about this government and their desire to erode individual rights ? Well past time to kick them out.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
God help us......
There is an outstanding 3-part series on the police in the sixties and seventies on iPlayer which shows how far back the problems go.
And yet there are clearly some very capable police around. In the Shipman documentary the policeman who investigated the doctor's drug offences in the early part of his career knew his job and was furious at how the GMC let the doctor off the hook. I suspect that these policemen are not the ones who get promoted. To get to the top you need to be good at politics rather than policing.
There are often good people in failing organisations. A public company can go under, and they move on. That option isn’t there with the Met. How might you start to deal with it if you were Home Secretary (ignoring, for the sake of argument, the Mayor’s role) ?
Good morning one and all. Excellent header, as usual, from Ms Cyclefree. And yes, several warnings were ignored in the Shipman case.
What is especially alarming is that, apart from the vaccine rollout ..... and it's arguable that that's not as good as it was...... see remarks about repeated invitations for booster shots yesterday ....... similar complaints and criticisms can be made across many areas of British life. For example, Private Eye is, and has been for years, running stories on the incompetence of then Serious Fraud Office.
What's happened to us. In spite of my innate prejudice, it can't all be blamed on our current PM, although unquestionably some can be.
Professor Tim Spector, from King’s College London, examined UK Omicron super-spreader events involving older people — and found the patients mainly suffered “sniffles”.
He said: “What we’re seeing so far is that symptoms are very, very mild.
“Most of my information comes from one big event, a 60th birthday party where 18 people aged 60 to 75 spent the night together in a hotel.
"Most of them had symptoms of a cold — sniffles, sore throat and fatigue were common.
"Only two had classic symptoms of Covid, fever and loss of smell or taste.
“Nobody had to see their doctor or go to hospital.”
He added all those at the party had been double-jabbed and some had had a booster.
---
If this was the case, we should all just have big parties asap, get it over and done with!
This is good news, and Tim Spector is one of the best experts on the subject. Why isn't it being more widely reported?
Because Covid has different effects and different outcomes on each individual. This was the same with the original strain, same with Delta and it will be the same with Omicron.
I have worked with people who had pretty much no symptoms at all, some had cold like symptoms, some it has hit then like an absolute truck and they were off work for many weeks including a stint in hospital.
Covid IS and always has been mild in the majority, but there are people out there with underlying health conditions and other unknown factors that suffer more. Even a milder strain still has the potential to put people into hospital in large numbers and put a huge strain on our health services
Pushing this narrative that Omicron is universally mild is extremely dangerous. Especially when it's clearly way more infectious than any other strain before it and people out there are vulnerable. It doesn't help at all with trying to get people to have boosters so we can protect the most vulnerable in society who face a real danger of severe disease if they catch it.
Absolutely. Why people can't grasp this is beyond me.
What we need to know is how the hospitalisation rate for Omicron will differ from the 1% or so we have been seeing with Delta. The fact that infections in 18 double- and triple-vaccinated people, perhaps mostly around 60, produced no hospitalisations tells us nothing new.
How do people get on with betting if they can't understand simple statistics? Do they always just bet on the favourite regardless of the odds?
Professor Tim Spector, from King’s College London, examined UK Omicron super-spreader events involving older people — and found the patients mainly suffered “sniffles”.
He said: “What we’re seeing so far is that symptoms are very, very mild.
“Most of my information comes from one big event, a 60th birthday party where 18 people aged 60 to 75 spent the night together in a hotel.
"Most of them had symptoms of a cold — sniffles, sore throat and fatigue were common.
"Only two had classic symptoms of Covid, fever and loss of smell or taste.
“Nobody had to see their doctor or go to hospital.”
He added all those at the party had been double-jabbed and some had had a booster.
---
If this was the case, we should all just have big parties asap, get it over and done with!
This is good news, and Tim Spector is one of the best experts on the subject. Why isn't it being more widely reported?
Because Covid has different effects and different outcomes on each individual. This was the same with the original strain, same with Delta and it will be the same with Omicron.
I have worked with people who had pretty much no symptoms at all, some had cold like symptoms, some it has hit then like an absolute truck and they were off work for many weeks including a stint in hospital.
Covid IS and always has been mild in the majority, but there are people out there with underlying health conditions and other unknown factors that suffer more. Even a milder strain still has the potential to put people into hospital in large numbers and put a huge strain on our health services
Pushing this narrative that Omicron is universally mild is extremely dangerous. Especially when it's clearly way more infectious than any other strain before it and people out there are vulnerable. It doesn't help at all with trying to get people to have boosters so we can protect the most vulnerable in society who face a real danger of severe disease if they catch it.
"Pushing this narrative that Omicron is universally mild is extremely dangerous"
I assume you mean because we don't yet know whether it's mild or not.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
The lawyer for the Morgan family on the Today programme right now. Giving Cressida a well deserved kicking - "a culture of impunity" - and making the point that it is the politicians' support for her which permits this.
There is an opportunity here for Labour, if they could only see it and are brave enough to take it.
Bucheon in South Korea will use AI, facial recognition and 10,000 CCTV cameras to track COVID-19 cases, their close contacts, and whether they were wearing a mask https://t.co/sQvAbTQ8Yk
This is getting very close to 1984, however good the intentions may be.
Governments everywhere are using the pandemic as great cover, to roll out the sort of authoritarian stuff dreamed of by civil servants for decades.
It’s to the UK government’s credit, no matter what else one might think og them, that they have shied away from the databases and massive tracking operations seen elsewhere, and that measures that have been introduced, have been dropped when no longer required.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
The lawyer for the Morgan family on the Today programme right now. Giving Cressida a well deserved kicking - "a culture of impunity" - and making the point that it is the politicians' support for her which permits this.
There is an opportunity here for Labour, if they could only see it and are brave enough to take it.
I am not holding my breath.
It’s quite amazing that neither the Mayor, nor the Home Secretary, seemed interested in removing Ms Dick when the opportunity arose, when either of them so doing might have been politically expedient.
Hang on, to be fair there were two trials, and in the second the accused was found not guilty of a serious charge, and the jury could not are on the others. The accuser first went to the police in 2019, so hardly justice delayed from that point of view.
CPS failings, perhaps. What else do you think the police could have done?
There should be one takeaway from this: young people (in fact, everyone) should be urged to report to the police when anything happens, not wait for years. This is not easy, and the authorities need to support both accuser and accused. But justice becomes harder after a year, let alone 30+.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
The lawyer for the Morgan family on the Today programme right now. Giving Cressida a well deserved kicking - "a culture of impunity" - and making the point that it is the politicians' support for her which permits this.
There is an opportunity here for Labour, if they could only see it and are brave enough to take it.
I am not holding my breath.
