politics | Steve Woods

PCC candidate queries paltry interpreting bill

27/01/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

This May sees a whole slew of elections to local councils, the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and last but not least, 41 local Police & Crime Commissioners (PCCs).

As regards the election of the PCC for Gloucestershire, Will Windsor-Clive, the Conservative candidate, has decided to play the bigotry and xenophobia card early. He’s doing so by questioning the £100,000 the force spends annually on interpreters, having filed a Freedom of Information Act request on the subject, the Western Daily Press reports.

The paper reports the overall costs have remained around £100,000 a year over the three years between 2011 and 2014.

In a quote for the paper, Mr Windsor-Clive is reported to have commented: “This is an unseen cost of high levels of immigration. Taxpayers quite rightly want their money spent on keeping their community safe, not on providing translating services. I’m determined to find ways of cutting back-office costs to spend on frontline policing and this is one area that needs investigating.”

Here are a number of questions electors (and others) should ask Mr Windsor-Clive.

1. Is it right to whip up bigotry and xenophobia for electoral gain?

2. Does Mr Windsor-Clive regard the rule of law and the administration of justice as priceless commodities in a civilised society?

3. If the answer to 2. above is yes, wouldn’t any reasonable person regard £100,000 a reasonable price to pay to enable the full participation of both victims and accused persons who don’t speak English proficiently in the enforcement of the rule of law and the administration of justice?

4. If Mr Windsor-Clive were to fall foul of the police in a foreign country whose language he did not speak, would he be content to forego the services of an interpreter, as he obviously wants to do in Gloucestershire?
Tidy BS5 at the Mayor’s Question Time

22/01/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

On Wednesday evening Bristolians had an opportunity to question the city’s elected mayor, George Ferguson, at the City Academy on Russell Town Avenue.

Your ‘umble scribe attended, hoping to ask George a question on the city council’s dreadful record on keeping on top of fly-tipping, litter and other environmental crimes within the city as a whole and east Bristol in particular.

The session was chaired by BS5 resident and freelance journalist Pamela Parkes, who did an excellent job.

Your correspondent was successful in putting his question to the mayor, which read as follows:

This year Stoke-on-Trent City Council managed to find £750K of additional funding to tackle environmental crimes such as fly-tipping. What additional budget allocations will the mayor be making this year to emulate the Potteries?

Needless to say, the mayor ducked answering the additional funding bit (from which one can infer that no additional resources will be made available in Mr Ferguson’s forthcoming budget. Ed.) and laid great emphasis on £80m cuts imposed by central govt. on Bristol and how much Bristol City Council was actually spending on waste management in Bristol. I thought most of his answer was emollient waffle, blustering about the establishment of Bristol Waste, early days for them etc. However, facilitator Pamela Parkes pointed out that despite all the campaigning by residents, both informally and formally under the banner of Tidy BS5, the situation locally hasn’t improved at all. To be fair to George Ferguson, he did make a good point about the need to promote the repair and reuse of consumer goods, to reduce the amount going to landfill.

George then handed over to the head of Bristol Waste whose name I cannot remember. She made the point that fly-tipping had remained constant in Bristol over recent years. When challenged about the level of fly-tipping – four times that in neighbouring local authorities, back came the defeatist line that fly-tipping is always higher in cities.

So overall it looks like there will be little change in the council’s competence or motivation in tackling fly-tipping in the city

Besides my question, others tackled the mayor on education, housing and homelessness, the treatment of BME communities (following the cancelling of this year’s St Paul’s Carnival and current management problems at the Malcolm X Centre) and transport.

At the end there was a lively open session, during which there was a lot of hostility to the mayor from the public on various matters – the previously mentioned carnival and Malcolm X woes, growing Islamophobia, declining community cohesion and the total waste of Green Capital (which GF characterised as the most successful Green Capital year yet. Ed.), to mention but a few.

George placed great emphasis on his listening skills, stating he’d listen to anybody. However, he has past form in his post-listening dismissals of members of the public. This was not lost on his audience on Wednesday, one of whom queried along the lines of: “You may be listening George, but are you hearing what they’re saying to you?”

