A glorious, but also fateful day

I celebrated the All Saints Day Eucharist at St John's for a different dozen people this morning, and Emma sat in the congregation, until she had to leave, as she was being picked up and taken to a conduct a funeral service just after. 

Ashley called at the church at the end of the service and we walked and talked together. He said that he'd only received formal official notification in a letter received at the the Motorpoint Arena reception desk yesterday morning, stating that as of today, South Wales Police are no longer going to be responding to calls from RadioNet users but answering calls exclusively from the commercial radio system backed by 'For Cardiff' since the breakdown in relationships between Cardiff BCRP Board and its Chairman and Crime Manager, despite previous Council and Police undertakings to the contrary.

Some of the top people running 'For Cardiff' are ex-cops. They were only willing to hear the account of the breakdown given to them by fellow ex-cops. There's been amazing indifference about this on the part of Council officers, to whom it was reported, when a formal complaint was made. So much political time and energy was expended in launching the Cardiff Business Improvement District scheme that spawned 'For Cardiff', that investigating the conduct of 'For Cardiff' management so soon after its launch would have been highly embarrassing, given that continued use of RadioNet, was endorsed as an existing asset available to the project at an earlier stage. 

The Police claim not to prefer one radio system over another and earlier gave an undertaking to respond to calls from both radio systems,  but reality tells a different story. 'Operational reasons' or 'lack of resources', can always be used and there's no obligation to account publicly for this change of decision. It would be a different matter if Cardiff Business Safe had launched a civil court action against all parties involved, but as a voluntary not for profit organisation, no funds held in reserve were ever set aside for litigation, only for outlay on the radio system in the event of a breakdown. 

There's always the possibility of trial in the court of public opinion via social media of course, but I doubt there's much interest in these issues out there on anybody's part. It would only ever come out if a major catastrophe or breakdown in public security involving secure communications failure occurred in the city. Then it would only be part of the inevitable blame game achieving nothing.

For ten years Cardiff Business Safe did its utmost to provide the best quality of service and equipment  to the city centre through RadioNet. Now this comes to an end. Let's hope all those who promoted this initiative won't live to regret it and have their reputations damaged, their trust and goodwill undermined behind the scenes, in the way that of Cardiff Business Safe was dealt with.

To cheer myself up after this news, later in the day I went out and bought a wide angled lens for my Sony Alpha 68 DSLR camera as I promised myself I'd do once the insurance reimbursement came through.  I also bought a solid state hard drive to install Linux on and fit to one of my laptops. If I'm satisfied with it, I may convert another. The price of SSDs has come right down this past year.

Christmas puddings have been cooking all day today, two of them, one big and one small. And yes, we did get around to making our 'Stir Up' wishes a month ahead of time. Clare has also made a start on Christmas cake too, soaking a second lot of fruit, ready for cooking tomorrow. Kitchen aromas are arouse seasonal anticipation, way ahead of the wreath on the door, and candles on the table.

Regional crime reduction pow-wow

After an early trip to the GP surgery for a prescription renewal, I pottered about for a couple of hours, then went into town, changed some Euros, horrified by the exchange rate, then went and bought a superzoom Sony HX50 camera that I could have bought in Malaga at the same price, had I not miscalculated the exchange rate and duped myself into thinking it would be cheaper to buy in the UK. I started out some months ago looking for a decent telephoto lens for my DSLR, but quickly gave up on the idea. A 30x zoom in a pocketable camera is a fifth of the price of a lens that would add weight and complexity I don't need for my kind of photography. Like everyone else I'd like to take good quality pictures, but don't need professional high quality output to satisfy my personal needs.

Ashley and I then met up at our new office in the Old Library and we travelled by train to Swansea for the Wales Against Business Crime quarterly meeting with other people working in Business Crime Partnerships across South East Wales. It's the first time I can recall travelling to Swansea by train and it was interesting to see the familiar landmarks along the M4 corridor from a different perspective.

I was the first meeting of this group I've been to, and I was impressed by the amount of ground we covered, ranging from confidential information sharing on identifiable shoplifters travelling between shopping centres along the M4, to discussion about the astonishing inconsistencies between local divisions of South Wales Police in implementing information sharing agreements with their Business Crime Reduction Partnership. Problems in Cardiff are reflected in nearly every area.

