Oh Dear! Anglesey's Ad-Hoc Data Protection System

During the summer of 2013, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) swept in to the offices of Anglesey County Council to investigate their policies and procedures for handling personal data.

Whilst this was notionally an audit undertaken with the authority's consent, such audits are generally a marker of ineffective systems and triggered by significant failings.

From the uninsurable, flood-plain built offices of Anglesey: inadequate data protection systems.

Anglesey does not have a happy DPA history.  It's Chief Executive, Richard Parry Jones, has signed two undertakings (2012 edition here) in as many years to improve matters.

None of this seems to have led to any changes.

In a report dated October 2013, the ICO found:

• No corporate training system for data protection
• No defined corporate staff structure for data protection handling
• "Inappropriate" systems for storing and securing personal data

The Executive Summary of the report can be read below:

Ico Audit Isle of Anglesey County Council Executive Summary 20131014

Caffi Mon to Close

Oh dear!  The unimaginatively-named 'Caffi Mon', a canteen within the Anglesey Council offices, looks imminently set to close.

The chips are down at Anglesey Council's subsidised in-house cafe.

Making a claimed loss of £20,000 per annum, the cafe is said, rather quaintly by Unison, to offer staff a place where "they can get a reasonable meal at a decent price without having to go out in the rain."

What a terrible inconvenience, having to do what just about every other worker has to do, and go out, yes, in the rain no less, to buy a meal!

I doubt any of the taxpaying public will shed a tear over the closure of Caffi Mon.  But they may question why the council ever ran its own cafe in-house, where it appears it was always subsidised and never made a profit. A private company which once ran it vanished, presumably because, er, it wasn't profitable.

I wonder when we might see the abandonment of the St. David's day extra holiday afforded to Anglesey council staff?  According to one report, Swansea Council's loss for handing out a freebie holiday amounted to £1 million way back in 2007. 

And when will we see an end to the super-inflationary increase in senior officers' pay?  So out of control is the system within Councils that we learn now of very deep and unlawful payments to officers at Caerphilly Council.  It is erupting into a major scandal.  There is little doubt this kind of thing is much more widespread amongst the public sector.

Welsh vs. English - And a Return to Normal at Anglesey Council

One of the very annoying, disturbing, even, facts about Welsh politics is that you invariably find yourself entombed in a bizarre system where Welsh is the only language that will do.  English is sidelined on the implicit message that the English have invaded us, damaged our language, and ought to be kept outside the council gates, out in the real world, where only a handful of people speak it.

Peter Rogers.  He's had enough and quitted Anglesey Council.  Image: Daily Post/Trinity Mirror

Indeed, stop a typical person in the street and talk to them in Welsh, and their actual fluency and facility with the language will be very poor.  Liberally interspersed with English words, bad corruptions of English words and of course, punctuated by plenty of 'yeah'.  The pure Welsh are a minority breed, mostly approaching or beyond retirement age, and often having occupied or occupying well-paid public sector jobs.  These are the so-called elite, often labelled the 'Taffia'.

Across Wales, only 23.4% of the population say they can speak Welsh.  This has sparked panic amongst the Taffia, who want to force-feed everyone until the damn well speak the Mother Tongue.

Today, we learn from the Daily Post that Councillor Peter Rogers, an independent member on Anglesey, has resigned.  The two reasons cited as prompting his departure are a lack of direction in the new, supposedly-revived council, and that the leader of the council is, it is alleged, not taking enough notice of non-welsh speaking members.

Cllr. Rogers has been labelled a "maverick" by the Daily Post.  I'm not sure that's fair.  Rogers became snared in a monumentally bizarre, expensive and ultimately futile case brought against him by the now defunct North Wales Police Authority.  In the tribunal, it was accepted that the Police Authority's code of conduct was not even engaged, because Rogers was not representing himself as a member of the Police Authority at the material time.

So, it seems that Rogers is giving us a hint of what is happening at meetings in the New-Age Council.  Whether or not his allegations of bias against those not speaking the Mother Tongue are reasonable or not is something we will have to leave to one side.   But Rogers clearly thinks this is going on.  He also give us an indication that the council is not moving forwards in representing the people in the way he envisages as the right way.

Little of this will come as any surprise to the people of Anglesey.  The Council has never worked properly since its inception, now a very long time ago.  It has simply gone from one crash barrier to the next, locked in stupid personality clashes and struggles for local, described as "parochial" power.

