Fit for what purpose?
When talking about the actions of politicians, government departments and agencies such as the police, I often emphasise the deliberate harm they do and the deliberate lies they tell. Such examples are so thick on the ground that it is easy to forget another marker of officialdom – incompetence. A recent story brought this to mind.
It turns out that more than 400,000 crime records have gone missing from the police computer. The police were in the middle of one of their weekly “weeding” sessions, during which they “expunge” data they think they won’t need any more, when – whoops! – they accidentally expunged the wrong data – essential data they would continue to need if they were to bring criminals to justice.
But there’s more: the accident doesn’t seem to have been contained at all well and The Guardian reports that high-ranking police officers are worried that “the chaos may cause them to hold data they should have legally deleted.”
Once news of this incompetent weeding got “into the public domain”, the usual efforts by the usual suspects were made to lessen its impact on public confidence. The Home Office declared it was “working with police to assess the impact of the error”. Policing minister Kit Malthouse dug deeper into his guide to Home Office jargon, telling us his department was working “very quickly” with “policing partners” to “try and recover the data and assess the full extent of the problem”. Malthouse has shown a bit of inventiveness here: the usual phrase is “working very hard”, as in “We are working very hard to reduce the backlog” of whatever the current backlog is; or “We are working very hard to improve the effectiveness of our test and trace system”. Changing it to “very quickly”, however, may have been unwise in the context of this data loss from the police computer, as it is likely to increase anxiety that yet another “accident” could take place. On “policing partners”, I haven’t come across this phrase before, but it does suggest a dance of some kind – which may not be quite the picture that officials wanted to paint.
Next up comes a statement by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC). A spokesperson said: “We are aware of an issue with the police national computer and are working closely with the government to understand the potential operational impacts” – which being interpreted means “Are we buggered for the future?”
Exactly. It seems we all are, at least potentially. It’s not only that we may not be protected from criminal activity after this “accident”. It also seems that if the police have mistaken or false information about us they can’t delete it, so we’re not safe from them either.
We might be partly reassured by what at first sight looks like a bit of straight talking from Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds:
“This is an extraordinarily serious security breach that presents huge dangers for public safety. The incompetence of this shambolic government cannot be allowed to put people at risk, let criminals go free and deny victims justice.”
Unfortunately for Nick, however, he’s a bit hamstrung by his party’s record. For example John Reid, one of Nick’s predecessors (who was actually Labour Home Secretary, not just a shadow), said in 2006 that the large chunk of the Home Office that was causing him trouble at the time – the Immigration Directorate – was “not fit for purpose”. In full:
“Our system is not fit for purpose. It is inadequate in terms of its scope, it is inadequate in terms of its information technology, leadership, management systems and processes.”
Still, that’s not Nick’s fault, is it? Sounds like it’s systemic to me. Perhaps that’s the difference between incompetence and deliberate harm: incompetence is systemic; deliberate harm is systematic. It’s to be hoped that, if Nick ever sheds his shadow and becomes Home Secretary, he will show more of the milk of human kindness than Reid ever showed. Reid’s complaint was that the department wasn’t deporting enough people and therefore couldn’t even cause deliberate harm competently. That’s what he wanted to fix. Personally, I think they’re quite efficient at causing deliberate, malicious harm. But that’s a story for another time.
Nothing but facts?
“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!” — Thomas Gradgrind, in Hard Times, by Charles Dickens
This story (see below) is about GPs in England saying there is an inconsistent supply and distribution of Covid vaccines and that this is causing roll-out problems. Embedded in the story is something I’ve known for a long time.
I’m used to seeing standardised, lying statements from my favourite government department, the Home Office, aimed at calming people’s fears and short-circuiting discontent, when both the fears and the discontent are well founded:
“The United Kingdom has a proud record of providing protection to those fleeing persecution … All those seeking asylum are dealt with on their merits.”
No it hasn’t. No they aren’t. And today, it’s interesting to see evidence that this type of statement is not confined to the Home Office but extends across government:
Jeremy Hunt (Chair of Commons Liaison Committee): “Why are the public not allowed to know anything except the most basic information [about the supply and distribution of vaccines]?”
In reply, Johnson promised the government would publish regional breakdowns “later this week” but admitted they were likely to show wide disparities. When it came to vaccinating the over 80s, he said it was “more than 50%, well over 50% now in the north-east and Yorkshire” but added it was “less good in some other parts of the country”.
This reply (bad news as it clearly was) was not the one he was supposed to give. But not to worry. Whitehall can cope with that. The official answer remains the official answer against all inadvertent blurting out of the truth, and he will be reminded of it when he gets back indoors in case he’s asked the question again. Here’s the official answer (otherwise known in Whitehall as “the truth”):
“Vaccines are being distributed fairly across the UK to ensure the most vulnerable are immunised first and all GPs will continue to receive deliveries as planned.” — Department of Health and Social Care unnameable spokesperson.