Because flooding, high winds and rain were imposing speed restrictions in some areas along the Swansea to Paddington line, there were delays in the schedule of trains that would get us back to Cardiff. It was seven o'clock by the time we got back and I was very lucky to get a bus home within minutes. Clare had arranged an outing to Chapter Arts Centre to hear a story teller accompanied by a fiddler and a guitarist tell tales from the Mabinogion. I scoffed half my supper in great haste before we set out and thankfully we were on time, and to our surprise ended up with a front row seat in an extra row placed on stage. A refreshing end to an interesting day. Now I must get that camera battery charged and ready for action.

 

On not building with sandy foundations

For the past two years CBS has been working towards re-establishing a Board of Management for the Cardiff Business Crime Reduction Partnership. The process has been fraught with misunderstandings and difficulties rather than consensual thinking about what needs to be done and how it should be achieved. 

Often in the past while working on this goal, I looked at the scant documentation Ashley and I inherited when the present business organisation was set up in 2008 and saw only deficiencies in the formation of an agency intended to unite participants in common concern to act in response to business crime issues in the city. Each time there's been a change of office holder responsible in the Council or Police, there's been a change of approach and ideas about how to achieve what had looked like common goals. 

Why this should happen was all the time staring me in the face, but I couldn't see it over the months we were preparing to re-launch the Business Crime Reduction Partnership Board of Management in a meeting at the end of October. The penny finally dropped a few days before the meeting, and after strenuous discussion with Ashley I took responsibility for what was ultimately a unilateral decision by CBS to abort the meeting, then work out how to explain this to invited participants after the event. A huge foolish risk. But better be pronounced a fool if I'm wrong than to let something happen, which if I was right would ultimately perpetuate the cycle of wrangling and mis-interpretations.

We say the devil is in the detail. In this case, the devil I finally glimpsed at work making clarity and consensus just about impossible to achieve, is in the lack of detail. There's no doubt about the good will and high intent of public officials and politicians who agreed and launched the Business Crime Reduction Partnership back there, eight years ago this month. 

The immediate outcome was the set up of a security radio network run for the city centre by contractors, plus a number of minor public initiatives issuing from that.  A constitution was drafted for the Business Crime Reduction Partnership by someone involved in its early activity, but this never seems to have been run past a lawyer, and was not fit for purpose, being unable to survive any change in its original membership. I realised this in my first spell of involvement with CBS when I was still at St John's, and first started work on a draft revision in 2008. I continued this after retirement and worked on it occasionally ever since. It was only in the days before re-launch I belatedly saw plainly what else was missing.

I took it on trust that some original documents relating to the formation of the Partnership were lost in the upheaval following the collapse of the Chamber of Commerce and Cardiff Initiative. We carried on, and I never stopped to question what might have been missing - like formal agreements signed between the various partners, a formal agreement commissioning Cardiff Business Safe to manage the service provision by whatever means approved by the governing body of the Partnership. What about instruments of governance for the Partnership were they any? 

Over thirty years I spent a lot of time serving on school boards of governors. I hated the formality, I hated the strictures and bureaucracy of governance, preferring to work with kids at classroom and playground level. But, due to the loyal and conscientious nature of local government education officers, lots of good things were achieved and often in difficult situations. So I learned respect and patience, and over a long period acquired an understanding of what was needed to make everything work well. If you have a proper organisational framework and the appropriate agreements in place, amazing things can happen.

At the eleventh hour, I realised we had none of this where the Business Crime Reduction Partnership was concerned. If it ever had been, somewhere along the path it got lost and forgotten. Frankly it doesn't matter how or why this is so. Blame and shame is stupid news media entertainment fodder, not the stuff that delivers worthwhile change. Big institutions running society achieve much on the basis of custom and precedent. That's their default position. They can also achieve near miracles with conscious planning and preparation, however. This I witnessed at first hand as Vicar in the city centre when re-development happened while the city continued to do business as usual. Any time something went wrong the only question of value was how to get from here to where we need to be?

Once I realised, all I could do was risk making a fool of myself and then explain what I perceived to be the problem and what remedy could put us back on track to where everyone was aiming to arrive at. How daft, how arrogant is that? If I'm wrong, then I'm exposed as well intended but ignorant. No fool like an old fool. At least it will prompt others to think harder about getting things back on track an initiative driven by CBS over the past five years. 

