Speaker's Corner

An arguable case for restorative justice

2011-02-05T03:05:00.000-08:00

Criminal law-making has been prolific during the last 14 years. In this time, over 50 new criminal justice bills have been laid before Parliament, resulting in 23 criminal justice acts which have created over 3,000 new criminal offences, with nearly half attracting a possible prison sentence. When we contrast this period with the 60 years between 1925 to 1985 when only six new criminal justice acts were passed, one gets an astounding illustration of Parliament’s appetite for regulation.

Law-making cannot mitigate the effects of crime on victims nor rehabilitate offending behaviour. Two fundamental questions for society are how to hold offenders to account while ensuring justice for their victims, and how criminal justice agencies can rehabilitate offenders to community social values and behaviour. The retributive paradigm which brought about the Michael Howard mantra ‘prison works’ in 1993, and which has been at the heart of Western thinking for over 900 years, has consistently failed to achieve its core objectives.

In his 2001 review of the criminal courts, Lord Justice Auld acknowledged the failure of our formal judicial process to repair the wrongs suffered by victims and our failure to rehabilitate offenders. Auld argued for a more ‘sensitive and sustained’ intervention approach with offenders in the early stages of their offending career. Citing the use of restorative justice used in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA, he argued that strategic and operational investment in restorative justice would secure significant and widespread benefits to the community.

It would be wrong to suggest our current criminal justice system is driven solely by an ethos of punishment. The principle of restoration in criminal justice was given its first statutory toehold in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act which introduced the concept of, and the authority to require, youth offenders to make reparations: ‘to a person or persons so specified; or to the community at large’ (s67).

In his 2001 review of sentencing, Making Punishments Work, Halliday identified three key purposes of sentencing: ‘punishment, crime reduction and reparation’, which he felt were inadequately covered in statute. This was remedied in s142 Criminal Justice Act 2003 which set out the clear purposes of sentencing: to punish offenders, reduce crime (including its reduction by deterrence), reform and rehabilitate offenders, protect the public, and facilitate the making of reparation by offenders to persons affected by their offences. In practice, however, victims’ voices remain silent and, although there is a statutory duty placed on sentencers to consider the making of reparations to victims of adult offenders as part of their sentencing decisions, this is mainly limited to the making of compensation orders.

RESTORATIVE APPROACH

Restorative justice (RJ) is where the victim and the offender are brought together directly or indirectly by a trained facilitator to deal with the consequences of an offence and its implications for future offending behaviour. RJ requires the offender to accept full and expressed responsibility for his/her offending and to make reparations to the victim and to make and to keep promises of good behaviour in the future.

The idea of victim-offender RJ first emerged in the UK in the 1980s through mediated settlements by probation officers. It was an ad-hoc affair to begin with, often motivated by religious conviction in the concept of restitution. Pioneering practitioners became self-appointed mediators/facilitators by stepping outside a criminal justice process which they viewed as punitive in its origins and destructive in its application and outcomes.

Between 2001-04 the Home Office funded an extensive study of RJ practice in London, Thames Valley, South Yorkshire and Northumberland which covered both adult and youth offending and relatively serious offences (524 cases). Of the three organizations (CONNECT, REMEDI and Justice Research Consortium (JRC)) involved in this research, only JRC worked within a randomized control environment. JRC managed to complete 342 cases (65% of all cases under trial) exclusively using the RJ conference model where the victim and offenders and their supporters were actively engaged in repairing the harm to the victim and designing a plan of reparation with promises by the offender to refrain from future offending.

Professor Joanna Shapland of the University of Sheffield independently evaluated the trials for the Home Office and published her key findings in four separate reports: the setting up of RJ programmes (2004); victim and offender willingness to participate in RJ (2006); the views of victims (2007) and finally the impact of RJ of reoffending (2008).

Of the victims who were invited to experience RJ conferencing, up to 77% of victims of adults offenders and up to 89% of victims of young offenders participated. From their responses, 85% of JRC victims were very/quite satisfied with their RJ conference experience and 80% of JRC offenders were also very/quite satisfied with their experience. Outcome agreements (where the victim/offender agree on the way forward) were achieved in 98% of JRC conferences.

Offenders who participated in the JRC trials committed 27% fewer offences (in terms of reconvictions) in the subsequent two years when compared with offenders who did not experience a JRC conference. Although RJ does not stop reoffending completely it does reduce the frequency of offending. There is no evidence suggesting different effects on reconvictions between types of offence and offenders. In short, it is not necessary to target RJ at specific offenders or offences.

When costing the three JRC trials in London, Thames Valley and Northumberland using a Home Office standard measure, Professor Shapland was able to show RJ represented significant value for money. The ratio of costs to savings through reductions in offending from the three JRC locations amounted to 1:8. Surprisingly, there has been no evaluation of the cost savings arising from RJ-induced reductions in victim post-traumatic stress disorders and the consequent reduction in costly dependency on health and social services resources compared with victims who have not experienced RJ.

In Northern Ireland, the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002 enshrined the provision for RJ under the Youth Conference Service (YCS). The YCS is recognised through statute to provide and facilitate restorative justice conferences for young offenders (ages 10 to 18) and their victims. Since 2003 over 5,500 referrals have been made to the YCS which has consistently achieved over 60% victim participation, with 91% of victims reporting satisfaction with their experience. According to the 2009 Prison Reform Trust report Making Amends: ‘in 2006, the combined reoffending rate for youth conferencing was 37.7% – this compared to 52.1% for those given community sentences and 70.7% for those given custodial sentences’.

CHALLENGING EXPERIENCE

A restorative justice conference between the victim, the offender and their supporters can be a deeply emotional and challenging experience for its participants; a process which is managed by a trained facilitator who must maintain control throughout yet empower the parties to make decisions about outcome agreements for themselves. Research suggests that the affected parties, particularly victims, are actively empowered by their experience during the restorative justice conference, whereas power is strategically and operationally removed from victims and offenders by the remoteness of conventional justice procedure and ritual.

When an offender and victim agree to participate in restorative justice, they embark upon a difficult psychological journey which actually personalises a shared criminal event from diametrically opposite experiences. Often for the first time, the victim becomes a real person to the offender, and the emotional pain suffered as a consequence of the offending is particularly and graphically brought home to the offender during a RJ conference.

Unlike conventional justice, the restorative justice conference requires the offender to explain personally and directly to the victim why they committed the offence. Critically, this explanation is given in front of their own family and supporters who often experience collective shame while encouraging them to become active supporters in the rehabilitative process.

Conventional justice practice is principally though not solely about punishing offenders for their offences against the state, rather than reforming offending behaviour or giving victims justice. In contrast, RJ is about offenders making amends directly to the victims or organisations they have harmed. When the state apparatus gives way to the less formal restorative process, the criminal justice landscape changes dramatically; fact, effect and outcome are examined and critically felt by the affected parties. They engage, exchange and interact during a RJ conference, whereas conventional justice ritual relies on advocates: exploring, examining and determining outcomes by adversarial joust.

NO PANACEA

Conventional justice ritual in actuality denies the voice of the victim and procedurally smoothens their pain. For justice to be seen and done, victim pain should be shrill, especially to the perpetrators of such harm. Only then will offenders be able to fully appreciate the value of, and respond to, the building blocks of rehabilitation.

RJ is not a panacea. However, its enormous value to victims, its significant contribution to reducing the frequency of offending and its obvious cost benefits to individuals and the community must be acknowledged by policy makers and practitioners. RJ should not be seen an alternative to conventional justice but as an integral part of the judicial process by becoming an available option in the adult court. Our courts must no longer be deaf to the pain of offending nor blind to its potential for healing and rehabilitation. As the old Angolan proverb reminds us: ‘the one who throws the stone forgets; the one who is hit remembers forever.’

Published in The MAGISTRATE Magazine February 2011

Is global capitalism on the ropes?

2010-09-23T04:56:00.000-07:00

Modern global capitalism, where companies become too big to be controled by their governments has spectacularly failed humanity and we need an urgent rethink if a financial catastrophe is not to turn into a global financial disaster!

Banks sold mortgages to millions who had no chance of servicing them and then they re-sold these mortgages as unaccountable derivative products to mask the inherent credit risk. Known as sub prime paper in the USA, it quickly became a financial game of musical chairs with no one knowing who was holding the dodgy debt until the mood music stopped in 2007. Billions of taxpayer £££s later, confidence in global capitalism is rightly be questioned.

Although our UK base rate is at an all-time low of 0.5 per cent, banks are charging “Dick Turpin” rates of up to, and over 20 per cent and often failing to lend to good businesses to protect their balance sheets.

UK Tax payer funded banks; Nat West, Lloyds and RBS and their subsidiary credit card companies are engaged in legalized theft while our government stands by, impotent of ideas and solutions.

Thank God for Vince Cable our Business Secretary; a man of principle and vision. We do indeed need a rethink of our mixed market model; smaller government and Town Hall burocracy with increased personal responsibility and a new ethos of accountability!

Is the prison service accountable for its activities?

2010-09-21T05:38:00.000-07:00

Introduction

This essay will focus on the activities of the Prison Service, its community of disadvantage, the means by which its activities are monitored by Parliament and her ministers, and how performance is measured by operational management.

The issue of monitoring prison activities through performance audits and league tables is examined as one measure of individual prison performance. The remit and effectiveness of the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the local Independent Monitoring Boards is also considered. A review of five annual monitoring/inspection reports on the oldest operational prison in the country is undertaken to discover their impact on prison practices. Political accountability is also examined as a response to crisis and public inquiry.

The question of prisoner's rights is considered, as is the effectiveness of the Prison and [Probation] Ombudsman in settling individual complaints and the effectiveness of judicial review in protecting prisoner's human rights. Finally, this essay will consider if existing inspection, monitoring and complaints processes are sufficiently effective in making the Prison Service account for its activities.

Special case?

There are a total of 139 prisons in England and Wales, 11 are run by private companies currently holding around 81,000 prisoners, of which approximately 4,000 are female (Prison Service 2009a). Eighty per cent of prisoners have the writing skills, sixty five per cent the numeracy skills and fifty per cent the reading skills of an eleven year old. Prisoners are thirteen times more likely to have been unemployed compared to the general population, thirteen times more likely to have been in care as a child and ten times more likely to have regularly skipped school (Social Exclusion Unit 2002 in Newburn 2007:705).

Prison relations are complex and diverse, with competing cultures and sub-cultures pressing their claims for influence and power. Accounting for such a social system where the reluctant inhabitants are wholly dependent on the state for their welfare needs including their safety and security (Sparks et al 1996) is a complex landscape of expectation, rights and obligations. Lord Wilberforce said, “... a convicted prisoner, in spite of his imprisonment, retains all civil rights which are not taken away expressly or by necessary implication” (Wilberforce 1982), and later Lord Woolf raised the concept of prisoner's “legitimate expectation” of how the state should treat them, and as Sparks et al rightly asked, “when does expectation create a right to its fulfillment?” (Sparks et al 1996:305).

