politics

  • Capita interpreter dispensed with in trial

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Reposted from RPSI Linguist Lounge.

    Marisa Allman writes:

    We started a 3 day hearing on 25th June with my client giving evidence via a Capita interpreter. To begin with she was unfamiliar with the process for taking the oath, simply reading it to the witness and asking for confirmation.

    It then quickly became apparent from the answers to questions posed that the witness was not being asked the question as it had been put in English. After about 40 minutes of questions the other party who was also Punjabi speaking indicated that the interpreter was not interpreting either the question or the response correctly. My own interpreter confirmed this. The witness also complained that the interpreter was confusing her. A decision was taken to dispense with that interpreter and put in a request for another, who arrived at 3:15. The first day of the hearing was therefore effectively lost.

    I can also tell you that in January or February this year I was involved in a case where the Turkish, unrepresented, father had travelled from Moldova for a final hearing. The interpreter called in sick on the morning of the hearing and Capita were unable to provide a replacement. My instructing solicitor was willing and able to find a replacement from another agency but this was not permissible because of the contract with Capita. No hearing took place, the hearing had to be adjourned to May.

  • Save Felix Road Adventure Playground

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    Never having had children, my contact with local play facilities has been limited. However, I do remember having a lovely conversation about the history of Bristol’s Easton district with the late local historian Lionel Ellery a couple of decades ago at Felix Road Adventure Playground.

    The adventure playground itself is sited on what was once the north coalyard of Easton Colliery, which operated from 1824 until 1911. From 1913 to 1972 the adventure playground then site served as a stone yard for Bristol building firm Cowlin.

    Felix Road Adventure Playground was established in 1972 by a group of local parents concerned that their children should have a space to play.

    However, its future is now under threat due to funding cuts by Bristol City Council, meaning it can only open for 2 days a week.

    A petition has been organised to secure the playground’s future. You can sign it online here.

    Paper versions of the petition have been left at these places for signature:

    • Easton Business Centre;
    • EMAP (Action for Children);
    • Easton Community Centre;
    • The Plough;
    • The Jolly Roger;
    • The Queens Head;
    • The Olive Grove Cafe;
    • Cafe Joanna, Chelsea Road;
    • Totally Toys, Gloucester Road; and
    • Playful, Gloucester Road.
    image of Felix Rd Adventure Playground
    Felix Rd Adventure Playground

    The petition needs 3,500 signatures to trigger a debate of the matter in full council.

    What is particularly galling about this funding cut is that Felix Road is located in Bristol’s Lawrence Hill ward, reputedly the most deprived council ward in South West England.

    Meanwhile, play facilities in some more prosperous parts of the city are not having their funding cut to the same extent.

    It is believed that St Paul’s Adventure Playground in St Agnes – an area with similar deprivation to Felix Road – is also under the same threat due to funding cuts.

    Why are Bristol’s poorest districts always treated so badly?

    It’s almost as if the city’s great and good couldn’t care less about those not so fortunate as themselves.

  • Free software a priority in education says French parliament

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    Marianne - symbol of the French RepublicThe Senate and the National Assembly, the two houses of the French parliament, have agreed to make free software a priority for education, according to Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website. This Wednesday last the National Assembly confirmed a proposal by the Senate urging higher education institutions to give preference to free and open source software. However, the plan still needs to be accepted by the government.

    France’s senators have been urging the government to make free and open source software a priority in education for the past 2 months. In response, the government has indicated that it is prepared to encourage schools and universities in the use of free software and open document formats. However, this is not enough for the Upper House, which wants free software to be mandatory.

    Last month senators unsuccessfully tried adding free software use to plans for reorganising state schools; this week the Senate included it in proposals for higher education and research.

    The first proposal was watered down by the government when it came up for discussion in the National Assembly. Senators are hoping to succeed this time as their plan has now been accepted by a joint committee of both houses. The proposal will be voted on next week.

    April, a French free software advocacy group, is following developments closely and has welcomed the Senate’s recognition of the importance of free software. “We hope that the government is not going to make any new attempt at reversing this encouragement.”

    Unfortunately, the French government is resisting the Senate’s push for free software, alleging that it breaks European procurement rules (really? That’s a strange interpretation of those rules. Ed.). April says such a requirement is perfectly legal. “It was validated by the Conseil d’État (French administrative supreme court) in its decision of 30th September 2011. We urge the French government to publish a detailed legal analysis.”

    Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

  • That’ll lean you!

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media, Tech

    This blog has written before about politicians’ scrapes with technology and their apparent inability to cope with it (posts passim).