A T-shirt design produced after George’s dismissal of a member of the public in 2013. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In the end the session overran and City Academy staff were heartily thanked for sacrificing their time so generously.
Why pick on Muslim women, Mr Cameron?

18/01/2016 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

Earlier this morning a man doing Prime Minister impressions appeared on the BBC’s Today programme to explain why Muslim women should be encouraged to learn English.

That person – a man called Cameron – is reported by the press to be advocating such an idea to “combat radicalisation“.

At the same time, this Prime Minister impersonator announced £20 mn. additional funding to teach Muslim women English, an initiative that applies a sticking plaster to the massive wounds inflicted to English language teaching by his governments since 2010. The most recent of these cuts was last July, involving a £45 mn. scheme that taught English to 47,000 foreigners.

Whilst I would concur that parents with a poor command of English in this country would place them at a disadvantage when it came to understanding the influences on their children, why are Muslim women being singled out for special treatment? After all, there are plenty of women of other religions – and none – with poor English skills.

Journalist Fleet Street Fox of the Mirror has labelled Cameron’s announcement as “breathtakingly cretinous“, in addition to which he’s come under fire from his own ranks, including via social media from a former Minister, Sayeeda Warsi.

Furthermore, Cameron’s pronouncement has been roundly condemned by the Ramadhan Foundation whose Chief Executive Mohammed Shafiq commented as follows earlier today:

The Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Government are once again using British Muslims as a political football to score cheap points to appear tough. There are three million Muslims in this country and the Prime Minister chooses to focus on a very small minority of extremists when clearly the majority of British Muslims reject extremism.

The Ramadhan Foundation has been clear for many years that we face an increased risk from terrorism and an ideology of hatred, the best way to confront it is to build support within Muslims and support the work done across the country and not lashing out and denigrating Muslims.

The irony of the Prime Minister calling for more resources to help migrants learn English when his Government cut the funding for English classes in 2011 has not been lost on many people.

This was a right wing, neo con Prime Minister delivering more of the same disgraceful stereotyping of British Muslims rather than focusing on the positive contribution of our faith and community he focuses on the extreme minority of issues which clearly is not representative.

Many in the British Muslim community will reject this neo con agenda and continue our work in confronting extremism and terrorism without the support of the Conservative Government.
2016 – the greenwash continues

16/01/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

Bristol’s wasted year as European Green Capital (posts passim) may be over, but the greenwash* continues, as shown by the advertising hoarding below by the side of the A4032 Easton Way, a dual carriageway blasted through this inner-city community in the late 1960s or early 1970s to speed motorists from one jam to another. To be more specific, the hoarding itself is conveniently situated next to the traffic lights by the Stapleton Road bus gate, where bored commuters can gawp at it waiting for the lights to change as they suffocate in their own traffic fumes and poison the rest of us.

Picture credit: StapletonRd

As can be seen from the photo, at least one local hasn’t fallen for the greenwash and has said so, pinpointing the source as the trousers of Bristol’s elected mayor. 🙂

The mayor – and the local authority he runs – had an ideal opportunity during Green Capital Year to tackle some of Bristol’s endemic problems, such as the chronic over-reliance on the motor car, abysmal public transport and the unending stream of litter and fly-tipping blighting the inner city, but decided to do very little on these matters, preferring instead to spend money on pointless art projects and mutual back-slapping events for the great and good.

* Greenwash (n.), a superficial or insincere display of concern for the environment that is shown by an organisation.
An evening’s poaching in Bristol

15/01/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics

My late mother Gladys grew up living next door to the village poacher – a gentleman now long departed called Tom Cook – in her childhood home of Blo’ Norton in Norfolk.

During my youth in Market Drayton, Shropshire, Derek Podmore – otherwise known as Poddy the Poacher – was another character one encountered who achieved a certain notoriety. At one stage this notoriety reached national level when he featured on the centre pages of the now defunct News of the World after breaking into the Duke of Bedford’s safari park at Woburn Abbey one night and shooting milord’s bison… for a bet.

