Daily Archives: Tuesday, December 11, 2012

  • Milestone meeting as Justice Minister engages interpreter groups

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Helen Grant MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Minister for Victims and the Courts, held positive discussions on 4th December with nine organisations who united as umbrella group Professional Interpreters for Justice and whose representatives were invited to talks.

    In the meeting Helen Grant MP said that the system needs the professional interpreters’ organisations and that if all can work effectively and positively together it will be good for the running of the justice system.

    Problems with the operation of the Ministry of Justice contract awarded to Applied Language Solutions (acquired by Capita at the end of 2011) prompted a critical National Audit Office (NAO) report earlier this year. In addition, there have more recently been two parliamentary inquiries by the Public Accounts Committee and Justice Select Committee respectively, who will publish their findings in coming weeks.

    Professional Interpreters for Justice has been invited to submit ideas on how the Ministry of Justice can carry out the recommendations of the NAO report, particularly with regard to commissioning an independent evaluation of the adequacy of the new contract’s quality standards for interpreting and translation and the incentives which might attract professionally qualified members of the interpreter organisations back to court work.

    In its report the NAO highlighted that as few as 300 (13%) of the 2,300 professionally qualified interpreters on the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI) are still working in the court; this has caused problems with both supply and quality of interpreting in courts under the new contract.

    Keith Moffitt, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, representing Professional Interpreters for Justice, says: “There’s a real risk of the legal interpreting profession collapsing and we are encouraged that the Justice Minister wants to listen and properly engage the profession in the interests of delivering justice. Our members are principled individuals who feel their professional status has been watered down by the absence of quality in this private contract. We’ll be writing to the Minister with our proposals for working groups to tackle the issues”.

    The Justice Minister invited proposals from Professional Interpreters for Justice within 14 days.

  • The Golden Bull Awards 2012

    Steve WoodsLanguage

    image of the Golden Bull trophy
    The Golden Bull, the ultimate accolade for gobbledygook
    I might not always agree with everything done by the Plain English Campaign, but I must commend them for their excellent work in combating the spread of impenetrable and confusing jargon by both public sector organisations and the private sector with their annual Golden Bull Awards. The Golden Bull Awards are presented annually for the year’s ‘best’ examples of gobbledygook.

    This year’s awards were announced yesterday, 10th December, and there are some real corkers amongst the winners.

    For instance, there’s the following from the newly created Cheshire, Warrington and Wirral NHS Commissioning Support Service:

    A unique factor of the NHS Cheshire Warrington and Wirral Commissioning support organisation is its systematised methodology for project and programme management of small, medium, large service re-design and implementation…Building in equality and risk impact assessments the options are taken through a process to arrive at the content for an output based specification and benefits foreseen as a result of the implementation.

    The service is inclusive of full engagement with Clinical Commissioning Groups who direct at decision-making points how they wish the proposal to be deployed (re-commmisson, de-commission or changes to current services/providers), and lastly an implementation team who see the service redesign through to evaluation and benefits realisation.

    Another fine example comes from the London Borough of Enfield for this extract from a letter about a building’s change of use.

    NOTIFICATION OF THE MAKING OF ARTICLE 4 DIRECTION (REF: Art 4/HMO) RELATING TO HOUSES IN MULTIPLE OCCUPATION

    I am writing to inform you that on the 15th October 2012, the London Borough of Enfield made a direction (reference: Art 4HMO) under article 4(1) of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995 as amended.

    The direction relates to development consisting of a change of the use of a building to a use falling within Class C4 (houses in multiple occupation) of the Schedule to the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 from a use falling within Class C3 (dwellinghouses) of that Schedule, and removes permitted development rights for this type of development from the date when the direction comes into force.

    Finally, a private sector example. Can you decode this extract from the Investors’ Report of December 2011 from The Children’s Mutual?

    UBS believe that the ‘New Normal’ economic environment of relatively low growth means that the ability to differentiate between secular and cyclical growth opportunities becomes more important and that for the foreseeable future the main driving influence on market sentiment will be the structural adjustments and the political capital required to help mitigate the contractionary influence of low growth.

    What this means for portfolio construction is that in a low growth, low return, capital constrained environment, competitive advantage favours a combination of income generative, conservatively funded, self sustaining businesses – groups that UBS class as “dividend aristocrats” and who are experiencing secular growth. This leads UBS to their long-term core investment objective of being invested in high quality businesses.

    If any passing reader can render the above quotations into plain English, please feel free to do so in the comments below.

  • Joint Parliamentary Committee rejects Snooper’s Charter

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    The Joint Committee of MPs and Lords today published its report into the draft Communications Data Bill, otherwise dubbed the Snooper’s Charter. The Committee has spent six months scrutinising the proposals, receiving a substantial amount of oral and written evidence. The final report is available from the Joint Committee website.

    As rumoured yesterday (posts passim), the Joint Committee has given the draft Bill the thumbs down, stating that it pays “insufficient attention to the duty to respect the right to privacy, and goes much further than it need or should”.

    Furthermore, the committee report is extremely critical of the Home Office, calling their figures “fanciful and misleading”.

    In addition to these criticisms, the report reckons the overall cost to the taxpayer is likely to exceed the predicted £1.8 bn. “by a considerable margin”.

    Finally, both the Joint Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee, which was also examined the draft Bill, were critical the lack of consultation by the Home Office. Indeed, some major ISPs and communications providers were not consulted at all and were only sent a copy of the draft Bill after its publication.

    In conclusion, both the Joint Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee believe that the Home Office’s proposals need rethinking.

    According to BBC News, a spokesman for the prime minister said the PM accepted the criticism from MPs and peers of the draft Communications Data Bill and would re-write it.

    In view of the PM’s views, we are forced to ask the following question: what do you call an organisation that ignores the views of 2 parliamentary committees? Answer: Her Majesty’s Government. 🙂