It’s quite amazing that neither the Mayor, nor the Home Secretary, seemed interested in removing Ms Dick when the opportunity arose, when either of them so doing might have been politically expedient.
It was somewhat 'odd' that she was promoted after the shooting of that poor Brazilian chap.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
The lawyer for the Morgan family on the Today programme right now. Giving Cressida a well deserved kicking - "a culture of impunity" - and making the point that it is the politicians' support for her which permits this.
There is an opportunity here for Labour, if they could only see it and are brave enough to take it.
I am not holding my breath.
It’s quite amazing that neither the Mayor, nor the Home Secretary, seemed interested in removing Ms Dick when the opportunity arose, when either of them so doing might have been politically expedient.
It was somewhat 'odd' that she was promoted after the shooting of that poor Brazilian chap.
Cf Amanda Spielman, Dominic Cummings, Sam Freedman, Dido Harding, Priti Patel...all promoted upwards after demonstrating not merely serious levels of incompetence but actually being dangerous.
Unfortunately this government operates on cronyism not competence and Khan is too much of a wet fish to throw his weight around when he should.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
The lawyer for the Morgan family on the Today programme right now. Giving Cressida a well deserved kicking - "a culture of impunity" - and making the point that it is the politicians' support for her which permits this.
There is an opportunity here for Labour, if they could only see it and are brave enough to take it.
I am not holding my breath.
It’s quite amazing that neither the Mayor, nor the Home Secretary, seemed interested in removing Ms Dick when the opportunity arose, when either of them so doing might have been politically expedient.
It was somewhat 'odd' that she was promoted after the shooting of that poor Brazilian chap.
Cf Amanda Spielman, Dominic Cummings, Sam Freedman, Dido Harding, Priti Patel...all promoted upwards after demonstrating not merely serious levels of incompetence but actually being dangerous.
Unfortunately this government operates on cronyism not competence and Khan is too much of a wet fish to throw his weight around when he should.
I suspect one can add Gisela Stuart to that list. And yes, Khan ought to be 'front of house' on this!
Good morning one and all. Excellent header, as usual, from Ms Cyclefree. And yes, several warnings were ignored in the Shipman case.
What is especially alarming is that, apart from the vaccine rollout ..... and it's arguable that that's not as good as it was...... see remarks about repeated invitations for booster shots yesterday ....... similar complaints and criticisms can be made across many areas of British life. For example, Private Eye is, and has been for years, running stories on the incompetence of then Serious Fraud Office.
What's happened to us. In spite of my innate prejudice, it can't all be blamed on our current PM, although unquestionably some can be.
The Serious Farce Office as Private Eye describes them. They've never been up to much.
I once had to be flown back from the US at a moment's notice to give a witness statement because the then SFO director insisted to my bosses that I was a key witness. This was nonsense. Anyway I was interviewed with such brilliant questions as "Is there anything else you don't know about?" ("Well yes, quantum physics and how to play the violin, also the rules of cricket. Do you want me to go on?") and told to appear in court. As soon as the prosecuting barristers saw the statement they reportedly told the SFO not to be so silly and I was stood down.
Honestly, the drama series writes itself. (And I am writing it, btw ....).
I remember watching a documentary about the hunt for the Yorkshire ripper a couple of months ago. A staggering tale of incompetence, misogyny, misdirection of massive resources, leaps of faith and hypothesis without any proper evidential base brought to an end by a simple piece of competent policing by a local police officer.
I think that the reason they find racism, misogyny or homophobia something they want to deny is that it makes it harder to argue that incompetence is a "one off" or something that could be dismissed. We had a truly astonishing case in Scotland recently where the police searched a 1 bedroom flat and failed to notice a chopped up body in the bath. It was only after the remains had been put in bin bags and put out for collection that it was noticed they were leaking blood. And of course the Scottish police have just paid out £1m rather than have a proof which would have highlighted their incompetence about those left to die at the side of a motorway.
Running very large institutions is difficult. Creating common and acceptable standards is also difficult. But as @Cyclefree's header highlights once again, it would be good if they at least tried.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
The lawyer for the Morgan family on the Today programme right now. Giving Cressida a well deserved kicking - "a culture of impunity" - and making the point that it is the politicians' support for her which permits this.
There is an opportunity here for Labour, if they could only see it and are brave enough to take it.
I am not holding my breath.
It’s quite amazing that neither the Mayor, nor the Home Secretary, seemed interested in removing Ms Dick when the opportunity arose, when either of them so doing might have been politically expedient.
It was somewhat 'odd' that she was promoted after the shooting of that poor Brazilian chap.
She retired from the Met. Moved to the Foreign Office for some vague advisory role. Then mysteriously reappeared at the Met. We have not been told the whole story.
Professor Tim Spector, from King’s College London, examined UK Omicron super-spreader events involving older people — and found the patients mainly suffered “sniffles”.
He said: “What we’re seeing so far is that symptoms are very, very mild.
“Most of my information comes from one big event, a 60th birthday party where 18 people aged 60 to 75 spent the night together in a hotel.
"Most of them had symptoms of a cold — sniffles, sore throat and fatigue were common.
"Only two had classic symptoms of Covid, fever and loss of smell or taste.
“Nobody had to see their doctor or go to hospital.”
He added all those at the party had been double-jabbed and some had had a booster.
---
If this was the case, we should all just have big parties asap, get it over and done with!
This is good news, and Tim Spector is one of the best experts on the subject. Why isn't it being more widely reported?
It is reported. Worth noting that this was in a vaccinated and mostly boosted population.
That is the point. Mild if vaccinated, perhaps much less so if not.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
Good morning one and all. Excellent header, as usual, from Ms Cyclefree. And yes, several warnings were ignored in the Shipman case.
What is especially alarming is that, apart from the vaccine rollout ..... and it's arguable that that's not as good as it was...... see remarks about repeated invitations for booster shots yesterday ....... similar complaints and criticisms can be made across many areas of British life. For example, Private Eye is, and has been for years, running stories on the incompetence of then Serious Fraud Office.
What's happened to us. In spite of my innate prejudice, it can't all be blamed on our current PM, although unquestionably some can be.
The Serious Farce Office as Private Eye describes them. They've never been up to much.
I once had to be flown back from the US at a moment's notice to give a witness statement because the then SFO director insisted to my bosses that I was a key witness. This was nonsense. Anyway I was interviewed with such brilliant questions as "Is there anything else you don't know about?" ("Well yes, quantum physics and how to play the violin, also the rules of cricket. Do you want me to go on?") and told to appear in court. As soon as the prosecuting barristers saw the statement they reportedly told the SFO not to be so silly and I was stood down.
Honestly, the drama series writes itself. (And I am writing it, btw ....).