I was therefore very pleased to learn that Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) is organising a talk on poaching by Steve Mills at 7.00 p.m. on Thursday 28th January at Hydra Books in Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EZ (map).

Entitled “Poaching in the South West: The Berkeley Case“, Steve’s talk will cover the contents of his recent BRHG pamphlet “Poaching in the South West“, which considers the poaching wars in rural areas in the 18th and 19th Centuries and the arms race conducted between the poaching gangs, landowners and gamekeepers. He will also look at the development of the “poaching” laws in the period and the famous Berkeley Case.

William Hemsley, The Young Poacher (1874). Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

More information on Steve Mills’ pamphlet here.
Bristol Mayor wins greenwash award

09/01/2016 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

As a fitting end to Bristol’s year as European Green Capital, Mayor George Ferguson has won the Greenwash Award in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs awards for 2015.

From your correspondent’s vantage point in the inner city, it has to be said that Bristol’s year as Europe’s beacon of best environmental practice has hardly been crowned with glory, with money wasted on pointless art projects, widespread wildlife habitat destruction and the continuing blight of fly-tipping.

Will George Ferguson be collecting his award in person from Lord Gnome? 😉
Home Office defers plans to cut interpreters’ pay

28/12/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

Today’s Guardian reports that the Home Office has postponed its plans to cut the pay of more than 2,000 interpreters from 1st January 2016. This comes in the wake of a threatened boycott from Home Office interpreters (posts passim), which could cause chaos in the running of the UK’s immigration system.

According to The Guardian, the Home Office has confirmed that any plans to cut pay will be deferred at least until February while negotiations with the interpreters take place. Considering that Home Office interpreters have not had a pay rise since 2002 (they get a basic £16/hr. on weekdays and slightly more at weekends. Ed.) and the Home Office’s desire to cut what is already fairly meagre pay do not bode well for those negotiations.

A meeting lasting more than two hours took place between interpreters and the Home Office on 21st December. At the meeting, Home Office civil servants warned the interpreters against speaking to the media in a blatant disregard of the interpreters’ rights under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998. A further meeting between the Home Office and interpreters is planned for the middle of January.

The Home Office stated as follows after the 21st December meeting: “Following our meeting with the interpreters on 21st December, we intend to defer implementation of this change at least until 1st February 2016 to allow us time to give proper considerations to the views and opinions expressed.”

Given the government’s arrogant refusal to listen to anyone besides its donors and beneficiaries, it looks like the next linguistic sacrifices on Whitehall’s altar of austerity will be Home Office interpreters, following on from the Ministry of Justice’s interpreters, the overwhelming majority of whom refused to work for the abysmal rates offered by Capita Translation & Interpreting (posts passim) and have been boycotting court and tribunal work for the last couple of years.
PI4J writes to Home Office on reduced interpreter pay rates

24/12/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J), the umbrella group representing over 2,200 NRPSI registered and qualified interpreters working in 135 languages, has written to the Home Office’s Central Interpreters Unit in Liverpool regarding the proposed pay cut for Home Office interpreters which is due to come into effect on 1st January 2016 (posts passim).

The text of PI4J’s letter is reproduced below.

Central Interpreters Unit
Interpreter Operations Unit
UK Visas & Immigration
The Capital
New Hall Place
Liverpool
L3 9PP

By Email: CIU@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

21 December 2015

Dear Sir/Madam,

Re: Introduction of reduced rates of Home Office interpreters’ pay from 1st January 2016

Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J) is an umbrella group representing over 2,240 interpreters
from both the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI) and the National Union of British Sign Language Interpreters (NUBSLI). Our aim is to work with government to ensure the quality of interpreting available to the Justice System and in the Public Sector.

Reliable communication provided by qualified professional interpreters and translators is an essential resource which ensures that justice and human rights are upheld for non-English speakers and deaf people. This is put at risk if standards are dropped and quality is sacrificed.