Wilberforce and Woolf offer aspirational rather than codified exemplars from which the Prison Service should be held to account. As Sparks et al also observed, prisons and “their particular and distinctive features are always special cases of action, structure, power and authority” (Sparks et al 1996:300).

Parliament is responsible for the provision of laws and regulations governing the conduct and management of prisons, and it is to Parliament that the Prison Service is ultimately accountable. It delegates executive authority for the Prison Service to the Justice Secretary and monitors its performance through published inquiries, reports and recommendations from the Justice Select Committee, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, local Independent Monitoring Boards and the Prison [and Probation] Ombudsman. In extremes the government, under Parliamentary pressure, will establish specific inquiries to investigate serious incidents.

Operational accountability

Each prison is managed by a prison governor who is responsible for its day to day operations. The governor reports to an area manager/director, who then reports to the Chief Operating Officer through to the prisons Director General [Phil Wheatley] and a Prison Board; appointed by the Justice Secretary; under the legal framework of the 1952 Prison Act. The Justice Secretary, previously the Home Secretary, has the “primary authority” for prisons and the published rules which regulate and manage prisons. A revised set of prison rules was established in 1999 by Statutory Instrument (Smit 2007:567).

The Prison Service Statement of Purpose is to look after prisoners “with humanity and help them lead law-abiding and useful lives in custody and after release...” (Prison Service 2009-b). The prison service has established a mainly quantitative system of key performance indicators, targets and standards. The Performance Standards Manual which the Director General describes as “relevant”, “realistic” and a “vital part” in measuring performance (Wheatley 2004: Foreword), is aimed at “improving performance and compliance at all levels of the service”(Prison Service 2002-a). There are over 50 performance standards, measured against over 1200 key audit baselines. The results from self- audits and the biennial audits of the Standards Audit Unit are published in the quarterly performance rating table, which grades each prison between 4 [Excellent], and 1 [Poor] (Prison Service 2002-b).

Prisons with the lowest grade are seen as “failing” and may become subject to “special management measures” which can lead to a process of “market testing” and a prison could find itself being offered to the private sector (Coyle 2007: 509). This not so subtle sanction reveals an intriguing policy, for whatever the failures under public management, the authorities believe contracted-out prisons will perform more efficiently than public prisons. When the average quarterly tables for the period February 2004 to August 2008 are examined, there is no evidence that the private sector outperforms the public sector. In fact, an average of 27 (twenty one per cent) of the public prisons achieved an “exceptional” grade 4 rating, whereas only 2, (eighteen per cent) of the contracted out prisons achieved this standard (Prison Service 2002-b).

Performance tables may be appropriate to monitor the production and quality of ball bearings, where materials and conditions remain relatively constant. In a closed prison setting, simple quantitative performance data can be misleading and cannot reflect the unique dynamics between one prison and another. Such a “narrow focus on what can easily be measured” can only provide a limited glimpse of the prison estate, its manpower, and application of resources. It cannot reveal how prison is experienced by prisoners and how humanity is practised by officers (Liebling 2004:132), and nor can it adequately measure the application of discretion upon which so much matters in everyday prison life.

In 2002, the Prison Service introduced biennial surveys to measure prisoner perceptions of their prison experiences, based on Liebling's “Measuring the Quality of Prison Life” study between 2000-01 (Liebling 2004:132). Using “appreciative inquiry” techniques, Liebling invited staff and prisoners to reflect on their best rather than worst experiences. Liebling sought broad agreement between staff and prisoners on “what matters” in prison life. She discovered that “staff and prisoners produced the same set of dimensions, suggesting a moral consensus or shared vision of social order and how it might be achieved”. Her work provided a much needed interactional value model which describes and monitors that which previously appeared impossible to measure: “respect, humanity, support, relationships, trust, fairness...” which are not covered by quantitative mechanisms of operational accountability alone (Liebling 2004:146-152).

Political accountability

In April 1990, a disturbance broke out at Strangeways Prison in Manchester as a protest over conditions. Strangeways became the trigger for several other prison riots and after calls in Parliament for a public inquiry, Lord Woolf was appointed by the Home Secretary to investigate the disturbances. The 1991 Woolf Report was to bring about an end to slopping-out and a promise to rid the system of the “cancer” of overcrowding (Woolf 2008:270). It was seen as a road-map to restore decency and justice where conditions had become intolerable. Woolf sought to include an expectation of legitimacy in prisons by getting the “right balance” between security, control and justice (Woolf 2008:243), which at the time was in a “near terminal crisis of order and moral credibility” (Sparks 1994:17).

In 1992 Derek Lewis, who believed the riots of 1990 “represented the nadir” for the Prison Service, was the first non-career civil servant to be appointed Director General, and the first and only appointee personally selected by the Home Secretary (Lewis 1997:2). The optimistic ethos post Woolf swiftly changed on Michael Howard's appointment as Home Secretary in May 1993 and thus heralded the birth of a 'get tough on crime' era, when at the 1993 Conservative Party conference he proclaimed: “Prison Works”. His claim conflicted with the evidence and recommendations of the Woolf Report and the 1991 White Paper Custody, Care and Justice, which had secured political consensus as an appropriate response to Woolf, never made it into law (Lewis 1997:109 and 119).

Ministerial accountability came into sharp focus in January 1995, during a debate over the setting up of the Learmont Inquiry into the 1994 Parkhurst prison escapes. When asked, “Where does the buck stop?”, an attempt to clarify political responsibility for the prison escapes, Howard replied, “I am responsible to Parliament for policy. The director general is responsible for operational matters” (Howard 1995:col 40). This was an interesting reply, given Learmont's criticism of minsters for setting “conflicting objectives” for the Prison Service (Lewis 1997:192). This was later challenged by Jack Straw, Shadow Home Secretary, after the removal of the Parkhurst governor from operations and Howard's dismissal of Lewis following Learmont's criticism of local and national management. Straw said, “Section 1 of the Prisons Act 1952 makes no distinction between his (the Home Secretary's) responsibility for the policy of the Prison Service and the operation of that policy”(Lewis 1997 and Straw 1995:col 502).

Conditions

Over the years, prison conditions have been at the heart of many disturbances, as evidenced by the Strangeways riots in 1990. The post of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons was established in 1981: “To inspect or to arrange the inspections of prisons in England and Wales and report on them to the Secretary of State, in particular on the treatment of prisoners and on conditions within prisons” (Ramsbotham 2005: 49). The Chief Inspector's remit is silent on “the frequency of its inspections or the content of its reports”. Inspection reports are addressed to the Justice Secretary and, by law, published (Ramsbotham 2005:55). It is through the publication of such reports that ministers can be called to account by Parliament. Ministers may suffer the embarrassment and political ignominy of defending a prison service once described as “a litany of failure and moral neglect”(Narey 2001, in Ramsbotham 2005:215).

Ramsbotham presided over 237 prison inspections (112 without warning), inspecting every prison at least once. He frequently complained to Ministers that his “minute budget was totally unequal to the task” and was overspent every year in undertaking what he described as “our inadequate programme”(Ramsbotham 2005:56). Chief Inspectors serve for five years and may have their contracts extended a further three years by mutual consent. Describing it as an “elaborate charade”, Ramsbotham's contract was not extended beyond the five years and he was unilaterally 'retired' by Jack Straw (then Home Secretary) in 2001 (Ramsbotham 2005:227-8). Ramsbotham paid the price, for exposing “apathy and indifference” among ministers and officials (Popplewell 2004).

Local Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) consisting of unpaid volunteers supported by an elected national council inspect prisons under a statutory remit to monitor “...the humane and just treatment of those held in prison and the range and adequacy of the programmes preparing them for release”. They must promptly inform the Secretary of State of any “concern” they might have, and prepare an annual report “on how well the prison has met the standards and requirements placed on it...”(IMB Northallerton 2007-8). Neither the IMB Secretariat nor the Briefing and Casework Unit of the National Offender Management Service keeps an audit of those concerns “promptly” reported, or the outcome of any action taken (Stephens 2009 and Moseley 2009).

To test the value of reports to ministers on improving prison conditions, a review of the IMB annual reports for Northallerton YOI between 2004-8 and the 2006 Chief Inspectors report was undertaken. Northallerton YOI, built in 1783, is the oldest operational prison in estate. Its IMB Chair vigorously condemned the practice of offenders having to eat their meals in cells with uncovered lavatories, especially when doubled up (IMB Northallerton 2004-8). In January 2006, the Chief Inspector of Prisons also complained about “unscreened” sanitation in cells and her “particular” concern about the practice of prisoners eating all their meals in them”(Owers 2006:23). Both the Chief Inspector and IMB recommended the provision of a separate dining area. In her formal reply, the minister dismissed the reports and defended the practice of prisoners eating their meals in cells with lavatories whilst doubling up, as an “operational necessity”(Eagle 2007).

Grievances and Judicial Review

The post of Prison [and Probation] Ombudsman was established in 1994 following a recommendation from Lord Woolf. As Woolf later observed, “At the time of Strangeways, justice stopped at the prison door. I regarded this as one of the worst aspects of the system” (Woolf 2008:267).

Under “Terms of Reference” from the Justice Secretary, the Ombudsman [Stephen Shaw] investigates individual prisoner grievances and, since 2004, all deaths in custody. Between 2007-08, he received 4,750 complaints, of which only 1,673 (thirty five per cent) were investigated to conclusion. The number of property complaints and appeals against disciplinary adjudications are now being “matched by complaints about regimes, allocation and categorization decisions and about risk assessment” which Shaw suggests derive from prisons operating “at more or less maximum capacity”(Prison Ombudsman 2007-08 Summary).

Prisoner's perceptions of fairness will be irreparably damaged if they feel their formal grievances are drowned in red tape and delay, and as Woolf observes, “An ineffective grievance procedure is probably as bad as no procedure at all”(Woolf 2008:267). Those who feel their complaint has been independently considered and had their views taken into consideration will have a sense of procedural justice, even if the final decision goes against them (Tyler 1990). Speaking of the complaints which are upheld, Shaw was ebullient and unequivocal, “It is extremely rare for the Prison Service not to accept or implement my recommendations” (Shaw 2009).

In 2008, Shaw failed to establish a separate parliamentary remit for the Prison [and Probation] Ombudsman and although independent from the Prison Service, Shaw continues to argue: “A reporting line to Parliament remains the best option...” (Prison Ombudsman 2007-08:4). As though to highlight the point, Shaw resigned as Chair of an Article 2, Human Rights compliant investigation on the treatment of a troubled young woman (SP) in a near-death incident following a history of self harm in custody between 2003-2005 and her subsequent transfer to Rampton Secure Hospital. Shaw accused the Prison Service of attempting “to dictate” the conduct of the inquiry and “to fetter” his independence (Shaw 2008 in EWHC 2009:13).

