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Media Savvy |
Enterprise Corner
August 2014 |
drinkanddrugsnews
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MEDIASAVVY
WHO’S BEEN SAYING WHAT..?
When laws are widely flouted they cease to be laws and instead become
instruments to punish certain members of society. When the government
sacks its chief drugs advisor for stating scientific facts it exposes itself as
arrogant and unheeding. When billions are pumped into prohibition
without producing any significant reduction in drug use – during a period
of austerity no less – it makes a mockery of our system of governance.
Alex Horne,
Independent
, 4 July
In the boomerang sting that stung the stinger, [Mazher] Mahmood posed
as a Bollywood producer and enticed Tulisa [Contostavlos] to Las Vegas to
discuss paying her £3m to star in a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. Two
minutes into the pitch, a less naive soul would have thought: “Aye, aye, it’s
that tosser Mazher Mahmood.” …Beyond the priestly enclave of the red-
top news conference, does anyone care if a music industry
twentysomething likes the odd line? Or claims, after being plied with
booze, to be willing to facilitate a deal to ingratiate herself with an
apparent film producer? ...Targeting a vulnerable young woman with the
intent to destroy her is a deeply despicable act of bullying.
Matthew Norman,
Independent
, 22 July
Failed relationships, aspirations not achieved, mental breakdown,
poverty, unhappiness, alcoholism, drug addiction. All of that the
consequence of someone having behaved badly towards them several
decades before. Maybe put a hand on their thigh. Maybe worse. And you
dare not gainsay these furious litanies of complaint, because if you do
then you are in some way complicit. It is a bizarre state of mind, in my
opinion, that enables normally rational people to swallow this paradigm
– the official paradigm now – whole, and does not question it at all, just
accepts it as fact.
Rod Liddle,
Spectator
, 12 July
We must challenge those who label drug addicts as weak. Only then can
we call ourselves a compassionate society.
Liz Macdonald,
Guardian
, 24 July
A judge has ruled that an American drugs dealer [Johnny Callie] can’t be
deported from Britain because he has a ‘human right’ to free medical
treatment on the NHS… Callie’s case was bolstered by a supportive letter
from the Norfolk and Suffolk Probation Trust. There’s a surprise. The
Guardianistas
who run the probation service would consider Callie a valued
‘client’. The interests of the wider public are never taken into consideration.
Richard Littlejohn,
Mail
, 15 July
It would be hard to imagine a less deserving case for free healthcare
than Callie, a US citizen who was jailed in 2007 for supplying heroin and
cocaine. I am sorry that he is said to be depressed and to suffer from
diabetes and high blood pressure, but he was part of a trade which has
inflicted far more misery and ill health on others. Rather than treat him
for free, logically Britain should send him a large bill not just for his own
treatment but to cover the treatment the NHS has provided for the drug
users who bought the heroin and cocaine he supplied.
Ross Clark,
Express
, 15 July
LAST MONTH I WAS INVITED
to take part in a
‘MOPAC Challenge’, a regular deep dive into one
aspect of criminal justice conducted by London’s
deputy mayor for policing and crime, Stephen
Greenhalgh. Held at City Hall, this particular
MOPAC Challenge focused on substance misuse; I
was representing the charity sector alongside
Addaction. We were joined by senior officials
from the NHS, local authority community
safety teams and, of course, the Metropolitan
Police service.
During the session, we reiterated our belief –
which we’ve made in this column many times –
that employment and self-employment work. I also spoke about the natural
entrepreneurial flair in many of the people we encounter and how this needs
to be channelled into something positive for the individual and for society.
But our key point, which I’m glad was supported by other participants at
the challenge, was to identify a gap in the provision and resourcing of
employability skills in the Integrated Offender Management (IOM) teams
with local crime fighting forces. These are multi-agency hubs, run by the
police, looking to bring together a wide range of organisations to help tackle
the most prolific of reoffenders, up to a third of whom also have substance
misuse issues. However, we’ve found that employability support and
promoting self-employment is one area that, in most cases, is missing from
these IOM hubs – support that we know can help reduce the rates of
reoffending and substance misuse.
Of course, having identified the gap, the challenge now is how to fill it. It’s
an area that we know the deputy mayor took on board as one of his three
actions from the session, and which we hope to be supporting him on, given
our experience.
In fact, this is the gap that we are hoping to fill in West Yorkshire. We
recently visited three major IOM hubs there as a part of our planning for an
innovative service to reduce crime and drug-related crime in the region.
These Integrated Offender Management teams were some of the first to be
set up anywhere in the country and have been having a real impact in
reducing the levels of reoffending. The visit confirmed everything we’d been
saying about a gap, but they also reminded us how we can achieve so much
more when agencies and organisations work together.
How to get these smaller organisations and charities working and
delivering in the public sector, in the face of competition from far larger
organisations, is an issue that will exist at least until the general election
next year. The shadow social enterprise minister, Chi Onwurah, announced
that a Labour government would offer some government contracts that only
not-for-profit organisations could bid for. Following one of the biggest shake-
ups in government since the 1960s, the departing minister for civil society,
Nick Hurd, urged the prime minister to do more to enable small charities and
social enterprises to win public contracts. As we get closer to May 2015, I
hope we’ll hear a lot more from all the political parties on this subject, but
I’m keen to get your thoughts as well.
To enquire more about our work, please contact me at
amar@tsbccic.org.uk and follow me on Twitter @amarlodhia or
@tsbclondon. Don’t forget to use the #tag DDNews when tweeting!
Amar Lodhia is chief executive of The Small Business Consultancy CIC
(TSBC), thesmallbusinessconsultancy.co.uk
ENTERPRISE CORNER
MIND THE GAP
Employability support should be an important part of
tackling reoffending rates, says
Amar Lodhia