On 20th November 2015 interpreters received a notice regarding a reduction in rates to due to take place on all bookings undertaken on behalf of the Home Office (HO), including UK Visas & Immigration, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement and HM Passport Office and any other bookings made through Interpreter Operations Unit, from 1st January 2016 onwards.

PI4J is extremely concerned about this decision to slash interpreters’ rates of pay, without any
consultation with or input from interpreters and their representative bodies.

This decision will most certainly have serious implications for the supply of competent, qualified professional interpreters to the Home Office. These interpreters have provided ongoing linguistic support and expertise to the Home Office over the years, including in many rare and hard-to-find languages.

Interpreters have demonstrated in the last four years that they can and will refuse to work for low rates set by so-called ‘market forces’, thereby significantly reducing the pool of qualified interpreters and translators available to work in the public services.

This is evidenced by the detrimental decline within the Ministry of Justice’s Court Interpreting Service since they outsourced to a private agency in 2012. We assume that you are aware of the extensive coverage in the media regarding the subsequent disruption and chaos visited upon the courts and the delays and collapse of court cases, resulting in an enormous waste of time and money and two Parliamentary hearings (see below links).

PI4J has been at the forefront of the professional interpreters’ campaign against the unacceptable lowering of standards and quality in public service.

The standard of interpretation is fundamental to allow access to a fair hearing and justice for vulnerable minorities in the asylum and immigration system and to assist enforcement agencies in the prevention and detection of serious crime. They must be afforded equal access to the highest levels of linguistic support.

Standards must include minimum professional qualifications for Public Service Interpreters (PSI) and BSL/English Interpreters, Deaf interpreters and Sign Language translators, to include mandatory NRPSI/NRCPD/SASLI registration and independent regulation.

Without these safeguards, access to justice will be denied and human rights and race relations will be jeopardised.

In addition, we reiterate that in order to attract and retain qualified and experienced professional interpreters and language professionals, equitable and sustainable terms and conditions need to be put in place.

Professional interpreters invest substantial time, effort and money to gain and maintain their skills. The proposed cut means that Home Office interpreting work will become part of the low-paying industries.

It is important to point out that there has not been an increase in the Home Office interpreting rates for many years now. They were further eroded by inflation and the growing cost of living in the UK, especially in areas such as London. In addition, failure to provide reimbursement for travel time under 3 hours each way and travel expenses up to 100 miles, particularly in view of the remote locations of many of the Home Office and detainee centres, make the rates even more unattractive.

Remuneration must reflect the fact that these are gross hourly rates for self-employed interpreters, liable to pay Income Tax and National Insurance, who have no pension, holiday or sick pay, and no job security.

The impact of the cuts places interpreters’ livelihoods at risk and will mean that public service interpreting will no longer be a viable career. As skilled professionals they will seek to earn a better living in other sectors.

This in turn will result in reduced quality of language services and a back-log to a system which is already struggling.

Full support of professional interpreters and appropriate terms & conditions is the only way forward to ensure the quality and success of any future arrangements for the provision of language services in the public service sectors and to avoid a market exit.

In the interest of all involved and the system itself, we urge you to reconsider this troubling and counterproductive decision.

Yours faithfully,

Klasiena Slaney
For and on behalf of the Professional Interpreters for Justice

Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J) Member Organisations:
Association of Police and Court Interpreters (APCI) – chairman@apciinterpreters.org.uk
Cymdeithas Cyfieithwyr Cymru; (CCC) – geraint@cyfieithwyrcymru.org.uk
Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) – chiefexec@iti.org.uk
National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI) – chairman@nrpsi.org.uk
National Union of Professional Interpreters and Translators, part of Unite the Union (NUPIT)
– nupit@unitetheunion.org
National Union of British Sign Language Interpreters part of Unite the Union (NUBSLI)
– branchsecretary@nubsli.com
Society of Official Metropolitan Interpreters UK Ltd (SOMI) – board@somiukltd.com
The Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) – keith.moffitt@ciol.org.uk

