Another weekend of consistently good news on hospitalisation and deaths from South Africa, and another weekend it seems of everyone ignoring what’s staring them in the face. Even when accompanied by some pretty clear looking stats and charts.
I think this is recency bias. We are assuming the news must be bad because it was for the last 2 variants. That plus confirmation bias from both sides, as usual. PB regulars will of course have seen this effect at elections many times, when a series of polls tells us something we can’t bring ourselves to believe, like “Trump is going to win the nomination” or “May could lose her majority”.
There’s still time for the stats to get worse but at the moment I’m looking at them and seeing good news. So much so that I wonder if Omicron could save much of unvaccinated Europe and the US from the deadly winter Delta wave that they were due otherwise.
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.
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.
Theory:
Honest, competent people might not make many mistakes but accept responsibility when things go wrong.
Dishonest, incompetent people make more mistakes but deny responsibility when things go wrong.
So for an organisation inflicted with 'producer capture' people in the second group can be more useful.
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.
Except he wasn't. The rules set out in great detail the procedures, and he ignored them. The FIA are arguing that one clause in the rules overrides another. The result if that, if it stands, would give race directors the power to fix races with impunity under safety cars. That's why it should not stand.
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.
And you know that how? I’m pretty sure that things are moving right now on this.
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.
It's been all over the news for a couple of weeks. It's not exactly been secret.
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.
It doesn't look to me that a great deal of forward planning has gone into delivery. It just looks like he has invited a super- spreader free for all in the middle of a pandemic.
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.
Cricket has laws.
Cricket has one law. When it appears on the television, change channels.
(Obedience to this law in our household is somewhat lacking. I'm a scrupulous adherent, husband insists otherwise.)
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.
Except he wasn't. The rules set out in great detail the procedures, and he ignored them. The FIA are arguing that one clause in the rules overrides another. The result if that, if it stands, would give race directors the power to fix races with impunity under safety cars. That's why it should not stand.
But the clause does give him the power. It literally uses the word overriding.
It morally should not stand but the rules as written do let him override the rules as written. Its infuriating but how can the CAS say otherwise when its there in black and white?
Mr. S, so it seems. The Government wants a distraction from the PM's troubles, the media has a fetish for misery, and lots of people have now normalised the idea of returning restrictions and variants being 'naturally' worse.
Of course, that's based on nonsense and will cause serious harm to business, even driving firms under. But hey, it changes the headlines for the PM. So who cares if people lose their businesses and can't pay their mortgages, right?
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.
David, you’re coming dangerously close to complimenting the national police service. Highly irregular for a Scottish Tory.
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.
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.
Masi seems to have unlimited overriding authority in respect of the Safety Car so the rules don't have to be followed. 🤦♂️
15.3 details the respective duties of the Race Director (MM, works for the FIA and travels with the circus), and the Clerk of the Course (local to each circuit, manages team of marshals, medics and track workers). It says that the use of the SC is the call of the race director - as opposed to use of yellow flags, for example, which come under the marshals and the CofC.
There’s no way the intent of that clause, is to allow the RD to over-ride 48.12, which details how the safety car should be operated, and is understood by the teams to be the SOP.
Masi (Messy, as he’s being called in F1 forums today), was making the rules up as he went along, and Mercedes have every right to take this all the way up to the CAS.
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...
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.
It's been all over the news for a couple of weeks. It's not exactly been secret.
Indeed.
What do those complaining think the government should have done ?
Send a letter to all those involved in the vaccination process giving them a month's warning perhaps.
As far as I’m concerned having overriding authority over the “use” of the safety car is not the same as having complete discretion over the procedure of the ending of a safety car period.
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.
Except he wasn't. The rules set out in great detail the procedures, and he ignored them. The FIA are arguing that one clause in the rules overrides another. The result if that, if it stands, would give race directors the power to fix races with impunity under safety cars. That's why it should not stand.
But the clause does give him the power. It literally uses the word overriding.
It morally should not stand but the rules as written do let him override the rules as written. Its infuriating but how can the CAS say otherwise when its there in black and white?
It gives him authority over other officials (eg the clerk of the course). It doesn't give him authority to make up regulations on the spot.
As I said, the way in which the FIA have relied on/ interpreted that clause is absurd on its face. I don't think it will stand.
As far as I’m concerned having overriding authority over the “use” of the safety car is not the same as having complete discretion over the procedure of the ending of a safety car period.
Plus that regulation appears to relate to the relationship of the clerk of the course with the race director and not the race director’s powers generally.
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.
We have a stack of changes coming through for 2022 which will improve the formula and make for harder racing. We also need to see some rule changes to remove some of the dangerous and petulant moments seen this year: 1. Ban cars from trundling round the track during FP and Qualy. There have been several close incidents this year and not all of the tracks offer sweeping forward views of the track. The risk of a car smashing into a much slower car unsighted is too high. 2. Remove the ambiguities involved in track limits. Never mind "you can't go off track in these turns" it should be the whole track. More gravel traps and high kerbs please 3. Remove the ambiguities over "gaining an advantage". If you go off the track in a battle with another driver you lose the place. We have seen repeated incidences of drivers gaming the huge run-offs to follow the rules yet gain an advantage 4. Stop teams petitioning the race director and stewards. Make it one-way traffic from race control to the teams, not the other way round. Have contact allowable for emergencies only not for whining. 5. Simplify the safety car rules. If there is debris on track or a stranded vehicle or marshals need to be on track, deploy the safety car. Do it more. Reshuffle the pack so that they restart in order. Not only is this a fair applies to all interpretation of the rules it also stops these races where we get a huge spread through the field very quickly. Works in Indy, steal with pride.
As for Abu Dhabi, if Mercedes are taking this all the way then the sanction is to annul the race. The regulations are clear that the race director is the race director, but if he got it wrong then annul the whole event. Doesn't give Mercedes what they want, but then again nothing does.
