Chris Grayling is very good at his job.

"Nonsense!" shouts the crowd, "He has the reverse Midas touch and turns everything to shit."

I used to think this, up to and including messing up the railway franchises and the ferry contract with the company that owned no ferries, but after reading about his latest debacle (the botched 'privatisation' of probation services), the penny has dropped.

He is clearly bad at privatising things - but his job description isn't 'privatise things well', it is 'privatise things badly', and he is very good at that, a 100% track record so far. And anybody with half a brain must know that you cannot 'privatise' core functions of the state, like probation services, or indeed HM Land Registry.

That is the only rational explanation, people wail about the shocking cost to the taxpayer, but from the point of view of the contractors, the lawyers, the consultants and other middlemen, those are corresponding huge gains.

I assume that with all these things, the recipients make large donations to the Conservative Party and/or offer cost non-exec directorships to senior Conservative politicians, which is the object of the exercise from the point of view of Chris Grayling (and whichever Prime Ministers appointed him/didn't sack him).

Fun Online Polls: Influencing the goverment; HS2 vs student loan write-offs.

The results from last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which is the better strategy for influencing Labour or Tory policies?

Join the party and agitate from the inside - 11%
Vote for another party whose policies you agree with - 89%

Which is what I have observed. I'm relieved that so many agree. Thanks to all who took part.
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I know that it is silly to match receipts from particular taxes with particular items of government expenditure, but it's sometimes useful to do so to put things into perspective.

Last week, the Transport Secretary insisted that the white elephant vanity HS2 railway line would come in on time and on budget at £55.7 billion.

Most are agreed it is a waste of taxpayers' money, of benefit only to a very few (the construction companies and some landowners) and nobody in his right mind believes it will be on time and on budget. In fact, we know it won't, because the original budget set in 2010 was £32.7 billion.

The Tories then went on the offensive and claimed that it would "cost" £100 billion to write off student debts, forcing the innumerate Labour education spokeswoman into an embarrassing and unnecessary climb down. That's the nominal amount of the outstanding loans, but they will be collected via a graduate tax and lots will be written off, so what's relevant here is the net present value of the tax receipts, let's call it £60 billion in round figures.

So you could argue, future graduates are paying 9% extra income tax on income above the £21,000 allowance in order to fund HS2.

Which I hope most would agree is completely bonkers.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Glorious politician waffle.

From the BBC:

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said:

"Our new aviation strategy will look beyond the new runway at Heathrow and sets [sic] out a comprehensive long-term plan for UK aviation. It will support jobs and economic growth across the whole of the UK. Our vision puts the passenger at the heart of what we do, but also recognises the need to address the impacts of aviation on communities and the environment."

None of that has any tangible meaning whatsoever, it's the usual kitchen sink random list bollocks.

An actual expert gets to down to brass tacks:

Martin Rolfe, chief executive of NATS, said the consultation process could take between two and three years, "so millions and millions of people will have a say in aircraft flying over their house".

He told the BBC's Today programme: "Local communities are very obviously concerned about what more traffic might look like, but actually modernising [airspace] means we can keep aircraft higher for longer. "We can have them descend more steeply than they currently do because modern aircraft are more capable than the types of aircraft that were in service when this airspace was originally designed."

I'll mark him down for using the meaningless phrase "local communities" instead of just "people", but hey.

"Internet trolls face longer sentences"

From Revealed Tech:

Days after describing online abuse suffered by TV presenter Chloe Madeley as “crude and degrading”, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling told the Mail on Sunday that he was determined to “take a stand against a baying cyber-mob” and would allow magistrates (who can currently impose jail terms of up six months on internet trolls) to pass serious cases up to crown courts, who in turn would be able to impose maximum sentences of two years.

Is that all? So who are these naysayers doubting the ability of Chris to deliver to his timescale?

'The risk register is quite clear about what is involved. The 35 existing probation trusts are to be replaced by 21 government companies "delivering all functions subject to market competition", and the establishment of a new national public probation service to deliver the remaining 30% of the work involving public protection and high-risk offenders. It means transferring 18,000 employees to new organisations, reallocating 250,000 offender cases, recruiting 22 new management teams and merging more than 2,000 existing computer packages. All of this needs to be in place by October next year so that it is up and up and running by the May 2015 general election.

The justice minister, Lord McNally, told peers that Grayling intends to use existing powers in Labour's Offender Management Act of 2007 to "create and sell companies, and to transfer the delivery of a large proportion of the probation service to the private sector via contractual arrangements involving the formation and sale of a number of new community rehabilitation companies" '.