Bryan Payling, a former prison governor, was appointed in October 2008 to replace Shaw. The Howard League for Penal Reform (HL) applied on behalf of SP for judicial review on five grounds; the first and most important being “The investigation ordered... lacks independence” (Howard League in EWHC 2009:1). Interestingly, this was the only ground to succeed when Mr Justice Pitchford found, “that an investigation carried out by Mr Payling would fail to meet the requirement for independence demanded by Article 2” (Pitchford in EWHC 2009:111). Mr Payling must now step down from the inquiry.

In the past, the courts could intervene through judicial review to ensure Prison Service officials stayed within their “delegated powers” (Smit 2007:570). A prisoner may have been lawfully denied a right but its removal may have been unlawfully implemented. It was the process of removing the right which judicial review scrutinized, not the policy or decision to deny the right. However, since the enactment of the 1998 Human Rights Act, which requires public bodies to act in accordance with ECHR convention rights, the courts can now challenge primary legislation, and thereby “issue a notice of incompatibility” which minister must correct (Smit 2007:570).

Conclusion

Inspection and monitoring by the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Independent Monitoring Boards and investigations by the Prison [and Probation] Ombudsman do provide an effective means of exposing unacceptable Prison Service activities. However, the evidence suggests these bodies act with independent minds, and the Prison Ombudsman is effective in resolving a minority of prisoner complaints made each year, nonetheless these bodies have little if any influence on the strategic and structural failings of the Prison Service.

Public inquiries are an effective means of holding the Prison Service to account, but only after a crisis, and their effectiveness is diminished if they propose changes which the Government finds unpalatable. After the 1990 prison riots and the subsequent Woolf Inquiry there was political agreement on the way forward for the Prison Service. Sadly this evaporated when the public spotlight moved away. Despite many improvements, the “...crisis of order and moral credibility” which prevailed in April 1990 (Sparks 1994:17) became “a litany of failure and moral neglect” (Narey 2001, in Ramsbotham 2005:215) ten years after the hope and expectation ignited by the recommendations of the 1991 Woolf Report.

While the formal processes of inspection, monitoring and investigation go some way to call the Prison Service to account, and although the courts can and do intervene on both policy and practice, it is long after harm has been experienced and damage inflicted. The predominantly closed world of a prison community is, I submit, a “special case”(Sparks et al 1996:300). It requires the means to monitor its “moral performance” as well as its operational and financial outcomes.

The introduction of “Measuring the Quality of Prison Life” surveys in 2002 provides an innovative means of monitoring the complex interactions in prison life which are central to the rehabilitative process. Regrettably, these reports have limited circulation and are not readily open to public scrutiny through which the Prison Service could be made to fully account (Liebling 2004:132).

“To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice”
(Magna Carta 1215:40)

References:

Coyle, A. (2007) Governing, leadership and change. In Jewkes, Y (ed) Handbook on Prisons. Willan Publishing. Ch.21.

Eagle, M. (2007) Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. In letter: (2007, July 200th) to HMP/YOI Northallerton Independent Monitoring Board. Available:http://www.imb.gov.uk/annual-reports/10-ministers-replies/Reply_-Northallerton_2006_-1.pdf?view=Binary (Accessed: 2009, January 14th).

Howard League for Penal Reform (2008). In SP and Secretary of State for Justice: [2009] EWHC 13 (Admin) CO/10380/2008.

Howard, M. (1995) Home Secretary. In the House of Commons (Hansard, Col 40.1995, January 10th ). Available: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199495/cmhansrd/1995-01-10/Debate-2.html (Accessed: 2009, January 8th).

Independent Monitoring Boards (2004-8) HM Northallerton Young Offenders Institution. Annual Reports (2004-8) Available: http://www.imb.gov.uk/annual-reports/08-annual-reports/Northallerton_2007-2008.pdf (Accessed: 2009, January 5th).

Lewis, D. (1997), Hidden Agendas:Politics,Law and Disorder. Hamish Hamilton London.

Liebling, A. Assisted by Helen Arnold (2004) Prisons and their Moral Performance: A study of Values, Quality and Prison Life. Oxford University Press.

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Moseley, R. (2009) Briefing and Casework Unit, National Offender Management Service. [Telephone] (Personal communication, 5th January 2009).

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Owers, A. (2006) HM Chief Inspector Of Prisons for England and Wales Report on full announced inspection of HM Young Offender Institution Northallerton (October 2005) Available: http://inspectorates.homeoffice.gov.uk/hmiprisons/inspect_reports/hmp-yoi-inspections.html/551091/Northallerton.pdf?view=Binary (Accessed:2009, January 12th).

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Liminal State!

2010-09-15T05:42:00.000-07:00

It is easy to mourn the certainties of our past, which with the benefit of hindsight, appeared safer and more certain than the world we face today.

There is the impression we are less safe, and our children are at greater risk, but that's all it is; an impression. Memory always plays the trick of letting us recall the good things from our childhood and teens years - whilst masking, hiding and burying those aspects of past life which contradict our memories.

Take a look at Shakespeare's Winters Tale, Act III, scene III, when the character the shepherd wishes youths between 16 and 23 would sleep, to reawaken beyond the time of drink, violence, theft and getting wenches in trouble.

It was largely the same in the 16th century as it is today with one exception, the cloak of mystery and magic surrounding our establishment (royalty, politicians, judiciary, and in the 21st century; captains of industry) has been lifted to reveal a tawdry world of self interest and a blatant unwillingness to be held accountable.

The explosion of 24 hour, wall to wall media, has brought with it the uncompromising truth about our leaders, culture and society in all its raw and savage clarity. We are currently in a "liminal" state in our history, very much like the transition from feudal communities to industrial structures as we now move away from a mechanized to the electronic environment.

I commend the work of Emile Durkheim, so you too can see, what is happening today, is simply a variation on a long line of historical themes.

Porcelain and Pottery restoration.

2010-08-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

Polly Bacon, who trained under Roger Hawkins the ceramic restoration expert on the BBC's Antiques Restoration Roadshow, is a well respected porcelain and pottery restorer working from her small North Yorkshire studio. Trading under the name Bodytalk Restoration, she is a recommended restorer for several leading auction houses: Tennants of Leyburn; Watsons of Darlington and Boulton & Cooper Fine Arts of Malton.

Polly's work has been featured in Yorkshire Life Magazine (2005) and more recently, in Antiques Info Magazine. The following article was published by Antiques Info in November 2009:

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

Working from her small studio in the quaint Georgian market town of Richmond, set in the heart of Yorkshire Dales is Polly Bacon; an antique ceramics restorer.

Her studio, at the bottom of her garden is a veritable Aladdin’s Cave; little pots of pigment of every shade and colour, paint brushes of various lengths and sizes and delicate tools of every description adorn her worktops under the brightness of magnifying lights. Surrounded by shelves of vases, figurines, teapots, bowls, dishes and pots of every description she looks positively content in her artistic retreat.

Polly picked up a 19th century Staffordshire cow figure and smiled proudly as showed off the finished piece and explained, “I was asked by an antique dealer to make a new front leg which was obviously missing. After I finished the original work the dealer put it onto his stall at Newark Antique Fair. Two weeks later the dealer returned and told me that while he was showing it to a potential customer, it slipped from his hand and smashed into twenty three separate pieces. “Look at it now she says, “good as new, or should I say, good as old”.

Polly was formally trained in porcelain and pottery repair and restoration after many years restoring her own pottery as a collector. She trades under the name Bodytalk Restoration and has a web page; www.bodytalk.com to exhibit some of her finished work.

Restoring ceramics requires a lot of patience, an eye for colour, form and structure. “Every repair is different” Polly says; “I can have two identical pieces with a hairline crack or a chip missing and the repair will be unique every time”. Looking around Polly’s small studio, there is a new teapot lid which has been made to match the original 19th century teapot. Cracks have been filled and made ready for painting; chips made good and an expensive hand painted Royal Worcester Dish, which has been completely restored and hand painted.

Polly points out, With every repair or restoration there are several stages which must be undertaken commencing with a through cleaning. The distinction between a repair and a restoration is an important one: repairs invariably include glueing the broken pieces together then filling the tiny gaps which are left behind with a compound and then rubbing it down before paint and glaze can be applied, a restoration often means a missing piece or limb must be hand made and replaced to make the item whole again.

Cleaning an item before work can commence is not always straight forward, as Polly explains “Cleaning can often reveal previous repairs or restoration work which the owner was blissfully unaware. I use anything from non abrasive biological cleaning solutions through to the most powerful chemicals on the trade market. Sometimes items can soak for several days to bring them back to life or in the case of delicate porcelains they may need a deft touch with a cotton bud which can then take up to several hours”.

Delicate porcelain can also spring out of line when broken, this may leave a shallow ridge between the two edges when glued back together. In such cases Polly says “I lay a thin layer of compound along the offending edge and then I feather it out about an inch or so before I rub it down until the raised ridge disappears. I always aim to make my repairs invisible to the naked eye”.

“A wide range of artistic skills are necessary to survive in this business”, Polly says. “You never know what job will come in next, it can be a rare 18th century teapot in need of a new lid or it can be a late 20th century Royal Doulton figurine which simply needs cleaning. Often customers can be surprised at what can be done to bring their ceramics back to life and I particularly like the challenge of a badly broken item to restore. I am saddened when I hear people say, that they have thrown a cherished or sentimental item away because they didn’t know anyone who could repair it”.

Polly has worked on many different commissions over the years and is happy to give free estimates and insurance claims estimates when requested. Her work has involved the frivolous to the fanciful and from the sentimental to the very expensive. She says “ I always try to complete a trade commission within 12 weeks and a retail customers work within 16 weeks.

Polly says, “I have found my own nirvana; where my work is my hobby and my passion, I am very lucky”. Polly Bacon is truly, 'an artist in residence'.

TO CONTACT POLLY GO TO www.bodytalk.com

Restorative Justice

2010-05-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

Graduated from the University of Cambridge on Saturday 15th May 2010 with a Master of Studies Degree in Applied Criminology, Penology and Management. My research thesis: Making Progress in Restorative Justice: a qualitative study seeks to address a gap in the literature on how facilitators make progress in the restorative justice process.

Making Progress in Restorative Justice: a qualitative study.

