I love the way the government spend waste my money.
They decided that in order to stamp out passport fraud, the answer would be to arrange for people applying for a passport to have face-to-face interviews. 216,581 applicants have attended these sessions up until July 2008.
The cost of introducing the scheme helped to raise the cost of a passport from £42 to £72 in 2005. The bil for the interviews has been some £96million & the monthly running costs are £2.5million, so that makes about 115million of our lovely English pounds.
Fortunately, this has all been money well spent; not a single case of fraudulent applications has been uncovered as a result of applicants having an interview and none of the 216,000 people had their applications rejected.
Regular readers will know of my disdain in certain compensation claims where you can get a squillion pounds for hurt feelings & £2.50 for having your legs blown off.
The MOD has just paid out £2.4million to a Kosovan man who was accidentally shot in the face by a British soldier.
Six men were driving round a British-guarded building in Pristina in 1999, firing guns in the air to celebrate a national holiday.
A group of paratroopers, fearing they were under fire & in danger, opened fire on the jeep killing 2 occupants & wounding Mohamed Bici. He was subsequently flown to the UK & treated on the NHS. He was then granted legal aid to sue the MOD in a British court. He won £346,000 legal costs & £2,054,000 cash. The paratroopers were found innocent of any wrong-doing at an enquiry.
Royal Marine, Mark Ormerod was offered £214,000 when he lost both legs & an arm after being blown up.
A similar injury to Mr Bici’s would earn just £11,000 compensation should it happen to one of our servicemen.
Tick-boxes, targets & graphs. No, not the modern police force this time but Haringay Council’s Child Protection Department.
I didn’t expect the senior executive to apologise regarding the death of Baby-P, after all, nobody in authority apologises for anything because an apology can be construed as an admission of guilt, but it was very interesting to see the little graphs & charts presented by Sharon Shoesmith to learn how good her department is despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
I had a case of ‘been there, done that’ on reading ex-Haringay social worker, Nevres Kermal’s story in the paper today.
This is a social worker who claims she tried to blow the whistle on Haringay’s social services department’s woeful practices in protecting children.
Ms Kermal claims she warned bosses & government ministers about poor practices in her department, but was ignored & subsequently targeted by those same bosses.
Complaints of being overworked & understaffed must ring bells in any public authority throughout the land these days. Money being mis-spent on team building trips abroad & tea parties for staff. Nothing new there.
Ms Kermal claims that when she brought matters to the attention of her managers they became hostile towards her. She says she outlined cases of neglect & abuse being ignored by social workers direct to Ms Shoesmith herself but was basically ignored.
She says as a direct result of her efforts to put matters right her managers instigated a series of trumped up charges against her resulting in her being investigated for an allegation of assaulting a teenager & further for being an unfit mother herself.
One could argue that these are merely the ramblings of a slighted worker who ended up being sacked by her department & is trying to get her own back. Given that there will now be 3 separate enquiries into the sad case of the death of Baby-P I guess time will reveal whether Ms Kermal speaks with forked tongue or not.
But I have seen similar situations within the police which clearly mirrors what Ms Kermal alleges to have happened at Haringay. Managers don’t like it when their boat is rocked. Rather than sort out the matters being brought to their attention, they take any criticism as a personal attack & do anything to get their retaliation in first. They can be particularly vindictive hen their little empire is under attack.
I love the Germans; they have great beer, they don’t cross the road until the little green man flashes & they have a wicked sense of humour.
Take the Chaos Computer Club.
It seems the Germans have the same concerns over the introduction of identity cards & storage of personal data as we do in the UK.
A hacker from the Computer Chaos Club has got their hands on the fingerprints of the German Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schauble. The print came from a glass used by the minister at the opening of a religious studies department at the University of Humboldt in Berlin.
An image of the fingerprint has been printed in a copy of a German magazine “Der Datenschlueder”. In an ironic masterstroke the fingerprint has been printed in the magazine but also supplied on a flexible rubber film with partially dried glue which will leave an exact copy of the print, much the same as the real minister’s print. It can be slipped over a finger & used to leave fingerprints on doors, telephones & biometric readers.