It seems a return to normal might be underway.

But the people of Anglesey have a lot of blame to shoulder.  They keep returning the same old people to power.  True, a few new faces appeared after a bit of shuffling of ward boundaries this year.  But there remain a group of old guards who ensure their popularity through (a) being welsh speaking and members of Plaid Cymru, and (b) being 'someone we know', however rubbish or questionable their past performance.

In short, the people of Anglesey vote for people that are not outsiders.  The island does not like people from outside its ranks, and rarely allows such people to come into the party.  Indeed, few outsiders want to come to Anglesey, leaving us with a limited pool of people at the bottom of the cooking pot to take up public positions for which they are often woefully unsuited.

Anglesey is out on a limb, both geographically and socially.  It is rapidly being left behind.  Its youngsters, thankfully, are leaving it behind, most notably because there is no meaningful work for them here anyway. Farms are closing shop as the average age of farmers rockets and their families move elsewhere. And the few large businesses that did come here - and only because of generous but unsustainable 'carrot' packages, have left.  Even the population is undergoing a strange metamorphosis, as the large number of people who retired or moved here from England in the 60s and 70s now pass away or go back to their point of origin, doubtless to take up a place in an old people's home.  Few want to buy their houses, which in some cases are falling apart as they wait for a buyer.

It is, I regret to say, the typical story of an island.  Some in Scotland have come together and made island life not only attractive but developed nice cottage economies.

That seems impossible on Anglesey, for all we do is sit around, hoping that one nuclear power station will solve all our problems when the existing one has done nothing of the sort.  Wylfa has remained a bizarre oasis of wealth and good jobs on the shores of an island that is otherwise an economic black hole.  A new Wylfa will bring some wealth for some people, but not the majority.  Not the single mums and unemployed who live in hovels, funded by a state that would rather label them as wasters, or worse.

No, there is no future for Anglesey.  Accept that, and we might change tack and start from the beginning.  We first need an identity, not dozens of different ones.  It's a tourist island, nothing else.  Put all effort into that, embrace and welcome tourists and the pounds in their pockets, and make it a really attractive, different place to be.  Don't try to be like everywhere else.

Wales' New Education Minister - 1 out of 10 So Far

Hardly living up to Leighton Andrews' hard-hitting political style, new Wales Education minister, Huw Lewis is proving to be a big dissapointment already.

The new face of Welsh Education - and more pupil attaintment disasters to come.

 
Mr. Lewis has recently commented he "wont be ushering in any drastic changes."

That's a real pity, because drastic changes, of course, are precisely what a bottom-of-pile education system needs in Wales.

He is, however, clever enough to realise that the imminent PISA results for Wales aren't going to be good.  He 'predicts' this, but anyone with half an interest in education within Wales (that is, most of the education system), will know it's damned obvious it's not going to cut it, come autumn.

It's a great pity that, rather than spending his time telling Wales Online what he's actually going to do, he immediately launches into the tired-old tit-for-tat politics that has come to characterise relations between a Welsh Labour Government and that laughing its head off at us in Westminster.

Huw Lewis should stop playing party politics and get back to Leighton Andrews' mission to make a difference.  It's a real shame we sack people who hold up a placard, whilst sticking-in insipid politicians with little evident idea of how to shake up the education system.

Mark so far, Mr. Lewis?  1 out of 10 seems generous.

Spending your Money on Cosy Rooms

Reports abound this week about expenditure by Gwynedd Council on meeting rooms in hotels.

For gleefully spending taxpayers' hard-earned cash, enquire within...

A recent news report recounts:

"An internal audit  by Gwynedd found that “various council officers favour paying for the hire of external meeting rooms rather than using the council rooms”.

"It added: 'It was seen that this expenditure has reduced over the last three years, but when considering the pressure on the council to reduce costs, all of the expenditure cannot be justified.'”

One must question why "certain officers favour paying for... external meeting rooms."

Could it be something to do with the Freemasons?

One hotel named in the news reports as being a favoured venue, though not implicated in any wrongdoing, is the Celtic Royal, Caernarfon.  A mere quick walk from the Council offices, one might say it's very convenient.  Not cheap to the taxpayer, but convenient, yes.

Councils and Freemasons aren't seen as a healthy combination. 

