Welsh government moves to end the handcuffing of children in care when they are moved between placements

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There was a bit of encouraging news today in the shape of a story in Social Work News:

Wales has become the first UK nation to protect children in care from being handcuffed or restrained when being transported between care settings, under landmark new regulations introduced by the Welsh Government.

The Senedd has published the Reducing Restrictive Practices Framework (RRPF), its latest framework to protect vulnerable children from harmful handcuffing and restraint practice.

The RRPF turns out to have been published two weeks ago and the relevant section reads:

There are circumstances where it may be necessary to use secure transport to move people between placements, outside of the criminal justice system.

Welsh Ministers are clear that it is not appropriate to use handcuffs of any kind during such journeys.

The use of secure transport itself should be only considered if, following a full risk assessment, it is deemed necessary to reduce the risk of harm to the person being transported and/or serious harm to others.

Where the secure transport services are commissioned, any use of restrictive practices during the transport of an individual should be reported to the commissioning agency. These incidents should also be recorded and reflected in data collecting arrangements.

The unnecessary use of handcuffs, with their implication of criminality, on children in care was flagged up by Fiona Simpson in a Children & Young People Now article last summer.

She reported on Hope Instead of Handcuffs, a cross-party campaign calling for legislation allowing children in care to be handcuffed while being moved between placements to be scrapped.

Hope Instead of Handcuffs also wants to reform the law in this areas. At present it allows private transport providers to restrain children without any regulation, monitoring or accountability.

Simpson quoted Emily Aklan, chief executive of children’s social care provider Serenity Welfare and founder of Hope Instead of Handcuffs:

"I've seen far too many children with red marks around their wrists with massive distrust towards the system which is supposed to be helping them. 

"But with no need to monitor and report any use of handcuffs and safeguarding issues preventing children from being able to share their stories, it’s been incredibly difficult to prove just how widespread this issue is."

What we need to see now is that rest of the United Kingdom following the lead of Wales on this worrying issue.

I suspect private companies are putting the need for safety above any other factor - certainly above the dignity and rights of children in care.

The Joy of Six 1083

Peter Geoghegan shows how the European Research Group became a tightly organised "party within a party" that set the UK on course for a no-deal Brexit.

"People are not stupid. They can laugh at all kinds of things without taking it home and into reality. I perform in front of generally intelligent audiences, and they get the stuff. They don’t go home and smash things up, do they?" Jerry Sadowitz talks to the Guardian about being the experience of being cancelled by his Edinburgh fringe venue.

"Homer, a high-school graduate whose union job at the nuclear-power plant required little technical skill, supported a family of five. A home, a car, food, regular doctor’s appointments, and enough left over for plenty of beer at the local bar were all attainable on a single working-class salary." Dani Alexis Ryskamp argues that the existence enjoyed by the Simpsons when the series launched in 1989 is now out of the reach of many Americans.

"From 1979 to 1985, Norwich was home to the largest squat in Europe: the Argyle Street Alternative Republic ... Around 60 terraced council houses were occupied by hippies, bikers, Bolsheviks, and wanderers of every stripe." Damien, a former resident of the Republic, remembers how it was broken up by the authorities.

Rachel Cook celebrates the reopening of Leighton House in Holland Park, the home of the Victorian painter Frederic Leighton.

Graham McCann surveys the rise and fall of Don Estelle: "There he was, one of the stars of a BBC sitcom that was attracting audiences of up to 17 million viewers, as well as sharing the spotlight on multiple editions of Top of the Pops with the likes of Paul McCartney and Wings, the Bay City Rollers, 10cc, Art Garfunkel, Barry White and Eric Clapton, and making lucrative personal appearances all over the country, often in the company of his co-star and musical sidekick, Windsor Davies."

Child abuse inquiry calls for mandatory reporting in its final report

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The final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has come out in favour of the mandatory reporting of allegations of sexual abuse in institutions for children.