An anonymous research student has allegedly used this technique to fool 20 different biometric readers including the same model as used by Germany’s passport office.
A British group No2ID, has announced that they have obtained Jacqui Spliff’s fingerprints from a glass she used at a Social Market Foundation event after it advertised a £1,000 cash reward for the Home Secretary or Prime Minister’s prints.
If any of this is true it is a) very worrying that the government promises of the effectiveness of the ID card system appears to have been blown out the water before it’s even started and b) very funny.
If there’s one thing the British can do really well, it’s put on a Remembrance Service. The service at the Albert Hall as featured on BBC 1 last night was a cracking example. I can measure how good it is by how many times I get the lump in the throat. Last night there were several.
I went to the Remembrance Day Service in my local town today. So did several hundred other people. I’m sure there were more this year than the last time I went.
The old soldier who read the oration was different this year; I guess the ex-para who did it for a while has died.
More good news for motorists that the government are planning on extending the scheme to charge us to use the motorways.
Technology trials are due to start which would allow drivers who pay a fee to drive past all the rest of us stuck in stationary traffic. Apparently, the government are considering the plans on stretches of motorway that are due to be widened as well as hard shoulders.
We could see these lanes operating on the M25, the M42 near Birmingham & the M27 & M3 near Southampton. Prices will depend on the length of the journey but some trips could cost as much as £5. Trials are due to start next year.
In order for the government to give my money away to the banks & the Cromptons (see yesterday’s post) they need to raise more cash, what easier way than squeezing even more money out of the (legal) motorist? So that’s road tax, petrol duty, congestion charges, parking fees & speeding ticket revenue, we can now look forward to being charged to use roads that might actually allow us to make a journey in a reasonable time.
For the last 18 years or so I’ve been part of a single-wage family. I have had a mortgage all this time & when times have been a bit hard, as they often can be for a single wage family with a large mortgage, I have had to take out loans to get by. I still have a loan now, one of many in my adult life.
Although we have two cars neither or what you’d call modern or up-to-date. We don’t go abroad for holidays. Our children, when they finally leave the education system will be net contributors to the economy of this great nation.
As Christmas approaches, thoughts turn to present for the kids. Mrs Weeks & I will probably do our usual & limit our mutual presents to £10 or £20, this way we can spend a bit more on the kids. The most expensive presents they’ve ever had have been bikes or hand-held computer consoles & the like, maybe £150 maximum.
In order to provide this for my family I have to work long, unsociable hours. I have been put in hospital several times & been assaulted many more times. I have restrictions on my private life that others would call rights abuse. I might moan about it but I carry on.
Tracey & Harry Crompton of Hull have somewhat different circumstances. They have 10 children. This week they were boasting that they had already spent £3000 on Xmas pressies & were fully intending to spend more.
Our earnings are not dissimilar. I get around £33,000 a year. The Hulls get £32,656. The difference is that my £33,000 is drastically reduced by paying tax, national insurance, Council tax & pension contributions. I take home a significant proportion less than my £33,000. The Comptons take home most of their £32,000, all except for the proportion which pays their rent & council tax, because all that money comes in the form of benefits payments.
Harry has been out of work for 15 years, Tracey has never worked in her life.
If Mrs Weeks needs a new pair of shoes she usually just goes without & gets the kids shoes, or she waits for a few months until she has enough cash for a pair.
Fortunately for her, Tracey Crompton is in a much more beneficial position, she says, “If the kids need something I go and get it. I rarely go without things either. If I need something, like a pair of shoes, then I’ll get it.” Tracey is very lucky, she adds, “We don’t have money worries. We don’t go without things and I think that’s because we are self-sufficient, we grow our own food I don’t see why others should have money worries.” I doubt I;d have money worries if I sat on my arse all day & took thirty two grand of other people’s money either, Tracey.
Good for Mrs Crompton, it;s always good to see someone happy with their lot.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining that we’ve got no money & haven’t had any spare to do some of the things that other families take for granted, like newish cars or foreign holidays, or bank accounts which aren’t overdrawn; I get paid more than a lot of people.
