Hearty Congratulations Raccoonteurs!
Back in the later half of last year, I rushed out an ‘emergency’ post, and asked for your help to publicise it.
‘Edna’ of this noble Raccoon Parish had drawn my attention to a Government consultation hidden away in the undergrowth which was more than alarming.
Social Workers were asking for the ‘power of entry’ to avoid the tiresome business of having to argue their case before a judge, when they wanted to barge their way into someone’s home uninvited.
Such a power, it might be argued, would be understandable if they were talking about homes inhabited by the mentally ill, the victims of violence, the victims of fraud, the victim of domestic violence, where there is a child at risk, or any of the other ‘vulnerable’ categories. I still think that such a power should only be granted on a case by case basis, but I could see how it might be argued that it was defensible.
But they weren’t. They were asking for a blanket power of entry! To anyone’s home, at any time, under any circumstances. Just because ‘they’ thought that the occupants weren’t followed approved ‘health advice’. Dear God! A Social Worker standing over you as you light the first cigarette of the day, proffering nicotine patches, decaffeinated watery coffee, and an invitation to attend their latest ‘safe sex’ seminar….
The Consultation’s aim was to determine the strength of the case for creating a new safeguarding power of entry. This issue is at the interface between issues of protection and civil liberties.
They advertised the consultation, on which the Government intended to make a decision, to the ‘Safeguarding Adults Advisory Group’, the ‘Care and Support Alliance’, and the ‘NHS workforce’, sat back and awaited their response. They expected ‘between a 100 and 150 responses’. It should have been a ‘slam dunk’ – ‘the Government, after consulting with interested parties have decided to grant’ etc…
Thanks to ‘Edna’ and the readers of this blog, it hasn’t worked out like that.
They got 212 responses.
An unexpected 88 were from people they hadn’t expected to hear from at all, at all….us, the public, they people against whom this power would have been used. (What idiot told them? That bloody Raccoon blog again!)
124 came from the Social Work emporiums that they had thought would respond.
We believe it is highly significant that members of the public were far more strongly against the proposal compared to health and social care professionals […] it is clear that some people perceive themselves at greater risk of unwarranted intervention by social workers than of abuse in their home.
“Therefore we will not be adding a safeguarding power of entry to the Care and Support Bill” What can I say? Raise your glasses to Edna please Ladies and Gentlemen! She won’t be paying for drinks around here for a very long time!
And many thanks to all those who retweeted that post and responded to it. A small victory. The Government did listen, and backed away from the proposed legislation. I can only put this down to the readers of this blog and especially the sharp eyed Edna – for nobody in the main stream media so much as raised their pen in the direction of this story.
Some days it feels futile bashing away at this keyboard – and other days are like today!
May 11, 2013 at 23:37
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Well done indeed. I’m beginning to understand exactly how a 12th Century
serf must have felt.
May 11, 2013 at 18:15
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Bravo both of you.
May 11, 2013 at 17:10
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I’m not sure how I missed this one but thanks to those who got involved.
Mind you, the chances of any knuckledragger getting over my threshold in one
piece without my permission is err, nil.
May 11, 2013 at 16:11
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Although not applying here, thank you all.
One countries laws/rules/regulations beome “E.U law” only too quickly. A
defeat, if only partial, is always good to hear.
May 11, 2013 at 15:57
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Well done Anna and the raccoonters. But be sure they will be back.
Have you seen this veg. seed thing?
May 11, 2013 at 14:36
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well done indeed! In the course of my work I am conscious of a constant
flow of “consultations” from the (Scottish) government. All are targeted
towards client (usually public sector or carefully selected) charities. The
public doesn’t know about them, but they result in laws which affect the
public. e.g. powers of entry into ALL property for inspectors (local authority
or SSPCA) if they “have reason to believe that an animal is being caused or is
likely to be caused unnecessary suffering”. Admirable objective, but why not
do it (as previously) with a PC and a warrant?(Animal Health and Welfare
(Scotland) Act 2006).
