Those That Live By The Shredder Die By The Shredder
It is often said that everything comes to him who waits. The partial lifting of the so-called banker’s, Fred Goodwin‘s super-injunction, shows that no matter how tight you jam the lid on a can of beans, eventually the pressure builds and it blows up in your face.
There are some choice headlines.
- Daily Mail – Sir Fred, adultery and the public interest.
- Independent – Goodwin’s affair at bank exposed after peer breaks gagging order
- Daily Mirror – No good in these gags
- The Sun – Fred the Bed
There’s a lot more.
The tone is set by this from the Daily Mail.
While RBS was undergoing the biggest collapse in British corporate history, he was busy carrying out an extra-marital affair with a senior colleague involved in the strategic direction of the bank.
Truly, there can be no doubting the public interest in disclosing Sir Fred’s conduct. The collapse of RBS, under his control, led to a £45billion bailout by taxpayers.
Thousands upon thousands lost their jobs and businesses in the financial devastation which followed.
If Fred had had an affair with a Page 3 bimbo, that wouldn’t have mattered so much to the bank and in the end UK taxpayers. The tabloids might have made us laugh as they did years ago with Ron Halpern, a long forgotten businessman in the 1960s or 1970s, but because he had an affair with a senior executive, it meant that his crazy policies were able to get through board and other meetings. I had problems years ago with a company, where I served on a technical committee that had a husband and wife on it. We all had to convince two people who slept together of the correct course of action. It was not easy and the company suffered.
Two people having a relationship in an organisation is rarely a good idea!
Fred Goodwin was knighted in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to banking. So at least we can’t blame that one totally on Prudence, as he wasn’t Prime Minister until four years later. It will be interesting to see in twenty or so years time, when the details of Sir Fred’s knighthood are released, what dicussions took place on his suitability for such an award.
If ever there was a case for a knighthood to be taken away, then Sir Fred is at the top of the list.
A Project Management Approach to Better Justice
The whole justice system from victims, families on the brink of divorce and criminals, to the courts and ultimately prison is very much like an enormous project, such as building a new railway line or refurbishing a fleet of airliners.
The objectives are very similar.
- Complete everything on-time and as close to the budget as possible.
- Get a high satisfaction rating from customers, who in this case are victims, their families and in the civil courts those that litigate and seek redress.
- Do all this within strict resource constraints, such as numbers of police, courts, judges and other legal staff.
So how would a good project manager build his railway line to meet the objectives?
There is an old phrase that Time is Money and I believe that this is something that the justice system in all its manifestation doesn’t address.
I can remember C coming home one day and saying that she’d finally got the details of a divorce settled, ten years after she first took on the case.
And yesterday we had the news that a new trial in the saga of Stephen Lawrence would start in November.
I doubt I could find more than a handful of people, if any, who thought either of these examples acceptable.
A good project manager would analyse why various jobs took a long time and take action to make sure that the delays were not repeated.
C often said these long times in divorce were often down to plain vindictiveness on the part of both parties and she would often ponder how they ever stopped rowing long enough to get married. There is even a story, I’ve heard of two barristers, who when they divorced managed to blow all their money on other lawyers. Somehow those that waste time in the divorce system, should be made to pay more, so that those who need help can get it.
With criminal trials it has often puzzled me, how supposedly similar trials take a very much variable time to get to court. This timeline of the Ipswich murders shows how a quite complicated case, was brought to court in just 14 months. Other much less complicated cases take a lot longer to get to court, with all that entails in terms of costs of remand and stress for the witnesses.
We must not cut corners, as quality of justice is paramount, but surely some analysis will lead to ways to improve the speed of the courts.
With all the fuss about Ken Clarke’s comments on rape, it seems to me that emotion has got the better of a decent analysis, which might indicate a few simple procedural changes, that will ensure a less stressful time for the victim and more cases coming to a result where the guilty is rightly convicted.
I remember seeing an article some years ago, where when there was a cot death, one police force tried to send an officer, who had suffered a similar experience. This simple change to procedure, showed a degree of compassion and care and removed a lot of bad emotion and accusations from the system. In my view it showed how if police respond to an incident properly in the first place they might save a lot of problems later on. First response seems to be getting better, but I’ve only reported a couple of crimes in my 63 years. Two were in France and if the French system hasn’t changed, we have nothing to learn there.