As I pointed out above once we're into release all the lapped cars then Verstappen is right behind Hamilton. So whilst they are protesting the unreleased part what they really mean is they are protesting the release part, despite that being the normal use of the rules they want using normally...
Another weekend of consistently good news on hospitalisation and deaths from South Africa, and another weekend it seems of everyone ignoring what’s staring them in the face. Even when accompanied by some pretty clear looking stats and charts.
I think this is recency bias. We are assuming the news must be bad because it was for the last 2 variants. That plus confirmation bias from both sides, as usual. PB regulars will of course have seen this effect at elections many times, when a series of polls tells us something we can’t bring ourselves to believe, like “Trump is going to win the nomination” or “May could lose her majority”.
There’s still time for the stats to get worse but at the moment I’m looking at them and seeing good news. So much so that I wonder if Omicron could save much of unvaccinated Europe and the US from the deadly winter Delta wave that they were due otherwise.
Im afraid that modelling what will happen is making the news far more than what is actually happening.
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.
Sanest F1 post I’ve read on here for a long time. The general tone on this blog has been utterly appalling and really makes me concerned about the mental health of many of the posters. Calm down folks! It’s only entertainment. Nothing more. Nothing less.
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.
And you know that how? I’m pretty sure that things are moving right now on this.
Yes his chums will be filling their pockets as we speak. They cannot believe their luck , £45 a shot and all done by people on minimum wage and doing loads every hour.
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.
David, you’re coming dangerously close to complimenting the national police service. Highly irregular for a Scottish Tory.
My other post pointing out some of their recent (mis)hits was obviously designed for balance Stewart.
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.
Cricket has laws.
Cricket has one law. When it appears on the television, change channels.
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.
We have a stack of changes coming through for 2022 which will improve the formula and make for harder racing. We also need to see some rule changes to remove some of the dangerous and petulant moments seen this year: 1. Ban cars from trundling round the track during FP and Qualy. There have been several close incidents this year and not all of the tracks offer sweeping forward views of the track. The risk of a car smashing into a much slower car unsighted is too high. 2. Remove the ambiguities involved in track limits. Never mind "you can't go off track in these turns" it should be the whole track. More gravel traps and high kerbs please 3. Remove the ambiguities over "gaining an advantage". If you go off the track in a battle with another driver you lose the place. We have seen repeated incidences of drivers gaming the huge run-offs to follow the rules yet gain an advantage 4. Stop teams petitioning the race director and stewards. Make it one-way traffic from race control to the teams, not the other way round. Have contact allowable for emergencies only not for whining. 5. Simplify the safety car rules. If there is debris on track or a stranded vehicle or marshals need to be on track, deploy the safety car. Do it more. Reshuffle the pack so that they restart in order. Not only is this a fair applies to all interpretation of the rules it also stops these races where we get a huge spread through the field very quickly. Works in Indy, steal with pride.
As for Abu Dhabi, if Mercedes are taking this all the way then the sanction is to annul the race. The regulations are clear that the race director is the race director, but if he got it wrong then annul the whole event. Doesn't give Mercedes what they want, but then again nothing does.
As I pointed out above once we're into release all the lapped cars then Verstappen is right behind Hamilton. So whilst they are protesting the unreleased part what they really mean is they are protesting the release part, despite that being the normal use of the rules they want using normally...
Had they followed the safety car procedure the race would have ended under the safety car - which is why Mercedes didn't bring Hamilton in. That's you second inaccuracy today - the first was to claim that Hamilton tyres wouldn't have lasted.
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.
David, you’re coming dangerously close to complimenting the national police service. Highly irregular for a Scottish Tory.
My other post pointing out some of their recent (mis)hits was obviously designed for balance Stewart.
Yes, I did read that one too.
It is to your credit that you point out the good practice as well as the bad.
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.
If that's the case it will be quite clear in 19 days time when this has failed.
I don't think it is the case and its just you willing on failure instead.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
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.
It's been all over the news for a couple of weeks. It's not exactly been secret.
That everyone would be jabbed in December? Fascinating that you think that has been all over the news for weeks when the PM announced it last night for the first time and then explained why he had changed the target from 7 weeks.
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.
I suspect that Mr J's penultimate paragraph is right. The police have been 'charged' (ahem) with all sorts of roles and as we all know, the actual number of bodies (ahem again) has been reduced. It's probably arguable that there were not enough in 2010 before the Coalition's reductions and the replacements now being sought will bring the numbers up to 'almost adequate', rather than 'inadequate', as under Cameron and May. I wonder too, if the technological advances that enable historic crimes to be investigated have had an effect.
Another weekend of consistently good news on hospitalisation and deaths from South Africa, and another weekend it seems of everyone ignoring what’s staring them in the face. Even when accompanied by some pretty clear looking stats and charts.
I think this is recency bias. We are assuming the news must be bad because it was for the last 2 variants. That plus confirmation bias from both sides, as usual. PB regulars will of course have seen this effect at elections many times, when a series of polls tells us something we can’t bring ourselves to believe, like “Trump is going to win the nomination” or “May could lose her majority”.
There’s still time for the stats to get worse but at the moment I’m looking at them and seeing good news. So much so that I wonder if Omicron could save much of unvaccinated Europe and the US from the deadly winter Delta wave that they were due otherwise.
Im afraid that modelling what will happen is making the news far more than what is actually happening.
Siri, draw a steep straight line graph and send it to a government cobra minister.
We’re going great guns at treating people on the waiting list. And this winter we’re doing more than ever to protect that, as well as dealing with all the other pressures we have. We are holding beds for people on the waiting list who are having surgery. But that raises really difficult ethical dilemmas. Do you hold an intensive care bed for someone with an aneurysm that could kill them at any minute, or bring in someone who’s just arrived through A&E and needs surgery? Is there a bed for someone who comes in and needs a thrombectomy, a potentially life-saving operation after a stroke?