Oh good. That’s alright then.
GPs in England say inconsistent supply of Covid vaccine causing roll out issues
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/gps-in-england-say-inconsistent-supply-of-covid-vaccine-causing-roll-out-issues?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Tier 5 or not Tier 5?
Who knows? The Chief Medical Officers advised it, which Michael Gove admits. But did the government do it? It’s difficult to tell whether the wishes of the CMOs have been met (the graph in the article here says only that it means “Strictest level of social distancing measures and restrictions“, which is not terribly clear). Gove was evasive, saying that the government had “no alternative other than to take every step that we possibly could” – which might range from, well, absolutely everything to only what they fancied doing in view of their obsession with getting the economy moving (they say restrictions are bad for the economy but often fail to mention that without them the economy, and everything else, would collapse). The point of the tier system, I suppose, is to try to solve this problem by a mixture of light restrictions here and heavier ones there, moving from one to another as the rates of infection change and (as we now know) the virus mutates. But this ensures that we are always behind the virus, never in front.
There seems now to be some acknowledgement of this and it looks as if the tiers have been temporarily suspended in favour of an across-the-board lockdown, similar to the first one. That first one worked, even though it was imposed later than it should have been: infection levels fell. But it was lifted too early, and infection levels rose after we were all advised it was OK to barbecue and dance in each other’s gardens and use each other’s bathrooms.
When will this new lockdown start to be lifted? Johnson thinks mid-February, when, he says, 12.2 million of the most vulnerable people will have received their vaccinations and we will have entered “the last phase of the struggle”.
I always worry when Johnson slips into his “Winston-at-war” mode (Churchill: “This is not the end, nor even the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning”). It’s misleading to think of the pandemic as an enemy in a war. A scientist interviewed on Channel 4 News the other day was asked by the interviewer whether the virus was “trying to beat the vaccine”. She replied that we should get away from the idea that the virus is trying to do anything: it is simply mutating, as viruses do.
Gove thinks mid-March is more likely, when the effect of the vaccine will start to be evaluated. Let’s hope one of them is right, even if it’s only by accident. Johnson isn’t always right. On Sunday he said there was “no doubt in my mind” that the schools were safe. Today they’re shut. Still, hope springs eternal …
Cedric Chouviat – the story continues
On 3 January 2020, Cédric Chauviat, a 42-year-old delivery man on a bike, was stopped by the police in Paris (they said he was talking on his mobile phone). At the end of the encounter, Cédric was dead, strangled, with serious damage to his neck. The strangling took place first while Cédric was standing up and continued while he was on the ground. According to the autopsy, he died of “asphyxiation associated with haemorrhaging of the two thyroid cartilages situated in the throat”. The police officer involved, named as Michael P., denied strangling him and claimed he had supported Cédric’s head with his arms throughout the encounter.
Strangling was, however, an official procedure. It’s aim was to “restrain an individual by reducing their capacity to breathe and their flow of blood to the brain”. In the 2008 police training manual, there are four different kinds:
- “strangulation by locking the head and the arms”
- “strangulation from behind with the lower arm”
- “strangulation by means of [the victim’s] clothing”
- “the technique of bringing [the victim] to the ground by strangulation”
No mention of the knee, you’ll notice, but the principle’s the same. The knee on the neck is an international police method of restraint – used not only in the US (as we saw in the case of George Floyd) but in the UK (it was used on a victim, in the street, in front of witnesses, soon after George Floyd’s murder).
Nevertheless, it looked for a brief moment as if the strangulation method would cease in France after Cédric’s death and the protests following George Floyd’s murder on 25 May in the US. “The method of taking someone by the throat, called strangulation”, said the French interior minister on 8 June, “will be abandoned, and will not be taught [in training courses].” But a few days later, after pressure from the French equivalent of the Police Federation, it was reinstated pending an alternative method being found. Strangulation would continue but it would be “practised in a measured way, with discernment”!
Meanwhile, inquiries have taken place, a report delivered to “the authorities” in September, but no action has been taken by the minister of the interior. At this moment, thousands of new police recruits are learning how to strangle their suspects. And there is no justice or vindication in sight for the Chouviat family.
So, for what it may be worth, I will keep the words of Cédric’s father blue-tacked to my study door in solidarity, and as a reminder that we should all, wherever we live, and perhaps especially if we think we’ve “taken back control” of our forces of law and order, follow his example. Immediately after his son’s murder he said:
“I am the father of Cédric Chouviat; they have assassinated my son. Emmanuel Macron, I will go to war against you, against your state.”
« Je suis le père de Cédric Chouviat ; on a assassine mon fils. Emmanuel Macron, je vais en guerre contre vous, contre votre état. »
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