politics

  • Ministry of Justice is not the Ministry of Fun

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics

    An interesting fact emerged today in an article in Inside Time (masthead: the National Newspaper for Prisoners. Ed.) about the mess that Capita Translation & Interpreting’s making of the interpreting contract it has with the Ministry of Justice (posts passim).

    The final paragraph of the Inside Time article mentions last year’s Civil Service People Survey, according to which just 28% of MoJ staff had confidence in their senior management and only 32% said the department was well managed. Moreover, a mere 18% of staff felt changes to services were for the better and only 23% said that change was well managed.

    What was even more surprising to me – and I hope to any other reasonable person – was the response of the MoJ’s spokesperson to these damning verdicts of the Ministry, as follows:

    These results show that staff are growing in confidence in the leadership and management of change in the department.

    What are they putting in the senior management’s and ministers’ tea at 102 Petty France, London SW1? I think we should be told.

    Hat tip: Yelena of Talk Russian

  • New figures show court interpreting service getting worse

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of scales of justiceEarlier this week The Law Society Gazette reported that the court interpreting service provided by Capita Translating & Interpreting (formerly ALS) is getting worse, contrary to the emollient assurances given to MPs by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Minister for Victims and the Courts, Helen Grant MP, that the service is has improved and is continuing to improve.

    Capita Translating & Interpreting has failed to reach its performance target after a year, resulting in delays in thousands of court cases.

    Figures released by the Ministry of Justice show that the performance actually fell in January 2013 the rate of complaints about the service has increased since August 2013.

    For the first year of the contract, i.e. up to 31st January 2013, Capita Translating & Interpreting’s overall success rate was 90%, compared with a target of 98% in the contract.

    During the year under review, Capita Translating & Interpreting received 131,153 requests for language services; these involved 259 different languages. Eleven per cent of these requests “were cancelled by the requesting customer”, i.e. either HM Courts & Tribunal Service or the National Offender Management Service. Of the remaining 116,330 requests, 104,932 were fulfilled or the requesting customer failed to attend, equivalent to a success rate of 90%.

    In its statistical bulletin, the MoJ said that “presenting a single success rate does not provide the whole picture on the changes in the operation of the contract over the first 12 months” (that sounds like an excuse to me. Ed.). In addition, the MoJ is claiming that the fall in performance coincided with the contractor reducing the mileage rate paid to interpreters and Helen Grant MP is sticking to her guns with the improbable claim that the contract with Capita Translating & Interpreting is saving taxpayers £15 mn. per annum.

    table of Capita T&I's performance for the year to 31.0.1.13
    Capita T&I’s performance for the year to 31.0.1.13. Source: Ministry of Justice

    Hat tip: Bristol Red

  • Surveillance state: coming to a recycling centre near you?

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    image of ANPR camera
    ANPR camera, now added to B&NES recycling centres
    Well, it is if you happen to be (un)fortunate enough to live in the unitary authority of Bath & Northeast Somerset (aka B&NES), according to the BBC news website.

    The council has installed ANPR cameras at its 3 recycling centres at Pixash in Keynsham Midland Road in Bath and Old Welton in Radstock to prevent callers from outside the district from using the facilities.

    It has informed residents of the move via its website, as follows:

    From 2 April 2013 you will need a FREE electronic Recycling Centre Resident’s Permit. You will not be able to use any of three our Recycling Centres with out [sic] this.

    According to the council, the move is necessary as it could not afford to subsidise the cost of disposing of waste belonging to people who live elsewhere. The council also states somewhat disingenuously that residents’ council tax pays for them to dispose of their recycling, but somehow omits to state that the council earns income from selling stuff that can be recycled.

    Nevertheless, it is asking its residents to sacrifice their privacy – and hence their liberty – to recycle or dispose of domestic waste.

    Benjamin Franklin had something to say about sacrificing liberty. Writing in 1775, he stated:

    They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

    A loss of liberty to save a few bob on the rates? 🙁 Whatever next?

  • Cyprus banks crisis – latest

    Steve WoodsOddities, Politics

    Today the banks in Cyprus re-opened after being shut for nearly 2 weeks and the mainstream media are reporting that severe restrictions are being placed on bank customers.

    These restrictions are already being felt by ordinary Cypriots, as the picture below shows.

    image of Cyprus bank ATM
    You want HOW much?

    No further comment is required.

  • Ministry of Justice and Capita breach Magna Carta

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    The administration of justice in England has a long history. Nearly 800 years ago, on 15th June 1215, King John and 25 barons of the realm signed the Magna Carta Libertatum or The Great Charter of the Liberties of England (otherwise simply known as Magna Carta) in a field on an island in the Thames at Runnymede with 12 bishops and 20 abbots as witnesses.

    If you’ve ever read it, you’ll know that Magna Carta is a curious hybrid of a document whose content ranges from the seemingly mundane, such as the removal of fish weirs on the rivers Thames and Medway, to such major legal concepts as trial by a jury of one’s peers and various rules for the administration of justice, which have been implemented by many other jurisdictions around the world, particularly those based on common law.

    Parts of Magna Carta are still in force today: you can see which (with relevant amendments) by reading the text in the UK Statute Database.

    image of 1 of 4 surviving original copies of Magna Carta, now in the British Library
    One of 4 surviving original copies of Magna Carta, now in the British Library

    What has Magna Carta to do with the Ministry of Justice and Capita? The answer is the disastrous contract for interpreting in courts and tribunals which the Ministry of Justice – in its limited wisdom – handed over to Capita Translating & Interpreting/ALS (posts passim).

    An English translation (the original text was drafted in Latin. Ed.) of Clause 40 of the original 1215 text reads:

    To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.

