Financial Illiteracy At The Top Of The Prisons Service

The report into the prison murder of Zahid Mubarek was presented to the Commons at the end of June. Now, the Home Office has set up this website which contains far more information than the report itself. I recommend a viewing if you have an interest in the UK criminal justice sytem.

I wanted to share some extracts from the main body of the report that highlights financial illiteracy at the top of the Prison Service. At Feltham, where the murder took place, the governor from December 1998 to April 1999 was Clive Welsh. From May 1999 to October 2000 Niall Clifford was in charge and Nick Pascoe was governor from October 2000 onwards. The report states that

"Mr Clifford did not regard Feltham’s budget as a constraint on the incurring of such expenditure as he thought was necessary. He regarded keeping within the budget as a secondary consideration. His policy was to spend what was needed to improve the regime. He did not think his job was at stake if he exceeded his budget. Mr Pascoe said much the same thing."

The following table shows the cost per prisoner at Feltham in three consecutive years.

£18,992 in 1998/99
£24,030 in 1999/00 (Zahid Mubarek died on March 28th of this year)
£37,507 in 2000/01

The spiralling spending corroborates the comments on Mr Clifford's and Mr Pascoe's financial priorities or lack of them. I'd like to contrast this with the situation before their tenure;

"In the late 1990s establishments were having to make efficiency savings. Their annual budgets were marginally lower in real terms in the financial year before Mr Clifford arrived at Feltham than in previous years"

Not that the authors of the report itself seemed very financially literate. For example take this quote -

"Such was the paucity of funding that the Inspectorate noted in 1997 that Feltham actually had the largest cost per prisoner of any young offender institution in the country." Source

Of course, the report highlighted other serious failings, but I thought I would bring out this example to demonstrate the financial illiteracy at the top of the Prison Service. Finally, it is noted that Feltham was considered a failing establishment so it jumped the queue for funding. Rewarding failure?

Czech English Words No 3 and 4 - Esej & Reality

I was a little amused when the better half sent me a document to print out with title esej. J is the Slavic equivalent of the letter Y hence Borat’s famous greeting jagshemash (pronounced yag-sh-masch), so I assumed a cute spelling mistake. Always the pedant, I pointed out the proper way to spell essay - only to be told esej is the Czech (and Slovak) way to spell essay. Naturally, I didn’t bring this up with the girlfriend again, but I asked a colleague of my age when she started using the word essay/esej. She said that she first heard the word essay/esej at high school and then also at university and that she considered it an import. Before that (pre 1989) they would invariably use the term slohova prace. You can see why the word essay was stolen and naturalised.

Another good example of Western words mutating into Czech is the word reality. If someone was trying to sell you reality in Prague what do you think would be on offer? Don’t google Czech reality because that’s dangerous. Instead check this Czech reality website. As an American friend from Birmingham, Alabama reminded me, realty means property in the US. I am fascinated how this word was assimilated into the Czech language with a pointless addition of a letter and how that idiosyncrasy stuck. Call me a saddo, but I’m going to see if I can get any answers over at the Czech expats portal.

MyBlogLog - A Tory Bloggers Tool?

I like MyBlogLog. I’m signed up for a year with them and it’s my only sites stats instrument. Many of the occasional visitors to my site use it and get listed on the recent readers sidebar, which is an interesting feature. Yesterday evening, the blogfather himself Iain Dale popped up – the only thing is I’ve no idea how long he stayed. It’s also handy for marketing my site as my visits to other sites that have the sidebar are shown whether or not I want to post a comment. One thing I’ve noticed is that although the mybloglog is extremely popular with right-wing bloggers, Tom Watson and Political Hack are the only Labour bloggers that I’ve noticed using it – and they don’t use the sidebar on their sites. I wonder why it hasn’t taken off in the same way with the Lefties. Or maybe I'm being myopic?

Beautiful Morning In Prague South

Here's a few pictures of Prague. October has been a pleasant month in Prague with plenty of blue skies. This morning is particularly nice and from my living room the view of the St Peter & Paul church is better than ever now that the tree foliage has mainly fallen. This church is located on the site of an old fortress although the "castle walls" that surround this attraction are apparently relatively recent. Should you visit this site, you must pay a visit to the cemetery. As well as being the resting place of luminaries from the arts world such as Capek and Dvorak, the beauty and symbolism reflected in the various shrines provides an insight into Czech culture over the years.

Looking down my street across the Vltava river shows the amount of greenery near Prague centre - although this is mainly due to steep hillsides unsuitable for construction. In the far distance, you can just pick out the Strahov Stadium which is the biggest stadium in Europe and dwarves the international football pitch that is next to it. In 2002 there was an Ozzy Osbourne concert at Strahov. Apparently, a crowd of over 20,000 was in attendance, but it seemed like maybe 10% of the space was being used.

From our bedroom windows you can see the historic Prague castle although as it is several miles away from here the view with the naked eye isn't as clear as this photo implies. Some say it takes three days to do a tour of the Prague castle and surrounding attractions properly. The gardens at the foot of the castle near Malastranske (Little Bank) tube stop are nice at the moment.

MPs Costs Out-strip Inflation

The cost of our MPs has massively out-stripped inflation.