You can imagine how some of our staff feel about unvaccinated people with Covid eating into our supply of ICU beds when you’re making these decisions, about whether someone with stage 4 cancer or an aneurysm can have an operation.
However, Pollard, one of those behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, said Covid would still pile pressure on the NHS this winter – with unvaccinated patients requiring intensive care and double-jabbed patients who are older and frail still at risk of “life-threatening” health issues.
“The latest wave of the virus in the UK, which is now rising rapidly in parts of Europe, will directly translate into a stream of mostly unvaccinated patients entering ICU,” he said in the article jointly authored with Prof Brian Angus, professor of infectious disease at the University of Oxford. “To prevent serious illness, these people need first and second doses of the vaccine as soon as possible.
“For those of us fortunate enough to have already been vaccinated, the story now seems very different. For most vaccinated individuals, these mild infections are little more than an unpleasant inconvenience.”
Paging the anti-vaxxers and all those who keep stubbornly insisting that their right to dick about vetoes everybody else's rights to medical care and freedom from lockdowns: please stop.
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.
It's been all over the news for a couple of weeks. It's not exactly been secret.
That everyone would be jabbed in December? Fascinating that you think that has been all over the news for weeks when the PM announced it last night for the first time and then explained why he had changed the target from 7 weeks.
No one has set a goal of jabbing everyone in December.
That claim is a misrepresentation.
Though obvs the media will pretend it was the goal when jabs are still happening in Jan week 2, because they want a story.
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.
You make the assumption (as all non-technical people do) that AI can possible fix all problems.
It can't simply because it will only look at the dataset it can be given and that dataset is highly likely to be both very incomplete (it will have full details on solved cases but very partial data on unsolved cases) and probably unintentionally biased / sexist (given the number of solved cases that have say a black rather than white protagonist) .
That's not to say that technology wouldn't solve a lot of police problems - I suspect a lot of things could be solved simply by making data visible and accessible rather than trying to be too clever. But there are a whole world of things that should be implemented country wide (the Cumbria / Durham mobile apps would be a very good place to start) that would generate a lot of quick wins.
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.
I suspect that Mr J's penultimate paragraph is right. The police have been 'charged' (ahem) with all sorts of roles and as we all know, the actual number of bodies (ahem again) has been reduced. It's probably arguable that there were not enough in 2010 before the Coalition's reductions and the replacements now being sought will bring the numbers up to 'almost adequate', rather than 'inadequate', as under Cameron and May. I wonder too, if the technological advances that enable historic crimes to be investigated have had an effect.
IIRC correctly recorded and surveyed crime fell through most of the decade so that is a difficult one to argue.
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.
David, you’re coming dangerously close to complimenting the national police service. Highly irregular for a Scottish Tory.
My other post pointing out some of their recent (mis)hits was obviously designed for balance Stewart.
Yes, I did read that one too.
It is to your credit that you point out the good practice as well as the bad.
But completely to my discredit that I managed to spell your name wrongly. Apologies.
When should we point out that given the current peak infection rate of early January and the 14 day lead time between vaccination and maximum immunity unless everyone is vaccinated in the next 10 days or so it's going to be too late.
Worse, because we are going to cram people into vaccination centres I suspect it's going to increase Omicron infection rates massively because if one person being vaccinated has it everyone near by simply going to get it.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
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.
You are SOOO right. The plotting is hard work. If I just put in the reality no-one would believe me. Perhaps it needs to be written as a farce .....
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.
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.
Sanest F1 post I’ve read on here for a long time. The general tone on this blog has been utterly appalling and really makes me concerned about the mental health of many of the posters. Calm down folks! It’s only entertainment. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Ssshhhh, it's much more entertaining reading the F1 crywank than PT's anti-science lies. Leave them be.
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.
We have a stack of changes coming through for 2022 which will improve the formula and make for harder racing. We also need to see some rule changes to remove some of the dangerous and petulant moments seen this year: 1. Ban cars from trundling round the track during FP and Qualy. There have been several close incidents this year and not all of the tracks offer sweeping forward views of the track. The risk of a car smashing into a much slower car unsighted is too high. 2. Remove the ambiguities involved in track limits. Never mind "you can't go off track in these turns" it should be the whole track. More gravel traps and high kerbs please 3. Remove the ambiguities over "gaining an advantage". If you go off the track in a battle with another driver you lose the place. We have seen repeated incidences of drivers gaming the huge run-offs to follow the rules yet gain an advantage 4. Stop teams petitioning the race director and stewards. Make it one-way traffic from race control to the teams, not the other way round. Have contact allowable for emergencies only not for whining. 5. Simplify the safety car rules. If there is debris on track or a stranded vehicle or marshals need to be on track, deploy the safety car. Do it more. Reshuffle the pack so that they restart in order. Not only is this a fair applies to all interpretation of the rules it also stops these races where we get a huge spread through the field very quickly. Works in Indy, steal with pride.
As for Abu Dhabi, if Mercedes are taking this all the way then the sanction is to annul the race. The regulations are clear that the race director is the race director, but if he got it wrong then annul the whole event. Doesn't give Mercedes what they want, but then again nothing does.
As I pointed out above once we're into release all the lapped cars then Verstappen is right behind Hamilton. So whilst they are protesting the unreleased part what they really mean is they are protesting the release part, despite that being the normal use of the rules they want using normally...
Had they followed the safety car procedure the race would have ended under the safety car - which is why Mercedes didn't bring Hamilton in. That's you second inaccuracy today - the first was to claim that Hamilton tyres wouldn't have lasted.
*Hamilton* said his tyres wouldn't last. Repeatedly. On the radio. Pointing out to Bono that he couldn't keep that pace to the end. His genius is that he always manages to find a way to protect the tyres even when they are going off. The VSC period was a freebie pit stop and they missed it.
