It's all Greek to me

There was some consternation among Guido Fawkes readers when it was revealed the Department for Work and Pensions has spent £7.6 million on translators and interpreters for benefit claimants.

That provoked me to check bankrupt Birmingham City Council’s spending and it turns out in the past two years, the local taxpayers have forked out £916,800 under the same two headings.

In all, £716,000 went on translation and £200,800 on interpreters in Birmingham in the two years to June. Which makes you wonder how much money is being spent all over the country and what languages are involved. I somehow doubt if Spanish or French are much called for.

https://order-order.com/2025/07/25/exc-taxpayer-forks-out-7-7-million-on-translation-in-just-one-year-for-benefit-claimants/#comments

Why is world cricket ignoring Imran's cruel fate?

Why are cricketers ancient and modern ignoring the fate of the man who is arguably the sport’s greatest all-rounder, Imran Khan?

Where are the protests? Where are the strongly-worded condemnations and ineffectual flappings of impotent outrage? Where is the boycott of Pakistan’s cricket team?

What’s the difference between Vlad Putin jailing his opponents on fatuous, transparently trumped-up charges and Pakistan’s military junta doing exactly the same thing?

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/imran-khans-call-from-jail-hold-asim-munir-accountable-if-anything-happens-to-me-alleges-harsh-treatment/articleshow/122581528.cms

Follow the money (down the drain)

Without wishing to stir things up for Unison and Birmingham Council, it seemed worth checking out bin-related online expenditure data.

Birmingham Council says, so it must be true: “We strongly refute any suggestion that agency workers have been carrying out work normally undertaken by striking workers. We continue to deploy the same number of agency workers on days of action as it we would on any normal working days.”

Odd, though, as the cost of agency workers listed under the heading ‘fleet and waste operations’ was £7.1 million in the first six months of 2024 and £13.1 million in the same period this year.

Total spending under the heading ‘fleet and waste operations’ was £38.3 million in the first six months of 2025 compared with £35.8 million at the same time last year.

An appalling cynic might think that, as the bin strike drags on, the council is spending a small fortune filling the void with temporary binpersons despite its strong refutation.

I did ask the council if there was any explanation for the rise in the employment of agency staff other than the obvious but, as usual, answer came there none.

Unite claims the strike is over plans to downgrade 171 people at a cost to each dustperson of £8,000 a year, ie £1.4 million (the council says only 17 people would lose £6,000 each, ie £102,000). Meanwhile, one way and another, Extra Personnel Ltd is cleaning up.

As it’s a nostalgic month for Birmingham music (Black Sabbath, ELO) here’s a Longbridge-inspired ditty (RIP Dave Cousins):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J56IicSNuEY

Birmingham's £10 million-a-month habit

Good news and bad news. The good news is Birmingham City Council has been warned of the huge cost of employing temporary staff almost permanently.

The bad news is that the warning was issued 22 years ago by former councillor Mike Olley, when the cost to the local taxpayer came to a then-worrying £19.3 million.

Today, the cost of temporary staff can conservatively be put at £10 million.

Every month.

The 2003 report highlighted lack of financial control, management failure, lack of ‘quality control’ over the people recruited and pointed out the private sector didn’t immediately call a temping agency every time a vacancy needed filling short-term. ‘There is a clear recognition of the need to challenge unnecessary cost,’ the report said.

What do we find today? In the first five months of this year, the council paid Hays Specialist Recruitment £41 million, Extra Personnel £5 million and £6 million on agency teachers. £51 million in five months or £10 million a month.

In 2003, Coun Olley said: ‘Whilst the motivations and level of accountability are different in the public sector, this does not mean that we should not seek to operate to the same level of efficiency as the private sector. Certainly in a climate where we as a Council need to find £31m in 2003/4 and £42m in 2004/5, we are in no position to discount how economies with agency staff might contribute to this.’

£31 million and £42 million? Ha! Chickenfeed.

A spokesperson from Hays, said: ‘Hays has worked with Birmingham City Council operating as their managed service provider since 2017. We supply a broad range of temporary workers across roles including finance, admin, social care, project management HR and technology.’

Obviously most of the cash the council pays Hays and others goes in wages and tax but it seems reasonable to assume 10 per cent is profit. In its 2024 annual report, Hays reported a profit of £105 million on a £1.1 billion turnover.

