Vince Cable leaped aboard every opposition bandwagon at any opportunity before 2010, so much so that he convinced most that he actually knew what he was talking about and was hailed as The Chancellor That Never Was.

Unfortunately Vince found himself in a position where he had to start doing real things and not just talk about them and Vince has found it hard to come to terms with the fact that criticising something is not the same thing as fixing it, not anything like the same thing really.

Vince doesn't appear on TV half as much as he used to.

I entirely understand that and agree with your analysis.

If memory serves me correctly, though, there were issues in this area before the last general election.

I'm fairly certain a piece I did with two homecarers in Scotland, which centred on the issue of unpaid travel between visits, was pre-2010.

But it's massively increased since and, as you say, as a direct consequence of the cuts.

According the reports linked to the CPS ran with it until the press / Iceland got hold of it then they reviewed the public interest element.

I was watching one of tose emergency rescue programmes the other night. One of the almost fatally injured was a 19 year old care worker on her way to a client who was found after her car had crashed into a dry stone wall in the Dales. I wondered at the time if she had been rushing as a result of poor working practice / scheduling.

It's a reasonable hypothesis, I would have thought.

On the subject of scheduling & tracking of care workers, the company I work for has a tracker and job logging solution for remote and isolated workers, I have to use it myself. It was designed with care workers in mind using mobile phone technology and our own bespoke software and is marketed at employers as a duty of care product as well as an accountancy tool.

Surprisingly it has never sold in the numbers that we thought it might and its not for the want of marketing either, the technology has been used in other sectors and sells well there and so the only conclusion that I (personally) can come up with is one which a previous poster touched on - that of cost and of margins too tight to work with, if I was mischievous I might suggest that the businesses involved don't want the evidence recording but again, thats just opinion.

CPS didn't run anywhere with it, it never got to a court, but yes I would suspect that the shiitstorm was instrumental in a rapid review. We'll never know whether CPS would ever have run with it otherwise.

However I suspect not. For a start, I can't understand why the charges were brought under an obscure provision in an ancient Act (Vagrancy Act), couldn't the Met find a single offence in the Theft Act if they really felt these people were thieves?

For another, I doubt there is a first year law student in the land who wouldn't immediately see the difficulty in proving dishonesty if you are taking something which the previous owner has clearly abandoned, by throwing it in a rubbish bin. Is it seriously suggested that each and every item in a landfill site is someone's property still? Call the police!

But the saddest thing is to find that in our so-called civilised country, there are authorities who are happy to try to criminalise those so poor that they resort to eating thrown away food from bins. Yep, that's a useful way to spend our council tax, isn't it? They should transfer the cretin who thought it was a good idea to police the city tips around Mumbai. That would keep them busy.

A similar criminal brazenly operating on the sub-continenthttp://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/00157/TH06_OPED_GARBAGE1_157202f.jpg" >

Just on this point, the local council tip (or recycling depot as they like to call themselves now) has several signs around its perimeter and entrance stating that removal of any items will be viewed as theft so despite promoting recycling and bemoaning landfill they seem to be very protective of the rubbish that you consign to their care and not at all keen on letting others do the recycling.

The Met would have charged on the basis of CPS advice, but I can't imagine any of the people I know from there suggesting a charge, never mind the laughing at the police and telling them to go away.

Ridiculous episode and the CPS press release is a bit naughty to ignore the CPS role in the initial charge.

I think what they don't actually want is dozens or hundreds of people scavenging through containers all day which would obviously be a complete non-starter for H&S purposes as well as preventing normal operation of the site. I can hardly tip my large box of general rubbish into the crusher while there are 2 or 3 people scouring the contents.

OTOH I would agree that some of the stuff would be of use to people, but I'm not sure to what extent the Council already arranges for that to happen, for example, do they sell the electrical goods, or the wood waste, etc.? Obviously stuff like cans glass and plastics are sold commercially in large quantities.

Whatever, I don't think they could sensibly or safely operate a "help yourself" policy, certainly not as far as the crusher containers go. Once the stuff is chucked in there you can't have people climbing in to find bits to remove.

Are you sure? The reports I saw all said it was the Met that charged. Maybe that was the reason to use the Vagrancy Act.

Agreed, and this supports the reports that it was the Met alone.


Unless it is correct

You're a bloody spoilsport you are, when I lived oop north in the 1980s the local tip consisted of a wall that you drove up to and tipped your rubbish into a concrete pit below, everyone did this including the bin wagons. Most days when you got there and looked over the wall there would be several old blokes sorting around in the rubbish that hadn't yet been scooped up by the two or three JCBs that periodically came by to move the rubbish to the actual landfill at the back of the site.

You could fill the best part of a Sunday afternoon sitting on the wall watching to see if any of the old blokes got covered by someone elses kitchen waste or an old carpet, or alternatively throw the stuff at them deliberately - when the diggers came back it was even more fun.

Slight change of subject.

Lengthy but worth a read.

I suppose it depends where the bin is sited, if it's in an open area then I fail to see the problem, if, as seems to be the norm round our way, the skips are kept locked away behind huge fences then there's the question "what's he/she doing climbing over that wall?". Which is what probably happened here.