You say "followed safety-car procedures". There are three options - finish under SC which all teams had agreed should not happen, not let the lapped cars pass, or let the lapped cars pass. Masi has interpreted the need to let cars pass as being to bunch up the field. I agree that he shouldn't have been selective and have called for the rules to be changed to stop this from happening.
Mercedes are complaining that the RD failed to let all cars past. So had he done so Verstappen is right behind Hamilton still. So their complaint is stupid. What they really mean is that because of the risk that their driver on the wrong tyres would lose, the race should not have been restarted at all.
And thats why as a Hamilton fan I am not backing his team. "Don't let them race, we might lose" is not how the sport should work. And I am sick of both Wolff and Horner's petulant whining. It has gone on long enough. Its sport. Sometimes you are unlucky.
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
"At least thats what swathes of them are reporting on Twitter"
...
Correct. So either these doctors and nurses are lying and thus bringing their employer into disrepute, or they haven't been told as was claimed.
Its not the government's job to inform every individual doctor and nurse, never has been, never could be.
You're being pathetic. Individual doctors and nurses work patterns will be discussed with their own line managers etc not by the Secretary of State.
I don't expect the SofS to inform them. I expect their managers to inform them. Its clear that hasn't happened so its either a comms failure in the NHS or there simply wasn't time.
I want this new hyper rapid jabs plan to work because it needs to work. But if they can't communicate it out successfully then how do they hope to pull the more complex bits off?
Mail Online: 'Why weren't we doing this MONTHS ago?': Tory MPs and NHS bosses warn dishing out a MILLION boosters a day in face of Omicron will be 'incredibly difficult' and may see operations cancelled again - as GPs say they only found out scaling up plans LAST NIGHT
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
Fraud is already largely offloaded to the City of London police who specialise in such things. And given that most fraud is rarely local / regional it does make sense for it to be done by a national force.
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
Mail Online: 'Why weren't we doing this MONTHS ago?': Tory MPs and NHS bosses warn dishing out a MILLION boosters a day in face of Omicron will be 'incredibly difficult' and may see operations cancelled again - as GPs say they only found out scaling up plans LAST NIGHT
Err...maybe because we didn't want to cancel operations again until we absolutely had to and we didn't know about Omicron then?
Is there any news yet on whether anyone in the UK or Europe has died from the new variant?
I doubt there's been time either way.
Usually it's what, around 20 days from infection to death? On average, of course; some are quicker; some take weeks and weeks. I'm not sure how many were infected in Europe by 24th November, but with the doubling rate we've seen, it'd be really not many at all.
Frankly, if we'd seen any deaths already, I'd be really worried.
Tom Daley Tyson Fury Adam Peaty Emma Raducanu Raheem Sterling (!!!!) Sarah Storey
Shortlist of only six. Weren’t there a dozen in the last Olympic year?
Weird list though. They’ve likely left Lewis out to stop a campaign, and Tyson Fury has said he’ll sue the BBC if they nominated him.
Lots of Olympic lays paying out though, thankfully vindicating that strategy. Mostly the bet with @Philip_Thompson to see play out now.
I don't mind a shortlist of six. But Sterling and Storey shouldn't be anywhere near this list.
Where is Whitlock and Kenny? Should be ahead of Daley IMO.
I'd vote for Whitlock if he was nominated. Kenny (of the male variety) should have won SPoTY in 2016, but I think his time has been. He was rather fortunate to win his gold this time and the Keirin isn't a premier event, in my view.
Daley would be a worthy winner (as would Peaty, Raducanu and Fury). China won every diving gold except one. The one won by Daley and Lee. Yes, it's a team event (they should be nailed on for team of the year), but Daley has stuck at it for all these years. Very impressive, in my opinion.
The overall problem with the police seems to be that too many of the wrong people persist in out-dated ways of thinking. We can ignore that alleged victim/suspect/lead/complaint because they are black/female/poor/a tom etc etc.
I don't know how we change that quickly, but we could at least have more strenuous and external oversight. Instead we have waste of space PCCs who are politicians and an immovable Met Commissioner.
Visited North Shropshire at the weekend. Feels like it'll be a majority of less than 2,000 for either Con or LD.
That's very interesting. What are you basing it on - actual canvassing and comparing with previous VI or chatting to people or...? (no need to say if you were helping a specific party if you'd rather not) Is there a lot of engagement by voters, or do you think turnout will be low?
When should we point out that given the current peak infection rate of early January and the 14 day lead time between vaccination and maximum immunity unless everyone is vaccinated in the next 10 days or so it's going to be too late.
Worse, because we are going to cram people into vaccination centres I suspect it's going to increase Omicron infection rates massively because if one person being vaccinated has it everyone near by simply going to get it.
There's clearly nothing that can realistically be done about the vaccination centre problem, because trying to dole out tens of millions of jabs through a system of one-in, one-out individual appointments is wholly impractical.
I suggested the other evening that there was at least a theoretical case to be made for a lockdown (of limited duration, not for three or four bloody months again,) simply to try to stamp on disease transmission insofar as is possible and take a bit of pressure off the healthcare system, whilst racing to get all the jabs done. But it seems that the Government has elected to at least try to get to Christmas before resorting to harsher measures - presumably, in part, because it believes that much of the population won't obey a stay at home order this Christmas in any event.
The Omicron strain of the coronavirus was detected in California’s wastewater last month, even before the World Health Organization declared it a “variant of concern,” lab data suggest.
Denmark has maybe the best sequencing in the world. I’d trust their data over any random waste-water sampling anywhere else.
Maybe some random Saffer took a leak in a stopover at LAX. What does it prove?
American complacency in general over Omicron is mystifying. It will hit them in a week or two (or before) and follow the exact same curve as Denmark, UK
American complacency over Alpha was baffling. Their complacency over Delta was inexcusable. American complacency over Omicron now simply fits the pattern.
