Record your views and plrase share. Government consultation. consult.defra.gov.uk/defra/trail-...

Details of the verdict against Meta and Google re liability for social media addiction www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram told him that as minister for prisons, probation and justice he had "served as a role model to all". To be fair, as a Chief Probation Officer at that time he was emphatically never my role model. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Meta can brush off huge financial penalties. They just need consumers to overlook their behaviour and keep using their products.

To oversee “the biggest expansion of tagging in British history” The professional has been transformed. Grayling dream realised. #TransformingRehabilitation

The “special relationship” always been imbalanced.Trump’s merely ripped the tactful veneer off it. IMO, Starmer was right not to join the Iran offensive; but also right to adapt to changing circs by committing defensive resources now. We didn’t want this war, but must now try to limit its impacts.

This is a gem of a final paragraph @alanbeattie.bsky.social

Insightful reporting by David Allen Green at the Financial Times on why Palantir data-analytics defence contracts with UK government should raise concern.

I have a book out in less than a month and so I am plugging it shamelessly. Here is the opening poem. Please consider joining our attendance to the office of the moment by pre-ordering a copy here! www.bluediode.co.uk/product-page...

NEW ‘Scandal’. A word to be used sparingly - but this is it. Ministry of Justice is spending over £100 million on a prison that can’t hold prisoners - Dartmoor. Key decisions taken in March 2022. Justice Secretary was Dominic Raab & Permanent Secretary Antonia Romeo, now at the Home Office…

This is a bold, evidence-led report that tells it exactly like it is: that Scotland's current level of imprisonment "goes far beyond what is required for public safety", because "having a high prison population does not equate to a safer society". And so say all of us.

youtube.com/watch?v=zJnk... So… this is what Trump, Ice and President Steven Miller have unleashed on the American people. Teachers dropping a dime on “illegal” 7 year olds that only appear to be “illegal” because they look “Hispanic”. Every American should listen to this.

Poland to probe possible links between Epstein and Russia, PM Tusk says reut.rs/3ZjaEGe

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a new leader on Saturday to run New York City’s Department of Correction. Stanley Richards, who most recently served as the chief executive of a prisoner advocacy nonprofit, will be the first formerly incarcerated person to lead the department.

I wrote this poem the day after Renee Good was murdered - it’s about how the media and politicians immediately dehumanised her. I have had a few people ask “who wrote it?” So I am putting it up again - written in anger

Watching Robert Jenrick badmouth all his mates and fall like a shot pheasant into Nigel Farage’s bulging game bag brought plenty of cheer to a dreary January afternoon ✍️Ben Wildsmith wp.me/p8Mk4U-1cLk

Reform told you reducing council tax was easy. They just had to slash Woke policies, and a billion or two would be saved. They wouldn't even need to close care services. They promise you that. And then every single Reform-led council cut care services and increased council tax.

She's right... and it comes down to money. SCS salaries are down 20% in real terms since 2010. You have directors on less than £100k. The main reason we still have a functioning SCS is Stockholm syndrome.

Excellence in Delivery Award – BOLD Programme – North Essex Probation Delivery Unit Case Information Dashboard, Ministry of Justice

Fergus McNeill, Professor of Criminology and Social Work at the University of Glasgow, gave this year’s Howard League Lecture, with the title ‘Rehabilitation and Penal Reform’. Read the lecture here: https://howardleague.org/blog/the-2025-howard-league-lecture-held-in-memory-of-lord-parmoor/

These decisions…"imply cutting ‘other’ departments (including local government and justice) by £6.4bn in real terms between 2028-29 and 2029-30".

As research reveals families feel informed about what’s happening in school, but not always listened to or understood, here are key lessons from trusts with strong reputations for building positive relationships with parents schoolsweek.co.uk/5-lessons-fr...

So worth a watch / listen…

Good appointment www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Are you interested in working for a more humane and effective response to crime? We are looking for a Development Officer to join our busy team. https://howardleague.org/about-us/vacancies/development-officer/

“We find it extraordinary that contracts were awarded to both Serco and AUEM despite being found by the Serious Fraud Office to have been dishonestly misleading the government while providing EM services,”

The issues at #Medomsley have been known for many years. This 2012 report is (warning) very distressing and gives a glimpse of the horror. www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/...

The #Medomsley history is devastating. Will the personal characteristics of the serial perpetrators make them less subject to public condemnation & will those of the victims less the focus of public concern? The answer - also devastating- is probably yes These children were served up to perpetrators

The Communications Director @nationaltrust.org.uk is definitely one of the organisation’s treasured assets.

I just love how supporting the National Trust and the RNLI now makes you a dangerous radical.

Restores my faith in personal agency that RT2021 who describe the nature of their business as, “Activities of other membership organisations not elsewhere classified” (Companies House) have again failed to succeed at NT council elections where they were relying on mass voter apathy from members.

“Rebuilding the system requires a revitalised multi-agency partnership to set strategic direction, improve working relationships and provide a clear set of principles and priorities to galvanise activity across the system.” Valuable report here. www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

Appreciative of @nationaltrust.org.uk for their inclusion of a mesmerising film showing the (still surviving) industry upon which the wealth of the household was based. “Haunting” is the perfect description.

Gotta love Private Eye. Always cuts through the crap.

There are just 7 days left for you to make your voice heard in our Annual General Meeting: buff.ly/LcZhyeO Cast your vote before midnight on 31 Oct.

This reminds me of the joke, “People used to laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well they're not laughing now.”

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

VIDEO: Probation under pressure Thank you to everyone who attended our Spotlights event on probation. If you missed it, or want to hear the discussion again, head to our YouTube channel to watch the recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29E6DBzA8GY

Government plan to further alienate offenders from their community. Probation Officers (who are now civil servants) have no choice but to comply. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/sep...

Reform’s immigration plan falls apart on hard contact with evidence, economics and any form of engaged brain. Never be afraid to stand up for this country and its decency and future by giving them short shrift.

What’s the difference between a Will and a Power of Attorney? Full help in the new ‘Grown Up Stuff: (Free) Wills & even more important Power Of Attorney’ Martin Lewis Podcast available on BBC Sounds bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/..., Apple, Spotify & all the usual pods

Now that it’s the time of year when the obscurely-funded right wing Restore Trust, a private company, try once again to take over the National Trust, my annual reminder of what they want to do with our history & heritage. blogs.sussex.ac.uk/snapshotsofe...

MoJ COO James McEwen has been named chief exec of HM Prison and Probation Service:

“If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then community power eats national strategies for lunch and dinner.

“Every minute, every second, has to be spent with one’s device clutched in one’s hand.”

….yes