Thursday 3rd August 2017

[HindleA]

Took some time but my parents seem to have recovered from the shock of my paying for a meal.I should have pre-warned them.

[HindleA]

Think it was the first time this Century.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That sounds very odd. There's not enough work in a prison to keep someone on site?

There might be, in the bigger establishments - but this would generally not be in the interest of the contractor. An on-site person might be tempted to do work which was not specified in the contract. (And they would still need a prison officer escort).

Experience in the private sector (a long time ago) taught me that it's what isn't in the contract that produces the big profits!

I can see that but facilities management is fairly standard stuff. How can it be hard to put that in a contract?

[citizenJA]

Goodnight, everyone
love,
cJA

[HindleA]

Good night

[refitman]

Reuters Top News
✔
@Reuters

BREAKING: Grand jury subpoenas have been issued related to June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Russian lawyers and others - sources

Also,

Federal prosecutors in New York subpoenaed the company of President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner late Wednesday over their use of the EB-5 federal visa program. The program issues green cards to immigrants who invest $500,000 in U.S.-based developments, 85 percent of which are Chinese. The irony of the subpoena is difficult to ignore. The Kushner family company is in trouble for essentially selling green cards at the same time the Trump administration is pushing a plan to curtail the number of green cards issued each year.

[Eric_WLothian]

I'm unhappy with my posts. I'm not denigrating the work of departmental commercial experts. If government requires commercial capability, departmental commercial experts are necessary staff.

It's sometimes known as the 'intelligent customer'. If you know as much as the contractor, they can't pull the wool over your eyes. (It could, of course, be argued that you might as well do the work yourself, but that's where the political ideology kicks in).

[HindleA]

Hope PF's o.k. I may have overburdened her with crosswords.

[adam]

That sounds very odd. There's not enough work in a prison to keep someone on site?

There might be, in the bigger establishments - but this would generally not be in the interest of the contractor. An on-site person might be tempted to do work which was not specified in the contract. (And they would still need a prison officer escort).

Experience in the private sector (a long time ago) taught me that it's what isn't in the contract that produces the big profits!

Tap-in moment as something I actually know about falls into my lap.

I worked as Operational Support Grade (OSG) in the Prison Service for my local jail's works department just before the turn of the century. It was a victorian jail and they had a governor grade in charge, two 'senior trades officers' running things day to day (who were 'properly' trained and qualified prison officers who also had expertise in particular trades) and a crew of about ten specialists - electricians, plumbers, general builders and a locksmith (!). It's possible that back before then they would have changed a bulb in passing but when i was there we had an internally networked booking system, with a database of goods in store, and officers had to enter jobs for them to be allocated to the works' staff who would request kit. So there was certain amount of admin/rigmarole about it but it was very orderly and well managed.

Anything bigger than the day to day would go to outside contracts for a particular job - so even in a fairly small to middling jail like this one there were about 250 toilets and all of the associated plumbing to maintain, for example, in the day to day, but when the wing needed to be rewired, or the roof relaid or a water main replaced, it would out to contract, and those contractors would need OSG escorts at all times. I spent a miserable fortnight standing at the foot of a ladder in the rain out front on the road whilst people worked on the roof of the gatehouse, and a blissful fortnight sat inside a locked compound within the main site, reading, eating and drinking, whilst some specialist asbestos strippers worked in a nearby roofspace in the spacemen gear. The contractors would have a very detailed spec of exactly what they were doing and they'd do nothing else at all.

Fairly soon after I left (in 1999) all of the grades shifted - so instead of officers working the day to day routine with a Senior Officer in charge in each department, you'd have a small number of officers managing OSGs doing the day to day - and at the same time the works downgraded their management got rid of about half the day to day crew. Outsourcing has meant that a lot of what had been PO jobs twenty years ago, and OSG jobs for 15 or more years, is now contracted out to private security, and I imagine the same is true for the works.

It's one of those socially lousy things about outsourcing - the electrician who finds their way into the prison service could end up as a governor. The contracted security guard will never be anything else.

[HindleA]

Interesting,thanks.

[adam]

Any fans of The Summer Game out there, and I'm sure there are some on here, will be intrigued to hear that the Special Counsel to the President advising Trump about Mueller's investigations is called Ty Cobb.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

So what do we think Ken meant about killing oligarchs in Venezuela? I've read what he said in context with as much of a sympathetic eye as I can manage and the best I can come up with is that he meant Chavez not murdering people was to his credit. Which would seem to me to go without saying.