Mrs Weeks & I made a decision when we were planning to have our family that she would give up work (she earned more than me at the time) to nurture our children. We gave up all the extras because we believed it was the right thing to do.
It sometimes pisses me off that others can get get away with doing fuck all & still get cream with all the extras.
I just wrote this article in full and was spell checking it when Firefox crashed, teach me not to use the save function as I go along. Anyway;
Talking of feeling like a criminal, as I was yesterday. I thought that I’d one more to the list of things which are perfectly legal but make me feel like a criminal.; voting Labour.
I’ve always been a Labour supporter as long as I’ve been able to vote. At heart I guess I’m a kind of a socialist. When I was a student I dabbled with a spell in the Young Socialists (or was it the Young Communists, I can’t remember now). The height of my radicalisation was going to see friends on stage in musicals at the local leisure centre & sitting all the way through the National Anthem.
I was a Labiour supporter up until about two years ago when I finally said, enough is enough. I won’t go through all the reasons Labour have pissed me off, I’ve written about many of them in these pages over the last 3 years, & I hate giving people the opportunity to say “I told you so”, and be right.
I reckon if you’re a wavering Labourite then Gordy’s recent stunt has to be the one which will tip you over the edge.
Bringing back the scuzz-ball Peter Mandelson. What the fuck is Brown thinking? What can this man do to possibly turn people back to Labour? Here is a man so slimy he makes a toad in a bucket of syrup look like a piece of sandpaper. A man so self-serving & up his own arse that he can’t take a piss unless there’s something in it for him. Not content with having to resign from one government, Blair brings him back & he has to resign again. In an act which really does prove that labour have no concept of punishing people who do bad things, they give him a highly paid & prestigous job in Europe & promise him a knighthood. How Labour got away with the cash for peerages debacle I’ll never know.
So two minutes in his new government role & we find that the sleaze has already been bubbling. What does a European trade minister have in common with a Russian billionnaire? Nothing, unless they are scratching each other’s back. So Mandy has been taking advantage of lots of free & expensive hospitality aboard a squillion-dollar yacht & curiously signs off on some fantastic tax import cuts for an aluminium company owned by said Russian over & above any other similar company, saving that company millions of pounds of import duty.
Of course, Mandy has nothing to hide, that’s why he refuses to answer questions about what took place at these meetings. He’ll continue to refuse to answer despite having ‘nothing to hide’ until someone reveals all in one of the dailies & he’s forced to go for a hat-trick.
I ask this because people often say they feel like criminals when they’ve done nothing wrong. I have a certain sympathy for this view. Standing in the queue at Tesco this morning I was behind the lady being served. She put her bank card into the little payment machine thingy & then covered up the whole keypad with her purse to such an extent that she couldn’t see the keys, she proceeded to tap in the PIN by feel, or memory, or some second sight.
I suddenly felt all indignant, like, why are you doing that, I have absolutely no interest in your PIN; I felt like a criminal, people needed protection from me stealing their credit card details.
Of course, a lot of people, myself included, feel guilty when going through Customs. Whenever I go through the ‘nothing to declare’ channel I feel like I’m being watched. I suppose this is natural, after all, I am being watched. But I feel guilty & I know the Customs Officers can feel my discomfort & this makes them more likely to stop me & go through all my unmentionables, which will cause even more consternation & embarrassment.
Whenever I pay for something at the shops with cash, am I the only one to feel like a criminal when the assistant takes my hard-earned spondoolicks & proceeds to hold them up to the light to check for Her Majesty & the silver strip? You mean you think I might have just taken that off my money printing machine at home or need to launder twenty quid through the same Asda checkout I’ve been using for years?
I don;t visit the doctor much but I do feel agreived trying to get my case past the secret police on reception. I’m made to feel like a bloody criminal because I’m ill. “You do realise the doctor is very busy?”
“Yes, I’m so sorry but if you could tell me how to retrieve my bollocks from the mincing machine, reconstitute them & attach them back to my scrotum I’ll not take any of the good doctor’s time.”