18,000 "new" private sector jobs, 18,000 "fewer" public servants.  On that basis alone this plan must surely be allowed to proceed, and without delay.   And as for the small matter of merging 2,000 existing computer packages, I am sure if a big enough carrot is dangled some private sector organisation with a proven track record will step up and deliver.

Chris Grayling to offer Chris Huhne a "rehabilitatory" post at the MoJ?

In a major speech to the Civitas think tank, Mr Grayling urged companies and the public sector - including the NHS - to hire convicted criminals.

And, asked by a charity for ex-offenders if he would consider taking on one in the Ministry of Justice he agreed it was right to ‘lead from the front’.

Mr Grayling said: "I'm very up for the idea of looking to see where we can find more educational or work opportunities for former offenders and of course we should lead from the front with that."

"Encouraging"? In what sense pray, Justice Secretary?

From the BBC:

Between September 2008 and March 2010 Peterborough had a reconviction rate of 41.6%, which was considerably higher than the national average of 37.3%, according to the MoJ figures. Since the new scheme began at the prison in September 2010 the reconviction rate has fallen to 39.2% in the period up to March 2012.

At Doncaster Prison while the overall trend for reoffending is down over time, results show its pilot has proved to be less successful since it was launched in October 2011. The re-conviction rate up to March 2012 was 41.1% - lower than the 41.6% rate between October 2009 and March 2010 and the rate of 46% in the period October 2008 to March 2009. But this was higher than the 39.8% recorded in the period October 2010 to March 2011".

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said the interim figures were "encouraging".

He couldn't possibly mean "I consider the snapshot statistics that I now have for one of them provides ample, irrefutable and compelling evidence for my bringing in my 'outsourced rehabilitation revolution' as quickly as possible, an intention I announced last October?"*:

"Peterborough, the model I'm looking at, is actually very encouraging indeed," he said.

The [Peterborough] scheme provided offenders with help as they prepared for release from jail and then access to services they needed outside prison, including housing, employment and financial services.

Grayling told a meeting hosted by the Civitas thinktank in London that the schemes opened up the market to rehabilitation providers in the voluntary and private sectors so they could innovate. He said a new approach was needed because of stubbornly high rates of reoffending.

"Britain's problem is less about offending and more about reoffending," he said, citing the ministry's new research.

* Daily Telegraph 22 October 2012 We will 'push ahead' with prisoner rehabilitation plans before pilot is finished, Grayling says

Mr Grayling said that he was so "encouraged" by what he had seen in Peterborough that he was giving the green light now to a national roll-out.

“Of course we aren’t “gagging” public servants

"they are completely free to express how brilliant our outsourcing schemes are in any arena they wish !” said a government spokesperson, seeking to rebut suggestions that the government was becoming increasingly heavy handed in its treatment of public servants who voice “negative” opinions about the government’s vital “corporate welfare” initiatives. 

The intervention had been sparked by an article in the Guardian newspaper concerning instructions issued to staff working in the National Offender Management Service – colloquially known as the Prison Service and Probation Service – warning them, on pains of disciplinary consequences up to and including dismissal, not to write blogs or issue comments via Twitter, nor to venture such opinions to journalists etc. criticising Chris Grayling’s plan for “outsourcing” the management and rehabilitation of 'low risk' offenders to “the usual suspects”.

Referring specifically to the planned “Offender rehabilitation” outsourcing the spokesperson explained that “This idea builds on Chris Grayling’s experiences at the DWP; where he was the Minister responsible for the Work Programme, which as everyone knows is a cracking success, with results so far indicating that it is close to half as effective as having no “Work Programme” at all.   

He has invited those organisations that have benefited from the Work Programme to bid to run “offender rehabilitation programmes for low level, low risk offenders” under similar arrangements.  The long term likelihood is that by doing this he is safeguarding the jobs of NOMS staff because the successful bidders will need people experienced in this sort of work and, rather than incur the expense of recruiting and training them to an acceptable required standard will probably themselves simply publish offers of “sub contracts” under the scheme that local Probation Services will be able to bid for – the “outsourced work being immediately re-insourced” if you will. 

This system is known to work because Atos, under the contract it has with the DWP for carrying out Work Capability Assessments, already re-insources some of this work to the NHS, and still manages to make a nice profit from the contract."