ABSTRACT

This is an exploratory study into how restorative justice (RJ) facilitators made progress before and during a RJ conference. It draws specifically on the experiences of Justice Research Consortium (JRC) facilitators who participated in one of three Home Office funded trials between 2001-4, and the only trial to employ a randomized control design based on the RJ conference model. Qualitative data was collected via focus group meetings and individual interviews. This study reveals how facilitators relied on a wide range of inter-personal characteristics, skills and techniques to secure and manage the participation of victims/offenders and their supporters in and throughout the RJ process. In particular, facilitators had to build rapport with the parties by a process of empathizing while remaining impartial and non-judgmental. From this data it is suggested that RJ in practice is about personalizing a criminal event which is most effective when it invokes an exchange of emotional responses between the parties which can then have a profound effect on the participants, resulting in changed perspectives and behaviours. It is therefore suggested, that the success of RJ conference encounters is heavily reliant upon the work of the facilitators. The data from this study have implications for their future recruitment, training and supervision.

Restorative Justice Consortium has published this thesis at: www.restorativejustice.org.uk/?Resources:Publications:Articles_2

CRIME: Make it Personal!

2009-12-23T00:11:00.000-08:00

Since Labour's election victory in 1997 they have introduced over fifty new criminal justice bills in Parliament creating over 3,000 new criminal offences.

More offences and greater punitive measures have not reduced offending or given victims greater justice under Labour. The current state approach, which is a remote; mechanized process denies victims their voice and allows offenders to escape the impact of their crimes.

Contrast Labour's obsession with criminalizing behavour with the 60 years between 1925 to 1985 when only six new criminal justice acts were passed in Parliament and its easy to see making laws by itself cannot and does not change attitudes or behaviour.

We need a model which gives voice to victims and challenges offenders with the impact of what they have done to victims. Only then will crime become personal and the pain of offending really felt by all!

Polly Bacon

2009-09-12T23:49:00.000-07:00

For Polly S Bacon pictured here with her father.

She brings me peace!

Turmoil, uncertainty and confusion as they conspire to defeat,
Trying to order matters which hold true amidst the winds of chance.
Upon the seas at the mercy of swell and storms raging in eternal hands,
Where the sail may take me, the will and mood of one's inner spirit.

Torment, rage and emotion taunt, her reassurance forever steadies the mast,
Calming the heart as worries dissipate on the dawning of each new morn.
Into the unknown, the journey seems long, the challenges high and far,
Sharing every step I take you are the one who brings the peace.

For the 30 years we have journeyed together!

Wondering

2009-08-21T13:06:00.000-07:00

Sparkles, dancing on a calmed pond,
Reflection from the stars beyond.
Dark shadows baying across the space,
Wilting snowdrops with a dying grace.

Only the hoot from a lonely owl,
Beckons the sheep stir and shepherd scowl.
Night has fallen and left another day,
As I lay down, on a cold bed of clay.

Looking up to the stars far and wide,
Contemplating, how warm to sleep inside?
Traveling the roads from dawn to dusk,
Sometimes begging, sometimes I'll busk.

Chattels in my bag, coat upon my back,
Dreams have come true, tracing my lonely track.

John R Bacon
Copyright 1976

Busby Stoop Chair

2009-08-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

IS THE infamous Busby Stoop chair and its shadowy links with the notorious murder of Daniel Awtey in 1702, a deathly curse from the past or just a clever ruse?

Just West of the pretty market town of Thirsk in North Yorkshire and famous for the James Herriot vet stories, is the Busby Stoop Inn with a dark history and a curse reaching from the summer of 1702 to the present day.

In the late 17th century, a coin clipper and forger Daniel Awety moved from Leeds to the rural hamlet of Kirby Wiske some 3 miles from the Busby Stoop Inn, to continue his illegal business of counterfeiting the King's sovereigns.

Daniel Awety, bought a farm on the edge of Kirby Wiske and renamed it “Danotty Hall”, a derivative of Dan-Awety, which stands to this day. The hall sits at the top of a gentle rise, providing an excellent look-out for unwanted visitors.

Awety extended the hall - he built a hidden room linked by a secret passage from the underground cellar. He put a large oak door on the west of the hall which faced the access track and behind the door he installed a square iron bar.

The heavy iron bar, over 4 feet long, lay dormant inside a secret hole on the left hand side wall just behind the oak door. When visitors were seen coming up the track the iron bar could pulled across the back of the door to a hole into the right hand side wall of the door.

Thomas Busby a local man became partners with his father in law Awety in the illicit coining business at the hall. It was reported, Busby a bully and drunkard, returned home to discover Daniel Awety sat in his favourite chair and after an argument threw Awety out. It is said, Awety threatened to take his daughter Elizabeth away from Busby and return her to Danotty Hall.

Later that night Thomas Busby went up to Danotty Hall and bludgeoned Daniel Awety to death with a hammer. After murdering Awety, Busby hid the body in nearby woodland. When Awety failed to appear, a search was mounted which led to the discovery of Daniel Awety's body and the arrest of Thomas Busby.

Busby was tried at York Assizes in 1702 and condemned to hang and his body dipped in pitch and left in a gibbet opposite the coaching inn at the cross roads on the old great north road leading into Thirsk.

As Thomas Busby was being lead to his execution he is supposed to have cursed anyone who dared sit in his chair. Thereafter the inn became known as the Busby Stoop Inn and the curse of the chair was born, or was it?

It's now suggested, the Busby Stoop chair famously hanging in the Thirsk museum and the focus of so much fear, might not have been made until after 1840, some 138 years after Thomas Busby's execution.

Dr Adam Bowett, a renowned and respected furniture historian, with a Research Fellowship at the Victoria and Albert Museum said, “The Busby Stoop chair is a type now known as a 'Caistor' chair, because of its association with the chair maker John Shadford. Shadford worked in the north Lincolnshire town of Caistor between c.1843 and 1881. It is unlikely to be older than c.1840 and could have been made as late as 1900”.

For generations, the Busby Stoop chair has filled men's hearts with fear and dared the foolhardy. The locals, always happy to goad others to sit in Thomas Busby's old chair, but never venturing to temp the curse themselves.

Karen Rowley, landlady of the Busby Stoop Inn said, “I've been here for the last 7 years and the locals are still afraid of the chair and its curse. I saw a figure on the landing upstairs, it was a very tall human like figure with no arms and no clear face. It moved sideways and then disappeared through a wall. I was absolutely terrified.”

In 1894, a local chimney sweep and another man had been drinking in the Busby Stoop Inn. After leaving the pub late, the chimney sweep laid down on the roadside to sleep, the following morning he was found hanging by his neck on a gatepost next to the old Busby gibbet. The inquest into the chimney sweeps death decided he had killed himself.

Across the road from the inn is the old Skipton on Swale airfield. It was home to 4 squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII, whose crews used to regularly drink at the Busby Stoop Inn. It is said, airmen who sat in the Busby chair, never returned home after bombing sorties over Germany.

Tony Earnshaw, was not a superstitious man when he took over the Busby Stoop Inn in 1968. Mr Earnshaw initially dismissed the Busby curse as nonsense but later reported several fatal incidents which began to worry him.

Before becoming landlord, Mr Earnshaw was in the pub having a pint when he over heard two airmen daring each other to sit in the chair. Both airman sat in Busby's chair and later that day, their car hit a tree and both men died on their way to the hospital.

Mr Earnshaw also reported the story of a group of builders who came in to his pub one lunchtime and dared a young labourer to sit in the chair. The brave your lad obliged and after returning to their building site the young lad fell through a roof onto concrete and to his death. After the death of the builders labourer, landlord Tony Earnshaw locked the chair away in his cellar.

In 1978, a man from the brewery sat in the Busby chair in the cellar. He told Mr Earnshaw how comfortable the chair was and suggested such a fine piece of furniture should be in the bar and not locked away in a damp cellar. Hours later the delivery drivers vehicle, inexplicably left the road and the driver was killed instantly.

This was the last straw for Tony Earnshaw, so he asked the Thirsk museum to take the chair away, on condition, the museum never let anyone ever sit in. The museum put the chair on the wall out of harms way and no one has been allowed to temp the curse for nearly 30 years.

Cooper Harding, manager of the tiny Thirsk museum said, “ We have a duty to respect our benefactors wishes. Over the years I have been requested many times to allow visitors to sit in Busby's chair.

Mr Harding added, “In 2004 a Japanese film crew got so upset when I refused them permission to sit in the chair, they complained to the head of legal services at county hall in Northallerton and later inquired what penalty would they incur if they disobeyed our rules. They were told, the penalty is,“death”. We could have made a lot of money for the museum if we had let visitors sit in the chair, but a promise is a promise.”

Is it curse or a clever ruse? The death of the chimney sweep in 1894 was a mystery at the time but in 1914 the chimney sweeps drinking partner died penniless in the local workhouse. As he lay on his death bed, he confessed to having tied the chimney sweep to a fence near the pub and robbing him of the of his purse, which contained only twopence.

The records from the 4 squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force based at the Skipton on Swale airfield during WWII show a below average aircraft loss of 1.65%, from over 11000 sorties.

The Busby Stoop Inn is a modern business at the roundabout separating the A61 and A167 between the villages of Sandhutton and Carlton Miniott. The pub still proudly displays a sign showing the Busby Stoop chair next to a mock set of gallows.

The History of York published in 1858, records the murder of Daniel Awety in 1702 , the Kirby Wiske parish records confirm Awety's burial on the 7th June 1702 . Early parish records reveal for the first time, the likelihood Christopher Shaws, was Thomas Busby's accomplice. Shaws was hung for the murder of a D. Notty and buried on the 4th August 1702 in Thirsk cemetery.

There is however, no formal record of a Busby Stoop chair or its famous curse until the mid 20th century and such reports are limited to press speculation.

The curse and the history of the murder of Daniel Awety has been good business for the Busby Stoop Inn and Thirsk museum for many years. As landlady Karen Rowley says, “We have people from all over the world visit our pub and they all ask about the chair and the curse”

Whatever the origin of the Busby Stoop chair and its curse, the locals believe the old coaching inn is stalked by the sleepless spirit of Thomas Busby.

Gibbeting - exposing the corpse in an iron cage, was feared by highwaymen more than the execution, it was believed the spirit could find no rest in the afterlife.

This story was first published in full with supporting pictures of the chair and its associated links by The Dalesman Magazine (September 2007)

In February 2009 Paul Jackson Editor - The Dalesman wrote:

"I should also draw readers’ attention to the excellent article by John R Bacon (Sep 2007) in which he disproves several theories put forward in the latest piece".

LIMINAL STATE

2009-03-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

It is easy to mourn past times which appeared much safer than they appear today. There is the impression we are less safe, and our children are at greater risk, but that's all it is, an impression.

Our memory has always played the trick of letting us recall the good things from our childhood and teens years - whilst masking, hiding and burying those aspects of past life which contradict our warm feelings.

Look at Shakespeare's Winters Tale, Act III, scene III, when his character the shepherd, wishes youths between 16 and 23 would sleep, to reawaken beyond the time of drink, violence, theft and getting wenches in trouble.

It was largely the same in the 16th century as it is today with one exception, the cloak of mystery and magic surrounding our establishment (royalty, politicians, judiciary, and in the 21st century: captains of industry) has been lifted to reveal a tawdry world of self interest and an unwillingness to be accountable.