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
Fraud is already largely offloaded to the City of London police who specialise in such things. And given that most fraud is rarely local / regional it does make sense for it to be done by a national force.
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
an interesting point: the armed forces recently broadened their recruitment to untypical military types as specialists in things such as cyber and psychology etc - I wonder whether for cyberfraud etc do we need to use expensive trained able bodied constables when actually it could be done by less physically capable (perhaps older) individuals...
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.
I suspect that Mr J's penultimate paragraph is right. The police have been 'charged' (ahem) with all sorts of roles and as we all know, the actual number of bodies (ahem again) has been reduced. It's probably arguable that there were not enough in 2010 before the Coalition's reductions and the replacements now being sought will bring the numbers up to 'almost adequate', rather than 'inadequate', as under Cameron and May. I wonder too, if the technological advances that enable historic crimes to be investigated have had an effect.
This won't be popular but perhaps Dominic Raab is right that the police should not spend time and resources on very old cases. Raab's one year statute of limitations is too radical but perhaps it is time to say that any crimes more than, say, two or three decades old are spent. Congratulations, you got away with it, but note that if Burglar Bill is still active then he can be caught and banged up for his recent and current crimes.
I'd love to book my booster jab but after spending more than an hour on the website & entering my NHS number dozens of times I give up. On both mobile and desktop the site is faulty. Cc@nhsuk"
Visited North Shropshire at the weekend. Feels like it'll be a majority of less than 2,000 for either Con or LD.
That's very interesting. What are you basing it on - actual canvassing and comparing with previous VI or chatting to people or...? (no need to say if you were helping a specific party if you'd rather not) Is there a lot of engagement by voters, or do you think turnout will be low?
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.
How do you know that?
I will come back here and apologise to you this time next week if the ramped up booster provision has been anything but an absolute cluster**"* this week.
I was also considering the burden he is putting on tired and demotivated NHS staff. But so longer as Boris is happy, everyone's happy.
The Omicron strain of the coronavirus was detected in California’s wastewater last month, even before the World Health Organization declared it a “variant of concern,” lab data suggest.
Denmark has maybe the best sequencing in the world. I’d trust their data over any random waste-water sampling anywhere else.
Maybe some random Saffer took a leak in a stopover at LAX. What does it prove?
American complacency in general over Omicron is mystifying. It will hit them in a week or two (or before) and follow the exact same curve as Denmark, UK
American complacency over Alpha was baffling. Their complacency over Delta was inexcusable. American complacency over Omicron now simply fits the pattern.
Good to see you posting - I was going to PM you later to check you are OK.
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?
My understanding is the recruitment of staff was to accelerate the programme to be completed by the end of January, which in itself was a tall order.
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
Fraud is already largely offloaded to the City of London police who specialise in such things. And given that most fraud is rarely local / regional it does make sense for it to be done by a national force.
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
an interesting point: the armed forces recently broadened their recruitment to untypical military types as specialists in things such as cyber and psychology etc - I wonder whether for cyberfraud etc do we need to use expensive trained able bodied constables when actually it could be done by less physically capable (perhaps older) individuals...
The people still need to be trained (there is only so much handholding you can do before it's better to automate the lot away) - it just means you need to recruit a different set of people.
Sadly it also won't be older people because these jobs would be highly computer based and that probably rules out the older people you are thinking of.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
Fraud is already largely offloaded to the City of London police who specialise in such things. And given that most fraud is rarely local / regional it does make sense for it to be done by a national force.
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
an interesting point: the armed forces recently broadened their recruitment to untypical military types as specialists in things such as cyber and psychology etc - I wonder whether for cyberfraud etc do we need to use expensive trained able bodied constables when actually it could be done by less physically capable (perhaps older) individuals...
The people still need to be trained (there is only so much handholding you can do before it's better to automate the lot away) - it just means you need to recruit a different set of people.
Sadly it also won't be older people because these jobs would be highly computer based and that probably rules out the older people you are thinking of.
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.
It's been all over the news for a couple of weeks. It's not exactly been secret.
That everyone would be jabbed in December? Fascinating that you think that has been all over the news for weeks when the PM announced it last night for the first time and then explained why he had changed the target from 7 weeks.
No one has set a goal of jabbing everyone in December.
That claim is a misrepresentation.
Though obvs the media will pretend it was the goal when jabs are still happening in Jan week 2, because they want a story.
"Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year."
"The chance to" meaning that everyone can get the jab this year. Which is a goal of jabbing everyone over 18.
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.
Absolutely. I mean, given the implicit message given to the other drivers, Masi may as well have sent out the message "All drivers other than Hamilton and Verstappen, please return to the pits; your race is over. Verstappen, close up on Hamilton for the restart with your new soft tyres."
It’s spoiled the entire season, which had, up until the last lap of the last race, looked to be the greatest season in my memory.
But there’s a rule of stories. Call it the Game of Thrones rule: the ending changes the flavour of all that came before. - A great ending can redeem a tedious set-up and make it all worthwhile. - A terrible ending can poison a great set-up and turn it pointless.
This was a Game of Thrones ending. I’ve never known a sporting authority change the rules in the dying moments in order to give an overwhelming advantage to the guy who was going to come second so he could win. And that is, quite literally, what happened here. The Race Director cheated to take the victory away from the one who was going to win in order to give it to the one who was going to come second. Because it was more dramatic and exciting that way.
Even annulling the race wouldn’t work, because that removes Hamilton’s chance to win - which he’d taken until they snatched it away from him by breaking the rules.
I’m really not a Hamilton fan at all, and I will not forgive them for making me feel sorry for him and that he actually IS hard done by.
England: Extension of vaccination rollout announced to take effect on Monday. Frequently you can book over the weekend because the system is updated and ready to go.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
What's changed is the shortening of the remaining booster programme by more than half, according to Johnson's announcement. Time is of the essence, so any further acceleration they can make is worth it, even if they don't make the target, as long as it is orderly.
