Blimey or, as Sir Alex Ferguson put it years ago “Football, bloody hell”, or as The Times journalist Simon Barnes put it “Real life, bloody hell”.  I am referring, of course, to the resignation of Fabio Capello as England manager yesterday. Presumably in response to my blog article on the subject

There was always going to be one winner, if the FA were prepared to stand up to him, as they were.  John Read of XPert HR left a comment on my previous blog about Capello saying that he thought the FA had a clause in the Managers contracts which gave them final say over team selection matters, a fact which was confirmed by former FA Chief Executive Mark Palios on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning.  Assuming that it had not been removed from Capello’s contract he clearly did not have a legal leg to stand on and his best hope of salvation was that the FA would back away from the prospect of losing their manager  just four months short of Euro 2012.  Thankfully they didn’t and stuck by their earlier decision.

The more interesting question is to what extent did the FA manufacture this situation to rid themselves of a manager they clearly had no great faith in?  The acquittal of Harry Redknapp from his tax evasion case  the very same day is too coincidental to my mind to have been a factor in the FA’s decision to stand up to Capello.  I’ve always been a believer in the cock-up theory of history, as opposed to the conspiracy view and if anyone can cock anything up, it is the FA.

However, perhaps on this occasion, they might just (fortuitously) have got it right. Judgment, Luck, More, by, than: please rearrange to make a familiar phrase.

P.S As an Arsenal fan I’m hoping that Harry Redknapp will be installed as full time England manager as soon as possible; this evening would be fine.

No related posts.

Capello a-go-go originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 09/02/2012.

The ability of the FA to shoot itself in the foot never ceases to amaze me, but I must admit to feeling justa little sorry for them over the John Terry affair.

The Chairman, David Bernstein, in my view, made the right decision in stripping Terry of the England captaincy, but then had the decision attacked by Fabio Capello, the Head Coach who said;

“I completely disagree with the FA about the John Terry decision and I have told that to the chairman. … The court will decide. It’s going to be civil justice, not sports justice, to decide if John Terry committed the crime that he is accused of. … I considered and still consider Terry as the England captain. I think we first should wait for the trial conclusion.”

 No ambiguity there then.  I suspect his reaction has more to do with trying to assert his waning authority than putting forward a reasoned argument on the actual issue itself (although it does call his judgment on that issue into question) and it brings him into conflict with his employers.  It was surely unwise of Capello to go public with his views, even if he did privately disagree with the FA’s decision.  David Davies, the former FA Executive Director, suggested Capello may have breached his contract of employment.

Capello may well be in breach of contract.  I would expect his contract to contain a clause saying that he won’t make any derogatory or detrimental comments about his employer and whilst his words are not derogatory, they are certainly detrimental to the FA because it flags up a big difference of opinion between manager and Board in one of the most high-profile businesses around in the run up to a major tournament.

More fundamentally, Capello may have broken the implied term of mutual trust and confidence in stating his disagreement so clearly. He must have known his words would cause embarrassment.  Perhaps he doesn’t care?  Maybe Capello doesn’t relish the prospect of another summer of high expectations and shattered dreams? If so, trying to get sacked by your employer would be one quick way out, but it doesn’t seem likely.  The problem for the FA now is what should they do about Capello’s outburst?  If they pretend it never occurred they look weak and if they do assert their authority they run the risk of being without their manager in the run up to Euro 2012, either because they have to sack him or he resigns. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t: as usual.

On the Terry issue itself there has been a lot of debate over whether he should have been dismissed before his criminal trial, with many people saying that he should be held innocent until proven guilty.  I think that is too simplistic and fails to take into account both the highly public and highly personal nature of the England captaincy.  For instance, there is a need for all members of the England team to set a good example and in Terry’s case that is called into question.  His commitment to the FA’s Respect agenda and supporting the anti-racist work it has been doing over the last few years is also compromised.

Further,  can a man who is accused of racism effectively lead a dressing room that contains black players, including the brother of the man he is accused of insulting? It’s all very well to talk about players being professional, but some issues run too deep.