Links:
Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J), includes links to Parliamentary hearings and dossiers of failings
RPSI Linguist Lounge and Professional Interpreters’ Alliance, collected news reports about the outsourcing of public service interpreting in the UK
National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI)
National Registers of Communication Professionals working with Deaf and Deafblind People (NRCPD)
Scottish body for training and qualifying British Sign Language interpreters (SASLI)
National Union of British Sign Language Interpreters (NUBSLI)
Statement by leaders of Fair Payment Campaign for HO interpreters

22/12/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

The leaders of the Fair Payment Campaign for Home Office Interpreters have issued the statement below in response to the Home Office’s plan to cut their pay with effect from 1st January 2016 (posts passim). The statement originally appeared on Linguist Lounge.

The Fair Payment Campaign for Home Office Interpreters resulted from a notice they received in November 2015 in relation to a reduction in rates due to take place on all bookings undertaken on behalf of the Home Office, including UK Visas & Immigration, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement and HM Passport Office and any other bookings made through Interpreter Operations Unit, from 1st January 2016 onwards.

Professional qualified Home Office interpreters are standing up against the proposed cuts to our already meagre fees which have been unchanged in at least 13 years. While cuts are being proposed, we contend that we have in fact been subsidising the Home Office over the years by the lack of increase in our fees.

Many interpreters and their supporters have already written to the Home Office Central Interpreters’ Unit expressing their dismay and opposition to these cuts in rates which were already much eroded through inflation, and mean that it will no longer be feasible for them to continue working in this field.

This will result in a diminishing pool of qualified, experienced and vetted interpreters for the Home Office, detrimental both to them but especially so to the great number of vulnerable people who depend on reliable interpreting services to put their cases across since they are unable to do so themselves. Their lives may be at stake. The right to a fair hearing is enshrined in international human rights law.

As a result of our letters and petition, campaign leaders have been invited to meet with CIU senior managers on Monday 21st December 2015. We shall keep colleagues updated as to the outcome of that meeting.

We shall be listening to what they say, re-iterating the contents of our petition letter and also making a point to stand firm on those points.

We have it on good authority that the strength and unity of our campaign stands us in good stead: our unity is our strength.

We shall capitalise on this fact and we must not forget the fiasco with the Ministry of Justice outsourcing of Court Interpreting Services to a private agency in 2012, which resulted in many qualified interpreters declining to continue working in that sector and consequently the lowering of standards and quality of services, causing the delay and collapse of many court cases, as can be verified by the extensive media coverage about this matter which can be found on this Linguist Lounge.

We have collected hundreds of signatures and many interpreters are still contacting us to join the Campaign.

We have the support of non-Home Office interpreters, translators and non-linguists. Some of these supporters have also written to CIU about their dismay, disappointment and disgust at what is being proposed.

The Fair Payment Campaign for Home Office Interpreters also has a social media presence on both Twitter and Facebook.
Sign petition to help save RiL

21/12/2015 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

In the never-ending austerity drive, the government is now threatening to cut funding to Routes into Languages, a vital resource for language learning in the UK.

Language learning in the UK has lagged behind other countries – particularly other EU member states – for as long as I can remember and looks likely to get worse if this latest funding cut goes through.

A petition has been organised on the UK Government and Parliament petition website. The petition’s text reads as follows:

Routes into Languages (RiL) works with schools and colleges to promote language learning. It works with teachers to develop and roll out innovative projects such as Mother Tongue Other Tongue and the Foreign Language Spelling Bee which benefit students and motivate them to learn languages.

Routes into Languages has worked tirelessly across the country to develop a range of regional and national networks to support schools and teachers to be innovative, raise students’ aspirations and make the case for language learning.

To lose this resource would be devastating, the RiL Spelling Bee alone involved 77,000 Year 7 students last year and this is only one example of the work that Routes does to offer free opportunities to all schools.

Please sign the petition to change this decision.

At the time I signed, some 6,000 signatures had been added to the petition.

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