Prats of The Week - Applied Language Solutions

My oh my, it has seemed like a gazillion years since I last awarded one of my prestigious, and internationally renowned, Prats of The Week Awards.

Thus, without any further ado, I congratulate Applied Language Solutions for winning this week's award!

For why?

Just ask a cat called Masha, who has been registered to work as a court interpreter.

Solicitors Journal reports that an investigation by the BBC into Applied Language Solutions (ALS), which has a contract with the MoJ to provide interpreting services to courts in England and Wales, identified a number of cases where interpreters were not asked for criminal record checks.

UMMM!!

I thought that in Nanny's Britain everyone had to have a CRB, even if they wished to just say hello to their neighbours?

As if that were not bad enough, step forward Masha.

The owner of Masha, the projects director of Talk Russian UK Neil McCafferty, said that he registered Masha with ALS:

“We signed her up for the rare cat language.

We were absolutely staggered to start receiving emails from the company suggesting we take Masha the cat for a language assessment.”

One might ask why it is that Nanny's MoJ works with ALS, the MoJ passed the buck:

“It is (Ken says: shouldn't there be a "the" here?) contractor’s responsibility to make sure that they meet this requirement.

We keep this and other contractual matters under scrutiny.”

Data released by the MoJ in May showed that from 30 January to 30 April 2012, ALS provided an interpreter in 81% of the cases where the courts requested one (the target being 98%). There were 2,232 complaints during the period, almost half caused by interpreters not attending court.

A spokeswoman for ALS said:

"If ALS finds interpreters without the appropriate information it will remove them from the register until this information is obtained.

If the BBC is aware of any interpreters working without the necessary information and is prepared to provide specifics, ALS will investigate and suspend or remove such interpreters, if appropriate."

Sorry Masha, it looks like you are out of a job there!

Applied Language Solutions, well deserving Prats of The Week!

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The Mister Men

Dear oh dear, what a splendid example of absolute nonsense brought to us by Nanny's Ministry of Justice.

The MoJ has issued guidance that says guards should use the formal address of "Mister" for at least 12,000 prisoners with learning difficulties such as dyslexia.

This is all the more odd as Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, has attacked as “ridiculous” a ruling that forced guards to call a gang boss serving life for murder “Mr”.

Given that the "learning difficulty" clearly was not enough to dissuade the judge from imprisoning the offender (as opposed to placing him/her in a hospital or freeing him/her), this seems a totally daft idea.

Or am I just a hard hearted, miserable sod with zero compassion?