BBC News quotes the chair of the inquiry, Professor Alexis Jay:

"We heard time and time again how allegations of abuse were ignored, victims were blamed and institutions prioritised their reputations over the protection of children..

"We cannot simply file it away and consider it a historical aberration when so much of what we learned suggests it is an ever growing problem exacerbated by current and future threat of the internet."

The 20 recommendations made by the inquiry also include:

• the creation of a cabinet-level minister for children; 
• a ban on the use of pain compliance techniques on children in custodial institutions; and 
• a requirement for registration of care staff in residential care and staff in young offender institutions and secure training centres.

You may recall that this is the inquiry described by Boris Johnson as money "spaffed up the wall".

Which leads me to recommend Richard Beard's Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England, a study of what being sent away to boarding school at a tender age does to the ruling class.

Why are Euston and Euston Square separate stations?

In short, because of 19th-century competition between railway companies and 20th-century worship of the motor car. But all that is about to change.

But do watch the video, because Jago Hazzard is always engaging. You can support his videos via his Patreon page.

Tory deputy chief whip: "I am fucking furious and I don’t give a fuck any more"

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Apologies for the bad language, but it's Isabel Hardman on the Spectator website quoting the comments of the resigning Conservative deputy chief whip Craig Whittaker this evening.

Hardman writes:

Wendy Morton has now left the post of chief whip after the government folded on the opposition day fracking vote being treated as a "confidence issue". MPs were warned they would lose the Tory whip if they didn't vote with the government. 

One MP who witnessed Morton walking past with the Prime Minister’s PPS, tells me: "She's as mad as thunder and is saying 'unbelievable'."

Craig Whittaker has just come out of the lobby and said "I am fucking furious and I don’t give a fuck any more."

She says there are also reports of the bullying of MPs before the vote.

Lord Bonkers 30 years ago: While members of the Women's Liberal Federation beat me with rolled up copies of Pericles' funeral oration

Look, I don't really care what Lord Bonkers was saying 30 years ago either, but the old boy insists. So here is an extract from the diary that appeared in the October 1992 issue of Liberator (no. 208).

We catch him playing truant from the Liberal Democrats' Autumn Conference.

Thursday

Normally, let me say at once, I should walk miles barefoot upon hedgehog skins while members of the Women's Liberal Federation beat me with rolled up copies of Pericles' funeral oration for the pleasure of hearing one of young Ashplant's speeches. You can imagine, then, what a bitter disappointment it is that an apparent clash of dates obliges me to leave Harrogate after morning coffee.

I purchase Sir Desmond Wilson's latest opus to read on the train; his publishers, with laudable candour, describe it as "a unique and frightening book.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10,

Major new donors are approaching the Lib Dems

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Crediting sources in the Liberal Democrats, ITV News reports that the party has signed up five major new donors in the part 10 days, including one who previously gave money to the Conservatives:

The donors have each added their names to a group known as the Liberal Alliance that provide funds to specifically target Conservative MPs in so-called Blue Wall seats.

They include seats on the outskirts of London with populations that are getting younger and more diverse.

Sources said that two of the donors had approached the party out of the blue to ask if they could help.

The donors have signed up to give the Lib Dems £50,000 every year.

ITV News quotes an upbeat party source:

“We have seen a significant change over the past week with a dramatic increase in donors knocking at the door of the Liberal Democrats.

"They will not forgive the Conservatives for wrecking the economy and see us as the main party to unseat many of those MPs in their heartlands.

"They know there is little chance of getting the Conservatives out of power without us winning those seats.”

Heinz and Wilko Johnson

I've been collecting unlikely pairings of musicians who feel like they come from completely different eras. And here's the latest.

Heinz Burt, protégé of the pioneering record producer Joe Meek and bass player with The Tornados, who had an era-defining hit with Telstar, and Wilko Johnson from Doctor Feelgood.

Burt - or just Heinz, as he was always billed - is the singer and Johnson is the long-haired guitarist nearest him when you see them in wide shot.