There is also no principle which says employers must not take disciplinary action before criminal proceedings have been completed: see this very useful piece on the xpert HR blog.

A final thought: What is John Terry’s employment status with the FA?  Is he an employee or a worker? The position of England captain is presumably an honorific one and he hasn’t (yet) been deselected for England, so don’t expect him to trundle off to the nearest Employment Tribunal to seek reinstatement.

No related posts.

Fabio Capello: In Breach of Contract? originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 07/02/2012.

It was wrong of the Forfeiture Committee to strip Fred Goodwin of his “K”. It smacks of a politically motivated knee-jerk reaction (as in knee to the groin) and does more to bring the honours system itself into disrepute than the actions of one man. He may have been guilty of incompetence or, more likely, recklessness, but that shouldn’t justify this action.

What about those peers who have been convicted of crimes – Lord Archer or Lord Taylor of Warwick, for instance?  Lord Black of Crossharbour (Conrad Black as was).  Why do they still have their peerages?

Charles Moore  in the Telegraph summed it up thus;

So far as anyone knows, Sir Fred Goodwin has not committed a crime, nor – the other criterion of forfeiture – has he been “censured/struck off etc by the relevant regulatory authority”.

He is not generically different from all the other Knights (and peers) of the big-bank Round Table who, in various ways, got it wrong – Sir George Mathewson, Sir Tom McKillop, Sir Victor Blank, Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, to name but a few. It is merely that we all happen to have heard of him. Should the whole lot be purged?

For the powers that be to be able to erase what they themselves have done is not a bracing corrective, but hypocrisy.

Morally, it is like those Stalin-era photographs in which leading comrades on the Kremlin balcony were airbrushed out once they had fallen from favour.

We need to keep the honours we have handed out so that we can carbon-date the folly of each age.

What this all demonstrates is the folly of a system that awards gongs to your mates, to be taken away when the government changes colour.  Let’s have honours for sportspeople, writers and artists and people who do good work in their local communities, but abolish for those who get them because of who they know or for doing their (high-level and well remunerated) jobs.

No related posts.

A Nail in the Coffin of the Honours System? originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 01/02/2012.

It’s been a while since I did a podcast, so here is my brief round up of some of the statutory changes and big cases coming up in 2012.  It saves me writing as well. More blogs next week and, hopefully, more podcasts too.

Related posts:

1. Podcast#1
2. Podcast#2
3. Jobsworth meets Charon QC

Podcast#3 – What’s coming in 2012? originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 28/01/2012.

To claim a 10% discount on the conference fee quote "Scutt10"

Click here to book

Last year I wrote about Miriam O’Reilly’s successful age discrimination claim against the BBC when she was thrown off Countryfile.  Yesterday it was reported in The Guardian that she is going to leave Auntie and run a women’s support network and seek other challenges. The parting is being reported positively, with Ms O’Reilly not taking the opportunity to stick the boot into the BBC, as she might well be justified in doing.

Leslie Seldon

Age discrimination is a topical for employment lawyers at the moment because this week the Supreme Court is hearing the case of Seldon v Clarkson Wright & Jakes, another age discrimination case which will (hopefully) give guidelines on the circumstances in which it is permissible for an employer to require an employee or, in this case, a Partner in a law firm to retire.  Age discrimination is the only type of discrimination that can be justified.  The question therefore is: what is justifiable?  It is hoped that this judgment will provide some guidance on this thorny issue. More probable of course, as @ljanstis has predicted, is the outcome where it will all be said to depend on the facts in each case (with Lady Justice Hale strongly dissenting), leaving the situation just as unclear as it is at the moment.

Seldon should be finished today and the Judgment, which will be handed down in due course no doubt, will be keenly anticipated. To recap:  the Court of Appeal held that it was possible for a partnership to justify the compulsory retirement of an individual at a particular age if it can be shown that it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.  In this case although it was held that forcing Mr Seldon to retire was directly discriminatory, it could be justified on the basis of it allowed associates to come through the ranks and achieve partner status, which also meant they wouldn’t leave to further their careers elsewhere, it facilitated succession planning and reduced the need to remove partners through performance measures.