To summarise.
- A project manager calculates the resources they need.
- They then look at the systems to get each task done in the most efficient way.
- Analysis is always performed to see if speed and quality can be improved and costs can be better controlled.
In my view, with forty years experience of project mangement, it is getting better as some of the rail projects like the Western Curve at Dalston and the improvements to container routes have been done on time and under budget.
Let’s hope that those who administer the justice system are prepared to learn from management successes elsewhere!
Strauss-Kahn Walks But Ken Doesn’t
So Dominique Strauss-Kahn has now quit as head of the IMF. He should have gone immediately, as evidence in serious papers I have read has him down as a man, who can’t keep his hands and dick to himself.
But Kenneth Clarke hasn’t resigned over his choice of words on BBC Radio 5 yesterday morning. I listened to the interview in full and have a rather different take on what happened.
I should say now, that I’ve very much against all violent, sexual and personal crime, as having been married to a barrister, who dealt with many cases involving some of the worst sexual offenders in this country, I have more knowledge than most people.
The program was billed as discussing the problems of the large numbers of people in prison and how we deal with it. I e-mailed in early in the program, before the discussion started and my e-mail is below.
A few years ago, I read the book Prisongate by Lord Ramsbottom. In the book, he says that there are a large number of prisoners who are suffering from dementia and other long term illnesses. Surely, these people should not be in prison.
I also went over a prison, where there were quite a few East European truck drivers, whose only crime was inadvertently bringing in illegal immigrants. Generally they are model prisoners, so why are they in jail, rather than being deported.
We need to make certain that we lock up the serious criminals, but what proportion of those are not any menace to society and should not be in jail.
They called me back and said they might put me on air and would call me back, if they wanted to put me on.
There had been comments in the tabloids in the morning saying that Ken was going to be soft on rapists, but giving them a fifty per cent discount on sentences if they pleaded guilty.
Virtually, all of the calls aired in the discussion were about letting criminals off lightly and fairly soon it was seemingly all about rape. Very little callers talked about anything else.
Now we all know Ken can be rather robust at times and I think he lost his patience and didn’t choose his words as carefully as he should have. He made a mistake that many would have done in the same circumstances
But the program lost complete track of being a wider discussion about how we get a better and a more affordable criminal justice system.
In the end Ken apologised, but it hasn’t stopped those who want a scalp in this government from calling for his resignation.
How many of those, who are calling for the resignation listened to the whole program?
Careless Driving
It is being reported that the government is thinking about bringing in fixed penalties for careless driving.
As a pedestrian, I’d like to see careless cycling, buggy pushing and obstruction placing dealt with in the same way.
European Court Rules Against Max Mosley
It is being reported that the European Court has ruled against Max Mosley.
My late father would be pleased to have seen this judgment.
He always claimed, that he got Max’s odious father with a tomato in the 1930s. It may even have been at the Battle of Cable Street. My father was there as a Londoner of Jewish ancestry, so he hated Oswald Mosley with a passion. Interestingly, my father was very much on the left of the Tory party, and he was not the only person with that political persuasion, who was there to stop Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts marching.
Jon Snow on Super Injunctions
Jon Snow has put this on Twitter.
Every single super injunction has now either been tweeted or has appeared in Private Eye: What has Judge Eady who set them up done? Sweet FA
Tweeters Attempt to Break the Super Injunctions
There are reports that users of Twitter are attempting to break the super injunctions.
It’s now getting to the point, where someone with a super injunction might think of doing an Andrew Marr for the money.
Suppose you are an well-known actor, athlete or a footballer say, who has had a brief dalliance with a Z-list celebrity. But your wife is perhaps a sensible woman who has forgiven you and has warned you about future conduct. Remember, strange as it may seem, there are a lot of women married to celebrities, who very much manage the family’s finances and often have a serious career in their own right. Perhaps you just want to act or play football and get on with your life. So you strike a deal with the Z-lister and sell the story. After all, in a footballer’s case the season is almost over and you can find a nice island hotel to hide for the summer.
So someone will take the money, settle with the Z-lister, write a few articles and run.
Once one has done it, the others might fall like a pack of cards.
You have to admit that probably keeping a super injunction going is not a trivial business and costly in terms of both time and money. The bill might hurt more than the adverse publicity.