I think we should get our own back. Next time you go to the bank for some cash, make sure you carefully & deliberately check every single individual note by holding it up to the nearest light & when you’ve done that make out you’re not quite convinced it’s genuine, tear the top of each note near the silver strip, draw across it with a UV pen & then examine it under a handy pocket-sized microscope you just happen to have in your pocket.
I don’t really understand all this business about the ‘credit crunch’. Funnily enough, I studied A-level economics. I have forgotten most of what I learned, unfortunately, this was before the exam over 30 years ago, which was a little worrying.
It does seem strange to me that the government has to give billions of taxpayer’s cash to institutions who have made a pretty healthy cash profit from charging me £30 every time a transaction goes through my account when I’ve overdrawn, & paying all that cash to a few individuals in the ‘city’, who earn more money than I’ll be paid in a lifetime, in one year’s bonuses.
What I really don’t understand is, if the government can’t find £30million to fund last year’s back-pay, how can they find 150squillion to give to banks?
Things are getting a little scary round at 200 Towers about now.
The impending retirement is starting to loom much larger on the horizon. This Christmas will see my last one as a police officer. Being as it seems like I’ve been one since God was in short trousers, the thought of applying for jobs is somewhat, er, frightening, yep, if I’m honest, frightening.
I’ve not applied for anything in my entire adult life, certainly not anything I’ve been required to provide a CV for. I can’t remember anything about applying for a job as a police officer. So I don’t know whether I had to put anything down on paper about my capabilities. All I know is I think I applied during the school holidays after I left the sixth form, had an interview & started a few weeks later, 30 years ago. I’ve started to compile my CV. The tricky thing is finding anything to actually put in it. I’ve read CV-writing websites until all the advice has merged into one and it still only has a paragraph in it. Being a hairy-arsed copper for 30 years must give you some skills but finding them & putting them on paper isn’t as easy as I thought.
I’m also developing this strange desire to read the job adverts in my local papers. I honestly haven’t decided what to do. I’m thinking about just having a few months of chilling which will give me more time to put off applying for a job. The choices I have appear to be;
apply to come back as a civvy in the control room (safe but not particularly happy)
apply to come back in some other civvy role within the police organisation (safe but are other departments any better than mine - can they be any worse!)
apply for some, as yet, unknown job outside the force.
have a few months off, go abroad, chill out & then back to the 3 choices above.
Thanks to a heads-up from a reader for this story.
Council chiefs in Wadebridge, Cornwall have built a 6ft high by 30ft long wall in a park so that local vandals have somewhere other than railway bridges & people’s garages to practice their artistic talents.
Built at a cost of £3000, the wall is designed to be a home to all the town’s grafitti. It is the brainchild of Police Sergeant Robin Moorcroft.
Prior to the official opening of the wall at the end of October, someone has sneaked under the fence & sprayed “I paid my tax & all I got was this lousy wall!!” Ironically, the wall was apparently built with donations of materials & labour from local people & businesses but will now have to be repainted at tax-payers’ expense.
Sgt Moorcroft isn’t happy & says he will be criming & fully investigating the matter, which is rather strange given that police fail to investigate the vast majority of petty vandalism. (see my blog entry yesterday) I suppose that’s unless it’s a pet project of the local police which gets damaged.
Time will tell whether acts of grafitti vandalism go down when the wall is ‘opened’ & whether this is money well spent. I recall a similar project somewhere else in the country was blighted by grafitti panels being pulled down by vandals before anyone got a chance to spray them with sub-standard scribblings.
I don’t know, we’ll have NHS trusts spending £400,000 on yachts to treat unemployed youngsters next…
I don’t agree that everyone who commits a crime should be sent to prison, at least not in the current format. There are, however plenty of people who deserve prison & more of it.
Luke McCormick is just one such specimen. If you’re a football fan, you’ll know who McCormick is, if you’re not a football fan, you won’t be surprised at yet another disgraceful example from a sport which has such a high amount of disgraces for such a small group of people.
McCormick spent the night quaffing wine & champagne at a wedding reception lasting some 12 hours. He went to bed at around 2am in his hotel room but got up two hours later & decided to drive home to confront his fiance over rumours she was cheating.