The Court of Appeal dismissed Mr Seldon’s appeal. It’s an issue that goes to the heart of the age discrimination problem with strong arguments on both sides.  Which takes precedence: an employers’ right to manage its business and encourage new blood or throwing good people out just because they’ve passed a particular birthday?   Personally, I hope Mr Seldon wins because otherwise I can’t see how the age discrimination legislation can have any credibility.

Not that Homer

There is also another age discrimination claim being heard at the Supreme Court – on indirect age discrimination. Homer v West Yorkshire Police is about indirect age discrimination.  Following the introduction of a new career structure he was refused entry to the highest pay band because he did not have a law degree.  Mr Homer brought a claim for indirect age discrimination on the grounds that at 61 years of age he would be unable to gain a law degree before he retired, unlike younger applicants. Again, judgment is awaited.

You can watch the progress of these cases via the Supreme Court website and Sky “Supreme Court Live”, unless you’d prefer to watch the cricket on Sky, which I wouldn’t recommend as England are currently 68 – 4.  Whether the Judges will be as equally decisive remains to be seen.

Related posts:

1. Goodbye House of Lords, Hello Supreme Court
2. Redundancy and Age Discrimination
3. Bankers and Age Discrimination

Age Discrimination Cases At the Supreme Court originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 19/01/2012.

Get a 10% discount on the booking fee for the above conference by clicking here and quoting “Scutt10″

During the Christmas break I read an article in The Independent about an increase in the number of “Valium addicts” being created by GPs and it stated

“Doctors are being sued for creating prescription drug addicts amid claims they have failed to follow safety guidelines published more than 20 years ago”

The number of clinical negligence claims is said to be increasing, from people who have been prescribed benzodiazepine drugs (which include diazepam/valium and lorazepam/ativan) for long periods of time and who have suffered injury and illness when coming off them.  The report suggests that GPs are still prescribing the drugs and quotes a Professor Malcolm Lader who believes there is a link between long-term tranquiliser use and brain damage as saying the Royal College of GPs is in denial about the issue.

This got me thinking on several levels.  The first was a reminder that when I was an articled clerk (ie trainee solicitor) back in 1991-93, I was told by my firm to “look after” the ten or so (legally aided) clients we had who were involved in the Benzodiazepine (BDZ) litigation which, at the time, was the biggest class action ever seen in the UK. The central thrust of the claims was that the drug companies should have known, or did know but didn’t act on the knowledge that long term prescription of BDZs could lead to injury. I don’t recall doctors being named as Defendants. It was frustrating work because all the exciting legal and medical stuff was done by the lead firms and my High Street firm acted as little more than a remote outpost, receiving instructions in the monthly bulletins from the lead firms, instructing the medical experts on the recommended lists and waiting for the inevitable outcome, which was collapse of the whole litigation after about three years.

Looking back it was obvious that the Plaintiffs, as they were then known in those long ago days pre-Woolf, would fail on the issue of causation.  In essence our clients, all of whom had (as far as I can recall now 20 years on) fairly nasty and intractable mental health issues anyway and it wasn’t possible to prove that the quality of their lives would have been much better without the drugs. Are we about to see a re-run of that litigation and that outcome?

In the first instance the potential defendants are different – last time it was the drug companies and this time the people prescribing the drugs who, surely, really should know better following the previous litigation? Breach of duty of care shouldn’t be much of an issue, but I suspect causation will be … again.