This video comes from The London Rock and Roll Show, which was held at Wembley Stadium in August 1972. This was the concert at which Roy Wood launched his new band Wizzard.

Without his hair dyed a startling blond and with sideburns, Heinz appears to be harking back to an era just before the one in which he found brief fame. The Tornados, and Meek's acts in general, looked forward, not back to the Fifites.

You can see the other unlikely pairings I have found in my post on Paul Rodgers and Bruce Thomas.

John Rogers follows the mythical river of Dagenham

John Rogers follows the Gores Brook, describing the walk on YouTube as follows:

Our walk starts in Parsloes Park in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham ... We walk the buried section of the Gores Brook. There are plans to daylight the brook from its culvert, a project by Thames 21 with the support of the Mayor of London. 

We then follow the Gores Brook above ground as it flows through Goresbrook Park, across Ripple Road, and past Dagenham Asda where the 145 bus terminates. 

Our riparian adventure then plunges us into a post-industrial landscape created by the ghost of the Ford Motor Works at Dagenham as we walk along Chequers Road, crossing Dagenham Dock Station and passing beneath the A13 road. Turning into Choats Road we once again meet the Gores Brook and follow footpath 47 to the point where the Gores Brook makes its confluence with the Thames at Horse Shoe Corner.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

The Joy of Six 1082

"Getting rid of Truss will not solve anything. Her party has come to resemble a sect. Brexit courses like a poison through its bloodstream. Whether old-fashioned Conservatism can be remade in opposition is an open question." Philip Stevens says the Conservatives have been broken by Brexit.

"Mississippi had certain unspoken rules, she told him, rules that didn’t exist in Chicago, where he’d grown up. He would need to follow them at all times. For instance: He shouldn’t speak to white people unless spoken to. If a white woman was walking toward him, he should lower his head and never look her in the eye." Ellen Wexler on a new film that dramatises the life of Mamie Till-Mobley, who forced America to confront the brutality of her son’s 1955 murder.

Matthew Pennell writes in praise of Britain's Asian businesses.

Ann Manov is deeply critical of Holocaust fiction in general and of the work of John Burnside in particular.

"Several of her entries were deleted by other Wikimedians, as the most influential contributors and editors are called. She told Today.com that they said a handful of the women she wrote up were not all that well-known. Wade said that’s right, that’s the problem: they should be better known." Timothy Harper talks to Jessica Wade, the 33-year-old who has written more than a thousand Wikipedia entries for little-known women scientists.

Eileen Jones recalls the joy of working with Angela Lansbury.

Ludlow's town wall still awaits repair 10 years after it collapsed

It will soon be 10 years since a surviving length of Ludlow's medieval town walls collapsed, but there is still no sign that it will be repaired.

Andy Boddington writes on his blog:

I visited the site on Friday. I am shocked by the state of the collapsed area. There are sycamores and a buddleia growing out of the rubble of the collapsed wall. All vegetation needs removing as a matter of urgency to prevent further damage to the wall. 

Tomorrow Ludlow's town council will discuss the walls, but will do so without the press or public present.

As Andy says:

This long saga needs to end but frankly I am not confident of it being resolved and the wall rebuilt within five years. The cost to the town council will be astronomical, perhaps up to third of its annual budget.

When the walls collapsed in 2013, there were a wide range of heritage grants available. With the tightening of public finances, and set to get tighter according to the latest Chancellor this weekend, it will get much more difficult to get a grant.

Liz Truss must have been a bad councillor too

Journalists tend to be snobbish about politicians who begin their careers in local government, but being a councillor provides a first-class political education.

In particular, it forces you to test whatever values and favourite policies you have acquired against real-world problems that are not of your choosing.

So far so good. I typed that a couple of days ago, intending to add the observation that Liz Truss would not be such a callow ideologue if she had served as a councillor and post it.

Then I told myself that I was being silly. Truss had served as a minister and cabinet minister of years, so she has plenty of experience. I deleted the draft post.