"Is there anything else you don't know about?" is probably the daftest question that can be thrown at anyone, let along someone in your position.
It is perhaps not entirely co-incidental with the report you mention that the Govt has announced an intention of taking action on benefit fraud, such as overpayment of Universal Credit.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
Not really.
It's suggesting that there needs to be a better way.
I don't see the benefit for society of diverting a million or so from whatever budget 30 years later for a court case and results, which could be used for better policing.
My local hospital is still spending several million a year paying off a PFI debt which Gordon Brown borrowed for decades ahead at enhanced interest rates. That's not an efficient way of handling it, even if it did keep it off the national borrowing figures (aiui).
Professor Tim Spector, from King’s College London, examined UK Omicron super-spreader events involving older people — and found the patients mainly suffered “sniffles”.
He said: “What we’re seeing so far is that symptoms are very, very mild.
“Most of my information comes from one big event, a 60th birthday party where 18 people aged 60 to 75 spent the night together in a hotel.
"Most of them had symptoms of a cold — sniffles, sore throat and fatigue were common.
"Only two had classic symptoms of Covid, fever and loss of smell or taste.
“Nobody had to see their doctor or go to hospital.”
He added all those at the party had been double-jabbed and some had had a booster.
---
If this was the case, we should all just have big parties asap, get it over and done with!
This is good news, and Tim Spector is one of the best experts on the subject. Why isn't it being more widely reported?
Because Covid has different effects and different outcomes on each individual. This was the same with the original strain, same with Delta and it will be the same with Omicron.
I have worked with people who had pretty much no symptoms at all, some had cold like symptoms, some it has hit then like an absolute truck and they were off work for many weeks including a stint in hospital.
Covid IS and always has been mild in the majority, but there are people out there with underlying health conditions and other unknown factors that suffer more. Even a milder strain still has the potential to put people into hospital in large numbers and put a huge strain on our health services
Pushing this narrative that Omicron is universally mild is extremely dangerous. Especially when it's clearly way more infectious than any other strain before it and people out there are vulnerable. It doesn't help at all with trying to get people to have boosters so we can protect the most vulnerable in society who face a real danger of severe disease if they catch it.
"Pushing this narrative that Omicron is universally mild is extremely dangerous"
I assume you mean because we don't yet know whether it's mild or not.
Well, it's a self-selecting small sample. It could be they were all unusually fit and healthy oldsters for example.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
The lawyer for the Morgan family on the Today programme right now. Giving Cressida a well deserved kicking - "a culture of impunity" - and making the point that it is the politicians' support for her which permits this.
There is an opportunity here for Labour, if they could only see it and are brave enough to take it.
I am not holding my breath.
It’s quite amazing that neither the Mayor, nor the Home Secretary, seemed interested in removing Ms Dick when the opportunity arose, when either of them so doing might have been politically expedient.
It was somewhat 'odd' that she was promoted after the shooting of that poor Brazilian chap.
She retired from the Met. Moved to the Foreign Office for some vague advisory role. Then mysteriously reappeared at the Met. We have not been told the whole story.
Really? I suppose the idea was to 'bring someone in from outside'!
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
Good morning one and all. Excellent header, as usual, from Ms Cyclefree. And yes, several warnings were ignored in the Shipman case.
What is especially alarming is that, apart from the vaccine rollout ..... and it's arguable that that's not as good as it was...... see remarks about repeated invitations for booster shots yesterday ....... similar complaints and criticisms can be made across many areas of British life. For example, Private Eye is, and has been for years, running stories on the incompetence of then Serious Fraud Office.
What's happened to us. In spite of my innate prejudice, it can't all be blamed on our current PM, although unquestionably some can be.
The Serious Farce Office as Private Eye describes them. They've never been up to much.
I once had to be flown back from the US at a moment's notice to give a witness statement because the then SFO director insisted to my bosses that I was a key witness. This was nonsense. Anyway I was interviewed with such brilliant questions as "Is there anything else you don't know about?" ("Well yes, quantum physics and how to play the violin, also the rules of cricket. Do you want me to go on?") and told to appear in court. As soon as the prosecuting barristers saw the statement they reportedly told the SFO not to be so silly and I was stood down.
Honestly, the drama series writes itself. (And I am writing it, btw ....).
You don't understand the rules of cricket?? That is surely a serious failing in anyone.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
A red flag would have been better, absolutely. Though we have to recognise the red herring that is the lapped cars. Lets assume that Latifi's car had been lifted slightly quicker and all lapped cars had gone by. One lap left. Verstappen on new softs behind Lewis on worn hards. No grounds for appeal. Would Mercedes have been happy? No.
Nor is there any scope for "curtail the race by two laps" because one team doesn't like the result. Nowhere in the regulations does it even suggest the possibility of considering such a thing.
The hard reality is that Mercedes fucked up their strategy and were unlucky. They believed the hard tyre would go to the end, Hamilton was doing his best but kept telling them that the tyres wouldn't last at that pace. And then manna from heaven - the virtual safety car. An opportunity for a cheap pit stop which Red Bull took and Mercedes didn't. Leaving Hamilton on tyres that were only heading in one direction. Had they pitted during the VSC the differential between Hamilton and Verstappen would not have been so high.
Then we have the Latifi crash itself. Red Bull saw it and rolled the dice, Verstappen straight in for a pitstop. Had there not have been a safety car then his chances of catching Hamilton had completely gone. If your response is "well of course it would be a safety car" then Mercedes had the same opportunity and missed it.
The real sad thing for me about the whole thing is how whiny and petulant both the Red Bull and Mercedes teams have been. For months. The FIA really needs to give both of them a calm pill.
Good morning one and all. Excellent header, as usual, from Ms Cyclefree. And yes, several warnings were ignored in the Shipman case.
What is especially alarming is that, apart from the vaccine rollout ..... and it's arguable that that's not as good as it was...... see remarks about repeated invitations for booster shots yesterday ....... similar complaints and criticisms can be made across many areas of British life. For example, Private Eye is, and has been for years, running stories on the incompetence of then Serious Fraud Office.
What's happened to us. In spite of my innate prejudice, it can't all be blamed on our current PM, although unquestionably some can be.
The Serious Farce Office as Private Eye describes them. They've never been up to much.
I once had to be flown back from the US at a moment's notice to give a witness statement because the then SFO director insisted to my bosses that I was a key witness. This was nonsense. Anyway I was interviewed with such brilliant questions as "Is there anything else you don't know about?" ("Well yes, quantum physics and how to play the violin, also the rules of cricket. Do you want me to go on?") and told to appear in court. As soon as the prosecuting barristers saw the statement they reportedly told the SFO not to be so silly and I was stood down.
Honestly, the drama series writes itself. (And I am writing it, btw ....).