The story also got me thinking about the bigger scandal, which is the complete lack of meaningful assistance for people suffering from mental illness.  I’ve acted over the years in both personal injury and employment cases for many people suffering from mental illness and have seen the effects personally to me at close quarters. Doctors seem to have a very limited arsenal of tools with which to treat what is a massive problem in the UK.  They seem to have a wide variety of drugs to hand over (SSRIs, MAOI, TCAs etc) but trying to find a treatment other than a “mother’s little helper” is much harder.  Most of these drugs seem to take ages to work, give horrible side-effects when being taken and don’t do anything to cure the underlying problem.  That seems to be the task of so-called “talking therapies”, but try finding your way through the maze of counsellors and psychologists and any other number of “therapists” offering this or that “method” and it may lead you to the point of madness anyway. Even if you find someone, how do you know they are competent and won’t cause more harm than good? You might expect the overstretched NHS to struggle to offer anything, but do the big charities offer anything better?  Trying to find a support group for someone suffering from acute anxiety seems virtually impossible, for example.

Talking therapies are supposed to be much more successful in curing mental illness but it seems from what I have seen to be a neglected area.  Taking another pill instead is easy – it takes away the crisis but not the long term underlying cause.  I have some sympathy for overstretched GPs who can only spare 5 minutes with each patient at maximum.  Perhaps the NHS should spend some of the many millions it undoubtedly spends on anti-depressant drugs on developing and regulating the “talking therapy” sector, perhaps in conjunction with the relevant charities.  Will it take a potentially massive litigation against the NHS in the form of another BDZ class action to cause public policy to change?

The third thought I had on the issue was that back then most of the Claimants were funded by legal aid.  That won’t happen this time.  The participants will all be signed up on No Win No Fee agreements, backed by insurance (if the ATE industry will support it) meaning that if it collapses again it won’t be the taxpayer footing the bill. Undoubtedly many deserving Claimants won’t be able to seek redress.

None of this is new of course.  The Rolling Stones sang about it over 45 years ago;

“Kids are different today, I hear ev’ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day”

No related posts.

Mother’s Little Helper? originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 12/01/2012.

For some light relief, take a look at the the 25 Top Oddball Interview Questions of 2011, as compiled by Glassdoor.com, a website that allows people to say what they really think about the company they work for.  These questions were ones that were really asked in interviews, apparently.  My favourite  (and I say that sitting here in the comfort of my own home and not sweating in an interview) is “Just entertain me for five minutes. I’m not going to talk”.  How would I answer? Nervous laugh?  A song and dance routine. Tell the guy he’s a complete ar*e and walk out?  I don’t know and I hope I never have to provide that answer.

Nor would I want to prove that Germans are the tallest people in the world, or If I was a Microsoft Office program which one would I be?  One question which put me in mind of the dreaded employee of the month award was “If you could be #1 employee but have all your coworkers dislike you or you could be #15 employee and have all your coworkers like you, which would you choose?”.  Tricky.  Almost as tricky as how you’d get an elephant into a refrigerator. Potential answer? “Bovvered? Do I look bovvered?”

The one I’d feel happiest answering though is “If you could be a superhero, what power would you possess?”.  My answer?  The power to detect bullsh*t well in advance.

Try as I might I can’t think of any witty or pithy responses to any of these questions.  I’m sure my fear of being out of work, whilst motivated at least 90% by wondering how to pay the mortgage is also a fear of having to sit in an interview and try and be polite whilst facing cretinous questions like these. Apparently George Melly, the late great Jazz singer once was cornered by a group of thugs intent on beating him up.  He managed to escape by loudly  reciting a Dada -ist poem that convinced his would be assailants that he must be deranged, so they left him alone.  It seems like a good idea to me.

The subject of complete nonsense takes me nicely on to Lucy Kellaway’s most recent podcast. It’s only 5 minutes long and well worth listening to – click here  Listen to Lucy – The Guff Awards 2011

In it Lucy reveals her choices for the most vacuous bit of corporate jargon from the last year – mission statements, promises to give 100,000% to the job and so forth.  She also gives an award for the best (ie worst) euphemism for redundancy.  The company  concerned announced that it was “managing for value”.

Related posts:

1. 10 questions to ask if you’re made redundant

Oddball Interview Questions & Other Guff originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 11/01/2012.