He was over twice the legal drink-drive limit when his car ploughed into the back of a Toyota containing the Peak family. Husband Phil has been left in a wheelchair, his two sons Arron, 10 & Ben, 8, were killed.
Evidence presented at the trial this week showed McCormick had driven at speeds in excess of 100mph narrowly avoiding leaving the road or colliding with other motorists before he hit the Peaks’ car as they travelled home from a day trip to Silverstone.
The maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving is 14 years. McCormick was convicted of this offence which involved killing two children. The sentence he received was just 7 years. With the usual guidelines for serving sentences he will be eligible for release in just 3 1/2 years.
If the maximum sentence is 14 years & this guy gets half of that (and will serve just a quarter) & he’s killed two children while drunk at the wheel, one has to ask what the hell do you have to do to get the maximum sentence?
It’s cases like this which make a complete & utter mockery of the sentencing system in this country. If it wasn’t so sad it would be laughable.
Mind you, the judge in the case, Paul Glenn, has ‘previous’. In 2007 he jailed trucker Robert Murray for just 4 1/2 years over a crash which killed two children when he failed to see a car whilst putting his mobile on charge. He crashed into a Renault Clio killing 13-year old Rebecca Casterton & her friend 12-year-old Lauren Brooks.
How long do we have to put up with behaviour like this from our judges, it’s a bloody disgrace. Can there be anyone in the country who really agrees with this kind of sentence?
For every scum-sucking low-life (see yesterday’s entry) I think it’s important to acknowledge that there is someone else who is a shining example.
Anthony Makin is just one such chap. Anthony is a Lance Bombardier in 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery. His vehicle was blown up while serving in Afghanistan 2 years ago. Driver Lance Bombardier James Dwyer, 22 was killed in the explosion while Anthony’s foot was blown off among other injuries. His leg was later amputated below the knee & he has since been fitted with a prosthetic leg.
Miraculously, Lance Bombardier Makin is back with his unit & now serving in Helmand Province back in Afghanistan. Further, his brother was so influenced by Makin’s experiences that he himself joined up with the same unit & is also serving in Afghanistan, alongside his older brother.
We often concentrate in the worst of society without giving space for the best, I guess that’s just the way of the world. So it’s nice to big someone up for a change.
Thanks to a heads-up from a reader I can bring you more news of the Swedish twins involved on the maniacal behaviour on the motorway on Traffic Cops this week.
The one in the red coat, remember her? the one who was run over twice, turns out to be one Sabina Ericksson, aged 40, of County Cork, Ireland (I could have sworn her sister had an Irish-ish accent when she was gobbing off whilst lying on the floor with broken legs).
Three days later she is alleged to have stabbed to death a 54-year-old male from Staffordshire. She then self-harmed with a hammer & jumped off a bridge over the A50 breaking both ankles & fracturing her skull.
She’s been under police guard at hospital until very recently when she was charged with murder & remanded into custody. In the biggest ‘no-shit-Sherlock’ comment since someone said Jacqui Spliff was a two-faced, back-stabbing old bitch, Stuart Muldoon, defending the mad Swedish bint, said a psychiatric assessment of Ericksson would have to be made before any plea.
If you can’t get the original Traffic Cops footage, you can now find it on YouTube.
Another week another compensation story. This one is about lesbian soldier Kerry Fletcher who has just won an industrial tribunal which agreed that she had been harassed by a sergeant who asked her for a threesome & sent her lewd text messages. She went sick from the Royal Artillery stables in North Yorkshire & complained that the MOD had not taken her complaints of harassment seriously.
She is claiming compensation for stress, hurt feelings & loss of earnings. The sum required? £400,000. She’s 32, probably has under 30 years working life left even if she chooses to work for the the maximum amount of time, so either she’s saying she’ll never be able to work again or that’s one hell of an amount of stress & hurt feelings.
Bugger me, but if you get your arms & legs blown off in Afghanistan, you only get £161,000. How the fuck can anyone justify £400,000? I get fed up to the back teeth with people who are somewhat hard done by & want hundreds of thousands of pounds compo while people who deserve that amount are left with derisery settlements. I think she wants £400,000 for stress, hurt feelings, loss of earnings & greed.