May 11, 2013 at 13:12
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Anna have you given up livewyre ???
May 11, 2013 at 13:22
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I don’t even see any livewyre option any more, thank god, and really
strangely the two posts I wrote using it (with the re-branded ID of
Mistlethrush) seem to have disappeared.
Its been a confusing morning and
I need a stiff drink now.
- May 11, 2013 at 13:05
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Well done Anna and Edna.
…. and the forum is back to normal too, phew.
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May 11, 2013 at 13:13
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Grand Mina you beat me to it – no need to answer Anna – Smiley face to
ya’
May 11, 2013 at 13:01
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Thank God for that. I would have been more worried that they might storm in
a nick my fags before I got a chance to even light one.
May 11, 2013 at 12:23
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Geez Louise, i’d completely missed the whole thing. Muchos gracias Edna.
I’ve worked in both Local Gov ant the Rozzers and any sensible officer wants
the law to protect them – if punters want to kill themselves or whatever then
as long as there’s professional deniability and recourse to the law of the
land then bingo, to the boozer. If there was to be a blanket responsibility to
intervene then the compo gates, the negligence and misconduct charges walk
into a whole new spectrum. Whoever thought of this is obviously an ambitious
imbecile with very little understanding of how quickly careers can be
torpedoed. What – give it 5 years, eh?
May 11, 2013 at 12:20
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Well done.
May 11, 2013 at 12:10
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Glasses raised indeed! The phrasing in #32 shows the effect people here
had. It’s rare that we see any of our efforts have such a concrete effect so
this is indeed a great thing to show!
MJM
May 11, 2013 at 11:28
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Sorry folks typo errors / omissions in my post – hope it still makes
sense.
May 11, 2013 at 11:27
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Holy Mackerel – I made a difference! ( albeit a tiddler of a difference).
Thank you Edna and Thank you Anna.
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May 11, 2013 at 11:23
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Anna, the news was reported some weeks back that Norman Lamb was cool to
the introduction of this power because the majority to those who would be
subject to it opposed it. I confess the nanny state being the default position
with adult care social workers seeking to get the same recognition as child
protection ones and using this power to do so anything could have happened.
But I think it may be UKIP’s threat (Farage claims to be a libertrian on his
website) to government and UKIPs website actually stating their for families
in these situations not being unfairly targeted that may have helped too. That
is not to say Raccoon Regulars and their contacts were not the tipping point
in terms of the balance and drinks for them.
BTY I am a teetotaller so fruit juice etc. for life is OK thanks.
- May 11, 2013 at 23:35
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Give the buggers an inch, and they take several miles. And any freedom
‘temporarily’ suspended is invariably lost for ever…
A pox on the denizens of Whitehall and a plague on all their houses!
May 11, 2013 at 11:17
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Well done Edna, the large gin and tonic being delivered to you by the bar
staff is from me.
I can’t afford to buy drinks for all of the
Raccoon Regulars who took part in that survey but well done you and do you
mind sharing a packet of peanuts?
And also well done to our Landlady.
By
the way, excellent though the result is, isn’t it a bit disturbing that
government policy was determined by only 200 odd people who bothered to reply
to the survey? Just suppose an extremist organisation swamped similar
gov surveys. Horrible thought. Oh, sillly me, they probably
already have!
- May 11, 2013 at 23:32
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You don’t consider the government itself is an extremist
organisation?
- May 12, 2013 at 12:33
May 11, 2013 at 10:19
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Just in case anyone missed this yesterday and in order to get as many eyes
on as possible. West Yorkshire police’s investigation into Sir Jimmy
Savile found that his home town police force found no evidence of any
impropriety on Jimmy’s part. That’s NOTHING -just gossip and hearsay,
with one tale now the subject of an ‘independent’ review. The hate
mongers call the report’s findings a cover up – well they would wouldn’t they
? The fight goes on. Sad that despite finding nothing the force
capitulated to the party line, producing a mini yewtree like set of figures
and graphs of ‘crimes’.