"Push through"

There was novel use of the expression in The Soaraway Sun recently, when they speculated about a cabinet reshuffle, and listed Chris Grayling as a potential winner on the grounds that he "has pushed through one of the Coalition's most ambitious projects - the Work Programme."

The phrase "push through" makes you think of achieving something difficult against a certain amount of resistance, doesn't it?* So heck knows what The Sun is playing at here. According to the Department of Work & Pensions, the Work Programme amounts to little more that politicians and senior civil servants passing large piles of taxpayer cash to privately owned companies (with whom no doubt the same politicians and senior civil servants will turn out have "close links" in due course) for very little in return.

* It is possible I suppose that they mean it in the VIZ sense, i.e. the Work Programme is a load of shit and Grayling has his fingers in it.

"Work for free or lose pension for THREE years"

From The Daily Mail:

Work unpaid or lose all your state pension for three years - this is the new message from the government to the long-term retired. Employment minister Chris Grayling said he is convinced a new 'work for pension' scheme would help to reduce Britain's £100 billion pensions bill.

Those who refuse to take part in the scheme, which would see those who have been in retirement for more than three years work unpaid for six months, would not receive any pension money for up to three years. Under the proposals unpaid work is likely to be up to 30 hours a week of community activities.

One pilot scheme offering mandatory jobs for the retired revealed many claimants would rather give up their pensions than turn up for work. In fact one Whitehall source told The Sunday Times that up to 20 per cent of pensioners offered 'mandatory work activity' refused to accept compulsory jobs and another 30 per cent failed to turn up.

But Grayling insists the scheme is to help rather than punish. He said: "This will help people who are struggling to get back into the labour market to be involved in full-time community activity for 30 hours a week. The alternative is to leave people sitting at home on the state pension doing nothing."

Easter Fun with Chris Grayling

From the BBC:

A key Conservative has been recorded suggesting people who run bed and breakfasts in their homes should have the right to reject homosexual guests. But shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said hotels should not be allowed to discriminate in that way.

There is of course no proper dividing line between b&b and hotel, so his proposal fails at the first hurdle, but it's fine with me, provided always that gay B&B owners are also allowed to reject Christian or Muslim guests, or those belonging to any other homophobic religion.

Chris Grayling

Quote(s) Of The Day

Well, yesterday, actually:

Alan Johnson, in his letter dismissing a scientific advisor for complaining that the government was completely ignoring his findings:

"I cannot have confusion between scientific advice and policy"

In case you thought that the main opposition party would be any better, their spokesman had this to say:

"This was an inevitable decision after his latest ill-judged contribution to the debate but it is a sign of lack of focus at the Home Office that it didn't act sooner given that he has done this before."

Potentially Libellous Shite Of The Week

Yesterday's Evening Standard accompanied this article with an inset headed "Revealed: Losers under new 60-minute travel rule".

I can't find the inset online, so I've scanned it in for you below. It continues:

Under new rules, MPs living within an hour's commute by train from London will be barred from having a second home... there are likely to be just 12 MPs affected. The Standard has estimated who the 'commuter dozen' will be..." and then lists Theresa May, Chris Grayling, Anne Milton, Michael Fallon, Ian Taylor, Peter Lilley, Michael Gove, Barbara Follett, Fiona McTaggart, Humfrey Malins, Kelvin Hopkins and Margaret Moran.

Now, I haven't paid much attention to the whole MPs' expenses 'scandal', but even I remember clearly that Kelvin Hopkins MP (Lab, Luton North) is one of the few who didn't claim for a second home, having claimed the princely sum of £1,242 for 'Cost of staying away from main home' in 2007-08. (Sure, he filled his boots on 'Office running costs' and 'Staffing costs', but that's not the topic here).

In other words, he is one of the few who won't lose out, so to say that he would is a malicious distortion. The funny thing is, t'was the self same Evening Standard which listed Kelvin Hopkins as a saint five months ago, with the summary "Travels with commuters on the Thameslink to London each morning, shunning a second home."

Bansturbators of the week

From the BBC:

Council advises ecstasy downgrade

The body that advises the government on illegal drugs is to recommend ecstasy be downgraded to a Class B drug...

The Home Office has made it clear it will reject the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs' recommendation. Last month, the Home Office restored cannabis from Class C to Class B, against the wishes of the advisory council...

The Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales has expressed opposition to suggestions that ecstasy should be downgraded to a Class B drug...

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling* said it called into question the government's choice of advisers...

* I hereby withdraw the half-a-cheer I awarded him earlier in the week.