You don't understand the rules of cricket?? That is surely a serious failing in anyone.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
I wonder if the police services elsewhere in Europe are in a similar state? Or the rest of the Anglosphere?
We haven't had any talk of all the anti-viral drugs the government ordered. I presume they aren't arriving in time. And remember they need to be taken immediately when you get symptoms, so pissing about with 111 or GP, then them being ordered and delivered in a couple of days is no good.
Classic Bloke down pub anecdote, but friend of a friend - who shielded first time around - already has something. Has been told that, if they test positive, they start taking them.
They were approved for patients at risk of severe illness in early November, so the timing all lines up.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
In my experience that is generally true but it can be startling when you come across good practice. I was recently on a Crown Office training course and the most interesting speaker was head of the sexual crimes unit in Scotland. If they identified a victim with certain characteristics they would work on the history of the accused tracing his previous relationships, addresses, other information that had been ingathered about him etc. They would use a series of data bases to achieve this and have the resources to investigate across Scotland.
The results are clogging up our High Court with many accused facing multiple charges of serial rape, sexual violence and domestic abuse. The patterns are highlighted and the law entitles the jury to determine the likelihood of the offence by reference to those patterns.
This is bringing to justice misogynistic monsters who have blundered through life causing so much pain and chaos but who previously all too often got away with it because the evidence in any one particular incident was weak or unreliable. Just a small example to show that it is not impossible when you have properly directed and motivated staff.
Good morning one and all. Excellent header, as usual, from Ms Cyclefree. And yes, several warnings were ignored in the Shipman case.
What is especially alarming is that, apart from the vaccine rollout ..... and it's arguable that that's not as good as it was...... see remarks about repeated invitations for booster shots yesterday ....... similar complaints and criticisms can be made across many areas of British life. For example, Private Eye is, and has been for years, running stories on the incompetence of then Serious Fraud Office.
What's happened to us. In spite of my innate prejudice, it can't all be blamed on our current PM, although unquestionably some can be.
The Serious Farce Office as Private Eye describes them. They've never been up to much.
I once had to be flown back from the US at a moment's notice to give a witness statement because the then SFO director insisted to my bosses that I was a key witness. This was nonsense. Anyway I was interviewed with such brilliant questions as "Is there anything else you don't know about?" ("Well yes, quantum physics and how to play the violin, also the rules of cricket. Do you want me to go on?") and told to appear in court. As soon as the prosecuting barristers saw the statement they reportedly told the SFO not to be so silly and I was stood down.
Honestly, the drama series writes itself. (And I am writing it, btw ....).
You might have to tone it down to make it believable.
Good morning one and all. Excellent header, as usual, from Ms Cyclefree. And yes, several warnings were ignored in the Shipman case.
What is especially alarming is that, apart from the vaccine rollout ..... and it's arguable that that's not as good as it was...... see remarks about repeated invitations for booster shots yesterday ....... similar complaints and criticisms can be made across many areas of British life. For example, Private Eye is, and has been for years, running stories on the incompetence of then Serious Fraud Office.
What's happened to us. In spite of my innate prejudice, it can't all be blamed on our current PM, although unquestionably some can be.
The Serious Farce Office as Private Eye describes them. They've never been up to much.
I once had to be flown back from the US at a moment's notice to give a witness statement because the then SFO director insisted to my bosses that I was a key witness. This was nonsense. Anyway I was interviewed with such brilliant questions as "Is there anything else you don't know about?" ("Well yes, quantum physics and how to play the violin, also the rules of cricket. Do you want me to go on?") and told to appear in court. As soon as the prosecuting barristers saw the statement they reportedly told the SFO not to be so silly and I was stood down.
Honestly, the drama series writes itself. (And I am writing it, btw ....).
You don't understand the rules of cricket?? That is surely a serious failing in anyone.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
I think it stands because that's what the rules say.
Should Masi have the power to fix the race like that? No. Should teams be badgering Masi while he's making his ruling? Red Bull saying to him "we only need one racing lap" etc ... No.
But he does have that power whether he should or shouldn't. It's absurd but that's what the rules say in giving him blanket discretion.
That needs changing but I can't see any scope for an appeal working because Masi was given unlimited power with the SC.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Yes you’re right. They should have waited until a union meeting could be called this Thursday, had a vote among members and then made the announcement to the public on 2nd Jan.
I remember watching a documentary about the hunt for the Yorkshire ripper a couple of months ago. A staggering tale of incompetence, misogyny, misdirection of massive resources, leaps of faith and hypothesis without any proper evidential base brought to an end by a simple piece of competent policing by a local police officer.
I think that the reason they find racism, misogyny or homophobia something they want to deny is that it makes it harder to argue that incompetence is a "one off" or something that could be dismissed. We had a truly astonishing case in Scotland recently where the police searched a 1 bedroom flat and failed to notice a chopped up body in the bath. It was only after the remains had been put in bin bags and put out for collection that it was noticed they were leaking blood. And of course the Scottish police have just paid out £1m rather than have a proof which would have highlighted their incompetence about those left to die at the side of a motorway.
Running very large institutions is difficult. Creating common and acceptable standards is also difficult. But as @Cyclefree's header highlights once again, it would be good if they at least tried.
Yes, I watched that too.
From across the pond, these two excellent documentaries which display the idiocy and lack of moral compass of the police are required viewing: The Confession Killer and Making a Murderer.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
I think it stands because that's what the rules say.
Should Masi have the power to fix the race like that? No. Should teams be badgering Masi while he's making his ruling? Red Bull saying to him "we only need one racing lap" etc ... No.
But he does have that power whether he should or shouldn't. It's absurd but that's what the rules say in giving him blanket discretion.
That needs changing but I can't see any scope for an appeal working because Masi was given unlimited power with the SC.
Have you got a link to the relevant article of the regulations?
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Whatever the government had done you would have complained.
It would either have been of the government not showing enough urgency or the government not giving enough warning.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Haven't they been talking about ramping up the rate of vaccination as soon as Omicron was named?
The announcement in this broadcast follows a fortnight of internal NHS work on working out how to ramp up the vaccination rate, including negotiations with GPs about what work to stop doing to enable needles to be plunged into arms instead.
The government have done precisely what you complain they have not done.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
I think that is undoubtedly true. The vast majority of crime is incompetent chaos where who did it is pretty bloody obvious, typically a member of the family or a lover. Detective work is minimal. It is administration and ensuring that the evidence available is collated that forms the larger part of the job.
A solicitor friend told me that the police are, in general, incompetent. They catch criminals because, in general, the criminals are more incompetent.
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
I wonder if the police services elsewhere in Europe are in a similar state? Or the rest of the Anglosphere?