    If court proceedings cannot take place due to unqualified interpreters being sent to court by Capita T&I, or interpreters not showing up for court assignments, that sounds very much like justice being delayed and could even be bordering on refusal. By their cavalier attitude to the administration of justice, the Ministry of Justice (perhaps it should be renamed the Ministry of Injustice. Ed.) and Capita T&I are showing their contempt for eight centuries of English law.

  • Capita sends unqualified interpreter to Old Bailey

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    This blog never ceases to be amazed at the mismanagement of the courts and tribunals interpreting service by Capita Translating & Interpreting/ALS (posts passim).

    Under the title ‘Judge corrects a Capita Interpreter’, Linguist Lounge recently published the post by ‘Stranger’ quoted below, which is reposted here with the kind permission of the site administrators.

    At court I fall into conversation with a Capita interpreter. She is North African and does Arabic. Prepared to do French too but only in simple cases. She tells Capita this but still gets sent to do a job at Bailey. The judge was French speaker and, she said, corrected her translation several times. She was greatly embarrassed and told Capita they shouldn’t have sent her. They told her that she should withdraw her name for French in that case. But they knew she wasn’t qualified for French, yet sent her to the court that deals with the most serious criminal matters.

    If you are sending someone to the Bailey you know it is not to interpret for a defendant who has been caught speeding. She says that the admin staff at Capita didn’t have a clue what they were doing. She seemed very unhappy with her “employers”.

    As pointed out by the original author, the Old Bailey doesn’t handle speeding offences. It is better known under its official title of the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales and deals with major criminal cases from Greater London and, in exceptional cases, from other parts of England and Wales. Were I the judge in that case, I would have had Capita Translating & Interpreting charged with contempt of court for not respecting the court’s authority.

  • UK Parliament: no open standards here

    Steve WoodsOpen Standards, Politics, Social Media, Tech

    Did you know House of Commons Select Committees only accept submissions in Microsoft’s proprietary formats?

    Today in my Twitter feed I read a tweet announcing the deadline for submissions to the Transport Select Committee for a new inquiry on local authority parking enforcement.

    Reading through the notes on the submission of written evidence, I was struck by the following:

    2. Evidence should be submitted by e-mail to transev@parliament.uk in Word or Rich Text format, with as little use of colour and images as possible. If you wish to submit written evidence to the Committee in another format you must contact a member of staff to discuss this.

    image of Parliament's crowned portcullis
    Parliament: we’re a Microsoft-only shop.
    Both Word and Rich Text format are Microsoft proprietary file formats. How long they remain readable is totally in the hands of a private American corporation whose first concern is making a return for its shareholders, not preserving the proceedings of Parliament and its committees for the benefit of future generations.

    For those future generations, I’d recommend that parliamentary select committees start accepting submissions in other, non-proprietary formats, such as plain text or open standards such as Open Document Format. The latter is an internationally accepted standard (ISO/IEC 26300:2006/Amd 1:2012) and is being widely adopted by other governments and official bodies (such as NATO, where ODF use is mandatory. Ed.) around the world for official document exchanges.

    Finally, the notes give no details any member of staff for the public to contact for submissions in other formats.

    Update: Since alerting the Transport Select Committee to this post via Twitter, I’ve received the following reply from them:

    Interesting post. We’re happy to accept other formats- and do – as long as we can process them using the software we have. We will certainly pass your points up the Committee Office chain to see if more can be done to accommodate this.

    Thanks, very much folks. I’ll await developments with interest.

  • Budget shocker: “one pence”

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Social Media, Tech

    Gidiot Osborne looking smarmyToday was a momentous day for George Gideon Oliver Osborne (aged 41 and three-quarters), a man who does Chancellor of the Exchequer impressions. Firstly, he joined Twitter. Needless to say, there was the usual warm Twitter welcome for politicians, as evidenced by the use of the hashtag #gidiot. Those using the hashtag were slightly more polite than other reactions to George’s embracing of Twitter.

    Secondly, it was also the day of the Budget. In summary there was very little to cheer about, except the abolition of the beer duty escalator.

    However, what made me cringe while listening to the Chancellor’s speech live on radio (apart from his whining, grating tone. Ed.) was his language: at one point near the end, I distinctly heard him refer to the amount of “one pence“.

    Now, George isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but one would at least expect the Chancellor of the Exchequer to know the difference between penny and pence.

    Since the end of the budget speech itself, BBC Radio 4 news readers have also reiterated Osborne’s ‘one pence’ blunder – repeatedly. 🙁

  • Capita now using criminals as court interpreters

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics

    image of scales of justiceThe rolling disaster that is the Ministry of Justice’s Framework Agreement for court interpreting is a story that just seems to keep on giving, especially in terms of bad news.

    On Friday the Northampton Chronicle carried a report from Northampton Crown Court where the judge branded Capita Translating and Interpreting as “hopelessly incompetent” (posts passim.

    Included in the piece is the following sentence:

    Mirela Watson, an Essex-based Romanian interpreter, said other issues nationally have included a trial collapsing because an under-qualified interpreter failed to interpret properly, and another where a crown court judge recognised an interpreter as a convicted prostitute.

    One is tempted to ask how did the judge know. 😉

  • UKIP if you want to

    Steve WoodsOddities, Politics

    The Europhobic United Kingdom Independence Party is always carping about how the European Union wastes money.

    They’ve now provided unequivocal evidence of the EU’s profligacy: here we see 2 UKIP MEPs snoozing their way through a debate in the European Parliament and thus not earning their allegedly gold-plated salaries.

    image of snoozing UKIP MEPs in Euro Parliament
    UKIP: snoring hard for Britain

    Some may accuse UKIP of hypocrisy; I couldn’t possibly comment. 😉

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