The Celtic Royal has historically also been the favoured venue for Caernarfon area Freemasons' meetings, though there is nothing to suggest simply offering its services indicates any wrongdoing on the part of the hotel. 

The link between masonry and councils in north Wales has always been a hot topic of complaint and concern.  It seems there may yet be more concern to hold.
 

Able Pupils in Wales - A Basketcase System

As this blog almost weekly notes, Wales is well behind compared with the educational attainment of children elsewhere.  For the past few years, it has been the subject of something approaching panic, as education authorities across Wales go into special measures for their failures, and an increasing number of schools are blasted for their part in the debacle.

What the welsh education system won't be producing anytime soon.

One policy that is said to be a "National Priority" by the Welsh Government and its inspectorate, Estyn, is that relating to more able and talented pupils.

Despite the hyperbole, only rarely - and these are Estyn's own words - is there evidence of an able pupils policy working in anything like an ideal way.  In many cases, it doesn't operate at all.  How's that for a national priority?

Even reaching a definition of the terms 'able' and 'talented' immediately leads to utter confusion.  One agency will use one definition, a school somewhere else will lift a definition of the first internet site they consult and mindlessly adopt that.  Inevitably, there are even workshops to thrash out what a consensus definition might be.

The statistics bear out the confusion.  At the end of the Foundation Phase, you have attainment or outcome levels 1-6 (with a few tragic categories below 1) and then an 'A'.  Let's look at the definitions from 5 onwards:

(5) The expected outcome for most but not all children.  Everyday language: average ouctome.

(6) Outcome above average.  Everyday language: not very clear, but doing very well might be good.

(A) Outcome significantly above average.  Everyday language: more able pupils.

Category (A) should mesh nicely with the 10-20% upper achievers in any cohort.  To be clear, that's because 10-20% means the child is performing above 80-90% of their peers.  'Significantly above average' matches this perfectly.

But.  What happens when we look at real world data?  I take the example of a very well-respected school that shall remain anonymous.  It, like just about all schools, seems to stop reporting anybody attaining above level 6.  It's not clear - at all - why that is. 

Indeed, it doesn't make any sense.

If we expect 10-20% of pupils will fly above the rest, where on earth are they in the yearly outcome figures?  Absent, is the only available answer.  For the Wales average, it seems a tiny number of schools do report level (A), coming in after averaging with the overwhelming majority that don't bother, at between 0.2 to 0.3% of the end of Foundation Phase year. 

The system is a Welsh mess.  It needs sorting out as a matter of urgency.  Not only are kids unable to work their maths out, the very people setting their education system in place are lost.

If you are a parent having the misfortune of trying to explain all this to a headteacher, God help you!  You will be met with some bland and usually senseless explanation as to why their school does things differently or not at all.  Otherwise, the school will simply see itself a victim of the 'way things are done', and shrug its shoulders.  If you persist in trying to get the best for your able child, I predict that you will quickly find yourself frustrated and possibly falling out over obvious errors of logic within the education system.

The sad reality at the moment in Wales is that there is both a philosophical antagonism and lack of resources to provide the support high flying pupils need and are expected to be given.  It is a toxic mix of factors that in pretty much all schools means able pupils are simply left to rot.

Far from being a National Priority, the implementation of the Welsh Government's Able Pupils Policy is a National Disgrace.

Leighton Andrews Gone

Last evening, Wales Education Minister, Leighton Andrews, resigned his cabinet seat for holding up a placard in support of a threatened school in his constituency.

If only such stringent standards of conduct were applied across the board in the public sector.

Resigned.  The last thing the Welsh eduction system needs is the loss of such a dynamic minister.

There is little doubt that, love him or hate him, Leighton Andrews was a man doing a job and doing it diligently.  Never a man to hold back on his words, he was certainly on a mission to change things for the better in Welsh education.

Not that being better than the bottom of the PISA list was a tall order.  But getting to the top few of the list was.

Had Andrews not committed the heinous crime of holding up a placard, he would probably be signing off on a deal to get rid of at least a third of Welsh LEAs, an alarming number of which are under special measures recovery boards for failing to conduct their affairs as they ought.

Was Andrews right to resign?  I don't think so, and here's why: Yes, it does superficially seem odd that a Minister who was ordering the closure and amalgamation of schools was protesting a school in his constituency should be kept open.