Luckily, yesterday morning I heard the latest The Rest of Politics podcast, in which everybody's favourite ex-Tory, Rory Stewart, remarks right at the end:

"You can hide as a cabinet minister. It's very, very easy to hide, particularly if you're a trade minister or a foreign minister. You get to take photographs in front of flags with dignitaries, you don't really have to deliver on policy and the prime minister carries the can."

Feeling much happier, I put this post up. Almost at once, a reader reminded me that Truss had been a councillor in Greenwich for four years before she got to Westminster.

So I took the post down again.

I pondered how to make sense of this contradiction as I wandered Market Harborough in autumn sunshine this afternoon. And I think I've got it.

Ready?

She must have been a bad councillor too.

Thank you.

Leonard Cohen: Tower of Song

In 2016 Leonard Cohen wrote a final letter to his friend and muse Marianne Ihlen, who was dying:

Well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.

And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.

Cohen died later that year.

The Joy of Six 1081

If satire were going to bring the Conservatives down, it would have done so a decade ago. Still, it keeps our spirits up and Euan McColm is in good form here: "Plaudits, too, for Jacob Rees-Mogg, who hit the airwaves a day later. The secretary of state for business has created a character for the ages, part Christopher Robin, part 1950s hangman. Beneath a plummy and polite exterior lurks the terrifying stench of menace."

Harry Shukman reports from the Ukip conference: "Today, fifty members of Ukip fit into the function room of a country pub outside Skegness, and there are plenty of empty chairs. The guest list barely stretches onto a second sheet of A4. There is talk of policies and history and electoral success but the room gives off the impression of a village cricket AGM instead of a party that recently took four million votes in a general election. Without Farage and without Brexit, Ukip is bereft."

Lucy Scholes praises The Glass Pearls, a forgotten novel by Emeric Pressburger about a Nazi war criminal hiding in plain sight in the streets of Pimlico.

Robert Hugill enjoys an evening of queered 18th-century music.

"My father took the following photo of Baldwin’s Gardens in 1949. The view is looking down towards Gray's Inn Road. In the early years of the war, the area suffered from the impact of several high explosive bombs and the effects of these can be seen to the right of the street." Baldwin's Gardens runs from Gray's Inn Road to Leather Lane and is a street I remember from Liberator paste ups long ago. This is a typically interesting post from A London Inheritance.

London's first UFO was spotted over St James's Park and Bloomsbury by a well-known physician called Cromwell Mortimer in 1746. Ertan Karpazli has the story.

GUEST POST A newspaper for and by Leicester people

Reece Stafferton reveals the plans for the Great Central Gazette, a not-for-profit newspaper for Leicester launching in 2023.

Leicester - a city which was served by a sole regional newspaper until a few months ago - is on the brink of change. 

I’m helping to launch the Great Central Gazette: a not-for-profit newspaper, written by and for local people in Leicester. 

Our ambition is to hold power to account, work with the community to fix big issues, and partner with local groups to present journalism workshops for anyone hoping to learn new skills. 

It’ll be run as a co-operative, a type of model where members get to vote on how the business is run. We begin publishing early next year.

Why are we doing this? Well, ideally, journalism would represent everyone. 

We should be able to tell our stories with our own voices and come together as a community to amplify disadvantaged, marginalised and under-represented people. We need newspapers created with and for the people who feel like they’re being let down by existing media.

In reality, current local newspapers in the city don’t go far enough to spark positive change. This is, in part, because they’re owned by a handful of wealthy individuals and organisations. 

Some of the reporting they do is good, but these newspapers used to care about the community. They informed, safeguarded, and grew every facet of local life. 

They’ve now transformed into money-making schemes. The newsroom’s dominating voice has become advertising income. A newspaper’s revenue is proportional to the number of website clicks it receives. Journalists write dozens of pieces a day to get our attention, and they use clickbait and strikingly non-local subject matters to do so. That isn’t sustainable.