One of the other dads at the little un's school is ex-Met, and before that ex-military (he's an older dad). If I recall correctly, he was invalided out of the Met after he was stabbed. Our kids are in different classes now, so I don't get as much chance to chat to him, but he did have some rather (ahem) strong views on the incompetence of the Home Office.
I do wonder if the problem is that the police have too much to do: not just in terms of crimes, but in terms of what they do. We want police on the streets. We want crimes investigated. We want victims supported and for the wrong un's to face justice. The crimes can vary from vandalism and arson (as happened in our village last week; the teenagers responsible have been caught) to historic serious sexual crimes, to fraud.
But if that's the case, I've no idea what the solution is.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
It's like he thought to himself "I'm up the creek, what can I do to re-establish a ten point poll lead? Vaccines did it for me last time, so..." But then there is absolutely no forethought as to how to enact his wizard wheeze.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
God help us......
There is an outstanding 3-part series on the police in the sixties and seventies on iPlayer which shows how far back the problems go.
And yet there are clearly some very capable police around. In the Shipman documentary the policeman who investigated the doctor's drug offences in the early part of his career knew his job and was furious at how the GMC let the doctor off the hook. I suspect that these policemen are not the ones who get promoted. To get to the top you need to be good at politics rather than policing.
There are often good people in failing organisations. A public company can go under, and they move on. That option isn’t there with the Met. How might you start to deal with it if you were Home Secretary (ignoring, for the sake of argument, the Mayor’s role) ?
Deep breath. Here goes.
The slow choice is to have a Royal Commission on the police - what should it do / how / a national police force vs local ones / the role of specialised teams etc. Or something like the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
The other is to take all the various reports which have been written in recent years and which set out all sorts of steps which need to be taken. Get them put into one master plan - with different workstreams - and actions and timings.
Appoint a team to be in charge of this - it will include people from the police but will not be led by them. It will need people with experience of investigations, culture change etc and they will need steel and determination. They need to be given full authority and report directly to the HS on a regular, frequent basis.
Make it clear to police leaders, the Police Federation and all the rest that they either get with the programme or get out. Promotions at all levels will be dependant on making the changes needed.
Communication - to make this stick you need to get past the permafrost level of management - so you need to get the good guys at the lower levels to buy into this. That needs senior leaders and a HS prepared to speak some hard truths to the police. And to the public
It needs relentless determination and grinding hard work month after month and for the HS not to lose focus on this so I would have a senior junior Minister whose job is just this.
There will be some quick wins if some of the recommendations in the reports are implemented.
The carrots will be properly targeted resources eg the use of AI to help with investigations etc.
A slow job - and some of the changes are dependant on other changes eg the failings in mental health lead to problems being dumped on the police.
Declared Tory nays on this week’s vote up to 71. That’s without including any that might be holding back before the Science Committee meets, or any ministers that might resign over it tomorrow. It will be telling to see how many abstentions there are on top.
Professor Tim Spector, from King’s College London, examined UK Omicron super-spreader events involving older people — and found the patients mainly suffered “sniffles”.
He said: “What we’re seeing so far is that symptoms are very, very mild.
“Most of my information comes from one big event, a 60th birthday party where 18 people aged 60 to 75 spent the night together in a hotel.
"Most of them had symptoms of a cold — sniffles, sore throat and fatigue were common.
"Only two had classic symptoms of Covid, fever and loss of smell or taste.
“Nobody had to see their doctor or go to hospital.”
He added all those at the party had been double-jabbed and some had had a booster.
---
If this was the case, we should all just have big parties asap, get it over and done with!
This is good news, and Tim Spector is one of the best experts on the subject. Why isn't it being more widely reported?
It is reported. Worth noting that this was in a vaccinated and mostly boosted population.
That is the point. Mild if vaccinated, perhaps much less so if not.
The sick oldies should have massive levels of boosters by now.
So who does that leave ?
The anti-vaxxers and the obese slobs.
Well they've had plenty of opportunities to get ready.
The amount of coverage BBCR4 is giving to the Clangers having allegedly said ‘sod it’ now and again in the 1970s is out of all proportion.
Just thinking that! Presses several much loved buttons tho’: nostalgia, the BBC talking about its favourite subject (the BBC), manufactured shock at VERY mild language.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Yes you’re right. They should have waited until a union meeting could be called this Thursday, had a vote among members and then made the announcement to the public on 2nd Jan.
That isn't the point at all. Whatever the merits of the idea he really hasn't even bothered to consider the logistics of delivery.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
Sky’s coverage was terrible. That article sets out very clearly why what happened yesterday was utterly disgraceful.
You can hardly expect Sky to highlight that their product is shite. It was the same with the T20 WC where almost every match was won by the team batting second. They didn't go on about it because it demonstrated that this was not a meaningful sporting contest.
The problem's not with Boris but with the team around him. Again.
"My advisors are shit and I have no control over them" is not the defence BoZo thinks it is...
The one thing I was prepared to give Johnson some credit for was the ability and willingness to appoint capable underlings and delegate power to them, so if he is no longer doing that then there's not much left.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Yes you’re right. They should have waited until a union meeting could be called this Thursday, had a vote among members and then made the announcement to the public on 2nd Jan.
That isn't the point at all. Whatever the merits of the idea he really hasn't even bothered to consider the logistics of delivery.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
God help us......
There is an outstanding 3-part series on the police in the sixties and seventies on iPlayer which shows how far back the problems go.
And yet there are clearly some very capable police around. In the Shipman documentary the policeman who investigated the doctor's drug offences in the early part of his career knew his job and was furious at how the GMC let the doctor off the hook. I suspect that these policemen are not the ones who get promoted. To get to the top you need to be good at politics rather than policing.
There are often good people in failing organisations. A public company can go under, and they move on. That option isn’t there with the Met. How might you start to deal with it if you were Home Secretary (ignoring, for the sake of argument, the Mayor’s role) ?
Deep breath. Here goes.
The slow choice is to have a Royal Commission on the police - what should it do / how / a national police force vs local ones / the role of specialised teams etc. Or something like the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
The other is to take all the various reports which have been written in recent years and which set out all sorts of steps which need to be taken. Get them put into one master plan - with different workstreams - and actions and timings.
Appoint a team to be in charge of this - it will include people from the police but will not be led by them. It will need people with experience of investigations, culture change etc and they will need steel and determination. They need to be given full authority and report directly to the HS on a regular, frequent basis.
Make it clear to police leaders, the Police Federation and all the rest that they either get with the programme or get out. Promotions at all levels will be dependant on making the changes needed.