The explosion of 24 hour, wall to wall media, has brought with it, the uncompromising truth about our leaders, culture and society in all its raw and savage clarity. We are having to adjust to a "liminal" state in our history, very much like the transition from feudal communities to industrial structures, as we now move away from the mechanized to the electronic.

I commend the work of Emile Durkheim, so you too can see, what is happening today, is simply a variation on a long line of historical themes.

Vengeance demeans, justice elevates civilization.

2008-02-22T03:24:00.000-08:00

Whilst renewed calls for the death penalty are perfectly understandable from the families of recent murder victims, its a call I cannot support.

I harbour no righteous indignation at the thought of the death penalty. I just think its unproven as a deterrence and would be unjustly applied to only a few, whilst we face the real danger of juries acquitting the guilty and convicting the innocent.

A case in point, David Hodgson a 48-year-old Richmond man was found guilty earlier this week at Teesside Crown Court of murdering shop worker Jenny Nicholl in June 2005.

Jenny Nicholl's body has never been found, there was no official crime scene, no forensic evidence linking Hodgson to any killing and yet based on circumstantial evidence, Hodgson has been convicted and sentenced to serve a minimum of 18 years in prison.

Faced with only circumstantial evidence to go on and the thought a conviction would condemn Hodgson to the gallows. Would the jury have been as confident or would they have become squeamish and more likely to have returned a not guilty verdict?

We will never know, but I suspect several jurors would have wanted to have found a reasonable doubt and Hodgson a guilty man, might is such circumstances have walked free.

On 20 July 1910, Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary said,

“The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country”.

I think Winston Churchill was absolutely right, let us continue to think and act in a civilized manner. Many years spent in custody is a far harsher punishment, than Albert Pierrepoint's celebrated, record seven second hanging, of James Inglis on 8th May 1951.

Imprisoned by lies

2008-02-20T06:17:00.000-08:00

David Hodgson a 48-year-old Richmond man was yesterday found guilty at Teesside Crown Court of murdering shop worker Jenny Nicholl [19]. Jenny, also from Richmond, North Yorkshire, left home on June 30th, 2005, telling her mum she would not be back that night.

Jenny Nicholl's body has never been found and there is no official crime scene yet based on circumstantial evidence only - Hodgson has been convicted and sentenced to serve a minimum of 18 years in prison.

Only Hodgson knows what occurred that night, driving him to murder his young lover.

The prosecution case uncovered his lies and wildly differing and contradictory accounts given to detectives. Hodgson denied having a relationship with Jenny but then admitted he was friends with her and over a month after Jenny went missing, said he loved her and his life revolved around her.

Hodgson's defense was predicated on Jenny telling him she was leaving home for good, alleging abuse by her father who subsequent to her disappearance was convicted of down loading child pornography from the Internet.

The prosecution alleged Hodgson made calls on Jenny's mobile phone after she had disappeared to send a text to her father, giving the impression she was still alive.

Later, Hodgson admitted he had called Jenny after her disappearance, from public telephone boxes in Richmond, and he had spoken to her from his home telephone.

The jury didn't believe Hodgson's claim Jenny left him notes after she disappeared. He said the messages had been left in a tin under a bridge in Green Lane, near Richmond. When the police asked why he had initially failed to tell them about the notes, he said it had "slipped his mind".

Jenny's friends told the court how she loved her car, bought by her parents in early 2005 and yet the vehicle was found abandoned at the Holly Hill Inn, in Richmond, four days after she went missing.

The defendant's mother-in-law, Evelyn Bagley was a key prosecution witness. She told the court, how she had seen Hodgson walking back into Richmond from the direction of Holly Hill, the morning after Jenny vanished.

Bank records revealed Jenny's personal account was £268 in credit and had not been touched after June 30 2005. A Richmond tanning salon also confirmed, Jenny had booked 25 sessions in the week she had disappeared. The prosecution said these were not the actions of a young woman about to leave her friends and family forever.

Mr Justice Openshaw branded 48-year-old David Hodgson a murderer and a liar as he imposed a mandatory life sentence on the married father-of-two at Teesside Crown Court earlier today.

The judge said Hodgson, had lied to police during the lengthy investigation and to the jury during his trial. He told Hodgson his cruel concealment of Jenny's body had deprived her family of the opportunity of laying her to rest and prolonged their anguish.

Richmond is a beautiful sleepy Yorkshire Dales market town. The tragedy to beset young Jenny Nicholl and her family has shocked and astounded this tiny community and will forever be restless in its history. Those of us, of which I count myself as one, never imagined the cold, calculating stench of murder would ever invade our cherished rural world. How wrong we were?

David Hodgson now has time to contemplate, how his actions destroyed two families and shook his community to the core. I sincerely hope he will find a way to admit his crime and tell Jenny Nicholl's family where she is and let her be properly laid to rest.

Postscript

Hodgson told the police, Jenny had left messages for him at a remote bridge on Green Lane - which is about 4km from the Holly Hill Pub, where she abandoned her car. This I believe was a Freudian slip by Hodgson, revealing where he left Jenny.

Green Lane is a forbidding, narrow track which is a remote secondary access lane and the perfect spot for lovers to meet and hide their activities away from from public gaze.

Adjacent and directly to the west of Green Lane are many disused mine shafts, a perfect, quiet place to hide a body.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

2008-02-15T04:39:00.000-08:00

According to a recent British Crime Survey, overall crime has fallen by 42% between the years 1995 and 2006.

What about future trends and societies ability to confront criminal behaviour and the roots of motivation to commit crime? These questions have exercised generations of criminologists from one of its founding fathers, the French sociologist Emile Durkhiem in 1893 to the present day.

I don't think its bold to suggest, most leading criminologists believe the roots of crime lie in some form of disaffection or victimization. This disaffection grows, argued Durkheim, when society is faced with radical change which questions social cohesion and a breakdown in the national moral framework which guides the order of things.

Whatever the complexities, of which there are many, crime is here to stay and the criminologists and sociologists continue to vie and add their personal voice in the development of national social policy.

As a casual observer, keen to learn and understand about such things, I have found parallels with Durkheim's France in the late 19th century and the developing electronic world unfolding before us today.

In 1992, I was keen to investigate the emerging technologies to redress the inequalities in the transaction value chain in the automotive sector, which at the time wholly advantaged the manufacturers. I was impelled to give more influence to the consumer. This early work, was successful in demonstrating a shift in the balance of power and created the first “demand driven transaction model” in automotive retailing.

The evolution of greater interactive technologies brings with it a unique brand of conflict as it offers advantages to one group over another with the former excitedly entrenching their rights as the latter seeks to militate the effect, by increasingly confusing and complicating the offerings. We only need to look to the supply of insurance services and utilities for such examples.

What you may ask has this to do with crime? As in the case of late 19th century France, I sense we are in transition, a liminal state between the old and the new - betwixt the end of the industrial revolution and a new fully wired, interactive, demand driven world.

This new brave world will be faster, more furious and less accommodating of failure to engage with the constant influence over our lives from global rather than local initiatives.

Today, schools struggle to educate students for jobs yet to be invented and the core skill sets of today will be out of date before students leave university with an ever growing group of disaffected individuals who cannot or will not be able to engage with the new order of things.

Within a generation, jobs and opportunities will be categorized as being information rich, [technology driven] and information poor [basic service sector] with differentials been bitterly fought over. We will in my opinion see a renaissance of collective bargaining and a rise in trade unionism to counter the gap between the information rich and poor.

Disaffected groups are likely to become evermore introvert and tribal, thus deepening division and discontent which in my view can only lead to greater levels of crime. Unless we begin to think out the box we will become a collection of fragmented communities ranging from exclusive gated groups behind the latest security paraphernalia to ghettos of despair with those in the middle bearing a heightened fear of crime.

I hope I am wrong but how can we avoid this somewhat apocalyptic view?

Leaders, policy makers and their advisers must think long term - beyond the election cycle and they must act strategically and philosophically to build a consensus for the next twenty years, if our society is to remain inclusive to all.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Respice Finem "Look to the end"

2008-02-12T01:09:00.000-08:00

What did the good Archbishop actual say?

- Dr Rowan Williams said that the introduction of parts of Islamic law here would help to maintain social cohesion and seems unavoidable.

- Sharia courts exist already.

- We should “face up to the fact” that some British citizens do not relate to the British legal system, he said, and that Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty”.

- A lot of what is written on this confusing subject suggests “the ideal situation is one in which there is one law and only one law for everybody”. He went on: “That principle is an important pillar of our social identity as a western liberal democracy.” “It’s a misunderstanding to suppose that that means people don’t have other affiliations, other loyalties, which shape and dictate how they behave in society, and the law needs to take some account of that.”

- “An approach to law which simply said there is one law for everybody and that is all there is to be said . . . I think that’s a bit of a danger.”

Sadly what Dr Williams omitted to say, seriously undermines his argument. He did not celebrate the fact that our long established legal system - combines both statute law and common law, nor indeed did he mention that the central tenet of our legal framework is equality.

From the moment of your first breath to your very last breath everyone is equal under our law and before our courts.

Dr Williams is a seasoned intellectual and a trained academic - naturally his instincts are to look deeper and broader at the theological questions of the day and try and shape an inclusive Christan consensus around his personal sense of values and direction.

As the leader of the Anglican Church, this is indeed what he must do, lead his flock.

But leadership demands an understanding of your subject and your flock. On both counts Dr Williams was simply wrong and instead of raising a debate he has fuelled a row. To suggest, as he did, “other affiliations” within a revised legal framework could be accommodated is simply unworkable. Our principles of judicial independence would be compromised and we would lose our systems universal respect. Such a suggestion is intellectually flawed.

Dr Williams has seriously misunderstood the mood of a normally tolerant British society which sadly will come to haunt the remainder of his term in office.

To many reasonable and fair minded observers, the establishment of which Dr Williams is a pillar continually gives the impression that British culture and values is something to be ashamed of and must be devalued to accommodate cultures far less tolerant than ours.

I have no doubt Dr Williams is a good man, who allowed his heart to rule his head. On this occasion, he was completely and utterly wrong.

We should forgive him for he knows not, what he has truly done.

Respice Finem

It's like global warming?

2008-01-23T23:46:00.001-08:00

Back in the heady days, when I set my blog up, last September to be accurate, one of my first blogs was about the US sub-prime market and its likely impact.

Take a look at,

http://soapboxcorner.blogspot.com/2007/09/only-birds-are-coming-home.html

The birds are now indeed coming home to roost and we are all going to catch the cold. Greed, overspending and misleading business practices is hitting us all, not just the villains this time.

I cannot predict where its all going to end but something tells me it wont be as bad as some suggest. Because we are linked in this global framework, democrats, communists and fascists alike.