Who says the Crime Commissioner doesn't pay?

The good and worthy causes supported with taxpayers’ money by West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster are manifold. The following list contains most, probably not all, the charities and organisations he gave money to during the month of March this year.

This list includes brief snippets about what these organisations do, mainly culled from their websites. The total amount listed adds up to more than £2 million.

• Advent IM Ltd £23,650. Security consultants;

• AJB Media £36,624. Specialist supplies, professional services and public engagement;

• Avision for Empowerment £37,805. ‘We are a Community Interest Company and the driving force for the empowerment and development of people to achieve personal and professional success’;

• Anawim Women Working Together £101,297. ‘Provides trauma responsive services including holistic support and advocacy in Birmingham to empower women’;

• Barnardo’s £9,776. ‘Helping vulnerable children’;

• Birmingham City Community Football Trust £5,000. As visited recently by Chancellor Rachel Reeves;

• Black Country Women’s Aid £440,116. ‘Black Country Women’s Aid is an independent charity which has supported survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence in the West Midlands for 30 years’;

• Blesst CIC £9,936. ‘BLESST focuses on developing deprived families and young people through employability training, community safe space learning, and cultural identity’;

• Bringing Hope £36,991 ‘Bringing Hope is a charity based in Birmingham UK that works in prisons and the community with those involved in serious violence and crime’;

• Buddi Ltd £11,470, alarms for the elderly;

• Birmingham Says No £10,000, ‘We are a multi award-winning campaign aimed at tackling the pressing issues of knife crime and youth violence across the West Midlands’;

• Centre for Civil Society (Living Wage Foundation) £2,137. ‘We are the movement ensuring everyone earns a wage to meet their needs’;

• COPACC £2,495 subscription. ‘CoPaCC now has a portfolio of services, collaborating to optimise organisations to meet their governance and management challenges and opportunities’;

• Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre £6,633. ‘Specialist support for adults and children in Coventry who have been impacted by sexual violence or abuse at any time in their lives’;

• Catch 22 £74,403. ‘For over 200 years, Catch22 has designed and delivered services that build resilience and aspiration in people and communities’;

• Centre Spot CIC £3,976. ‘Centre Spot CIC is a creative social enterprise that uses Sports and Physical Activity to engage and build capacities of people, particularly young people’;

• Cranstoun £424,900. ‘Empowering people, empowering change’;

• Children Heard and Seen £11262. ‘Supporting children with a parent in prison’;

• Dare2lead £2,359. ‘Dare2Lead is a social enterprise dedicated to unlocking the leadership potential of people, organisations and communities. Our range of leadership training and motivational programmes are tailored to suit everybody, regardless of their ability or industry’;

• Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire £11,130. Unclear what the money’s for but the university offers degrees in professional policing;

• Engage Youth Empowerment Services £1,056. ‘Delivers bespoke creative projects for young people, direct family and significant others’;

• First Class Foundation £6,250. ‘We create projects and programmes that serve young people and their families across the city’;

• Global Media Group Services Ltd £2,500. ‘On-air, on Global Player and outdoor – through these platforms combined, we entertain and reach over 51 million individuals across the UK every week’;

• His Majesty’s Prison Service £12,574 for ‘targeted initiatives’;

• ICVA (subscription) £1,750. Independent Custody Visiting Association;

• Inclusive Sports Academy £5,000. ‘Delivering well-being and physical activity to audiences with special educational needs and disabilities across the West Midlands’;

• Living Xperience Connexion £12,500. ‘We develop bespoke empowerment programs for offenders and those on the periphery of offending’;

• LuxeventsUK Ltd £1,200. ‘We’re an independent, female-owned agency based in Edinburgh, and we’ve built a reputation for delivering events that are strategic, seamless and memorable’;

• Man at Work CIC £3,866. Set up ‘to deliver transformative training for professionals in supporting the healthy personal development of boys and young men, challenging sexism and fostering violence-free relationships and communities’;

• Mentoring Arts and Diverse Education CIC £740. ‘Tailored mentoring and outreach services’;

• Midland Langar Seva Society £2,050. ‘The charity now provides over 150 thousand hot meals per month alongside many other amazing projects both in the UK and abroad’;

• Networkfour £3,999.43. ‘Alleviating poverty, breaking the chains of homelessness and criminality to offer hope and transformation to people in Birmingham and the West Midlands’;