Communication - to make this stick you need to get past the permafrost level of management - so you need to get the good guys at the lower levels to buy into this. That needs senior leaders and a HS prepared to speak some hard truths to the police. And to the public
It needs relentless determination and grinding hard work month after month and for the HS not to lose focus on this so I would have a senior junior Minister whose job is just this.
There will be some quick wins if some of the recommendations in the reports are implemented.
The carrots will be properly targeted resources eg the use of AI to help with investigations etc.
A slow job - and some of the changes are dependant on other changes eg the failings in mental health lead to problems being dumped on the police.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Haven't they been talking about ramping up the rate of vaccination as soon as Omicron was named?
The announcement in this broadcast follows a fortnight of internal NHS work on working out how to ramp up the vaccination rate, including negotiations with GPs about what work to stop doing to enable needles to be plunged into arms instead.
The government have done precisely what you complain they have not done.
I posted last night that its a ballsy strategy which they had to do. My point is that they haven't told the people who are doing the actual injecting. At least thats what swathes of them are reporting on Twitter and elsewhere. I have no doubt that high level conversations have taken place with the NHS, but its not been with the people on the ground.
My professional line is the provision pf Portfolio, Programme and Project office management. I genuinely believe that a lot of what I do is overly complex and - to be blunt - mumbo jumbo. I think the same applies to the provision of public services and delivery services generally. The desire to spread best practice has resulted in more bureaucracy, more box ticking and lower quality. It also allows people to hide behind following process when they mess up. We really need to refocus the police on catching criminals and deterring wrongdoing. Surely we can focus on what is important and simplify procedures.
Here they didn't even follow process. But your point is a good one. I think that the police spend too much time on incidentals and far too little on the essence of their craft - investigations. It is a mixture of art and science but however it is done it needs a laser-like focus on collecting, testing and understanding the evidence.
That can never be done effectively if you spend your time worrying about other matters or being blinded by your own prejudices. The police are in danger both of forgetting what their job is and how to do it.
I have heard, from policemen, that actual, movie style whodunnit investigations are so rare, that it is hard to build the skills.
What the actual fuck do they do then all day? In nearly 14 years my team did ca 5000 investigations, including cases which will be in the history books.
Might they try investigating low level crimes (burglary, for instance) or the very many frauds that get reported to them every day in order to build the bloody skills? That just sounds like an excuse.
Incidentally and anecdotally, on my team's regular leaflet outing today, we were struck by a change of mood. People normally glance at us, possibly smile, or not, and look away. Today we were stopped five times by passers-by saying variations on "Thank goodness we've got some sensible people like you around". This was on village streets in outer Godalming which traditionally vote Tory. There's a craving for serious purpose out there, and perhaps Johnson's statement tonight was a reflection of that.
Your last sentence reflects in part what my header is about. Seriousness and competence can achieve so much more than bullshit and blather.
From what I heard - it's 99% social work, ignoring crimes that aren't on the given list of what they are supposed to be "interested in" and dealing with crimes committed by fuckwits in front of cameras. The policemen in question weren't impressed either.
What I find extraordinary is the idea that some crimes can simply be ignored.
Every single thing that came to my team I had to deal with. I could not simply ignore it. The option of saying "oh here's a number, you are 489 in the queue but your call is very important. Let me play some music at you until you die of boredom or fuck off" simply wasn't an option.
So how do the police get to do this?
Is it that you were specialists, and the police generalists who have had more tasks loaded on to them (see the comment about 90% social work), at the same time as resources have been squeezed ? That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many. Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Personally I think this is one thing where we need a statute of limitations. I don't see the utility in a process costing perhaps 100s of k, and whatever the outcome may cost.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
That’s just saying that if the police can deliberately obfuscate wrongdoing for long enough - which is what happened here - they need accept no liability.
Not really.
It's suggesting that there needs to be a better way.
I don't see the benefit for society of diverting a million or so from whatever budget 30 years later for a court case and results, which could be used for better policing...
Would it ? Perhaps you should consider why they are suing. The family of the murdered private detective Daniel Morgan are to sue the Metropolitan police for damages, alleging that a decades-long cover-up of corruption is continuing.
An official inquiry in June found that the Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, obstructed the panel appointed by the government to investigate claims that corruption blighted the hunt for Morgan’s killers and that the Met had failed to root it out.
If it ends with Dick losing her job, £1m would be a bargain.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
Sky’s coverage was terrible. That article sets out very clearly why what happened yesterday was utterly disgraceful.
You can hardly expect Sky to highlight that their product is shite. It was the same with the T20 WC where almost every match was won by the team batting second. They didn't go on about it because it demonstrated that this was not a meaningful sporting contest.
Sky are rubbish, and it’s always better to watch live than on telly anyway. This autumn, I’ve managed to introduce Mrs Sandpit to both cricket and F1.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
My thoughts from last night, posted on another forum:
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
The FIA seem to be arguing that the race director has absolute discretion to manage the operation of the safety car. I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track. That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
I think it stands because that's what the rules say.
Should Masi have the power to fix the race like that? No. Should teams be badgering Masi while he's making his ruling? Red Bull saying to him "we only need one racing lap" etc ... No.
But he does have that power whether he should or shouldn't. It's absurd but that's what the rules say in giving him blanket discretion.
That needs changing but I can't see any scope for an appeal working because Masi was given unlimited power with the SC.
Have you got a link to the relevant article of the regulations?
The broken article is 48.12 and the blank cheque for Masi article is 15.3 apparently.
The thing that has really stunned me about last night's broadcast from the party bunker was that nobody has thought that the people who need to organise and deliver these million jabs a day from today should be told first.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Yes you’re right. They should have waited until a union meeting could be called this Thursday, had a vote among members and then made the announcement to the public on 2nd Jan.
That isn't the point at all. Whatever the merits of the idea he really hasn't even bothered to consider the logistics of delivery.
This story is in The Guardian and is entitled: "NHS recruits more staff to ‘ramp up’ Covid booster rollout".
It's dated five days ago.
Where has this crap talking point come from that there's been no work to speed up the booster vaccination programme prior to yesterday's announcement?
Comments
Lunch was never enjoyable.
I'd also love to have world peace, a genie that grants more wishes, magic beans and England to win the Ashes.
The problem is that people will get it, regardless of what we'd prefer. So how we handle that is the thing to be debated.
I have worked with people who had pretty much no symptoms at all, some had cold like symptoms, some it has hit then like an absolute truck and they were off work for many weeks including a stint in hospital.
Covid IS and always has been mild in the majority, but there are people out there with underlying health conditions and other unknown factors that suffer more. Even a milder strain still has the potential to put people into hospital in large numbers and put a huge strain on our health services
Pushing this narrative that Omicron is universally mild is extremely dangerous. Especially when it's clearly way more infectious than any other strain before it and people out there are vulnerable. It doesn't help at all with trying to get people to have boosters so we can protect the most vulnerable in society who face a real danger of severe disease if they catch it.