    Below is a screenshot of a tweet (since deleted) by Andrew Selous, the Tory MP for South West Bedfordshire commenting on Chancellor of the Exchequer Gideon Osborne’s comprehensive spending review in the House of Commons earlier today.

    Tweet by Andrew Selous MP
    Tweet by Andrew Selous MP

    Andrew should also know that the first rule about criticising others’ use of language is to make sure one’s own is impeccable (but they probably omitted to teach him that at Eton. Ed.).

    Hat tip: Phil Gibson.

  • Judge gets a relative to interpret as Capita cancels an interpreter

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Reposted from RPSI Linguist Lounge.

    Imran Majid writes:

    I’ve been stuck in court all day partly due to another cock-up by Capita. The District Judge was in a dilemma whether to carry on refusing to hear a bail application in the absence of an interpreter. This is the 2nd day, Capita cancelled an interpreter yesterday and then failed to send an Arabic interpreter today. The District Judge got an unqualified relative to interpret. So well done Grayling, you’ve saved the government some money there.

  • Genoa to use open source ‘wherever possible’

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics

    Genoa coat of armsThe City of Genoa in Italy is now encouraging the use of free and open source software and is saving local taxpayers more than €100,000 per year, Lettera43 reports.

    The Municipality of Genoa has decided to promote the use of free software and open source to save more than €100,000 a year. The council has already begun to use free software for services such as email, civil registry (births, marriages and deaths) and its intranet.

    In addition, trials are underway in nursery schools with e-learning and the use of PCs with free software and new groupware tools.

    “Free software, basically free, is a software in which the source code is accessible to all, editable by all,” said councillor Isabella Lanzone. “It will help us to free ourselves from the monopolies of the big computer companies and limit local government costs.”

    Furthermore, Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, writes that Genoa will use open source ‘wherever possible’. The council is to start using the image manipulation tool Gimp, document archive solutions 7Zip and PDFCreator, as well as testing the use of Quantum GIS, Kosmo, Postgres and PostGIS for its Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

    In addition, the council has announced it will be using Open Document Format as the standard format for its electronic documents.

    Finally, the city is to use Linux for a number of PCs meant to be used by council staff members that do not have access to a computer by default to enable them to access the council’s personnel resources.

  • The snoopers are already here – without a charter

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    image of eye staring back from screenAs part of Bristol Wireless, I’ve been closely involved in campaigning against the UK government’s plans for mass communications surveillance under the Communications Data Bill, also known as the “Snooper’s Charter” by its opponents (posts passim).

    It now appears that all this work might have been in vain. Amongst the revelations that have come to light as a result of US whistleblower Edward Snowden‘s disclosures to The Guardian and The Washington Post was the news that for many years, GCHQ, the British state’s eavesdroppers, have been running a programme called Tempora, which has been hoovering up internet traffic and communications data from undersea cables before they make landfall in the UK.

    GCHQ has been sucking up this data from millions – if not billions – of internet and telecommunications users at the rate of 600 mn. phone calls and 39 mn. gigabytes of data a day.

    In spite of this damning evidence, Foreign Secretary William Hague has been trotting out the same old “if you’ve nothing to hide, nothing to fear” mantra. I have some advice for Mr Hague: try telling that to the family of Stephen Lawrence, who have just discovered 20 years after his killing that part of the British state called the Metropolitan Police tried to smear and discredit the family after they’d mishandled Stephen’s murder investigation.

    However, there is a bit of positive news that has emerged today: Liberty – the human rights organisation – has today announced that it has issued a claim against the British intelligence services over their suspected involvement in the PRISM and Project Tempora privacy scandal.

    Liberty believes that its electronic communications – and those of its staff – may have been unlawfully accessed by the likes of the Security Services and GCHQ.

    Liberty will be ask the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) whether the British intelligence services have used PRISM and/or Tempora to bypass the formal UK legal process which regulates the accessing of personal material. The human rights group has issued a claim in the IPT, contending that rights under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act (the right to respect for a person’s private and family life, home and correspondence) have been breached.

    Furthermore, Liberty is also concerned that the British Intelligence Services have used PRISM and Tempora to evade legal checks and balances and monitor people in the UK and may be treating internet communications as international rather than domestic to evade closer scrutiny and receiving material from their US partners to evade scrutiny altogether.

    James Welch, Legal Director for Liberty, said: “Those demanding the Snooper’s Charter seem to have been indulging in out-of-control snooping even without it – exploiting legal loopholes and help from Uncle Sam.”