Europe’s largest annual online recruitment conference returns to central London on 26th January 2012. We have an exclusive discount for readers of this blog.

The 10th anniversary conference – “Online Recruitment 2012: The Year Ahead” will focus on online recruitment strategy, candidate attraction, mobile, online law and global social media, You’ll hear from other industry leading speakers as well as network with 500 professionals at the industry’s largest event.

1. Google are presenting on Google+ and mobile within recruitment.

2. ITV are talking about how they have successfully implemented a new careers website and social media strategy.

3. The FIRM are talking about 3,000 FIRM employer recruitment strategies.

4. Boots are back talking about the market a year on and how they successfully used Facebook for social hiring.

5. There’s a social media recruitment legal and compliance masterclass which should be really interesting.

6. Monster are talking about how BeKnown could change the recruitment world forever via Facebook.

7. LinkedIn are discussing their vision of the future of online recruitment in 2012.

8. Plus Enhance Media – the conference organisers – giving insight from the world’s largest piece of online recruitment research.

We’ll be there (obviously) and readers of Jobsworth can get a 10% discount on tickets! To find out more about the conference click here and when booking use the promotion code SCUTT10 to secure your discount.

See you on the 26^th Jan!

No related posts.

Advert: Online Recruitment Conference 2012: The Year Ahead originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 04/01/2012.

I always enjoy the week between Christmas and New Year; it gives me the chance to do all those jobs that I’ve wanted to do around the house and to wade into the pile of books and novels I collect throughout the year and never quite get chance to read. This year has been no different and in amongst all the festivities I’ve managed to make some inroads into the reading list.  A case in point is the first novel by Selma Dabbagh, a British Palestinian writer, called Out of It.  It makes for a very uncomfortable, although very readable experience (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms).

It’s main focus is Gaza and the enduring conflict between Palestinians and Israel mainly seen through the eyes of a brother (Rashid) and his twin sister (Iman), both 27 years old. Probably like a lot of people in the West I don’t pay as much attention to what is going on in Gaza as I should, but the power of this novel is how it manages to portray the awful conditions in Gaza and the sense of hopelessness better than many news or TV reports. It has a power and immediacy that “the truth”, as reported by news media, often lacks.

There is an extra layer of interest in this book for me as well: Dabbagh is a practising lawyer, who trained with Fisher Meredith and now currently works part time with Hickman & Rose, a firm of criminal and human rights solicitors based in Clerkenwell. She has advised clients who were injured and detained by Israeli forces in the Gaza Flotilla in 2010.

The characters are all vividly drawn and believable, if not especially likeable. There is no sentimentality in this book: it does genuinely read like a “fly on the wall” account. Rashid is frequently literally “out of it” through smoking marijuana and then he secures a scholarship to study in London. Iman returns to Gaza from studying in Switzerland anxious to “make a difference” and not content just to be a member of a worthy committee cum talking shop, such as she finds at the Women’s Committee on her return. The women don’t take to her as an outsider. For a while it looks like Iman wants to be not just out of Gaza but out of life as well.  Displacement, appropriately enough for a book that deals with the Palestinian situation, is a constant theme in this book. Making it a theme in a novel as well written as this brings home the desperation of the Palestinian people better than any facts or figures can.

The family is (or was) wealthy with political connections, but the father has escaped to a Gulf State which sounds suspiciously like Dubai.  He was involved politically until he was humiliated into leaving and taking up a life of Western comfort, much to his daughter’s disgust. They were all previously in Switzerland and Paris and, for Rashid, isolated from his family through his waning interest  in  the Palestinian struggle, unlike his elder, disabled, brother, Sabri, who spends his days researching and writing a book about the intifada. The mother holds a dark secret about her past which only slowly gets revealed as you read through the book.