Touch of the LOL about that.
That is not to excuse incompetence (from the top down), institutional racism, misogyny, or homophobia, but there’s perhaps an attitude of just one more problem among many.
Online fraud, which can be devastating for the victims, is barely investigated at all.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=320394
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/13/family-of-murdered-daniel-morgan-to-sue-met-for-damages
It needs knocking down and completely rebuilding, but I’m not convinced there’s anyone up to the task. Dick is, after all, the outstanding police leader of her generation….
Have Betfair settled their race markets on the podium ceremony as usual, and are the Championship markets still running pending appeals? I see that PP have done their usual trick of paying out both sides of a controversial event, which is great publicity for them but not an option open to exchanges.
Delicious.
“Okay, just watched the highlights, now going to bed. Initial thoughts…
“We thought the procedure was rushed for “the show”, but hadn’t realised that the instruction was only given to half of the lapped cars to overtake, and hadn’t realised there was an original decision for lapped cars to not overtake. To be honest, after a couple of laps of the SC we expected a red flag, to give a “Baku Sprint” finish once they’d cleaned up the mess.
“Masi is bang to rights for a breach of 48.12, (“Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.”) and the FIA are going to have an almighty problem working out what to do about it. He was making things up as he went along, when there are a specific set of rules he needs to follow.
“Just about the only possibility is to curtail the race by two laps, and declare the result on the positions behind the SC. But that overturns the drivers’ championship, for something that isn’t the fault of the champion - which is quite the mess they’ve got themselves into.
“Also LOL to find out that Mercedes bought their lawyer with them. This has a CAS case written all over it.”
The FIA have done a good job of bringing their own sport into disrepute in the past few weeks, seemingly desparate to see a new name on the trophy. WWF1
There is an outstanding 3-part series on the police in the sixties and seventies on iPlayer which shows how far back the problems go.
And yet there are clearly some very capable police around. In the Shipman documentary the policeman who investigated the doctor's drug offences in the early part of his career knew his job and was furious at how the GMC let the doctor off the hook. I suspect that these policemen are not the ones who get promoted. To get to the top you need to be good at politics rather than policing.
There's a similar issue with medical accidents and a backlog of costs on the NHS.
But if you have an already failing organisation, lump further tasks onto it, and squeeze resources, then it’s going to fail more.
I don’t know what the answer is. Perhaps have separate task specific services ? At least that way there might be a chance of introducing competence in individually areas.
As it is, whether or not the problem is tractable, there seems to be no political will to even look at it.
"Raab is understood to be considering a new bill of rights or reform of the existing act. He is thought to want to remove the duty on British courts to adhere to European Court of Human Rights precedents."
And who's opposing this? Why the security services - MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
I don’t see how that can stand, if it allows (as in this case) the director to completely set aside the procedures clearly set out in the rules, and impose a procedure which obviously favours a single driver above everyone else on the track.
That effectively gives him the unchallengeable ability to fix races, which is plainly absurd.
To reinforce the point, it’s not just about Verstappen vs Hamilton. The midfield drivers are also complaining.
https://www.racefans.net/2021/12/13/f1s-midfield-runners-left-speechless-and-confused-by-controversial-late-restart/
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/i-raped-12-devastated-jury-22415200?fbclid=IwAR30m1MqWtrzkn8pIWEhRujg6f5GKPygxsh97OKe_2NEQ95CGucly72OkyA
F1: post-race ramble from yesterday:
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2021/12/abu-dhabi-post-race-analysis.html
Well past time to kick them out.
There will be pockets of excellence but the leadership is poor, the demands are incessant and often incompatible and there isn't the sustained dedicated approach to change which is needed.
Plus there is a lot of resistance.
Misjudged loyalty to your tribe. Closing ranks against the person "speaking up". Feeling threatened by transparency. Not wanting to change. Finding reasons why it can't be done. This isn't exclusive to the police. It's seen in the the NHS, banking, politics, pretty much everywhere. It's why whistleblowing & culture change are so hard.
The first step is to accept you have a problem. The police don't really do that and politicians let them off the hook with all this support of the person at the top rubbish etc.
Take one small example: the City of London police focus on fraud but also cover normal policing duties for the City. So in the middle of the U.K.'s biggest fraud investigation, experienced fraud detectives were being diverted to police the Lord Mayor's show. That is daft.
A public company can go under, and they move on. That option isn’t there with the Met. How might you start to deal with it if you were Home Secretary (ignoring, for the sake of argument, the Mayor’s role) ?
What is especially alarming is that, apart from the vaccine rollout ..... and it's arguable that that's not as good as it was...... see remarks about repeated invitations for booster shots yesterday ....... similar complaints and criticisms can be made across many areas of British life.
For example, Private Eye is, and has been for years, running stories on the incompetence of then Serious Fraud Office.
What's happened to us. In spite of my innate prejudice, it can't all be blamed on our current PM, although unquestionably some can be.
What we need to know is how the hospitalisation rate for Omicron will differ from the 1% or so we have been seeing with Delta. The fact that infections in 18 double- and triple-vaccinated people, perhaps mostly around 60, produced no hospitalisations tells us nothing new.
How do people get on with betting if they can't understand simple statistics? Do they always just bet on the favourite regardless of the odds?
I assume you mean because we don't yet know whether it's mild or not.
There is an opportunity here for Labour, if they could only see it and are brave enough to take it.
I am not holding my breath.
It’s to the UK government’s credit, no matter what else one might think og them, that they have shied away from the databases and massive tracking operations seen elsewhere, and that measures that have been introduced, have been dropped when no longer required.
CPS failings, perhaps. What else do you think the police could have done?
There should be one takeaway from this: young people (in fact, everyone) should be urged to report to the police when anything happens, not wait for years. This is not easy, and the authorities need to support both accuser and accused. But justice becomes harder after a year, let alone 30+.
Teach your kids PANTS:
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/support-for-parents/pants-underwear-rule/
Unfortunately this government operates on cronyism not competence and Khan is too much of a wet fish to throw his weight around when he should.
The Serious Farce Office as Private Eye describes them. They've never been up to much.
I once had to be flown back from the US at a moment's notice to give a witness statement because the then SFO director insisted to my bosses that I was a key witness. This was nonsense. Anyway I was interviewed with such brilliant questions as "Is there anything else you don't know about?" ("Well yes, quantum physics and how to play the violin, also the rules of cricket. Do you want me to go on?") and told to appear in court. As soon as the prosecuting barristers saw the statement they reportedly told the SFO not to be so silly and I was stood down.
Honestly, the drama series writes itself. (And I am writing it, btw ....).
