I have just returned from a powerful adaptation of Jack Mapanje‘s prison memoir “And Crocodiles are Hungry at Night” at the Africa Centre.  The memoir tells the story of the arrest and imprisonment without charge of Jack Mapanje, an academic and poet, in the dying days of Hasting Banda’s Malawi.  The arrest, probably generated by academic jealousy, led to incarceration for 3 years, 7 months and 16 days and had a profound effect not only on Jack but on his family.  His release followed a lengthy campaign by Amnesty International and PEN International.

The production presented by Bilimankhwe Arts (of which I am a trustee) has an impressive central performance by Misheck Mzumara as the poet, but the entire ensemble are highly effective – particularly in showing the interplay of the prisoners sharing a single cell and their relationship with their guards.

The play runs to 18th August and tickets can be obtained here.

The House of Lords, unlike the House of Commons, is still sitting and this afternoon Baroness Jan Royall, Leader of the Opposition, asked a Private Notice Question of the Leader of the House, Lord Strathclyde, about the position of the Trade Minister, Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint.

As the Daily Telegraph has pointed out, allegations that HSBC, while Lord Green was its Chairman, allowed money laundering on a huge scale to take place are now casting a cloud over his current role as a Trade Minister.  Their report says:

“The US Senate has launched a coruscating attack on HSBC for its slapdash approach to money-laundering regulations. The bank could face a $1 billion fine.

According to Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “the culture at HSBC was pervasively polluted for a long time.” Just how polluted was revealed in the Senate report into the scandal. For example, between 2007 and 2008, HSBC’s Mexican operations moved $7bn into the bank’s US operations. According to the report, both Mexican and US authorities warned HSBC that the amount of money could only have reached such a level if it was tied to illegal narcotics proceeds.”

The Government’s answer boils down to saying that there is nothing that casts doubt on Lord Green’s integrity and that there is no reason that he should be held responsible for everything that the organisation of which he was chairman was doing.

However, what was he doing as Chairman of the Bank during this time? If the Bank were warned by both the Mexican and US authorities that transactions of $7 billion were tied to the illegal drugs trade, shouldn’t he have been told of the warnings.  If he wasn’t, why wasn’t he and what sort of system of corporate governance was he presiding over if it was not felt that such warnings should be conveyed to the Board? Is $7 billion too small a sum for him to worry about?  And if he was told, what did he do about it?

I tried unsuccessfully to get in and put a this question to the Leader of the House:

“How bad does the stench of money laundering have to be around its Trade Minister before it impacts on the reputation of the United Kingdom?  And why – if his integrity is as great as we are told it is – are they so reluctant to have him come to the House and dispel that stench by setting the record straight?”

The BBC captures the full exchange here and the Hansard test is as follows:

HSBC

3.07 pm

Thomas Galloway Dunlop du Roy de Blicquy Galbraith, 2nd Baron Strathclyde, is Leader of the House of Lords.  This afternoon he lost his temper with the venerable Lord Joel Barnett.  His asperity was in contrast to what is normally expected of the peer who is supposed to be Leader of the whole House and not just of his particular faction in the Government.

As you know, I am not one to gossip, but privately his colleagues are whispering that he is under stress.  Downing Street has been questioning his performance and, in particular, his failure to deliver his not-so-merry band of Conservative peers in support of House of Lords reform.  There are even rumours that he might be replaced in David Cameron’s Government reshuffle – should it ever happen.

Moreover, so I am told, no less a personage – if such a thing were possible – than the Baroness Anelay of St Johns, the Government Chief Whip and Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentleman-at-Arms, has let it be known that she is ready to take on the burden of the Leadership were it to fall on her shoulders.  (It is not, of course, immediately apparent why Baroness Anelay – aka “The Steel Magnolia” – would have more success than the hapless – and grumpy – Lord Strathclyde in keeping the rebellious Tory peers in line.)  This is all in private: publicly she says her only ambition is to play golf again at Woking Golf Club.

So Lord Strathclyde’s extraordinary rebuke of Lord Joel Barnett (who first entered Parliament when Lord Strathclyde was four years old) is seen as a sign of stress and the only question on the lips of Tory peers is whether a summer holiday will be sufficient or whether an urgent course of anger management lessons is going to be necessary.