The consequences of this is that the quality of journalism isn’t as it should be, with recycled press releases and paid for advertorials becoming the norm. 

The current model fails to represent people without a voice, prevents newspapers from investigating stories in detail, and generally doesn’t offer any solutions to the problems facing the city.

We’re not the first to attack the status quo. At the Gazette, we’re inspired by other independent media outlets like the Bristol Cable, who are running a co-operative model in their city. 

On our patch, we will cover unreported local news, showcase the history of Leicester, unpack stats and data, hold debates and open discussions, publish comment from local people, publish investigative features with solutions at their core, profile interesting people doing good in the community, and give a platform to the arts, literature, independent film and more.

The Gazette is in its infancy, but it’s ready to grow. Independent media, like The Gazette, are one of the fastest growing media industries in the UK. Chip into our crowdfunder, running until 14 November, to support our mission. 

Reece Stafferton is helping to launch the Great Central Gazette. You can follow him on Twitter.

Alexei Sayle in conversation with Frank Cottrell Boyce

Recorded at the Liverpool Philharmonic in April 2016 when he had recently published his second volume of autobiography, Thatcher Stole My Trousers. The first was titled Stalin Ate My Homework.

Blair's a Fucking Bastard has yet to appear.

A new article on Brian Eley, the only British chess champion to appear on Crimewatch

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Fiona Pitt-Keithley has written a new article about Brian Eley, the former British Chess Champion who skipped bail in 1991 while charged with sexual offences against boys. 

He died in Amsterdam in April, having kept one step ahead of the authorities for over 30 years, even if the life he led there doesn't sound much fun.

Pitt-Keithley sets out what is known or suspected about Eley and concludes:

This is a long story though I still cannot find out all the facts. But there are substantial rumours. His victims are said to include one extremely famous British chess player as well as many others well enough known on the chess circuit. If only half of these rumours are true, there are probably more than a hundred victims.

I might have written it off as police incompetence that he was not picked up the couple of times a policeman gave his exact location to Crimestoppers or when Stuart Conquest also attempted to report it to the Dutch police. But there is the strange matter of Eley’s picture being taken off the Interpol site, something neither South Yorks police or Interpol are prepared to explain. ...

Nobody else wanted to write this story which is why I am putting it out here. I would like to ask a favour of his many victims. Go to the police. Tell them what happened to you if you haven’t done so already. Put it all on record. Let the police and the ECF [English Chess Federation] and perhaps eventually the general public find the size of this story. For those who have made witness statements already ask South Yorks police about the case. You as victims may have some right to info that I do not have as a mere journalist. 

I will also ask a politician to look into the situation of why the police did not pick him up and why his name was taken off the Interpol Wanted list. It is important that other paedophiles are not given a free pass just because they have been useful in other matters to the authorities. Their victims deserve better.

Three candidates standing for Lib Dem presidency

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Nominations have closed for the Liberal Democrats' internal elections and there are three candidates for party president:

• Lucy Nethsingha
• Mark Pack
• Liz Webster

There is just one nomination for vice-president: Amna Ahmad.

You can find the list of people nominated for the various party committees on the Lib Dem website.

Today is the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams's birth

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born 150 years ago today.

The Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, one of his undoubted masterpieces, was first performed in Gloucester Cathedral as part of the Three Choirs Festival of 1910.

As far as I can recall, at BoxmoorPrimary School we had only two records to listen to: this and Morning by Grieg. Luckily, I fell in love with the Tallis Fantasia.

It was also one of the pieces of music - this very recording - that my mother enjoyed listening to in her final days.

Halifax horror error as stunned husband and wife both wrongly 'declared dead'

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What this? Rough work at the mortuary in West Yorkshire?

No, the story turns out to involve what was once the Halifax Building Society, which is now part of the Bank of Scotland, which is now wholly owned by the Lloyds Banking Group, and a couple from Stratford-on-Avon.

And it wins the Birmingham Mail our Headline of the Day Award.