MPs claimed £86.7m in expenses and allowances last year which is 7.3% higher than the previous 12 months. I find the £87,276 that can be claimed for salaries for researchers, secretaries and other staff excessive. I suggest this is reduced significantly and then capped year on year for productivity gains in a similar way to government grants to local authorities.

The £20,000 that can be claimed by MPs with constituencies outside of London for staying in London is ridiculous, too. A single person should be able to arrange annual accomodation in the capital for a fraction of that. Clearly not enough is being done to rein in costs. Any more ideas?

Another Use For Blogs

My girlfriend is currently studying at the University Of New York In Prague. She's getting lots of essays to do as homework. I was thinking that using a blog would be an excellent way of submitting, marking and archiving essays. The other day the girlfriend sent me her essay to print so that she could go to school to submit it the next day. If a blog was used, she could upload the essay at the appropriate time (no question about whether the deadline was met) and the tutor could provide comments and a mark in the comments to the post. As the submissions grow, the tutor and pupil can at a glance check on the progress of the student.

Maybe this has already been done, but I'd be interested to hear of any other innovative ways that the blog template can be used.

Phonics, Streaming and Paying Teachers Properly

Setting higher education to one side, on education we can expect the following things from a Conservative government. Less paperwork, guidelines, initiatives, target-setting and dogma. More decentralization, choice, freedom and flexibility. That’s all about instinct, not policy. The levels of literacy amongst our school-leavers are a disgrace and so are the levels of achievement. I have a large degree of respect both for David Willetts (Education Minister) and Nick Gibb (Schools Minister). Reading the runes the empirically successful techniques of phonics and streaming are likely to be implemented in the early years of a Conservative administration. Even if we were in coalition with the Dems this is an area where I would expect a lot of progress from what I consider to be a standing start (i.e where Labour will leave us). Although more contentious another expectation is that the status of the teaching profession will be enhanced. This means paying teachers more – I would expect something in return. I would like to see tough competition for teaching jobs. I want to see a time when the top reason for teachers leaving the profession before retirement is because they are not good enough, not because of unruly kids or too much paperwork. Does the above go far enough? Is this a platform we can run on?

Paraphrasing Broon

An ICM poll for the Guardian puts Labour on 29%, 10 points behind the Tories on 39%, with the Liberal Democrats on 22%. This level of support for Labour equals a previous record low for the party in an ICM/Guardian poll recorded in May 1987.

I was touched by Gordon Brown's response -

"If you're doing things right, and the economy is doing well, the health service is getting better, your schools are getting better ... then people will respond."
He added: "It's a discipline on us to be better and more effective, and to listen to people."

Paraphrasing Broon

We are ineffective. The economy isn't doing well and despite the billions we have poured into them neither schools nor the health service are improving.

NB - Nothing from the BBC on this story?!

This Is What I Call A Landslide

Prague local elections results

Civic Democrats (ODS) - 53.3%
Social Democrats (CSSD) - 15.4%
Greens - 8.0%
Communists (KSCM) - 7.9%
Association of Independent Candidates - European Democrats (SNK-ED) - 5.5%
Others - C10%

Well done to ODS who can now rule without the support of any other parties. My only gripe is that part of the ODS platform was to increase the number of police officers in the city. Seems to me that there are enough already, they just need to focus on the criminals rather than road traffic duties.

The ODS' dominance in Prague is mirrored in other major capitals in Eastern Europe who typically vote for the mainstream right (e.g. Bratislava in Slovakia). Some of the political posters have been interesting to say the least and if I manage to photograph a few before they disappear I will post them. Here is an amusing text I received the other day from an expat friend who got caught up in the campaigning

"I've found myself a Green Party tram. I'm having badges, leaflets and green tea forced on me. It's like a hippy nightmare."

Tory By-Elections Strategy

Wedding and birthday surprise went swimmingly. I'M BACK. In recent times there have been at least 6 to 15 predictable bad news stories per Parliament. That’s right - by-election results. For some reason they never seem to come up in Labour/Conservative marginals where we could give Labour a bloody nose, but nevertheless our results are appalling. The last time we made a gain in a by-election was June 1982. That's less than once in a blue moon.

Back in July in the aftermath of the debacle at Bromley & Chislehurst, a Tory Radio interview with Francis Maude gave me no comfort that he was going to solve the problem. I never like the words “try to” when talking about how to solve a problem. So, at conference, I was particularly interested to find out what was happening about by-elections. I asked the girl on the by-elections stand who had been put in charge and she said that (she thought!?) it was Grant Shapps. She was also recruiting a by-election volunteer task force. I hope this volunteer force doesn’t look like this.

Grant Shapps (Welwyn & Hatfield) is a great campaigner and one of only 40 Tories who won a seat from Labour in 2005. Every Tory blogger should check out his local web forum and he is full of excellent ideas – an interesting factoid is that he reckons that he has e-mail addresses for 10% of his constituents. Nevertheless, the man is an MP – he has a day job. Use his expertise by all means, but I want someone heading up the by-elections who is employed in that role full-time who has that as his/her prime responsibility. I want the someone who can strategise, who can lead and motivate and can jump at the kick of a bucket. Should failure continue that person will be out of a job. I want that level of clarity. Am I asking for too much?