Somehow I feel the storm will settle and the feared recession will simply become a bumpy, yet significant correction with no one fully escaping.

In the end, we will all have to pay something. Perhaps this will be justice after all. Some will lose their home and some will just lose money. A bit like global warming?

Porcelain & Pottery Restorer

2008-01-15T18:23:00.000-08:00

The 16th January is a special day, it's the birthday of a very special lady, who I believe is one of England's finest and most dedicated antique ceramic restorers.

For some years, Polly Bacon has applied her delicate skill to some of the most beautiful pieces of porcelain and pottery to bring them back to their former glory having been damaged or broken by their owners.

Polly's work was featured in the Yorkshire Life magazine in April 2005 and her work has been widely recognised in the antiques trade as well as from many private clients.

To see examples of Polly's work, visit her website at: WWW.BODYTALK.COM

Many happy returns Polly Bacon, a very special lady.

Rhys Jones

2008-01-11T05:51:00.001-08:00

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has had a private meeting with Stephen and Melanie Jones, the parents of murdered schoolboy Rhys Jones.

The meeting with Mr and Mrs Jones took place during a visit to Merseyside, where the 11-year-old was shot dead last summer, which horrified any right minded person, in a crime which is unsolved.

The quiet dignity displayed by Stephen and Melanie Jones after losing their precious child was both heartbreaking and inspirational.

No fanfare by Mr and Mrs Jones, no fancy PR spin machine paid for by wealthy backers, just an ordinary hard working couple, gripped by unimaginable grief.

Sadly, nothing will bring back young Reece Jones, but his mum and dad will ensure his memory is respected forever through their dignity and humility.

Charles Edward Bacon

2008-01-05T02:03:00.001-08:00

Private Charles Edward Bacon 2935, 2nd/5th Bn., [Prince of Wales Own] West Yorkshire Regiment died in Le Harve hospital France, on the 26th January 1917. He joined up in 1914 at the age of 36 and trained in Harrogate and Bedfordshire until his embarkation on the 6th January 1917.

The regimental war diary confirms, the 2nd/5th Bn stayed under canvass on the night of the 6th January 1917 and the following day, one man [Private Bacon] was taken to Quai d' Escale hospital in Le Harve, where he died at the age of 38, on the 26th January 1917. His body was laid to rest in ST. Marie Cemetery, Le Harve.

What is extraordinary about this unremarkable story, is Private Bacon's wife, Hilda, a mother of five, was escorted by the War Department, from her home in Hawes, a sleepy backwater of Wensleydale in North Yorkshire all the way to France to see my Grandfather before he died. This was at a time time when hundreds of men were dieing for their King and Country and would never see their families again.

In the book Wensleydale Remembered by Keith Taylor published in 2004, it is suggested Private Bacon died of pneumonia but was ill before his battalion set off from France and that he should not have traveled at that time. Whatever the truth about his illness and subsequent death, Charles Edward Bacon joined the army in 1914 and served his Country until his death in 1917.

It has bee recently discovered Private Charles E Bacon 2935, was awarded The British Medal 1914-1918 and the Victory Medal 1914-1919, but sadly his wife and family never knew.

I take this opportunity to pay tribute to my Grandfather who served faithfully and gave his life for his country and to his late wife Hilda Isabel Auton who struggled on to raise five young children after he died.

Empathy, truly a gift.

2007-12-31T09:49:00.000-08:00

To feel, the grieve of someone else's loss, the joy of someone else's new baby, the pride of someone else's success and the heartache of some one else's loneliness, comes from the gift of empathy and keeps us in touch with family, community and humanity.

Children who can talk, can be taught to read and write.

2007-12-30T10:34:00.000-08:00

Four out of ten children left primary school in 2007 without being able to read or write, Government figures show.

120,000 children could not read properly while almost 140,000 were unable to add up. The Government has failed to meet its own target, to get 85 per cent of 11-year-olds in England up to Level 4 by 2006, despite significant investment in improving schools.

Bright children often go on to university and leave their local communities, to rightfully pursue their careers.

But what about the children who leave school without any basic skills, they cannot read sufficiently to apply for a job and cannot do basic sums to be responsible for the money they do receive. These children are not socially mobile and therefore cannot take advantage of the opportunities most of us take for granted.

Whilst many rub along without any real hope or aspiration, some end up in the criminal justice process, ignored by their parents and punished by the system, only to continue to hurt the very community which nurtured them.

We need to invest as much in the academic basics as we do in academic excellence for our children. If we continue to fail in this basic necessity, we let our communities down as much as we let our children down.

I do not know, of a single child, born in England, who has failed to learn and articulate the basic English language, before they reach the age of five. In some cases children from the most deprived backgrounds have mastered one of the hardest languages to learn. Yet we find it acceptable, that these same children, cannot be taught to read and write basic English, after eleven years of schooling.

This is a sad and disgraceful reflection on our sophisticated society and our schools, who have failed dismally to stimulate our most deprived children through out eleven expensive years of wasted opportunities.

If we truly wish to remove poverty in our society, the battle must start with equipping all our children with the basic skills to communicate effectively within their communities, the rest is easy.

Happy New Year

2007-12-27T03:37:00.001-08:00

A belated Happy Christmas and my very best wishes for a peaceful 2008. I know my reader is out there, waiting with baited breath to read every word I scribble. Sorry, I just had a small brain fart there, fantasising again.

I'm not one for new year resolutions, as they rarely get resolved, but this year I will try and get my head down to a couple of projects. Sorry again, I can't tell my reader what they are, I might fail dismally in my quest and you will know how badly, which will encourage you to get a life and no longer visit my blog.

Enough of this rambling rubbish, I truly wish my lone blog reader whatever, he or she desires for 2008. To anyone else who stubbles into my little, self opinionated world, I apologise ,for my errors in spelling, grammar and composition.

If you understand what I am saying and agree, thank you. If you understand and disagree thanks for stopping by. Whatever your views, good luck in the coming year.

The infamous, A66

2007-12-13T07:48:00.000-08:00

Across the Pennine backbone, you wend your stony way,
Twisting in and over, and through valley, village and dale.
From Cumbria down to Yorkshire, drilled into lakeside hills,
Beauty either side of you, carved by rural stills.

Souls shed their mortal coils upon your deadly route,
Never heeding the warning, their feeble cries stand mute.
Your menace in your silence, your patience ever alert.
Ready for your next victim, never shying to inflict hurt.

Safe from you’re ready stings in the heart of Holmedale,
From my window, I see your industry and witness another tale.
Your dignity is in your presence, set among the English lanes,
But some day soon this deadly beast, the A66 will be tamed.

John R. Bacon
Copyright ©2001

The Busby Stoop Curse - The full story

2007-10-10T02:13:00.000-07:00

IS THE infamous Busby Stoop chair and its shadowy links with the notorious murder of Daniel Awtey in 1702, a deathly curse from the past or just a clever ruse?

Just West of the pretty market town of Thirsk in North Yorkshire and famous for the James Herriot vet stories, is the Busby Stoop Inn with a dark history and a curse reaching from the summer of 1702 to the present day.

In the late 17th century, a coin clipper and forger Daniel Awety moved from Leeds to the rural hamlet of Kirby Wiske some 3 miles from the Busby Stoop Inn, to continue his illegal business of counterfeiting the King's sovereigns.

Daniel Awety, bought a farm on the edge of Kirby Wiske and renamed it “Danotty Hall”, a derivative of Dan-Awety, which stands to this day. The hall sits at the top of a gentle rise, providing an excellent look-out for unwanted visitors.

Awety extended the hall - he built a hidden room linked by a secret passage from the underground cellar. He put a large oak door on the west of the hall which faced the access track and behind the door he installed a square iron bar.

The heavy iron bar, over 4 feet long, lay dormant inside a secret hole on the left hand side wall just behind the oak door. When visitors were seen coming up the track the iron bar could pulled across the back of the door to a hole into the right hand side wall of the door.

Thomas Busby a local man became partners with his father in law Awety in the illicit coining business at the hall. It was reported, Busby a bully and drunkard, returned home to discover Daniel Awety sat in his favourite chair and after an argument threw Awety out. It is said, Awety threatened to take his daughter Elizabeth away from Busby and return her to Danotty Hall.

Later that night Thomas Busby went up to Danotty Hall and bludgeoned Daniel Awety to death with a hammer. After murdering Awety, Busby hid the body in nearby woodland. When Awety failed to appear, a search was mounted which led to the discovery of Daniel Awety's body and the arrest of Thomas Busby.

Busby was tried at York Assizes in 1702 and condemned to hang and his body dipped in pitch and left in a gibbet opposite the coaching inn at the cross roads on the old great north road leading into Thirsk.

As Thomas Busby was being lead to his execution he is supposed to have cursed anyone who dared sit in his chair. Thereafter the inn became known as the Busby Stoop Inn and the curse of the chair was born, or was it?

It's now suggested, the Busby Stoop chair famously hanging in the Thirsk museum and the focus of so much fear, might not have been made until after 1840, some 138 years after Thomas Busby's execution.

Dr Adam Bowett, a renowned and respected furniture historian, with a Research Fellowship at the Victoria and Albert Museum said, “The Busby Stoop chair is a type now known as a 'Caistor' chair, because of its association with the chair maker John Shadford. Shadford worked in the north Lincolnshire town of Caistor between c.1843 and 1881. It is unlikely to be older than c.1840 and could have been made as late as 1900”.

For generations, the Busby Stoop chair has filled men's hearts with fear and dared the foolhardy. The locals, always happy to goad others to sit in Thomas Busby's old chair, but never venturing to temp the curse themselves.

Karen Rowley, landlady of the Busby Stoop Inn said, “I've been here for the last 7 years and the locals are still afraid of the chair and its curse. I saw a figure on the landing upstairs, it was a very tall human like figure with no arms and no clear face. It moved sideways and then disappeared through a wall. I was absolutely terrified.”

In 1894, a local chimney sweep and another man had been drinking in the Busby Stoop Inn. After leaving the pub late, the chimney sweep laid down on the roadside to sleep, the following morning he was found hanging by his neck on a gatepost next to the old Busby gibbet. The inquest into the chimney sweeps death decided he had killed himself.

Across the road from the inn is the old Skipton on Swale airfield. It was home to 4 squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII, whose crews used to regularly drink at the Busby Stoop Inn. It is said, airmen who sat in the Busby chair, never returned home after bombing sorties over Germany.

Tony Earnshaw, was not a superstitious man when he took over the Busby Stoop Inn in 1968. Mr Earnshaw initially dismissed the Busby curse as nonsense but later reported several fatal incidents which began to worry him.

Before becoming landlord, Mr Earnshaw was in the pub having a pint when he over heard two airmen daring each other to sit in the chair. Both airman sat in Busby's chair and later that day, their car hit a tree and both men died on their way to the hospital.