Libel Reform Campaign
I received this letter from the Libel Reform Campaign, whose aim is to stop the law of libel being used to silence critics.
Look out on BBC 1 tonight at 10:40pm for the next part of the BBC libel series: See You in Court. The program will follow science writer Simon Singh through his case and through the beginning of the Libel Reform Campaign.
We have been scrutinising the Government’s draft Defamation Bill since its publication in March, and tomorrow we will be appearing before a joint committee of the Lords and Commons in Parliament to tell them what we think, and discuss the Government’s proposals. You can come along to Committee Room Six between 9:30 to 10:30am to support us, or watch online on the Parliament website [http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/draft-defamation-bill1/].
We’re heaping pressure on Government to ensure they deliver a bill that is fit for the internet age. The bill isn’t quite there yet so if you haven’t already done so, please ask your MP to sign EDM 1636, to show their support for substantive reforms [http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-11/1636]. You can find your MP and their email address at www.theyworkforyou.com.
I have written and urge everybody to do the same.
Here’s my letter.
I am writing as one of your constituents who has spent a lifetime developing ideas, that bring wealth, employment and better standards of living not just to this country, but hopefully the whole world. I am also deeply concerned about the effect our libel laws have on medicine, science, journalism and literature. I very much support the Libel Reform Campaign, especially as my late wife was a barrister, who knew the field of defamation and its limitations and excesses well, although she practised in a more worthwhile field.
I would urge you to sign cross-party EDM 1636 Libel Reform welcoming the publication of the Government’s recent draft defamation bill and calling for improvements to fully protect citizens’ rights and the public interest.
I believe, along with the Libel Reform Campaign, that any individual whose reputation is damaged by a false and defamatory statement should have recourse to the law. But beyond that we need to protect discussion of matters of public interest and expressions of opinion.
This draft bill recognises that England’s libel laws are unfair, outdated, complex and costly, and that as a result they chill free speech. It must ensure that final legislation matches our objectives.
Will you please sign EDM 1636 Libel Reform or if you can’t then pleasesign other EDMs that indicate support for its objectives?
Feel free to copy.
Andrew Marr Comes Clean
Having watched Have I Got News For You and seen what Ian Hislop has said since Andrew Marr has come clean over the superinjunction, I think that he made his statement just in time. I think if Marr hadn’t broke his silence, it would have been all over the place within a week.
This always happens in the end, as someone makes a mistake or perhaps sadly one of the parties dies and then it gets published.
These privacy superinjunctions may have their place in some areas, like the protection of children But in many places they are just being used by indivduals and companies to hide wrong doing. Or should I say delay publication, as inevitably that’s what happens.
It would appear now that the tabloids are looking for the next person to come clean.
There is also a serious side to all this. Read this article in the Daily Mail. One person, who has found a serious health problem with paint, has even been prohibited from talking to his MP. It’s getting to be all very Kafka!
The Mail is also getting its claws into Fred the Shred in this article. At one time the injunction said that we couldn’t refer to him as a banker.
I’ve just typed his real name coupled with the w-word into Google. You get a lot of very funny articles.
Superinjunctions have now created this new game of Googling the Internet to find out the truth. You usually can! The google Toolbar is particularly useful, as it knows the common searches. Let’s say I’m a sportsman, who say has been associated with a Z-list celebrity, but I’ve taken out a super injunction to stop my wife finding out and divorcing me, thus relieving me of a lot of my money and half my salary, which would mean I’m unattractive to bimbos. If I continually type my name and that of the celebrity into Google, I can check that no stories are appearing. But all I’m doing is making it easier for people to find the association.
You can run, but you can’t hide.
Censorship
The Times today has been censored, just like papers used to be in Eastern Europe and still are in places like Iran.
It’s because they were talking about a sex scandal involving a well-known footballer. Apparently to mention his name in connection with scandal is now against the law.
Would I be guilty of contempt, if I put a list of all current footballers in this post, which on the law of averages would include him?
It doesn’t matter, as the truth will surface in a few days about who had the relationship with a former Miss Wales, Imogen Thomas, who appeared as a housemate on Big Brother.
But I’m totally against censorship, as it the tool of preference for every dictator since Stalin and Hitler. No-one should fear the truth.
The Anonymous Widower 