• Positive Youth Foundation £10,000. Provides ‘intensive frontline services to young people’ and supports ‘the local, regional and national youth work sector’;

• Phoenix Psychological Services £61,000. ‘An independent psychological practice specialising in trauma across the lifespan with individuals, families and organisations’;

• Prospects £70,000. ‘We guide millions of students to make the right choice’;

• Partnership Bridge Ltd £11,970. ‘Public order and safety activities’;

• Rethread Youth Ltd £22,312. ‘We are Redthread, a national charity delivering transformative youth work in hospitals and health settings’;

• Remedi – Restorative Services £100,000. ‘Remedi exist to enable those accessing our services to be the people they can and want to be, through the creative and proactive use of restorative approaches’;

• RSM UK Risk Assurance Services LLP £7,140. Internal audit;

• Recite Me Ltd £3,325. ‘From creating WCAG (web content accessibility guidelines) compliant websites to providing customised user experiences, Recite Me is here to support you to be more inclusive online through a range of accessibility solutions’;

• Red Snapper Recruitment Ltd PCC £10,000. ‘Experts in public safety’ (also agency staff for the dog unit £26,900);

• Rockc CLC £3,500. ‘At ROCKC, we’re on a mission to raise awareness around gang culture and violent crime through the powerful combination of art and education’;

• Round Midnight Ltd £14,000. ‘We are Virtual Decisions. We create engaging VR content that allow difficult decisions to be safely simulated, improving outcomes and saving lives through experiential VR learning’;

• Sarbat Wolverhampton £3,620. ‘We promote diversity and inclusion thus integrating the local community. We deliver these through a range of activities which includes multi sports projects, community engagement activities and education’;

• St Regis CofE Academy £4,700. Probably related to Wolverhampton police cadets;

• Titan Film and Hire Ltd £2,168. Public engagement;

• Unite and Uplift Together CIC £4,708. ‘We are on a mission to ensure everyone regardless of age, gender, social economic class, sexuality and disability have access to professionally organised support programs in a safe environment so they achieve their full potential for themselves, their communities and society as a whole’;

• Safer 2gether £33,945. ‘A venture launched to support practitioners from all sectors, navigate the ever evolving and complex safeguarding landscape’;

• Safer Now £2,150. ‘SaferNow exists to close the gaps between what organisations within children and adolescent safeguarding arenas can do, and what our communities require of us’;

• The Feast Youth Project £3,000. ‘Our desire is to bring together teenagers from different faiths and cultures to build friendships, explore faith and change lives’;

• The Mentoring Project £2,500. ‘We are dedicated to supporting change in the outcomes for Children’;

• Trailblazers Mentoring £4,000. ‘A UK charity which provides 1:1 mentorship and practical support to people in prison and post release’;

• Victim Support £60,275. ‘Provides specialist practical and emotional support to victims and witnesses of crime’;

• Weapons Surrender Ltd £13,474. ‘We offer a complete ‘start to finish’ service to the Police, public, local authorities, government bodies and supporters of anti-knife crime’;

• West Midlands Media Ltd £1,950. IT support;

• YMCA Black Country Group £17,000. ‘Everyone should have a fair chance to discover who they are and what they can become’;

• Zoe Lodrick Ltd £883.84. Sexualised trauma specialist.

And they say there ain't no sanity clause

Once upon a time a Government employed KPMG to tell them what they wanted to hear. KPMG duly obliged, announcing that a high-speed railway line from London to the provinces would generate £15 billion a year, mainly in the Midlands and the North.

That was in 2013 and it’s taken more than a decade for us to wake up and realise it was all just a dream.

But if you turn back to the KPMG report ‘HS2 Regional Economic Impacts’, you will see it is littered with disclaimers suggesting, to the cynic, especially in hindsight, that the firm didn’t really believe its own conclusions.

The report declares: ‘Any party other than HS2 Ltd that obtains access to this report or a copy (under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, through HS2 Ltd’s Publication Scheme, or otherwise) and chooses to rely on it (or any part of it) does so at its own risk.’

It says: ‘We accept no responsibility for the consequences of this document being relied upon by any other party, or being used for any other purpose, or containing any error or omission which is due to an error or omission in data supplied to us by other parties.’