    Finally, all this Anglo-Saxon surveillance has not gone down too well with some on the European mainland. Earlier this week, German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger wrote the following in the international edition of Der Spiegel:

    The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is. In a democratic constitutional state, security is not an end in itself, but serves to secure freedom.

    Quite.

    Contrast that civilised view with the control freakery displayed by UK Home Secretary Theresa May.

    This is a revised version of a post originally written for Bristol Wireless.

  • Australian government shelves data retention scheme

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    Big Brother is watching you posterIn the midst of all the recent revelations about the US National Security Agency’s Prism surveillance programme and GCHQ’s Tempora snooping on telecommunications and internet traffic, comes a small but welcome bit of good news. the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a controversial Australian government data retention scheme that would have required Australians’ internet and telephone activities to be stored for up to 2 years for law enforcement purposes has been shelved by the federal government after an inquiry recommended that the scheme should not go ahead.

    The committee looking into the proposal as part of an inquiry into national security delivered its report on Monday. Most of those making submissions to the inquiry did not support the proposal. The federal police and the Tax Office were among the few who did. The report was scathing about the lack of information provided by former Attorney-General Nicola Roxon and her department, saying this had hampered the inquiry.

    Peter Lee, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association, said: “It’s not so much a win for industry but more a win for commonsense,” whilst John Stanton, chief executive of the Communications Alliance, said the government’s response was “good news” for consumers and the industry.

    After the report’s release, Australia’s current Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the government would not pursue data retention legislation “at this time”.

  • One week in May

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    image of gilded statue of Justice on top of Old BaileyTo give an illustration of the chaos being caused by Capita Translation & Interpreting’s mismanagement of the courts and tribunals contract (posts passim), below is a record of the cases disrupted in the final week of May by failures to provide interpreters at all or provide them on time.

    How much longer can Helen Young MP continue to assert that all is well with the courts and tribunals interpreting contract?

    31/05
    Guildford Crown Court

    Details:Case listed for sentence. Prosecution & defence counsel, defendant and both complainants were all in attendance by 9.45am. However, the Arabic speaking interpreter was nowhere to be seen.

    Capita sent a telephone message via a note to the judge at 10.40 am. It explained that the assigned interpreter “had informed Capita last night that he would not be able to attend as he was double booked”. Capita left a telephone message that it would be able to provide an interpreter for 2.30 pm, some 5 hours after the due time. The defendant was left to wait in custody.

    Reported by Kuljeet Singh Dobe, Barrister, Old Bailey Chambers

    31/05
    Gloucester Crown Court

    Details: 3 Romanian nationals for adjourned Plea & Case Management Hearing (PCMH). No interpreter. His Honour Judge Tabor QC was scathing in his comments about Capita.

    Reported by Tim Burrows, Iacopi Palmer Solicitors LLP, Gloucester

    29/05
    Birmingham Crown Court

    Court 1 – sitting at 12:00 pm
    THE HONOURABLE MRS JUSTICE COX DBE
    Trial (Part Heard)

    T20127199 KREZOLEK Mariusz 20CV0147212
    LUCZAK Magdelena
    20CV0147212

    Details: Case delayed as Polish interpreter not provided by Capita for a child murder trial.

    29/05
    Guildford Crown Court

    Details: Capita have failed to arrange Vietnamese interpreter for Plea & Case Management Hearing PCMH at Guildford today. Case has to be adjourned. Waste of court time/public money. Judge very angry with Capita and says he will demand a written explanation and financial penalty.

    Reported by Guy Bowden (@BarristerGuy)

    29/05
    Leeds Magistrates Court

    Details: Trial at Leeds Magistrates Court aborted due to lack of Polish interpreter. Booked last month. Defendant had come from Poland for trial; witnesses from Slough.

    Reported by Sarah Greenan, Barrister (@Sarah_Zenith)

    29/05
    Derby Crown Court

    Details: Case of R v Thang Vu – Vietnamese interpreter booked through Capita. Barrister reports: “None attended but we all waited all day for one to appear. ALS/Capita contacted several times by the court but no interpreter. Defendants in custody. Case put off to next day. Court booked their own interpreter and we got on the next day.”

    28/05
    Norwich Crown Court

    Details: Case: R v Morkūnas T20127248

    The above case was listed at 9.30 am for Custody Time Limit hearing. A Lithuanian interpreter – booked through Capita – should have been there for a conference at 9.00 am, but did not arrive until 10.30 am. The learned Judge did not appear to believe the explanation of the interpreter being booked for 10.30 am and said enquiries would be made.