I think that the reason they find racism, misogyny or homophobia something they want to deny is that it makes it harder to argue that incompetence is a "one off" or something that could be dismissed. We had a truly astonishing case in Scotland recently where the police searched a 1 bedroom flat and failed to notice a chopped up body in the bath. It was only after the remains had been put in bin bags and put out for collection that it was noticed they were leaking blood. And of course the Scottish police have just paid out £1m rather than have a proof which would have highlighted their incompetence about those left to die at the side of a motorway.
Running very large institutions is difficult. Creating common and acceptable standards is also difficult. But as @Cyclefree's header highlights once again, it would be good if they at least tried.
That is the point. Mild if vaccinated, perhaps much less so if not.
It is perhaps not entirely co-incidental with the report you mention that the Govt has announced an intention of taking action on benefit fraud, such as overpayment of Universal Credit.
It's suggesting that there needs to be a better way.
I don't see the benefit for society of diverting a million or so from whatever budget 30 years later for a court case and results, which could be used for better policing.
My local hospital is still spending several million a year paying off a PFI debt which Gordon Brown borrowed for decades ahead at enhanced interest rates. That's not an efficient way of handling it, even if it did keep it off the national borrowing figures (aiui).
I always thought this was slightly unkind to the police, but he had much more contact with them than I did.
He'd fit right in.
Nor is there any scope for "curtail the race by two laps" because one team doesn't like the result. Nowhere in the regulations does it even suggest the possibility of considering such a thing.
The hard reality is that Mercedes fucked up their strategy and were unlucky. They believed the hard tyre would go to the end, Hamilton was doing his best but kept telling them that the tyres wouldn't last at that pace. And then manna from heaven - the virtual safety car. An opportunity for a cheap pit stop which Red Bull took and Mercedes didn't. Leaving Hamilton on tyres that were only heading in one direction. Had they pitted during the VSC the differential between Hamilton and Verstappen would not have been so high.
Then we have the Latifi crash itself. Red Bull saw it and rolled the dice, Verstappen straight in for a pitstop. Had there not have been a safety car then his chances of catching Hamilton had completely gone. If your response is "well of course it would be a safety car" then Mercedes had the same opportunity and missed it.
The real sad thing for me about the whole thing is how whiny and petulant both the Red Bull and Mercedes teams have been. For months. The FIA really needs to give both of them a calm pill.
They were approved for patients at risk of severe illness in early November, so the timing all lines up.
The results are clogging up our High Court with many accused facing multiple charges of serial rape, sexual violence and domestic abuse. The patterns are highlighted and the law entitles the jury to determine the likelihood of the offence by reference to those patterns.
This is bringing to justice misogynistic monsters who have blundered through life causing so much pain and chaos but who previously all too often got away with it because the evidence in any one particular incident was weak or unreliable. Just a small example to show that it is not impossible when you have properly directed and motivated staff.
Finding out on the telly that you are about to be placed under a massive workload where you will literally be under siege by angry people all the way through Christmas (and thanks for volunteering for working every day) is Not Good.
Its like Peppa couldn't give a monkeys about other people. Can't be right...
Should Masi have the power to fix the race like that? No.
Should teams be badgering Masi while he's making his ruling? Red Bull saying to him "we only need one racing lap" etc ... No.
But he does have that power whether he should or shouldn't. It's absurd but that's what the rules say in giving him blanket discretion.
That needs changing but I can't see any scope for an appeal working because Masi was given unlimited power with the SC.
From across the pond, these two excellent documentaries which display the idiocy and lack of moral compass of the police are required viewing: The Confession Killer and Making a Murderer.
It would either have been of the government not showing enough urgency or the government not giving enough warning.
The announcement in this broadcast follows a fortnight of internal NHS work on working out how to ramp up the vaccination rate, including negotiations with GPs about what work to stop doing to enable needles to be plunged into arms instead.
The government have done precisely what you complain they have not done.
I do wonder if the problem is that the police have too much to do: not just in terms of crimes, but in terms of what they do. We want police on the streets. We want crimes investigated. We want victims supported and for the wrong un's to face justice. The crimes can vary from vandalism and arson (as happened in our village last week; the teenagers responsible have been caught) to historic serious sexual crimes, to fraud.
But if that's the case, I've no idea what the solution is.
The slow choice is to have a Royal Commission on the police - what should it do / how / a national police force vs local ones / the role of specialised teams etc. Or something like the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
The other is to take all the various reports which have been written in recent years and which set out all sorts of steps which need to be taken. Get them put into one master plan - with different workstreams - and actions and timings.
Appoint a team to be in charge of this - it will include people from the police but will not be led by them. It will need people with experience of investigations, culture change etc and they will need steel and determination. They need to be given full authority and report directly to the HS on a regular, frequent basis.
Make it clear to police leaders, the Police Federation and all the rest that they either get with the programme or get out. Promotions at all levels will be dependant on making the changes needed.
Communication - to make this stick you need to get past the permafrost level of management - so you need to get the good guys at the lower levels to buy into this. That needs senior leaders and a HS prepared to speak some hard truths to the police. And to the public
It needs relentless determination and grinding hard work month after month and for the HS not to lose focus on this so I would have a senior junior Minister whose job is just this.
There will be some quick wins if some of the recommendations in the reports are implemented.
The carrots will be properly targeted resources eg the use of AI to help with investigations etc.
A slow job - and some of the changes are dependant on other changes eg the failings in mental health lead to problems being dumped on the police.
So it will take time. But you start by not treating the police as a sacred cow. See also here - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2021/10/01/what-now/.
Declared Tory nays on this week’s vote up to 71. That’s without including any that might be holding back before the Science Committee meets, or any ministers that might resign over it tomorrow. It will be telling to see how many abstentions there are on top.
So who does that leave ?
The anti-vaxxers and the obese slobs.
Well they've had plenty of opportunities to get ready.
Presses several much loved buttons tho’: nostalgia, the BBC talking about its favourite subject (the BBC), manufactured shock at VERY mild language.
Perhaps you should consider why they are suing.
The family of the murdered private detective Daniel Morgan are to sue the Metropolitan police for damages, alleging that a decades-long cover-up of corruption is continuing.
An official inquiry in June found that the Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, obstructed the panel appointed by the government to investigate claims that corruption blighted the hunt for Morgan’s killers and that the Met had failed to root it out.
If it ends with Dick losing her job, £1m would be a bargain.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/2021_formula_1_sporting_regulations_-_iss_13_-_2021-12-08.pdf
Masi seems to have unlimited overriding authority in respect of the Safety Car so the rules don't have to be followed. 🤦♂️
...
It's dated five days ago.
Where has this crap talking point come from that there's been no work to speed up the booster vaccination programme prior to yesterday's announcement?