And it goes on: ‘Whilst KPMG LLP has undertaken the analysis in good faith, no warranty, expressed or implied, is made in respect of the accuracy, completeness or appropriateness of its assumptions, calculations or results. No reliance may be placed upon the analysis by any party, except where specifically referred to in an agreed KPMG LLP letter of engagement. All users are accordingly advised to undertake their own analysis and due diligence before making any decision or entering into any commitment based on the information in this report.’

It also points out, further distancing the firm from what its report says: ‘The project has been peer-reviewed by an advisory panel of independent experts set up by HS2 Ltd.’ And they say there ain’t no sanity clause….

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/05/hs2-report-overstated-benefits-expert

Pity they didn’t read my reports

In 2013, I wrote:

When it comes to a sensible, reasonable, rational assessment of whether the thing will provide value for money, though, our politicians fall back on a variety of reports.

These are commissioned by the Department for Transport and paid for by the Department for Transport so it rarely comes as a shock when they are widely trumpeted as proving the case for HS2.

I actually took the trouble to read the last one all the way through. The truth is I could not make head or tail of it. When it descended into rocket science, I knew I was lost.

In 2015:

Nobody really knows how much HS2 will cost when it’s finally opened. The official figure is now apparently £43 billion and Labour has said it would withdraw its support if the bill rose to more than £50 billion.

But it is said that in the corridors of power it is widely accepted that the bill will eventually come in at something like £73 billion.

It’s clearly the case with HS2 that the simplest way of estimating the cost is to think of a number – any number – and then double it.

There is no chance it will bring any added long-term prosperity to the West Midlands. Just as the true cost of HS2 is pure guesswork, so is its ability to create jobs. But whenever its backers come up with a number, halve it if you want something like the true picture.

And in 2016:

It’s probably unlikely the Birmingham to London high-speed trains will actually derail when they hit a top speed of 223 mph. Because the might never go that fast.

Research by engineer Prof Peter Woodward warns that at such a high speed there could be ‘significant issues’ with track instability.

The HS2 company says it’s taken into account the fact that its trains will run about 40 mph faster than the rest of the world’s high-speed trains and there’s nothing to worry about.

Let’s hope so because speed of travel is one of the key arguments for building the line in the first place. If trains can’t actually go as fast as advertised then, even if they don’t crash, the whole financial case for this infinitely costly (latest guesstimate now £55.7 billion) line will certainly run into the buffers.

Fetch the comfy chair

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin with news that the West Midlands Police have spent £67,000 so far this year with a company called Back Care Solutions.

If you find that staggering, you may need to sit down when you learn that, in March, the police paid £497,000 to Abbott Toxicology, who test officers and recruits for drugs and booze.

A cursory glance at Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster’s on-line spending declarations for the first four months of the year show has been splashing the cash.

He’s given £45,000 to the West Midlands Anti-Slavery Network while The St Giles Trust, which helps people ‘held back by poverty, unemployment, the criminal justice system, homelessness, exploitation and abuse to build a positive future’ has had £739,000.

Many payments are relatively small sums: Birmingham LBGT has been given £40,000; Birmingham Pride got £2,000; Relate’s had £88,000; Sikh Women’s Aid £39,000; the New Testament Church of God’s was blessed with £3,200; the Romanian Community Centre, £4,000; Women in the Shade, £2,000; and Edu-k-fun, £2,160.

The commissioner obviously believes in the transformative power of sport having given Streetgames UK, £20,000 and Support through Sport Youth, £3,678; the Andrew Simpson Sailing Foundation, £3,080; Sporting Spirit, £3,859; Guardian Ballers £2,400 and Streetgames £20,000.

Mr Foster’s membership of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners cost taxpayers £49,695, his taxis £7,000, his earnings £100,000.

Happily, he’s got more money than ever to spend, having put up local taxes by £13.95 (6.5 per cent, 5p below the legal limit) but even with a budget of £984 million, he’s not happy. He blames ‘central government’ for the police being 800 officers short even though the force claims crime fell six per cent in year to March.

Maybe. Still, His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary’s most recent assessment gave the force no ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ ratings, two ‘adequates’, three ‘requires improvements’ and three ‘inadequates’.

The inspector said: ‘I have serious concerns about how well the force investigates crime, protects vulnerable people and manages offenders and suspects. We have highlighted these problems in previous inspection reports, but the force’s performance has declined.’

Fetch the comfy chair.