I'm fully aware of the shit Venezuela has had to put up with from the CIA and wealthy U.S benefactors funding the opposition but bundling people into black vans in the middle of the night and fixing referenda only plays into their hands and paves a way for their eventual victory.

And making ambiguous statements and indulging in whataboutery does no good for the Labour Party.

Let's face it, not one of us here would rather be in Venezuela right now.

[PaulfromYorkshire]

What's not to like?

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Labour gain Margate Central from UKIP

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I spent a miserable fortnight standing at the foot of a ladder in the rain out front on the road whilst people worked on the roof of the gatehouse.

I used to live near Armley prison in Leeds and during some work saw exactly what you describe. Thoroughly miserable looking prison staff standing at the bottom of ladders for hours on end. Mind you standing outside in Armley for ten minutes would make anybody miserable.

[refitman]

So what do we think Ken meant about killing oligarchs in Venezuela? I've read what he said in context with as much of a sympathetic eye as I can manage and the best I can come up with is that he meant Chavez not murdering people was to his credit. Which would seem to me to go without saying.

I'm fully aware of the shit Venezuela has had to put up with from the CIA and wealthy U.S benefactors funding the opposition but bundling people into black vans in the middle of the night and fixing referenda only plays into their hands and paves a way for their eventual victory.

And making ambiguous statements and indulging in whataboutery does no good for the Labour Party.

Let's face it, not one of us here would rather be in Venezuela right now.

All I've read is the headline in the Graun, but my first thought was "killing off" as is making oligarchs not be a thing in the country. Not actually killing people.

[Eric_WLothian]

Tap-in moment as something I actually know about falls into my lap.

I worked as Operational Support Grade (OSG) in the Prison Service for my local jail's works department just before the turn of the century. It was a victorian jail and they had a governor grade in charge, two 'senior trades officers' running things day to day (who were 'properly' trained and qualified prison officers who also had expertise in particular trades) and a crew of about ten specialists - electricians, plumbers, general builders and a locksmith (!). It's possible that back before then they would have changed a bulb in passing but when i was there we had an internally networked booking system, with a database of goods in store, and officers had to enter jobs for them to be allocated to the works' staff who would request kit. So there was certain amount of admin/rigmarole about it but it was very orderly and well managed.

Anything bigger than the day to day would go to outside contracts for a particular job - so even in a fairly small to middling jail like this one there were about 250 toilets and all of the associated plumbing to maintain, for example, in the day to day, but when the wing needed to be rewired, or the roof relaid or a water main replaced, it would out to contract, and those contractors would need OSG escorts at all times. I spent a miserable fortnight standing at the foot of a ladder in the rain out front on the road whilst people worked on the roof of the gatehouse, and a blissful fortnight sat inside a locked compound within the main site, reading, eating and drinking, whilst some specialist asbestos strippers worked in a nearby roofspace in the spacemen gear. The contractors would have a very detailed spec of exactly what they were doing and they'd do nothing else at all.

Fairly soon after I left (in 1999) all of the grades shifted - so instead of officers working the day to day routine with a Senior Officer in charge in each department, you'd have a small number of officers managing OSGs doing the day to day - and at the same time the works downgraded their management got rid of about half the day to day crew. Outsourcing has meant that a lot of what had been PO jobs twenty years ago, and OSG jobs for 15 or more years, is now contracted out to private security, and I imagine the same is true for the works.

It's one of those socially lousy things about outsourcing - the electrician who finds their way into the prison service could end up as a governor. The contracted security guard will never be anything else.

My experience in this area is a bit earlier than yours, I think. Although there were a few computer systems in jails, they were fairly primitive and usually unofficial. I'm sure the works officers had to account for their time and materials used, but at that time, most of those systems were paper based. The works officers generally had a better knowledge of all the nooks and crannies their jails than anybody else, including the governor.

When we were inviting tenders for an IT maintenance contract, I remember going round a couple of jails with each of the shortlisted bidders. When I asked one of them what she thought, she said she didn't like the way the prison officer kept locking the doors behind us.

(In one criminal justice organisation where I worked - not the prison service - the finance manager ran the accounts on a Sinclair Spectrum, or something similar).