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour. 2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs. 3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Doubtful. As you say, collapsing 7 weeks of work into 3 at zero notice when Christmas and New Year are in those 3 is *challenging*. The pledge is that "Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year." That means the system has to have enough doses and appointment slots to do everyone in 3 weeks. Which is a million a day.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
Tell you what - lets let them try eh? When they fail, as you have decided that they will, you can come on and shout about how prescient you are.
FFS - for once try to see things with a neutral stance.
Tom Daley Tyson Fury Adam Peaty Emma Raducanu Raheem Sterling (!!!!) Sarah Storey
Shortlist of only six. Weren’t there a dozen in the last Olympic year?
Weird list though. They’ve likely left Lewis out to stop a campaign, and Tyson Fury has said he’ll sue the BBC if they nominated him.
Lots of Olympic lays paying out though, thankfully vindicating that strategy. Mostly the bet with @Philip_Thompson to see play out now.
I don't mind a shortlist of six. But Sterling and Storey shouldn't be anywhere near this list.
Sterling is the one that’s got me, wasn’t on the radar at all.
I was thinking that if a footballer was going to be nominated it would be Mason Mount as he set up the goal in the Champions League final.
But Logan basically said "...oh, and Raheem does a lot of good work away from football."
Surely Rashford then? Wrong black footballer by mistake?
Well, quite. Logan did start by saying he scored three goals at the Euros (Kane scored four, by the way), but it's obvious that it needed more to justify his inclusion.
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
I’ve wondered over the past few years if there need to be two “police” forces. As more and more “new crimes” such as hate crimes etc become an issue due to new laws and new technology it seems like there are too many conflicting needs placed upon the current police.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
Fraud is already largely offloaded to the City of London police who specialise in such things. And given that most fraud is rarely local / regional it does make sense for it to be done by a national force.
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
an interesting point: the armed forces recently broadened their recruitment to untypical military types as specialists in things such as cyber and psychology etc - I wonder whether for cyberfraud etc do we need to use expensive trained able bodied constables when actually it could be done by less physically capable (perhaps older) individuals...
The people still need to be trained (there is only so much handholding you can do before it's better to automate the lot away) - it just means you need to recruit a different set of people.
Sadly it also won't be older people because these jobs would be highly computer based and that probably rules out the older people you are thinking of.
By ‘older’, they mean the likes of you and I - who could probably do a better job of investigating cyber crime than someone who is recruited for their physical fitness and appearance.
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.
As for Abu Dhabi, if Mercedes are taking this all the way then the sanction is to annul the race. The regulations are clear that the race director is the race director, but if he got it wrong then annul the whole event. Doesn't give Mercedes what they want, but then again nothing does....
With all due respect @RochdalePioneers you don’t know what you’re talking about
Which element - specifically? I'm calling for the rules to be tightened up for 2022 to prevent the wholesale bending of the rules and open cheating we have seen throughout the season. I'm also pointing out that if the failure here was not adhering to both the letter and spirit of the rules by making bits up as we go along, that making more things up as we go along by simply making the race a few laps shorter is hardly a solution.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
I am no F1 expert, but watched the race yesterday.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
Red Bull were in the fortunate position, of being able to do the opposite of what the car in front did. Twice.
If Lewis had stopped at the end, and Max gained track position, and the race then finished behind the safety car, with Lewis having literally given away the championship…
Comments
I think this is recency bias. We are assuming the news must be bad because it was for the last 2 variants. That plus confirmation bias from both sides, as usual. PB regulars will of course have seen this effect at elections many times, when a series of polls tells us something we can’t bring ourselves to believe, like “Trump is going to win the nomination” or “May could lose her majority”.
There’s still time for the stats to get worse but at the moment I’m looking at them and seeing good news. So much so that I wonder if Omicron could save much of unvaccinated Europe and the US from the deadly winter Delta wave that they were due otherwise.
Please nominate that incredible teenager who has done what nobody in the history of tennis had ever done before and won a grand slam as a qualifier.
Honest, competent people might not make many mistakes but accept responsibility when things go wrong.
Dishonest, incompetent people make more mistakes but deny responsibility when things go wrong.
So for an organisation inflicted with 'producer capture' people in the second group can be more useful.
The rules set out in great detail the procedures, and he ignored them. The FIA are arguing that one clause in the rules overrides another.
The result if that, if it stands, would give race directors the power to fix races with impunity under safety cars. That's why it should not stand.
(Obedience to this law in our household is somewhat lacking. I'm a scrupulous adherent, husband insists otherwise.)
It morally should not stand but the rules as written do let him override the rules as written. Its infuriating but how can the CAS say otherwise when its there in black and white?
Of course, that's based on nonsense and will cause serious harm to business, even driving firms under. But hey, it changes the headlines for the PM. So who cares if people lose their businesses and can't pay their mortgages, right?
There’s no way the intent of that clause, is to allow the RD to over-ride 48.12, which details how the safety car should be operated, and is understood by the teams to be the SOP.
Masi (Messy, as he’s being called in F1 forums today), was making the rules up as he went along, and Mercedes have every right to take this all the way up to the CAS.
What do those complaining think the government should have done ?
Send a letter to all those involved in the vaccination process giving them a month's warning perhaps.
It doesn't give him authority to make up regulations on the spot.
As I said, the way in which the FIA have relied on/ interpreted that clause is absurd on its face. I don't think it will stand.
1. Ban cars from trundling round the track during FP and Qualy. There have been several close incidents this year and not all of the tracks offer sweeping forward views of the track. The risk of a car smashing into a much slower car unsighted is too high.
2. Remove the ambiguities involved in track limits. Never mind "you can't go off track in these turns" it should be the whole track. More gravel traps and high kerbs please
3. Remove the ambiguities over "gaining an advantage". If you go off the track in a battle with another driver you lose the place. We have seen repeated incidences of drivers gaming the huge run-offs to follow the rules yet gain an advantage
4. Stop teams petitioning the race director and stewards. Make it one-way traffic from race control to the teams, not the other way round. Have contact allowable for emergencies only not for whining.
