[Tubby Isaacs]

This is promising.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/art ... s-of-chaos

Aslef train drivers reach deal that could end rail strikes after two years of chaos

Think this can be safely filed under "mess we inherited" too. No wonder Reeves wasn't very expansive in terms of new commitments.

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/art ... bilitation

Labour urged to scrap £4bn Tory mega-jails plan and fund rehabilitation

Not sure about this really. Of all the expert opinions people like me have, I've never been particularly convinced by this sort of stuff. Sure, we have more people in prison than most places (we meaning England and Wales, and SNP Scotland, it's not like the English Tories have been an outliers). The ex-rapist who competed in the Olympics served 13 months in the Netherlands. I don't think that would be accepted here, even if rehabilitation was spot on. And even with our relatively punitive system, it's not hard to find, particularly with violent crimes, cases where you think the perpetrator got off lightly.

Of course, there's a balance with how much you fund cops, prisons, probation etc. But I'd build new prisons, not necessarily these enormous ones, because I think we'll need the places without winging it on overcrowding like we have been.

[Abernathy]

The two need not be presented as a mutually exclusive dichotomy. Remember "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" ?

[Youngian]

Industrial prisons in Germany where you surrender your weekends and holidays but can carry on with your life, have been deemed a success in terms of low reoffending rate. But just can’t British villains turning up if it was tried here. As they’re thick as an elephant’s turd.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Lots of German villains are too thick as well and won’t get considered for that sort of sentence. Might work at the fringes though and worth considering.

[Andy McDandy]

You can produce all the stats you like and it won't make any difference - a good chunk of the population have a visceral reaction to crime and criminals summed up as chuck 'em in and forget 'em.

[Yug]

Industrial prisons sound a bit like community service, where the miscreant carries on with life as normal, and does their court-mandated odd jobs in what used to be their free time. It seems to work ok.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The two need not be presented as a mutually exclusive dichotomy. Remember "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" ?

You could see Sure Start as being part of that, but at the same time there was a high prison population.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has said foreign students make a huge contribution to the UK’s town and cities, but she has no plans to change recent Tory visa restrictions

Don't know what words were used exactly, but I don't think this policy will hold. Would make sense to take students out of migration figures altogether and only add them in if they stay after the course. It's one of the things that can be done later and nobody considering voting Labour will really care. Easy to say "just do it now", but I don't think funding problems with universities are widely understood yet.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Anything in this? The Guardian definitely has an anti-Labour element, but there have been silly briefings for a while.

‘Look out for fireworks’: power struggle rumours between No 10 big beasts persist
Downing Street officials deny friction between Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney, but negative briefings continue

Keir Starmer told his staff on his first day in office their duty was to return politics to service and to end self-interest.

Yet it has taken less than a month for negative, personal briefings from within Downing Street to emerge in the press, suggesting all is not entirely well in the working relationship between the two big beasts close to the prime minister: Sue Gray, the prime minister’s chief of staff, and Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s election strategy guru.

I quite like the idea of the delivery person (Gray) telling the politics person (McSweeney) to fuck off, but it's probably better if it's more harmonious. And I think, in retrospect, Labour left a lot of votes out there in the General Election because of overly negative messaging (about the last thing Starmer said before the election was that he didn't think we'd ever rejoin the EU). The cost of that in terms of the Greens having a platform for a free hit all over urban Britain next time could be very high. If McSweeney was responsible for that, his desk can be moved into the broom cupboard as far as I'm concerned.

[Andy McDandy]

His job is done. Hers is ongoing.

This is just journalists shitting in the pool.

[Tubby Isaacs]

He's still in charge of the politics, isn't he?

[Bones McCoy]

The two need not be presented as a mutually exclusive dichotomy. Remember "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" ?

You could see Sure Start as being part of that, but at the same time there was a high prison population.

Something like Sure Start will take 20 years to show results.

Otherwise (I've been away for 2 weeks, but posted a warning about mega-jails before I left).
Here's a brain dump.

I don't think it's contradictory to want to build more jails while thinking we jail too many people.

1. Mega Jails in the USA (and their copyists in central America) have proved to be recruiting grounds for ultra-violent organised crime.
There are reams of studies pointing to post Reagan mega-jails as the birthplace of the various Mexican Mafias.

2. Our jails are old and overcrowded. I accept we're in no position to demolish Barlinnie or the Scrubs. But some new builds on a smaller basis offer opportunities to spread the present population.

3. Options other than "banged up 23 hours" sound promising from a rehab and appropriate punishment perspective.
Care must be exercised so the "Nice soft sentences" don't become the preserve of criminals from a privileged background.
If the suspicion develops that ordinary cons are getting porridge and banged up, while Etonians caught skimming the economy get weekend detention, with yoga and internet.
Well then the Two tier meme deservedly grows legs.

[mattomac]

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has said foreign students make a huge contribution to the UK’s town and cities, but she has no plans to change recent Tory visa restrictions

Don't know what words were used exactly, but I don't think this policy will hold. Would make sense to take students out of migration figures altogether and only add them in if they stay after the course. It's one of the things that can be done later and nobody considering voting Labour will really care. Easy to say "just do it now", but I don't think funding problems with universities are widely understood yet.

If they don’t the sector might go bankrupt on them, I assume they are putting together something.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I don't know. They're keeping it quiet if so. My go to universities sector guy, Glen O'Hara, posted this a while ago. Not sure how it would work.

Glen O'Hara
‪@gsoh31.bsky.social‬
In my view what's going to emerge in university-world is a New Labour style quid pro quo: okay, you get some extra cash and conditional access to more money on top, but you have to do more for the government on skills, teaching and regional policy.

[mattomac]

Well without it they will see a bankrupt University.

I can see funding being put into widening participation and Nursing.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is good and overdue, irrespective of the restriction of winter fuel allowance. It seems to be much worse to allow hundreds of thousands of penniless pensioners not to know about pension credit than to restrict fuel allowances.

The result of this might be that not very much money is saved, but the spend will be much more progressive

Ministers launch pension credit campaign after restricting winter fuel payments

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ar ... l-payments

[Killer Whale]

Need the same for attendance allowance:
https://policyinpractice.co.uk/people-o ... 2-billion/

[Tubby Isaacs]

And getting a council tax reduction when one of a couple is claiming attendance allowance. Those are less directly progressive, but everyone should get what they're entitled to.

[Crabcakes]

The result of this might be that not very much money is saved, but the spend will be much more progressive

Progressive and targeted at those in poverty rather than free cash for rich people who don’t need it? What is this crazy and novel kind of thinking?