It wasn't actually part of what CBS was commissioned to undertake when set up to provide security radio network services. It happened by default as there was no custom and precedent to cater for the task. Maybe the only historic documents give the Partnership a framework for development are a handful of publicity leaflets and the launch press release. I'd be interested to be proved wrong, but so far, no evidence, so I press on with drafting terms of reference and service level agreements - the regles du jeu, that offer certainty and stop new people making it up as they go along.

This morning it was my turn to explain my actions at a top level meeting in County Hall of people committed to make the Partnership work. This was a meeting I prayed about more than I usually do, so that my habitual self doubt and anxiety didn't obscure communication. From a deliberate annoying confrontation I wanted to move towards dialogue, that recognised the need to ensure the Partnership started on a foundation stronger than presumed agreement and precedent. I was aware my action could be regarded as a breach of trust, but truth will come out if truth is recognised.

We came away from the meeting with an agreement to consider anew the question of foundation documents for the Partnership on the basis of the drafting work I've been doing since the day it dawned on me what the problem was. I have little trust in my expertise to provide what's needed. All I've done is devise a tentative answer to the problems caused by perceived deficiencies in the formation process. It's a first step, for proper consideration by real experts. Getting around to asking the right questions proved to be a lot harder than any answer could ever be. Who dares to say life is dull?

Cyber & street crime in contention.

Wednesday and Thursday I slipped back into usual routine and went to the CBS office in the afternoon. Then I had a call from Father Graham Francis in a panic because he's downloaded an unusual email offering a voicemail attachment to the message. Curiosity led him to forsake his usual caution. He hit on the attachment and released a package which hijacked his desktop PC. 

The trouble we now have with all these competing user interfaces on Windows, Mac, Android and Linux systems is all kinds of messaging options with different names - is it a text or a hangout, or an email, or an IM or a tweet message? What is a voicemail? In reality it could be a vocalised text or email, or a plain audio message file or a robotic spam message relayed to either your phone your tablet or your PC. 

It's a confusing mess, especially if you haven't pared down your systems to exclude every gizmo except the ones that actually work best for you. It's like walking through a street market with lots of different voices competing for your attention. Will you notice which voice belongs to the thief after your wallet? The lack of consensus and consistency about these things on the part of system designers, and the lack of clarity about managing the options presented does the user no favours whatsoever.

Anyway, I hunted out a couple of anti-virus rescue CDs from my collection of emergency tools and went over to St Mary's Vicarage after work. When I booted up his nine year old Compaq with Windows XP, it quickly revealed that the malicious payload belonged to the 'Ransomware' category, blocking internet access, flagging up every system call as a malware threat and urging the user to place an order through a nag screen for the Anti-Virus Scrutiny product that would banish the ills it had introduced, for a hundred quid. Graham said there had been a news article during the week in the local paper about a business which had fallen prey to this, or a similar scam. 

Well, that evening, I tried live rescue CDs from top security providers F-Secure and AVG. With over a half a million files to scan, each took two hours to run on such ancient hardware. Both detected a couple of infected files, but failed to remove them. I went home by taxi at half past eleven, pondering my next move. I still had a CD with the latest monthly Windows Malware removal tool to try, if but I'd have to find out how to get into 'Safe Mode' on such an old piece of kit.

Friday morning I attended the press briefing for the city centre Christmas policing initiative 'Operation Mistletoe' in St David's Hall. It was an odd sort of gathering with separate huddles of police and council officers, and politicians, and just a handful of people moving between them. The local sector Inspector gave a brief presentation. She should have been followed by a speech from the boss of the St David shopping centre but he stood them up, so the meeting was mercifully brief and pretty pointless, as there was only one junior reporter present. 

One local security professional remarked last week that to launch 'Operation Mistletoe' in the first week of December was too little too late, as the thieves had already been out in force throughout November, collecting merchandise to sell on eBay or in pubs. By now they were ready for Christmas, so the only value of enhanced policing in December was to curb alcohol induced anti-social behaviour during party hours. That's not to be sniffed at, but it's an indication of the lack of serious interest shown by the police when it comes to acting on business crime intelligence provided by people working in store security day by day. There is, so say, a reduction in retail crime and we're supposed to be grateful for that. The sad thing is that unreported retail crime has increased because the store security teams are not getting the consistent and speedy level of support from the police they need to be effective.