5. Simplify the safety car rules. If there is debris on track or a stranded vehicle or marshals need to be on track, deploy the safety car. Do it more. Reshuffle the pack so that they restart in order. Not only is this a fair applies to all interpretation of the rules it also stops these races where we get a huge spread through the field very quickly. Works in Indy, steal with pride.
As for Abu Dhabi, if Mercedes are taking this all the way then the sanction is to annul the race. The regulations are clear that the race director is the race director, but if he got it wrong then annul the whole event. Doesn't give Mercedes what they want, but then again nothing does.
As I pointed out above once we're into release all the lapped cars then Verstappen is right behind Hamilton. So whilst they are protesting the unreleased part what they really mean is they are protesting the release part, despite that being the normal use of the rules they want using normally...
That's you second inaccuracy today - the first was to claim that Hamilton tyres wouldn't have lasted.
It is to your credit that you point out the good practice as well as the bad.
I don't think it is the case and its just you willing on failure instead.
Scotland: Health secretary announces on Twitter extension of vaccination rollout for next day. Wife phones up the next day and told it's not happening until the next next day.
But it's Johnson who hasn't done any forward planning.
Tyson Fury
Adam Peaty
Emma Raducanu
Raheem Sterling (!!!!)
Sarah Storey
You're being pathetic. Individual doctors and nurses work patterns will be discussed with their own line managers etc not by the Secretary of State.
WTF is Sterling on the list for. Nothing sporting.
Come on Raducanu!
Here's a piece from 2010 with exactly the same material:
https://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/2010/03/08/clangers/
Just the infinitely thick UK media being itself, looking for lazy content.
I wonder too, if the technological advances that enable historic crimes to be investigated have had an effect.
No Max Whitlock. The most decorated Olympic pommel horse gymnast of all time.
We’re going great guns at treating people on the waiting list. And this winter we’re doing more than ever to protect that, as well as dealing with all the other pressures we have. We are holding beds for people on the waiting list who are having surgery. But that raises really difficult ethical dilemmas. Do you hold an intensive care bed for someone with an aneurysm that could kill them at any minute, or bring in someone who’s just arrived through A&E and needs surgery? Is there a bed for someone who comes in and needs a thrombectomy, a potentially life-saving operation after a stroke?
You can imagine how some of our staff feel about unvaccinated people with Covid eating into our supply of ICU beds when you’re making these decisions, about whether someone with stage 4 cancer or an aneurysm can have an operation.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/13/the-secret-nhs-trust-boss-the-strain-on-hospitals-is-visible-and-visceral
However, Pollard, one of those behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, said Covid would still pile pressure on the NHS this winter – with unvaccinated patients requiring intensive care and double-jabbed patients who are older and frail still at risk of “life-threatening” health issues.
“The latest wave of the virus in the UK, which is now rising rapidly in parts of Europe, will directly translate into a stream of mostly unvaccinated patients entering ICU,” he said in the article jointly authored with Prof Brian Angus, professor of infectious disease at the University of Oxford. “To prevent serious illness, these people need first and second doses of the vaccine as soon as possible.
“For those of us fortunate enough to have already been vaccinated, the story now seems very different. For most vaccinated individuals, these mild infections are little more than an unpleasant inconvenience.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/23/covid-patients-in-icu-now-almost-all-unvaccinated-says-oxford-scientist
Paging the anti-vaxxers and all those who keep stubbornly insisting that their right to dick about vetoes everybody else's rights to medical care and freedom from lockdowns: please stop.
That claim is a misrepresentation.
Though obvs the media will pretend it was the goal when jabs are still happening in Jan week 2, because they want a story.
It can't simply because it will only look at the dataset it can be given and that dataset is highly likely to be both very incomplete (it will have full details on solved cases but very partial data on unsolved cases) and probably unintentionally biased / sexist (given the number of solved cases that have say a black rather than white protagonist) .
That's not to say that technology wouldn't solve a lot of police problems - I suspect a lot of things could be solved simply by making data visible and accessible rather than trying to be too clever. But there are a whole world of things that should be implemented country wide (the Cumbria / Durham mobile apps would be a very good place to start) that would generate a lot of quick wins.
Weird list though. They’ve likely left Lewis out to stop a campaign, and Tyson Fury has said he’ll sue the BBC if they nominated him.
Lots of Olympic lays paying out though, thankfully vindicating that strategy. Mostly the bet with @Philip_Thompson to see play out now.
Worse, because we are going to cram people into vaccination centres I suspect it's going to increase Omicron infection rates massively because if one person being vaccinated has it everyone near by simply going to get it.
And I'm posting this as a Hamilton fan. His driving all season has been sensational. His ability do everything from scythe through a field to go banzai fast and protect the tyres is stunning. And I absolutely admire all he is doing when not driving.
But he lost because his team left him out on old tyres at the mercy of events. Red Bull gambled hard and it paid off. Mercedes once again screwed their strategy and got caught. Do we want to see hard and fair racing or not? Whole chunks of this season have been unfair - they've all be cheating and that includes Hamilton not staying within 10 car lengths on repeated occasions. Nobody is clean. So we mop up and do better next year.
"New analysis suggests that half of UK families have seen their disposable incomes shrink in the last two years.
A report by a left-of-centre think tank shows that the poorest half of the population have had their incomes squeezed by £110 since 2019.
The New Economics Foundation (NEF) says that the richest 5% are better off by £3,300 a year."
Leveling up, my arse.
Well, yes - but I was rather assuming that would be the case in this alternative universe.
You say "followed safety-car procedures". There are three options - finish under SC which all teams had agreed should not happen, not let the lapped cars pass, or let the lapped cars pass. Masi has interpreted the need to let cars pass as being to bunch up the field. I agree that he shouldn't have been selective and have called for the rules to be changed to stop this from happening.