Mr Earnshaw also reported the story of a group of builders who came in to his pub one lunchtime and dared a young labourer to sit in the chair. The brave your lad obliged and after returning to their building site the young lad fell through a roof onto concrete and to his death. After the death of the builders labourer, landlord Tony Earnshaw locked the chair away in his cellar.

In 1978, a man from the brewery sat in the Busby chair in the cellar. He told Mr Earnshaw how comfortable the chair was and suggested such a fine piece of furniture should be in the bar and not locked away in a damp cellar. Hours later the delivery drivers vehicle, inexplicably left the road and the driver was killed instantly.

This was the last straw for Tony Earnshaw, so he asked the Thirsk museum to take the chair away, on condition, the museum never let anyone ever sit in. The museum put the chair on the wall out of harms way and no one has been allowed to temp the curse for nearly 30 years.

Cooper Harding, manager of the tiny Thirsk museum said, “ We have a duty to respect our benefactors wishes. Over the years I have been requested many times to allow visitors to sit in Busby's chair.

Mr Harding added, “In 2004 a Japanese film crew got so upset when I refused them permission to sit in the chair, they complained to the head of legal services at county hall in Northallerton and later inquired what penalty would they incur if they disobeyed our rules. They were told, the penalty is,“death”. We could have made a lot of money for the museum if we had let visitors sit in the chair, but a promise is a promise.”

Is it curse or a clever ruse? The death of the chimney sweep in 1894 was a mystery at the time but in 1914 the chimney sweeps drinking partner died penniless in the local workhouse. As he lay on his death bed, he confessed to having tied the chimney sweep to a fence near the pub and robbing him of the of his purse, which contained only twopence.

The records from the 4 squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force based at the Skipton on Swale airfield during WWII show a below average aircraft loss of 1.65%, from over 11000 sorties.

The Busby Stoop Inn is a modern business at the roundabout separating the A61 and A167 between the villages of Sandhutton and Carlton Miniott. The pub still proudly displays a sign showing the Busby Stoop chair next to a mock set of gallows.

The History of York published in 1858, records the murder of Daniel Awety in 1702 , the Kirby Wiske parish records confirm Awety's burial on the 7th June 1702 . Early parish records reveal for the first time, the likelihood Christopher Shaws, was Thomas Busby's accomplice. Shaws was hung for the murder of a D. Notty and buried on the 4th August 1702 in Thirsk cemetery.

There is however, no formal record of a Busby Stoop chair or its famous curse until the mid 20th century and such reports are limited to press speculation.

The curse and the history of the murder of Daniel Awety has been good business for the Busby Stoop Inn and Thirsk museum for many years. As landlady Karen Rowley says, “We have people from all over the world visit our pub and they all ask about the chair and the curse”

Whatever the origin of the Busby Stoop chair and its curse, the locals believe the old coaching inn is stalked by the sleepless spirit of Thomas Busby.

Gibbeting - exposing the corpse in an iron cage, was feared by highwaymen more than the execution, it was believed the spirit could find no rest in the afterlife.

This full story and supporting pictures was published in The Dalesman Magazine

Only the birds are coming home!

2007-09-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of the crisis in the US sub-prime market? If not, you're about to.

American banks have been lending shed loads of money to the sub-prime market, simply put – lending money to people who have a bad credit history.

This business is high risk, so the banks charge higher rates of interest and secure the risk by a charge on the property. Which is all fine and dandy in a booming housing market.

This banking debt then becomes commercial paper and a financial commodity, to be bought and sold. The banks start trading in this paper to take the capital off their balance sheets and increase their liquidity. This brings in more cash and the whole lending cycle starts over again with a batch of new high risk customers and the deadly game of financial musical chairs is in play.

By the way, the music in this high risk game is the regular siren of increasing property prices.

Now for the fun bit, but its not funny at all. It hurts everyone - industry, business and our pensions. Surprise surprise - the risky customers in what is laughingly called the “sub prime market” are in over their heads with personal debt and decide not to pay their mortgages and so the banks begin fore closure proceedings.

This in fine until a trickle of bad debt, turns into a river and then a deep sea of debt and properties begin to flood onto the market. This glut of houses outstrips demand in the US and house prices fall sharply which consequently undermines the value of the huge commercial paper in the banking system.

The music in our game of financial chairs has now become deafening in its silence.

But in our game there isn't a chair left - just bewilderment as the key players stand around, scratching their heads and asking, “whose sitting with the debt-ridden commercial paper?

While everyone is waiting to find out who is holding the baby, sales of commercial paper dries up, there is a squeeze on credit and there is a serious loss of confidence in our financial institutions and the world markets.

You might imagine, this is a problem for the US banks and not ours - you would be wrong - we live and work in a global economy and when the US sneezes, we get the flu.

The birds are coming home to roost, but not the sub-prime customers - their homes have already been repossessed.

The first Richmond

2007-09-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

The first Richmond and mother of the 57 Richmond's across the globe, is a small Georgian market town in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales from which the song, “The Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill” was written.

Richmond is built around the Norman castle which towers above the River Swale. The name Richmond, comes from the Norman - Riche-Mont, to mean, Strong Hill. The castle was built in 1071 and is famous for never having been besieged.

The market place, a centre for rural commerce in the 18th century has charmingly failed to keep pace with modern England in the 21st century and originally it was the outer bailey of the castle and home to the medieval stocks and pillory.Both the Normans and the Danes have influenced Richmond and the nearby villages of Easby and Skeeby. The term, BY is Danish, to mean village.

The architecture is a reminder of Richmond's religious past. Walk up the narrow, twisting corridor of Finkle Street into Newbiggin and you will be in the square, where in 1558 - Richard Snell was burnt at the stake, for renouncing Queen Mary's brand of catholicism and where John Wesley the founder of the non-conformist sect, preached in 1774.

In 2002, Country Life magazine named Richmond in the top ten best places in Britain to live. The survey considered the towns historical setting, house prices, the crime rate and local amenities including sporting and outdoor facilities.

The King's Head with 30 bedrooms - was built in 1718 and is Richmond's principle hotel. This elegant Georgian building, is a feature of the hopscotch, cobbled landscape of the market place.

The Green Howard's museum in the heart of market place shows off - 318 years of regimental history, with rare artefact's such as Sergeant Alfred Atkinson's Victoria Cross which he won at the Battle of Paardeberg in 1900 and photographs of the Crimean War, the North-West frontier of India, the Boer War and film from both World Wars.

A walk down Millgate, brings you through a narrow twisting hillside to the River Swale. Barrie's Ice's is on hand, to offer ice cream and hot and cold snacks and beverages, served by smartly dressed assistants. Sit awhile and watch the fast flowing river splash over the shallow water falls. Across the road from Barrie's ices, families with children can play safely in the well equipped play area. By the river there is ample room to picnic or just have fun in the relative safety of the shallow waters amongst the naturally stunning beauty of the tree and shrub lined river banks.

There are clean public toilets where you can actually find them in Richmond – one is located on the car park near Barrie's Ice's and the other toilets are right next to the local tourist office on the corner of Victoria Road and convenient for Friary Gardens.

Richmond is quite steep and very cobbled – however, there is always a footpath at hand for easier walking. The town trail walk is only 1.5 miles long and peppered with interesting short walks through narrow streets, and alleyways offering history, charm and character. Friar's Wynd takes you under a medieval gateway, and to the UK's first Theater Museum, opened in 1979 by Richard Baker and home to Britain's oldest set of theater scenery.

Next door, is a little jewel, Richmond's Theater Royal. It was built in 1788, and is Britain's only complete Georgian Theater. The 214 seats are set in an intimate, rectangle setting with boxes on three sides and a small gallery above. The furthest seat, is only 11m from the stage, whose proscenium width is only 5m. The current summer season includes classics to modern comedies and from musical classics to tribute bands such as the ELO Experience.

The local tourist office is on Victoria Road, adjacent to the well kept Friary Gardens where the Franciscan Friary bell tower, built by the Greyfriars of Richmond, still stands.
Walk down behind the Kings Head Hotel and into Ryders Wynd and you will come across Richmond Museum. The tiny museum, established in 1978, is home to a transport gallery which has a model of Richmond station, a chemists shop from Catterick Garrison and also the famous James Herriot set from the TV series 'All Creatures Great and Small.

Millgate House Gardens, is a must for any visitor and although a small, intensively planted garden, the displays are simply breathtaking. It's full of surprises, designed to encourage you into intriguing little corners and tempt you with winding paths through elaborate planting to hidden floral treasures.

What about family fun? There a an excellent family swimming facility set in beautiful surroundings, within 5 minuets walk from the market place - offering a main pool with a smaller accompanying children's pool. There is also a Leisure Suite incorporating sauna, steam, spa and sunbed facilities.

The cricket and bowls club is just off Victoria road and another safe play area for children on Quaker Lane. There is a full 18 hole golf course with club bar and restaurant located at the top of Gallowgate, on the road from Richmond to Ravensworth.

Richmond has inspired artists for generations and today there are several highly competent artists dotted around the market place, but its the work of Middlesbrough born, Mackenzie Thorpe in Finkle Street who has become world famous for his original pastels of square sheep, shocking landscapes and childlike images.

Visitor's have a wide range of accommodations to choose from but if you wish to indulge in a little self catering opulence, then Culloden Tower designed by Daniel Garrett, architect of The Banqueting House, is for you. Here is two tall octagonal rooms, bathed in glorious daylight and decorated to the highest standard. The Gothic style carving and plaster work of the lower room is in sharp contrast to the Classical style of the upper room. Here you can sleep under what must be the Land Mark Trust's grandest bedroom ceiling and well worth the 60 steps hike up the tower to reach it.

Richmond is only 15 minutes from the main bus and rail links in Darlington and only one hour by road to the famous Gateshead Metro Shopping Centre and south to Leeds City Centre. Although, only 4 miles from Scotch Corner and the main A1 link, you are in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales and only 15 minutes from Wensleydale and its rambling, unspoilt villages.

Richmond caters well for the visitor, you will find traditional English café's and tearooms in and around the market place including Thai, Italian, Indian and Cantonese restaurants. For dining with a difference – you can visit The Restaurant on the Green, located on the corner of Bargate and Craven gate. It was re-built in 1689 and comes complete with original inglenook fireplace and flag stone floors or if you prefer a modern Bistro setting, 29 The New Frenchgate Restaurant at the bottom of Frenchgate also enjoys a good reputation.

For excellent dining, a short drive from Richmond to the village of Kirby Hill - you will find the 18th century inn – The Shoulder of Mutton Inn. The old English pub restaurant set in this tiny Georgian hamlet serves up first class fare and real ales by top class chef Micheal Yates - who along with his wife Toni Bennett, runs the pub. The views from the pub car park across the dales are simply breathtaking

Escaping the stress of everyday life can sometimes be difficult in a modern consumer driven culture, but a visit to the Georgian town of Richmond in the North Yorkshire with its brisk walks and friendly folk and you will soon recharge your batteries.

