Re: John Reid strikes again...


"Stephen Glynn" <nyeplm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4e5if0F1d4e4lU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Gaz wrote:
Stephen Glynn wrote:
Just spotted this in Ranting Guttersnipe's blog:

'From Today?s Daily Mail (http://tinyurl.com/pq52k )

'"It began as a routine photo opportunity, the stock-in-trade of Labour
spin doctors.
The idea was to show the embattled Home Secretary getting to grips with
the foreign prisoner deportation fiasco. Stung by criticism of his
decision to take a holiday while his department is in crisis, John Reid
arranged to be photographed attending a series of dawn raids yesterday
as police and immigration officers searched for released foreign
criminals. "


I kind of felt sorry for Reid today, seeing the negative press he has
been getting on this piece of public relations.

You can imagine them, sitting round a table, trying to work out how to
gain the initiative, get the popular press back on side, and look tough.
"hey John, why dont you join a team on a dawn raid arresting some illegal
overstayers"

Sounds like a good idea, makes John look like a man of action, getting on
top of the problem etc, and this kind of thing has worked in the past,
remember Maggie in the tank etc.

Oh dear, little did they know, I have rarely seen such a bashing of a
politician with their publicity stunt backfiring, since the infamous John
Selwyn Gummer feeding a mad cow burger to his children.

The general discontent with the Government, i'd suggest has been running
for a few years, but the alternative (or memories of the alternative) has
been to awful for many to contemplate, but it seems like something has
changed in the last six months.

The Government is out of control, how long can they sustain such bad
press coverage? Something has to give. You would expect a new home
secretary to be given some breathing space, but he is getting hammered as
if he has been in the job for a couple of years.

Six months ago, the perpetual Labour Government, in power for the next
ten years seemed not so much likely, as inevitable, but now, you have to
wonder if they can leap on through to the next election.

The longer it goes on, the longer it looks like Gordon Brown is not the
man to take over, I find it hard to visualise a real change from Brown,
with certainly frostier relations with the media, and the frightening
away of middleclass tory voters.

Its not looking good for Labour in Government, where is there John Major
figure, a huge break from the past that can renew?

Gaz

Reid, I think, is toast. Part of the reason this stunt backfired so badly
is that it's symptomatic of exactly the sort of thing that got the Home
Office into such a mess in the first place -- ministers (and sometimes the
Prime Minister) going in for headline-grabbing stunts and initiatives
without bothering to think out the details and then blaming the Civil
Service and the courts when it all goes horribly wrong.

As I've mentioned before, I've frequently been told by people at the INS
that one of the main reasons they're in such chaos there -- and they are,
with files going missing and people changing jobs every five minutes -- is
that no sooner have they managed to get the latest initiative or
crack-down or whatever to work than the Home Secretary of the day is off
at another tangent about something that's upset the editors of the
red-tops.


Do you recall this story from the Independent?

<quote>
The priorities that are adopted by Britain's elite crime fighting force will
be partly based upon the number of column inches newspapers give to
different types of organised criminality, Sir Stephen [Lander, Chairman of
SOCA] disclosed.
'Researchers at the Home Office have looked at about 30 newspapers, divided
equally among broad*** and compact newspapers, the tabloids, and the
regional press, over the past five years. They have calculated which
organised crime issues are the most pressing by measuring the column inches
and number of stories devoted to each subject. Organised immigration crime
came first, followed by drugs.

'Sir Stephen explained: "The brainboxes in the Home Office have been putting
together a sort of harm model. The model basically articulates the harm
that is caused to the UK under a number of headings - the rewards taken and
made by the criminal; the social and economical harm to the UK; the
institutional harm - corruption for example and illegal immigration - and
tries to put a cost [on them]."

"It also brings into play judgements about the degree of public concern and
they have a proxy for this, which is the amount of column inches in the
press. Which is not quite right, but is probably as good as you will get. It
is pretty rough and ready but it is asking the right questions. It is asking
not, what is the incidence of something, but what is its impact. One of the
priorities of the harm model is a better understanding of the problems."

He continued: "The first of the cracks of the methodology suggests that we
need to do more on people-smuggling and people-trafficking."

So does this mean that because newspapers are obsessed with immigration
issues that Soca will be giving people smugglers and traffickers more
attention than it would otherwise? Sir Stephen replied: "Illegal immigration
stories in the media are much the most frequent - they reflect a newspaper's
policy line on a subject and they also reflect genuine anxiety."

"People-smuggling has been growing across Europe and the UK is seen as very
attractive location. The best estimates are that 95 per cent of the illegal
immigrants who get here are paying someone to facilitate them, so it is a
real money earner. It is a lower risk than drugs. It does have an impact
that has been growing over the past 10 years."

He did, however, concede: "There is certainly a level of hype in some of the
media coverage but nevertheless there is substantial money made at the
expense of the UK and taken out of communities from poor countries."

Ministers will set the overall priorities of Soca, which in turn draw on the
"harm model".

But is it right that politicians should have such an influence in the way
crime is tackled - why not leave it to the professionals? He argued: "You
can't disentangle the political imperatives. If ministers want to have
something slightly more important than something else then that is their
political judgement."

"They run the country, I don't - it's their judgement that counts. It is a
real problem [illegal immigration] - this has weight this problem, the
degree of weight you attach to responding to this has to have an element of
political judgement about it. For a national agency, of course it is going
to be political, what else is it going to be?"

</quote>

Criticism here:

<http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2005/01/sir_stephen_lander_soca_settin.html>

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/11/lander_harm_model/>

<snip>


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