Mercedes are complaining that the RD failed to let all cars past. So had he done so Verstappen is right behind Hamilton still. So their complaint is stupid. What they really mean is that because of the risk that their driver on the wrong tyres would lose, the race should not have been restarted at all.
And thats why as a Hamilton fan I am not backing his team. "Don't let them race, we might lose" is not how the sport should work. And I am sick of both Wolff and Horner's petulant whining. It has gone on long enough. Its sport. Sometimes you are unlucky.
In my (strange) brain it seems to me there are two different types of crime/policing areas. “Physical crime” and “non-physical crime”.
So for physical crime the current or previous incarnation of the police should work - from assaults, murder, vehicle crime etc etc they require a very physical presence from the police and is reflected in training (well sort of….).
The “non-physical” crime - hate crimes, fraud, harassment etc need a different approach and I would imagine that there is a small cross-over of police who are naturally good at or suited to dealing with both well.
So is it worth examining whether to have two police “streams”. One is the traditional - you join the police, train, work as a beat Bobby and move along getting specialised and developing skills ets for those “physical crime” needs.
The second stream is separate - you go through different training - like accountants or solicitors etc focussed on analysing paperwork/electronic communications. You never have to work the beat, wear a uniform etc.
This would attract a different cohort who would be good at these sort of forensic investigations at a desk and want to be investigators but don’t want to go out on the street and work shifts etc.
They are both police with powers to arrest etc etc but separate streams, entry requirements, training and different appeal and broader appeal.
It would take a lot of the crap off the desks of the physical police - can be out dealing with people instead of stuck at desk trawling through their computers and hopefully also ensure that investigations/crimes that require a different approach get dealt with better.
I want this new hyper rapid jabs plan to work because it needs to work. But if they can't communicate it out successfully then how do they hope to pull the more complex bits off?
But Logan basically said "...oh, and Raheem does a lot of good work away from football."
I think the broadcast had three objectives:
1. Get people to take Omicron seriously so they change their behaviour.
2. Make it clear we're entirely dependent on vaccination and voluntary measures. Johnson won't bring in any new NPIs.
3. Allow Johnson to take the initiative with the kind of showy programme he likes.
The key question is (2). Will it be enough?
Hate / harassment aren't the same because they do have clear regional elements in most cases
Hope @Gallowgate makes it through
Usually it's what, around 20 days from infection to death? On average, of course; some are quicker; some take weeks and weeks.
I'm not sure how many were infected in Europe by 24th November, but with the doubling rate we've seen, it'd be really not many at all.
Frankly, if we'd seen any deaths already, I'd be really worried.
Daley would be a worthy winner (as would Peaty, Raducanu and Fury). China won every diving gold except one. The one won by Daley and Lee. Yes, it's a team event (they should be nailed on for team of the year), but Daley has stuck at it for all these years. Very impressive, in my opinion.
I don't know how we change that quickly, but we could at least have more strenuous and external oversight. Instead we have waste of space PCCs who are politicians and an immovable Met Commissioner.
I suggested the other evening that there was at least a theoretical case to be made for a lockdown (of limited duration, not for three or four bloody months again,) simply to try to stamp on disease transmission insofar as is possible and take a bit of pressure off the healthcare system, whilst racing to get all the jabs done. But it seems that the Government has elected to at least try to get to Christmas before resorting to harsher measures - presumably, in part, because it believes that much of the population won't obey a stay at home order this Christmas in any event.
Their complacency over Delta was inexcusable.
American complacency over Omicron now simply fits the pattern.
@GoodwinMJ
I'd love to book my booster jab but after spending more than an hour on the website & entering my NHS number dozens of times I give up. On both mobile and desktop the site is faulty. Cc@nhsuk"
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1470067980042182659
I was also considering the burden he is putting on tired and demotivated NHS staff. But so longer as Boris is happy, everyone's happy.
Sadly it also won't be older people because these jobs would be highly computer based and that probably rules out the older people you are thinking of.
We need this to happen. But it seems unlikely. Sadly.
"The chance to" meaning that everyone can get the jab this year. Which is a goal of jabbing everyone over 18.
I mean, given the implicit message given to the other drivers, Masi may as well have sent out the message "All drivers other than Hamilton and Verstappen, please return to the pits; your race is over. Verstappen, close up on Hamilton for the restart with your new soft tyres."
It’s spoiled the entire season, which had, up until the last lap of the last race, looked to be the greatest season in my memory.
But there’s a rule of stories. Call it the Game of Thrones rule: the ending changes the flavour of all that came before.
- A great ending can redeem a tedious set-up and make it all worthwhile.
- A terrible ending can poison a great set-up and turn it pointless.
This was a Game of Thrones ending. I’ve never known a sporting authority change the rules in the dying moments in order to give an overwhelming advantage to the guy who was going to come second so he could win. And that is, quite literally, what happened here.
The Race Director cheated to take the victory away from the one who was going to win in order to give it to the one who was going to come second. Because it was more dramatic and exciting that way.
Even annulling the race wouldn’t work, because that removes Hamilton’s chance to win - which he’d taken until they snatched it away from him by breaking the rules.
I’m really not a Hamilton fan at all, and I will not forgive them for making me feel sorry for him and that he actually IS hard done by.
FFS - for once try to see things with a neutral stance.
Can you explain to me what exactly Red Bull were gambling? As far as I could ascertain they gambled precisely nothing, as they had nothing to lose by pitting.
It’s not a gamble if the stake are zero. It’s certainly not gambling hard.
As I say, I’m no expert.
Yes Masi had the power to override the rules technically.
No there's not a chance he should have done that and he's brought the sport into disgrace by not following the rules.
If Lewis had stopped at the end, and Max gained track position, and the race then finished behind the safety car, with Lewis having literally given away the championship…