But that misses a very, very important point: the choice of which schools are closed was never one for the Minister.  It was the decision of the local council.  And the way in which some councils have gone about selecting their schools for closure has often been the subject of considerable community criticism, being seen as based on whom is friends with whom and good-old-fashioned prejudice and bias.


Anglesey's education department, as one example, is one of several under special measures, and has seen plenty of schools closure opposition, including a U-turn on its policies after a well-organised community campaign in 2012 highlighted deficiencies in the manner of its selection for closure. 

None of this had anything to do with Leighton Andrews, so he was in practice entirely free to support a school if he thought the local authority was going about its closure programme in a wrong way.  It's a pity Andrews never seems to have been given the opportunity to express this entirely legitimate position, because Wales is, this morning, a much worse place for losing him.

We can only hope this is not seen as an excuse by some not to thoroughly shake-up the local authorities that endlessly fail to bring about the change that is so desperately needed by our kids.

Welsh Education and the PISA Test

The Welsh Education system is not the best. 

By far.

Our tough-talking Minister, Leighton Andrews, has often seen ready to dismantle the current system of local education authorities, and many would support him if he ever did.

PISA - a real test for the Welsh education system.

According to this report, Wales is moving up the PISA scoreboard at a remarkable rate.  What is less clear, is how this incredible turnaround is being achieved.

One clue as to what could be involved comes from a meeting held by one local authority during 2012.  Typically, it took place in a rather plush country hotel.

According to those in the meeting, representatives from schools were told that they were being too hard on themselves.

Unsurprisingly, a few came away thinking they were being told to mark less harshly than in the past.  The authority in question denies such a suggestion.

But this would not improve PISA rankings, because the test is undertaken by real pupils doing a real test, and is not based on government-provided statistics.  It's one reason why schools keep banging on about how good they are whilst the PISA results say something completely different.

More likely, this could have been an attempt to improve some aspect of the local authority's statistics more within Wales than anything else.  Still, it does beg the question of what exactly the statement 'being too hard on yourselves' was actually meant to convey.

We await with baited berath what Leighton Andrews' next step will be in relation to the ever-increasing number of Welsh education authorities needing parachute-in Recovery Boards to get them working.  This week, a report recommends a third of them be disbanded.  Let's hope it's a report that's heeded.

Hijacked Wales?

This new blog aims to examine current ideologies, politics and culture within Wales.  It does so firmly through the English language, though the author is fully fluent in Welsh.

Wales. Inseparable from the language.  Or is it?

Before we embark one person's philosophy, let's listen to an exchange from 2012 which does, I am ashamed to say, rather reveal the trench warfare that always and immediately develops whenever the words 'welsh language' are aired.  I am with David Davies, and am equally ashamed to listen to the woman's words:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18254869

Is Wales welsh?  Is it really a nation of harps and mountains, where rosy-cheeked farmers live a life through nothing but their Iron Age mother-tongue, and englishers are in the minority?


No!  It is not.

Statistics from the latest census survey (2011) show that, since the last survey, there has been a 2% drop in the number of people speaking welsh across the principality (and even that term will make nationalists red-faced.) 

This means that, across Wales, only 19% - that's less than 1 in 5 - speak welsh. 

To nationalists, it's a tragedy of epic proportions.  Accusations of failed politics fly here and there, igniting any piece of ground they touch. 

In reality, however, this is not a failure of politics, which sometimes already feels a little like brow-beating the unwilling when it comes to 'encouraging' the speaking of this defunct language.

It is, rather, the will of a nation.  But it is not a nation that turns its back on the principle of Wales as a nation simply because its people find its ancient language of little use in the modern world.  Any visit to a game of rugby will readily prove that. 

So who is it that is really, truly alarmed by the people of Wales seeing their lives as part of a greater, international whole where English, Chinese and Spanish are more relevant that a language now spoken only by just over half a million people (that's 0.008% of the global population in mid-2013.)

The answer, to most objective people living in Wales, is the welsh middle class, typically public sector-employed welsh in their middle-ages, with retirement within sight.  It is slightly bumped up in number by a small minority of misguided, ill-informed youngsters who find some excitement, though very rarely these days, in daubing slogans on walls or shouting some protest or other during their beloved Eisteddfod.