[Eric_WLothian]

I spent a miserable fortnight standing at the foot of a ladder in the rain out front on the road whilst people worked on the roof of the gatehouse.

I used to live near Armley prison in Leeds and during some work saw exactly what you describe. Thoroughly miserable looking prison staff standing at the bottom of ladders for hours on end. Mind you standing outside in Armley for ten minutes would make anybody miserable.

In one government building where I worked, prisoners from the local jail used to cut the grass outside. If it was raining, the officer in charge would stand in the corridor and watch them through the window.

[adam]

The BBC have a show next week where the central narrative appears to be that Jodie Whittaker is not a real doctor.

[adam]

My experience in this area is a bit earlier than yours, I think. Although there were a few computer systems in jails, they were fairly primitive and usually unofficial. I'm sure the works officers had to account for their time and materials used, but at that time, most of those systems were paper based. The works officers generally had a better knowledge of all the nooks and crannies their jails than anybody else, including the governor.

When we were inviting tenders for an IT maintenance contract, I remember going round a couple of jails with each of the shortlisted bidders. When I asked one of them what she thought, she said she didn't like the way the prison officer kept locking the doors behind us.

(In one criminal justice organisation where I worked - not the prison service - the finance manager ran the accounts on a Sinclair Spectrum, or something similar).

We had windows 95 machines and whatever the early office version database program was, and there was some kind of ordering system for jobs but I think it involved officers having to call a particular number and the works' clerk giving them a job number and entering the details for the works crew, I don't think there was even a simple internal network.

I worked in the courts in the early 90s and everything was done on paper, everything. We had several big old fashioned cash ledgers on every section - monies in, suspense in, suspense out, monies out. There was one working computer in the office (for a major combined court centre - crown and county courts) which had one hopelessly out of date and inadequate index file on it. One of the things I did to try to make up time (never give me a flexitime job, I'll come in at ten, leave at four and cash in holidays) was to print off the next page of the index, find the files and see if what the print out said bore any resemblance to the files. It rarely did.

[RogerOThornhill]

And a first Labour councilor in Worthing for 40 years...

" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Eric_WLothian]

My experience in this area is a bit earlier than yours, I think. Although there were a few computer systems in jails, they were fairly primitive and usually unofficial. I'm sure the works officers had to account for their time and materials used, but at that time, most of those systems were paper based. The works officers generally had a better knowledge of all the nooks and crannies their jails than anybody else, including the governor.

When we were inviting tenders for an IT maintenance contract, I remember going round a couple of jails with each of the shortlisted bidders. When I asked one of them what she thought, she said she didn't like the way the prison officer kept locking the doors behind us.

(In one criminal justice organisation where I worked - not the prison service - the finance manager ran the accounts on a Sinclair Spectrum, or something similar).

We had windows 95 machines and whatever the early office version database program was, and there was some kind of ordering system for jobs but I think it involved officers having to call a particular number and the works' clerk giving them a job number and entering the details for the works crew, I don't think there was even a simple internal network.

I worked in the courts in the early 90s and everything was done on paper, everything. We had a big several big old fashioned cash ledgers on every section - monies in, suspense in, suspense out, monies out. There was one working computer in the office (for a major combined court centre - crown and county courts) which had one hopelessly out of date and inadequate index file on it. One of the things I did to try to make up time (never give me a flexitime job, I'll come in at ten, leave at four and cash in holidays) was to print off the next page of the index, find the files and see if what the print out said bore any resemblance to the files. It rarely did.

You must have followed my career. I was involved in developing a court system before moving briefly to prisons and then on to trying to develop inter-agency links.
Most of the financial benefits of the court system were in the collection of fines but I remember one saving being the redundancy of hand-written, leather-bound criminal registers.

[RogerOThornhill]

Finally...you would have thought this was a parody but apparently it's real.

Andrew Pierce‏
@toryboypierce
Follow
More
Britain gives £80m aid to Brazil which breaks football transfer record by selling player 4 £198m. Something wrong here

[refitman]

Finally...you would have thought this was a parody but apparently it's real.

Andrew Pierce‏
@toryboypierce
Follow
More
Britain gives £80m aid to Brazil which breaks football transfer record by selling player 4 £198m. Something wrong here

'Swhat happens to your brains when you work for the Fail.