Lord Strathclyde works his charms on a clearly fascinated Home Secretary

Lady Anelay’s steely look

My attention has been drawn to a statement from the National Association of Retired Police Officers saying that many of their members could have been available to G4S as security staff for the Olympics but there has been no approach to their Association for help.

Eric Evans, the President of the National Association, has said:

‘ At a time when unemployment is so high and many police officers are retiring earlier than planned because of Government cut backs, it is difficult to understand how G4S have failed to recruit the required number of security staff. I am sure that many of those of our members, who have recently retired would have been glad of an opportunity to get some employment at the Olympic Games not only for the money but also to be involved in such a major ‘lifetime’ event. I am frankly very surprised that G4S have not sought our assistance in recruitment.’

He goes on to comment:

“It is however the case that we at the national office of NARPO have not at any stage been approached by G4S to assist in recruiting security staff for the Olympics and certainly have not received any memorandum from G4S this week or at any other time requesting such assistance.”

How serious were G4S to get themselves out of the mess in which they have got themselves and why haven’t the Home Office told them to use retired police officers in this way?

According to the BBC senior managers at G4S only realised “eight or nine days ago”, that they could not provide enough security guards for the London Olympics.

The BBC says that the company’s chief executive, Nick Buckles, told them that:

“problems in the recruitment and deployment process were only recently identified.  …

the company accepted it had “underestimated the task of supplying staff to the Olympics”.

“We deeply regret that… and we are deeply disappointed. It was a daunting task to supply that number of staff in a short time scale.

“I began to know it was going wrong eight or nine days ago… Basically we are recruiting a large number of people and they are all working through a process of interview, two or three different degrees of training, licensing and accreditation.

“It is only when you get closer to the Games, you realise that the number is not as high as you expect,” Mr Buckles added.”

Pardon?

This is staggering.  I remember sitting in meetings three or four YEARS ago when the problems of recruiting sufficient accredited security guards were raised.  It was foreseen then that, given the nature of the security industry, that it would be difficult to get enough suitable individuals to commit to the (comparatively short) Games period and have them trained and vetted in time.

In the intervening period I and many others raised the issue and heard reassurances that the security companies involved and in particular G4S were confident that they would have no difficulty managing the situation.

Now to be told that the senior people in G4S only woke up to the problem the week before last is staggering.

G4S is supposed to be the largest private security company in the world.

Logistics is supposed to be their business.

Quite clearly their management information systems leave a lot to be desired.

How could they have not seen this coming?  If an organisation knows that it needs, say, 1000 security guards fully trained and vetted by a certain date, if it knows how long the recruitment, training and vetting are likely to take, and if it has its world-wide and UK experience to tell them how many recruits will drop out or turn out not to be suitable, it is not a difficult or complex task to know when you need to start the process.  And that time was not eight or nine days ago.

Mr Buckles has also said that he cannot guarantee all the security staff will speak fluent English.  Now that’s a surprise too.

So what’s the slogan going to be:

“Come to the London Olympics and you’ll be bossed around in the queue to get into the venue by some ill-trained half-vetted lout but – if you are lucky and not English speaking – there is just a chance he will speak your language.”

G4S will charge Olympic organisers Locog £280m, but (are we supposed to feel sorry for them?) they say they will lose up to £50m on the contract.

The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (of which I am a member) has just published a report criticising the Government for failing to take seriously the concerns that it expresses in its First Review of the Strategy.

In particular, the report points out that the Government has failed to respond adequately to the Committee’s concerns about the implications for the National Security Strategy of major shifts in US strategy, of the Eurozone crisis and the potential impact of Scottish independence.

The Joint Committee had urged the Government to press ahead with planning the next national Security Strategy, allowing sufficient time to involve academics and experts external to the Government in the process and to allow the next Comprehensive Spending Review and the Strategic Defence Review to be properly integrated in the process. The 2010 National Security Strategy was rushed and weaker as a result.

The Government has acknowledged that it is “important to start thinking about the work plan” for the next National Security Strategy “well in advance of 2015″.  However, there is no indication that any effort has been made to start drawing up plans to ensure that the next Strategy is a more candid and more explicit document that properly addresses difficult questions.

Even more disturbing is the absence from the Government of any indication that it intends to draw up the next Strategy in a way that achieves a broad national consensus on the foundations necessary to plan for our nation’s security in the longer -term.