Right to left: "Dwi'n siarad Cymraeg perffaidd"; "Dwi'n siarad Cymraeg OK"; "Dwi'n siarad a bit of Cymraeg, innit."

Those advocating an increase in state interference in which language the people of Wales choose to speak are, in a very real sense, shouting for their own self-preservation and the perpetuation of their class.  It is not always a class to be proud of.

Back in the 70's, a campaign of second home burning became briefly popular amongst the nationalists.  Although few would amdit it in public, there was plenty of tacit approval, or at least a marked lack of disapproval, for the fire-bombing campaign.  It attracted the interest of MI5, and some accusations of stitch ups were made by the nationalists.

Occasional resurgences in fire bombing were evident, and I recall well seeing an Army Bomb Disposal Unit soldier calmly walking to defuse a suspect device in the offices of a local (english) architect as recently as the early 1990s.  The architect had probably corresponded with a high-ranking public authority figure who wanted a nice house, built in the country on his exclusively-secured planning permission, using nothing but the welsh language and welsh products (so long as cheaper alternatives weren't more sensible.)

Do we really want kids force-fed welsh at school?  It appears that politicians and the welsh middle-class elite have realised quite well that, if their bias is to be expressed in full, it must be introduced to the young. That is, in the schools run by the welsh middle class who occupy seats of power in local government and education authorities, few of who, incidentally, appear capable of doing their real jobs properly.

Whilst we are force-fed welsh, kids are falling well behind in the world.

Schools in Wales have quietly become concentration camps for the force-feeding of a language few in the adult world (who have rights and tell councils where to get off), want to speak.  You could wonder who it is  decided the language is so important.  But the answer is bleedin' obvious: not the public!  The welsh elite have, it is very true, entirely hijacked the public sector, including schools, and work in a cabal to ensure their agenda - and not anybody else's, prevails.

Take for example one English-speaking family (originating from mostly English-speaking south Wales), whose daughter was increasingly alienated by a supposedly bi-lingual school that simply taught through welsh.  Indeed, the headteacher and teachers were often heard admonishing little kids for using English - a perverse reversal of the "Welsh Not" system attracting so much feigned vitreol amongst the welsh-nashes. 

The dad decided to approach the school.  He was told to speak more welsh at home.  It might sound uncontroversial, other than the family just wasn't welsh, and they didn't wish to speak it.  The Welsh Nash's response is: well, if you don't like it, go back to where you came from.  They will never admit it, though it may surface from time to time in letters where dissent breaks out. 

This appears to be the idea in some supposedly bi-lingual schools now.

But this kind of hell-bentishim in one, very small minority of nevertheless powerful people operating critical state systems such as schools is the central bigotry in play within Wales.  No matter that the welsh education system ranks at the bottom of PISA assessments and seems incapable of improvement.  No, let's all just carry on worrying about the language, because that's what will sustain the families of the cultural elite that has infected the nation.

It seems to me ironis that, when the rest of overcrowded UK seems to be growingly right wing and intolerant of even the most intelligent, productive of 'foreginers', we have vanishingly few such positive contributors within Wales.  At last count, only 4% of Wales was a member of a self-declared ethnic minority; in England, it's 13%.  Maybe that says something about our supposedly-warm Welsh welcome? 

Predictably, only 2% of top jobs in local government are occupied by ethose of ethnic minority background.

My solution?  Anyone, no matter where they come from or which language they speak, who has a bona fide interest in Wales and can make a positive contribution in any field of human endeavour is welcome - particularly in the north, which has enclaves of Welsh Nashes intent on recreating the Iron Age.  Ironically, that's precisely what they are likely to achieve, as the area, already highly unattractive to economic development, becomes more and more isolated by the concerns and policies of those who are very nicely off, thank you very much.

Alternatively, any sensible person, faced with a fascist welsh elite and rapidly declining nation can send their kids to better places.  In that, we will really only be continuing a trend that has been going on for decades.

Might be useful for the A55 and the exodus of realistic families and their kids.

And there you have it.  We do have our fair share of nutters, welsh equivalents of the EDL.  But they are just a tiny minority who MI5 will have a good eye on.  The ones we really need to worry about, however, are the public sector staff, who often hide a rabid hatred of anything non-Welsh behind their suits and nice, tidy desks.

There is another side to Wales and its language worries.  It's just that nobody has the guts to speak about it.  It's time that changed.