After the meeting and a brief visit to the office, I returned to the afflicted PC, ran the Windows Malware removal tool, which found several more infected files, but appeared unable to remove them as there was no change in state of the machine after reboot. Meanwhile Graham had tracked down another  Microsoft free malware removal tool called Microsoft Safety Scanner. We downloaded it and burned it to a CD, booted the machine into safe mode and ran it with complete success. It still took two hours, making a total of eight hours machine minding over two days.  I thoroughly recommend a visit to the on-line Microsoft Malware Protection Centre, given the variety of clear explanations, tools and strategies it offers beleaguered users with hijacked PCs.

While scans were running, I help Graham install his first powerline network plug set and hook them up to his Sky On Demand box. The former I'm familiar with, but the latter's a complete mystery to me, as we're still on our first digital TV with free to air channels. For the rest iPlayer suffices. Not that much time for entertainment these days. Glad to be retired.

  

I was there - Olympic torch Cardiff

I went into the office after lunch, but as there wasn't much going on, I left early for home and got caught up in crowds gathering the welcome the arrival of the Olympic torch. I gave in to the occasion and positioned myself at the top of high street opposite the Castle, a little too early for comfort really, in bright sunshine. Preparations to cordon off an area for the torch procession through the city centre were thorough and long drawn out, since it was vital to keep some pedestrian thoroughfares and crossing points open until the last minute. It was quite an impressive feat of organisation. Well done Cardiff Council for that.

A brightly attired troupe of Carnival Samba dancers and drummers brought a good measure of local spirit to the streets, as did Wonderbrass, Cardiff's swinging jazz ensemble which does great things when playing out of doors. I'd got the Torch arrival time wrong, as there wasn't much public information to say when it was due to appear. In the hour beforehand, promotional teams of the three main Olympic sponsors - Coca Cola, Lloyds TSB and Samsung - worked like mad to mount advertising banners along barriers, and gave out free things to wave, so that the media record would show a sea of corporate commercial banners. To my mind this utterly despoils the Olympic ethos.

What annoyed me most that the distribution by the Samsung team of little flags with the Union Jack on one side and the Samsung Olympic sponsor's logo and colours on the other. Which is worse, to have your country's flag burned by hated adversaries, or defaced by a foreign owned global corporation? Will nobody be locked in the Tower of London for this betrayal of our national dignity? To make matters worse, the Samsung blue colour is nearly the same as that of the Tory party. Who let Olympic organisers get away with all this? The reality is every bit as absurd and degrading of our sovereign identity as the satirical TV comedy series based on LOCOG recently portrayed.

The corporate PR folk in their naff uniforms put much loud effort into warming up an already overheated crowd, making the wait seem even longer. Only on a big match day have I seen so many police officers in the city centre - dozens on foot where they belong, with the crowds, then amazingly in a vehicle procession, 3 riot squad vans, 3 patrol cars, 6 motor bikes, 4 expensive police bicycles, and 2 police horses. How much did that little show cost in fuel and police overtime? Money not being spent making the city centre a safer place to do business. Ironically the police got more of a cheer from the crowd than did the corporate PR drones.

When the torch arrived, it was preceded by a large vehicle sporting a rear end platform installation supporting half a dozen photographers. This stopped for a photo opportunity outside the Castle, blocking the view for hundreds of people in the vicinity, all straining to get a glimpse and take their own picture - as I was.

I heard a number of people curse in frustration, as their camera or phone batteries died at the vital moment. Such a long orchestrated wind up meant that people happily snapped away at unimportant stuff believing that the moment was nigh when it wasn't. Fortunately, the torch procession went down St Mary Street, crossed the Taff, then doubled back toward the Castle, crossing the Taff again to enter the Castle grounds and appear at a ticket only open air concert on Cooper's field, so those who hung around after the media circus passed got a second go - if their batteries lasted.  Mine did, just - the overall results, disappointing. Occasion, un-necessarily over-hyped, disappointing.

The photos are posted here.