There are times when you just know the government have got things arse-about face. Unfortunately, this government seems to work this way more or less permanently.
Take the case of the Ghurkas going through the courts at the moment. Up to two thousand Ghurkas want to come & live in Britiain. They have served the Queen & this country in all fields of warfare throughout the 20th & 21st century. Thirteen of them have won the Victoria Cross for action in battle. They have been members of the British Army for almost 200 years & 50,000 of these Nepalese men have died for this country.
Their base, up until 1997 was in Hong Kong. When we gace Hong Kong back to China the Ghurkas were based in Kent. Under current guidelines, any Ghurka who retired after 1997 has the right to remain in the UK. Those who retired before do not & have been denied permission.
Some of those who wish to live in the UK served in WWII, such as 86 year old Tul Bahadur Pun, VC winner, who was denied the right to live in the UK until a big publicity campaign last year made the government change its mind. Many of the Gurkhas wish to take advantage of our health system in many cases to treat illnesses & conditions brought on through their military service.
It seems strange that wanted terrorists can come to the UK, have us pay for their homes, dole, family allowances & education. We’ll let Somalians come & live here & murder people. We have no problem with eastern Europeans popping by & remaining here to steal, rob & murder. And we don’t care a jot about anyone who wants to come to the shores & take advantage of our generous money-handing-out policies despite never lifting a finger in the service of this land.
But fight for this country in one of the most respected military units in the world, sometimes for 30 years or more & the Home Secretary’s solicitor will say that you don’t have “strong enough ties with Britain to live here”. Like all those people who live here examples given above have strong ties with the UK.
I don’t like paying taxes as much as anyone else but I’m bloody sure I’d rather my taxes went to a couple of thousand ex Gurkhas than some of the hundreds of thousands who currently have access to it.
The binmen are coming tomorrow. I’m glad I don’t live in Stockport though, I’d be risking a fine because I’ve out my bin out the night before I should, according to Stockport council.
Victoria Clarke, 21, was fined £700 last week for putting out rubbish before the due date. Well, not quite £700 to be fair; a £350 fine, £350.12 in costs & a £15 victim surcharge.
Ms Clarke really only has herself to blame though. She was served a notice bot to do it again after a previous incident, the next time she did it she was given a £100 fixed penalty notice. When she failed to pay the fine she was taken to court.
And quite right too, we can’t have people being given fines & waltzing off into the sunset never to pay the money. It’s just such a pity that the courts don’t follow up all the criminals who fail to pay their fines & even when they do, how many end up having to fork out £700?
Meanwhile, over in Wisbech Joshua Knight was fined £85 for his offence. Being £15 less than the fine for putting your bin out too early it must have been a pretty low-level offence, yes?
No. Knight was driving his car when he ‘lost concentration’ and strayed into the path of another vehicle resulting in the death of a Mr Ashfaq Choudhry. Still, we should all be comforted by the fact that Knight was disqualified from driving for a year also. So that’s alright.
You can spend millions on software security. You can design the most robust industrial grade anti-hacking systems. You can utilise the toughest encryption protocols available. None of this means a thing once you introduce the Mark 1 human numpty.
The police service is the latest in what is becoming a very long & never-ending list of holders of seceret information to lost it all.
West Midlands Police have lost a data stick reported to contain information of terror suspects’ vehicles & movements.
As far as I can recall, the loss of all this data, including 25 million child benefit claimants, personal details of NHS staff, prison officers, military applicants, convicted criminals, bank account details left in bin bags outside banks, etc etc etc, has never been down to a failure of a computer system or hacking attempt. All of it has been lost because some numpty mislaid it or used insecure methods of sending it somewhere.
Given that at some stage all the data ever recorded in the past or potentially recorded in the future wil be handled at some point by an actual person somewhere, can anyone have any confidence that the government or any other body can really keep it secure?
It’s no wonder more & more of us are against any further recording of our personal information.
Thanks to a heads-up from a reader for this story.