The Busby Stoop Curse

2007-09-03T04:51:00.001-07:00

Is the infamous Busby Stoop chair and its shadowy links with the notorious murder of Daniel Awtey in 1702, a deathly curse from the past or just a clever marketing ruse?

Just west of the pretty market town of Thirsk in North Yorkshire and famous for the James Herriot vet stories, is the Busby Stoop Inn with a dark history and a curse reaching from the summer of 1702 to the present day.

In the late 17th century, a coin clipper and forger Daniel Awety moved from Leeds to the rural hamlet of Kirby Wiske some 3 miles from the Busby Stoop Inn, to continue his illegal business of counterfeiting the King's sovereigns. He bought a farm on the edge of Kirby Wiske and renamed it “Danotty Hall”, a derivative of Dan-Awety, which stands to this day. The hall sits at the top of a gentle rise, providing an excellent look-out for unwanted visitors.

Awety extended the hall - he built a hidden room linked by a secret passage from the underground cellar. He put a large oak door on the west of the hall which faced the access track and behind the door he installed a square iron bar. When visitors were seen coming up the track the iron bar could pulled across the back of the door.

Thomas Busby a local man married Awety's daughter Elizabeth and became partners with his father in the illicit coining business at the hall. It was reported, Busby a bully, returned home to discover Awety sitting in his favourite chair and after an argument he threw Awety out. It is said, Awety threatened to take his daughter Elizabeth away from Busby and return her to Danotty Hall.

Later that night Thomas Busby went up to Danotty Hall and bludgeoned Daniel Awety to death with a hammer. After murdering Awety, Busby hid the body in nearby woodland. When Awety failed to appear, a search was mounted which led to the discovery of Daniel Awety's body and the arrest of Thomas Busby.

Busby was tried at York Assizes in 1702 and condemned to hang and his body to be dipped in pitch and left exposed in a gibbet opposite the coaching inn at the cross roads on the old Great North Road leading into Thirsk.

Gibbeting - exposing the corpse in an iron cage, was feared by highwaymen more than the execution, it was believed the spirit could find no rest in the afterlife.

As Thomas Busby was being lead to his execution he is supposed to have cursed anyone who dared sit in his chair. Thereafter the inn at the cross roads became known as the Busby Stoop Inn, and the curse of the chair was born, or was it?

For the full story see The Dalesman Magazine September 2007

Yorkshire's version of The Minute Men

2007-09-03T04:40:00.000-07:00

CRIMINALS, from the counties of Cleveland and Durham are not welcome in North Yorkshire England and will be in for a nasty surprise if they venture into the Yorkshire Dales without good cause.

The good folk of Richmondshire have set up a “Volunteer Border Watch scheme ” covering the rural police beats of, Gilling, Eppleby, Barton and Middleton Tyas.

The volunteers, mount mobile observation patrols to observe strangers in and around the countryside adjacent to the A66 boundary road, separating North Yorkshire and County Durham, covering hundreds of square miles.

High profile policing and CCTV surveillance in the English towns of Bishop Auckland, Darlington and Middlesbrough have tempted criminals to try their luck in the North Yorkshire countryside.

The border watch volunteers, acting as the eyes and ears of the police were set up in 2005, to combat increased thefts from garages, garden sheds and farm buildings.

The border watch scheme was set up by the North Yorkshire Police under the Richmondshire Community Safety Partnership. The police support and oversee the scheme, but insist they are independent volunteer organizations.

The police called on the community to help them cover the large area, north of the Richmond district and “tip the scales in favour of law enforcement, against the villains”, the police recruitment notice said.

A secret army of unpaid volunteers, patrol the countryside from early evening until the early hours of the morning every day. The volunteers, observe, note and report any suspicious activity or anything which looks out of place on their watch. Vans and cars with trailers attract particular attention from the border watch units.

One volunteer remarked, “Criminals have got cute, they often bring dogs with them to give the impression they just innocently poaching rabbits, whilst masking their true intentions. But we are wise to that ruse”

One farming member of the Gilling West unit said, “It's my way of giving something back to the community. The police cannot be expected to be in every part of the dale, day and night. When you have been a victim of crime and lost tools and equipment or life-stock, this is one way you can make a real difference”

Volunteers, travel in pairs and share the responsibility for driving and taking notes. They log on with the police at the start of their shift and one unit is even equipped with a set of ex-military, night vision sights

All suspicious activity is noted and reported, through a dedicated link to the police control room. The intelligence gathered by the border watch volunteers is collated and prioritized by the police.

Urgent incidents attract an immediate police response. In other less urgent circumstances the information supplied by the volunteers, will trigger follow up inquiries or filed to build up a bigger intelligence picture, linking a number of suspicious activities. The owner of a vehicle spotted late at night by the border watch will attract police inquiries.

One volunteer said, “This alerts urban car drivers we are watching them, which works both as a warning and a deterrent”

A local businessman and a Gilling West volunteer said, “We have made a real difference and feel very proud of our small contribution in helping make our countryside safer”. However on one occasion at about 3 in the morning, we reported the number plate and location of a car which had been spotted, being driven very slowly and erratically. Suddenly the driver pulled his car into a hidden lay-by near the A66, and turned off his lights. The police were on the scene within minutes of it being reported and soon discovered, it was a Frenchman who had got himself lost. He was on his way to the annual French market in Richmond, with a car full of fresh bread.”

New volunteer recruits to border watch receive no training but are issued with guidance notes from the police. They are advised to remain anonymous for security reasons and instructed by the police to act at all times, as passive observers only.

Border Watch members, although they use their own private vehicles during patrols, cannot reclaim fuel, insurance or wear and tear expenses, for what is in effect, front-line police surveillance.

PC John Wilbor, the North Yorkshire Police liaison officer for the border watch scheme said, “The volunteers provide a valuable community service. Their intelligence reports have led to a number of arrests and have deterred crime in rural North Yorkshire” In the first six months of border watch, reported crime in the rural areas was down. We are always recruiting new volunteers and if anyone wishes to learn more or join one of our units, they can get further information by calling me on, 0845 60 60 247.

Rash advice

2007-09-03T04:36:00.000-07:00

When my baby son was in nappies, my wife tried everything she could to rid the little mite, of a worsening nappy rash. She tried every lotion, powder and gel on the market, to no avail. Even a prescription from our local GP failed to clear the problem up.

Then one day, the health visitor called and took one look at the nappy rash and exclaimed, “Cover his bottom with plain old powered starch, my dear, it'll soon clear up”. She did and the rash had gone in two days.

Three cheers for rash advice.

Working Men's Clubs in the UK

2007-09-02T16:52:00.000-07:00

Clubs- Are in recession

THE celebrated working men's club circuit, a corner-stone of working class culture for over 145 years and famous for shaping young aspiring live entertainers, is under serious threat from recession and the smoking ban.

A recent BBC Survey suggested, one in five working men's clubs could close when the smoking ban comes into force in England on the 1^st of July. Of the 560 clubs which responded to the survey, more than four out of five, also thought they would lose money when the smoking ban takes effect.

From July smoking as been banned in pubs, clubs and enclosed public spaces, even if the area is only available to private members. The government had originally supported allowing private members' clubs an exemption against the smoking ban, but the House of Commons voted to include clubs in the scope of the legislation.

The Club and Institute Union [CIU] was formed in 1862 to promote and support working men's clubs. In 1977 the CIU had over 4000 affiliated clubs but, such is the decline in recent years, membership has fallen to less than 2200 clubs, a fall of 45% in only 30 years.

Jim Kennedy, secretary of the Scottish branch of the CIU, confirmed not one of his 36 clubs had closed since the smoking ban became law in Scotland. However, income was down by between 11 and 15%. Mr Kennedy added, “My own club lost £23,000 in the first year of the smoking ban and I know of two clubs which have lost over £100,000 each in takings”.

Barry Slazberg, president of the South-East Midlands Branch of the CIU, said; “Clubs are in recession and the sector is on a knife edge. This smoking ban could tip many clubs over that edge”. “Clubs can adjust to the smoking ban, but they need financial help in the short term. I think the banks should offer a moratorium on bank charges for six months and breweries and other major club suppliers, should provide additional discounts, to help with this short period of adjustment.”

The largest concentration of working men's clubs are in the North West, Yorkshire and the North-East, many located in communities, near to the old traditional industries, such as textiles, coal and steel. The clubs are registered as non profit societies and managed as co-operatives, solely for the benefit of their members, which ensures bar prices are competitive.

Working Men's clubs offer a wide range of leisure options, from a pint with friends, a game of snooker, dominoes or darts, and on most week-ends, live entertainment and dancing to the latest sounds. Beer prices are low compared to pubs, with most working men's clubs offering a pint of beer from as low as £1:30.

Mick McGlasham, secretary of the County Durham branch in the CIU, which supports over 200 North-East clubs, agreed clubs are in recession and some clubs will need extra help. He said, “We should see the advantage of a cleaner and healthy club environment, which in time, will attract new members”. “I feel sorry for the old folk who are set in their ways. For some, their local club is the only way of getting any social contact”.

Bishopthorpe Sports and Social Club in York, with over 500 members, is a model of success. The club has added sports to its name and secured a better brewery deal and has invested in new soft furnishings and member facilities, such as Sports TV and top live entertainment. In the past 12 months, Bishopthorpe Club has bucked the club recession and increased its membership and bar takings.

John O'Brien, Bishopthorpe's ebullient club secretary, said; “We have made great progress. ”

He added however, “The smoking ban will hit clubs hard and, although our wholesaler has offered some assistance, the breweries response is, too little and too late. The brewers have only provided a glossy guide on the smoking ban, seminars on re-financing and a list of preferred suppliers of their branded awnings”.

David Jones, from for S&N, the UK's leading brewer and second most profitable brewer in Europe with reported profits in 2006 of £452M, up £55M on 2005, said,” We do not want to respond directly to the call for brewers to assist clubs with additional discounts”. “We feel the support we have put in place - which clubs can access via individually tailored finance packages should allow clubs to spread the costs and soften the short-term impact of the ban.

John Logie, from Barclay's Bank PLC, whose profit before tax rose by 35% in 2006 to £7,136m said, “Barclay's are available to discuss any change in circumstances that may impact on our clients' businesses”.

Although, CIU affiliated clubs in Scotland have seen a drop in their takings since the smoking ban came into force, nonetheless all 36 clubs are still in business. Bishopthorpe Sports and Social Club in York, believe modernizing the club and widening its member services, is the key to increasing membership and income.

There is no doubt, the fear of the smoking ban and its possible impact is causing alarm in some quarters of club land. But the evidence suggests there is hope for many clubs if they are prepared to modernize and adjust to a changing leisure industry.