May 11, 2013 at 22:20
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They probably didn’t have any complaints to investigate at the time. I
live in Leeds for 4 years in the seventies and they were much more
interested in catching the Yorshkire Ripper at the time, than in anything
Savile was doing. In fact I was interviewed for the Ripper investigation,
along with 50,000 other men, so they were definitely throwing some resources
at it. I never remember hearing ANYTHING about Savile in the years I lived
in Leeds, except a vague story that he lived in a room underneath the
staircase at the Queens Hotel, which was probably not true, or
distorted.
- May 12, 2013 at 00:14
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Here is something odd. Over at The Guardian I have complained about the
lack of accurate reporting on the charges faced by Stuart Hall, but what I
did not know until just now was that the hearing at which he pleaded
guilty was held in camera with the press excluded. This doesn’t seem to
have been reported on in the mainstream media. What the hell is going
on?
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/category/why-was-stuart-hall-tried-in-secret/
May 12, 2013 at 11:52
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Jonathan Mason,
Re: “Here is something odd. Over at The Guardian I have complained
about the lack of accurate reporting on the charges faced by Stuart
Hall, but what I did not know until just now was that the hearing at
which he pleaded guilty was held in camera with the press excluded. This
doesn’t seem to have been reported on in the mainstream media. What the
hell is going on?”
Here is an article from Delhi from 28/2/13 that says that the police
think that the “enquiry and trial in every rape case should be held
in-camera”.
But this is Delhi. To some extent I can see an advantage to it in
that, as seen with the Jimmy Savile case etc, the media and *some* of
the public can simply be a down right pain in the arse when they
interfere with these cases, saying things weren’t done right when they
were etc and I suppose it can help the case become less of a spectacle
in the media. I think perhaps the media used to show a bit more
restraint with it’s reporting than it does now.
That said, in the case of these recent elderly celebrity cases in the
wake of the Jimmy Savile ‘scandal’, my worry is it is simply so that the
public and media are unable to see what a farce the whole thing is, how
weak and contrived the evidence and the mental state of the
defendants:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stuart-hall-extremely-fragile-after-1552519
I noticed someone suggest on Twitter that one of Stuart Hall’s
accusers was “an ex-policewoman who works in Child Protection, one of
MWT’s friends” and that “most of the victims are known to ITV, the
Police and Mark himself”. This could just be speculation I suppose, but
to an extent, we do know that at least some of them were e.g Wilfred De
Ath’s accuser and Dave Lee Travis’s accuser and we can see how many of
these fools are in cahoots on Twitter so I think this guy’s suspcious
are not baseless.
https://twitter.com/Stanhopeless
I think their hiding something….
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May 12, 2013 at 12:50
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@Jonathan Mason
Thats interesting (one has to ignore the people in
the comments section as they are totally confusing the most recent
hearing with the earlier one which is the topic of the blog). Just as
interesting is, the fact that there is a skeptical ‘high level media
consultant’ jumping up and down in the background. I wish him every
success in exposing this business further.
- May 12, 2013 at 12:56
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@Lucozade.
I agree that in these ‘convict a celebrity’ cases we
don’t want cover ups of the potential paucity of credible evidence,
and theres no need for it. The people concerned have been denied their
privacy and dignity from the moment of arrest – if not earlier, so its
certainly not for their sake that its hidden.
May 12, 2013 at 13:35
May 11, 2013 at 10:06
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Remember! Eternal vigilance is the price of security! Who thinks they won’t
try this again?
- May 11, 2013 at 09:56
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Well Hurrah indeed to Edna – a victory must always be applauded. Now
there’s that small matter of yewtree !
- May 11, 2013 at 10:02
{ 31 comments }