    The case was called on twice but the court could not proceed as no interpreter was present. The explanation given by Capita was that she, the interpreter, had been booked for 10.30. No member of the Norwich CC staff would have made a booking for 10.30 am as it is established over many years that CTL hearings are at 9.30 and need to be preceded by a conference. The knock-on effect was that the trial, in which I, Defence Counsel, was committed in an adjoining court, was delayed. Under the old system there were a number of excellent Lithuanian interpreters who lived within 40 minutes of the court, were familiar with its practices, and have never, in my experience, been late.

    Reported by Defence Barrister.

    24/05
    Newport Crown Court

    Details: Andrew(@Andjones1000) reports on Twitter: “Vietnamese Defendant not able to be sentenced as no interpreter arrived at court. Efficiency???”

    23/05
    Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court
    Court Room 10

    Details:

    Case Name: O’Reilly + 11: T20127262; T20127250; T20120479; T20127269; T20127660; T20127381; T20127253;
    T20120636.

    Andrew Stephen O Reilly; Byron James Milne; Ceri Wilmot; Edwin Gorlee; Jason Lee Seale; Michael John Connolly; Sam Omidi; Steven John Petrie; Theodorus Van-Gelder; Wayne Braund

    Two-day sentencing hearing listed to start on 23 May at 10.30 am. Ten defendants (one of which needed a Dutch interpreter) and eleven barristers left waiting in court packed with public and press as Capita fail to provide Dutch interpreter. “This is what happens when you sell off services to the cheapest bidder”, says barrister.

    The interpreter booked by Capita was ‘on holiday’ and there had been a diary error. The Judge requested Capita come to court at 2pm to explain what had happened; they didn’t and he described the situation as ‘outrageous’. Capita appeared before the Judge the next day.

    Prosecution counsel: Mr Gary Woodall
    Defence counsel for defendant Van Gelder – Ms Gatto
    Defence counsel for defendant Gorlee – Ms Thompson

    All three barristers from 9, St Johns Street Chambers.

    20/05
    Wolverhampton Crown Court

    Details: Solicitor-Advocate Malcolm Fowler (Dennings Solicitors) reports: “Problems on stilts with, in particular, Wolverhampton Crown Court one, with one case from Friday put off for Capita to show cause within 14 days as to why they should not show cause over no Vietnamese interpreter.

    Today, no Polish interpreters for a two handed case put off until tomorrow and the Judge calling on Capita for wasted costs or at least to show cause.

    Before the Resident Judge at the same court there was no Vietnamese interpreters for five defendants which has caused a trial due to start today to have to be adjourned.”

  • MPs queue up to call for Capita’s interpreting contract to be axed

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of Parliament's crowned portcullisIn a debate in parliament on 20th June this week (posts passim) Members of Parliament queued up to condemn the Ministry of Justice’s handling of the £42 mn. annual contract awarded to Capita Translation & Interpreting (formerly ALS) for court interpreting services, which is still failing after 500 days.

    Liberal Democrat Sir Alan Beith MP, who is Chairman of the House of Commons Justice Select Committee, said that it was ‘deplorable’ how court staff were ‘strongly pressed by the Government not to co-operate’ with his Committee’s enquiry.

    After Justice Minister Helen Grant MP (who was not supported by any Conservative MP in the debate) had given a prepared statement, Sir Alan said the Minister “will not have convinced any of us that the situation is acceptable and sustainable… The Minister will never convince us that the savings figures take adequate account of the additional cost to the system.”

    Andy Slaughter MP, Shadow Justice Minister, remarked that the Justice Minister had been defending the “shambles” and was the only party not to listen to the advice of Professional Interpreters for Justice, the umbrella group which represents ten interpreter organisations. He said: “The Ministry of Justice did not want the full facts to emerge. This is not the end of the matter.”

    He said the Department had been unwilling to help him with his own investigations because “they know the devastating facts; after 500 days [of the contract] about half the courts are still finding their own interpreters. The Ministry of Justice is not acknowledging that it’s getting worse. The costs of failure of the contract must now be investigated.”

    Geoffrey Buckingham, Chairman of the Association of Police and Court Interpreters (APCI), says: “Professional Interpreters for Justice was vindicated during this debate and we were delighted to hear the Members of Parliament recount the contract’s failures and highlight where the Justice Minister has gone wrong in misleading statements about performance and savings.”

    Alan Johnson MP – a former Home Secretary – said: “This is a caricature, but it seems that someone who knows a bit of holiday Spanish can now come in and do a job in the courts, which has proved to be disastrous”. He remarked that he had never known three reports (from the National Audit Office, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee and House of Commons Justice Committee) “to be so consistent in their condemnation of a Government policy.”

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