Failure to build such a consensus will be a wasted opportunity – without such a consensus any future Strategy will not have abroad enough basis of buy-in and consent and that in turn will weaken the Strategy and also National Security itself.

The Government is pushing through changes to voter registration in this country.  This will mean that each elector will have to fill in a separate registration form – a change from the current arrangements where only one form per household is required.  This is allegedly designed to reduce electoral fraud.

Interestingly, these same arguments are used by Republicans to justify changes in voter ID rules in key states in the United States

And here is the Pennsylvania Republican House Leader boasting to his State Republican Party that the real purpose was to ensure that Romney wins Pennsylvania this November:

With research suggesting that the numbers on the electoral register will plummet under the proposed new arrangements in this country, can we expect a gung-ho David Cameron boasting to a future Conservative Party Conference that the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (interestingly introduced in the House of Commons by Nick Clegg) will deliver a future Tory election victory?

I have only just caught up with this story (courtesy of Naked Security from Sophos) and it is a salutary reminder to make sure that your home wifi connection is properly secured – as otherwise you don’t know who else might be using it and what else they might be doing.

According to the Sophos summary:

“After spotting threats posted online, a heavily-armed police SWAT team broke down the door of a house in Evansville, Indiana, smashed windows and tossed a flashbang stun grenade into the living room where an eighteen-year-old girl and her grandmother were watching the Food Network.

Can you imagine how terrifying it must have felt to have been in that room when the grenade was thrown in, and the house stormed by police with their guns drawn?

Oh, and just a small detail – the police had the wrong house. The home had an open WiFi connection, which meant that it could be used from an outside location.  ….

The somewhat rattled Stephanie Milan and her family were released without charge once the mix-up became obvious, and police looked further afield for the culprit who had posted messages like the following online:

"Cops beware! I'm proud of my country but I hate police of any kind. I have explosives made in America. Evansville will feel my pain."

…  The Milans’ door and window are now being repaired at the city’s expense. And presumably the family are taking steps to secure their WiFi connection.”

To make things worse the Evansville police had invited the local TV cameras along for the raid ….

It couldn’t happen here, or could it?

The Department of Health has recently announced a list of Non-Executive Members of the National Health Service Commissioning Board, the biggest quango in Europe through which most of the money going to the NHS passes.

And – in their wisdom (that’s meant to be irony) they have appointed Mr Naguib Kheraj, the current Vice Chairman of Barclays Bank plc. More significantly he was Finance Director of the Bank until 2007 – so he was in charge of the finances of the Bank when the attempted fixing of the LIBOR market was going on.

Just the sort of person we can have confidence in to oversee the running of our National Health Service.

Only this Government ……

I have now seen all the plays in Shakespeare’s “Shipwreck Trilogy” at the Royal Shakespeare Company season at the Roundhouse and there is no question that the productions of “Twelfth Night” and “The Comedy of Errors” are brilliant (I was less enamoured by “The Tempest” but then the play is by no means one of my favourites anyway).

Illyria has become in this version of “Twelfth Night” a rather sleazy Latin American state (with copious total immersions taking place – avoid the first two rows in the left-hand front of the stage if you don’t want to get wet), while Ephesus – the setting for “The Comedy” – is a proto-fascist state, taking a robust line with illegal immigrants and featuring incidental water-boarding and ECT use.  Normally such devices would be a distraction from the plays but in these productions the action seems to fit perfectly into the settings contrived for them.

There are some superb individual performances: notably Jonathan Slinger’s Malvolio (his buttocks provoking waves of hysteria amongst the youthful audience in the cross-gartering scene on the day I saw it), Kirsty Bushell’s Olivia in “Twelfth Night” and Adriana in “The Comedy”, Emily Taafe’s Viola (possibly the best rendering of the part I have ever seen) and Nicholas Day’s Sir Toby. The twin Dromios (Felix Hayes and Bruce Mackinnon – who also carries off a suitably inept Sir Andrew Aguecheek) ensure that the farcical set-pieces in “The Comedy” are genuinely hilarious. There are strong supporting performances from Cecilia Noble (as Maria in “Twelfth Night” and a formidable Emilia) and from Kevin McMonagle (as Feste and a terrifying merchant in “The Comedy”).

The tragedy is that none of the performances I saw was sold out and there were plenty of empty seats: the good news therefore is that you still have a few more days to catch the season before it ends.