This is a powerful book, tightly written, partisan and unsentimental. The Israelis are clearly the enemy and there is, unsurprisingly, nothing in the book to recognise the security threat posed to them. For instance, at one point Sabri, tells an English peace campaigner struggling to make sense of it all the following;

‘It’s not something you can ever “get straight in your head”… ‘It’s too wrong to be justified, too screwed up to be straightened out. If you force yourself to understand it in any way that leads you to justify it then you are fucked and we are lost“

 But this is a novel and why not be partisan?  It is a book about experience – terrifying experience – such as when Iman sees someone she knows blown apart by a missile from an Israeli drone.  At the beginning of the book the Israelis conduct a terrifying air-raid in retaliation for a failed Palestinian suicide bomber; overwhelming force used to destroy a hospital which dismembers and kills a little boy known to Iman, fuelling her hatred of the enemy.   It demonstrates  the futility of the Israeli “eye for an eye. tooth for a tooth” policy.

However, the novel is not partisan to the extent of ignoring the problems in Palestinian politics.  Frequent mention is made of the corruption of the “leadership”, a shadowy body that seems to exist without any explained democratic process. Hamas is not mentioned by name but that may be who Dabbagh is referring to in the book as the “Outside Leadership”.  Another example is how one of the family’s neighbours, Abu Omar, a man not widely liked by anyone, is suddenly “arrested” one day and taken away in the same way that used to happen in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Gazans then are not portrayed as a plucky heroic people fighting outrageous oppression but instead as a people simply oppressed and subjected to appalling injustice, both from without and within.

It’s a book with many themes and layers, political and personal.  There is the conflict between different nations and between different family members. It’s also a book about rites of passage – Iman has been ensconsed in the struggle for so long that she seems to have no life of  her own. Her father’s girlfriend urges her to “concentrate on developing herself as a woman”, code for getting a boyfriend and a life away from Gaza.  Rashid has a failed relationship with an English girl who only wants him because of the credibility it gives her when campaigning with a pro-Palestinian body in London.

Does it provide any answers to the intractable dispute in the Middle-East? No, but it’s a powerful first novel and well worth reading if you want any insight into the Palestinian crisis.

No related posts.

Book Review: Hopeless in Gaza? originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 30/12/2011.

In the dog days of 2011, when all there is to do is eat cold turkey and chocolate (but not necessarily at the same time), I thought it time to give the old blog a make over.  I was a bit jaded with the old blue and grey colour scheme and wanted something minimalist that would fit in with the other two blogs I write – Troubleahead and UK BlawgRoundUp.  I like the cleanness of the white background, contrasting with black writing.  I’d also got fed up with seeing my mugshot in the sidebar.  I might get a new photo done in due course, but for the time being I’m going with the stripped down bare basics look. The old theme – Persephone – didn’t provide much design flexibility and altering the borders round photographs proved beyond my coding skills. The problem was the text font was very hard to distinguish from the background colour: not so anymore.

I decided to opt for Headway (on the advice of Tessa Shepperson, who helped set up the other two blogs) because it offers maximum flexibility over design.

It’s a premium theme – costing about £45 at current exchange rates and that is the basic purchase option.  I justify the purchase on the basis that it puts me in charge of the design, once I’ve got to grips with the design editor, and means I should be able to update it again when I want. It is also said to offer SEO advantages over other themes but I take this with a pinch of salt.

The design editor is the key selling point of Headway. You don’t need to understand CSS or html etc to be able to use it, although I suspect that probably would come in very handy. You also aren’t limited to choosing two or three column pre-set templates.  Headway uses a “drag and drop” system of grids and blocks so that you can put what you want where you want. I won’t pretend that I’ve got on top if it yet, but it promises flexibility for the future.

I’ve still got some tinkering to do with some of the widgets and various other bits and pieces, but please bear with me on this.  I’d welcome your comments on the new look as well.

I’m hoping to get another couple of posts up before the New Year. In the meantime I’m off to eat some more chocolate.

Related posts:

1. Happy New Year!

New Year, New Look originally appeared on Jobsworth by Michael Scutt on 28/12/2011.