←Peter Kenyon obituary
Текст: My husband, Peter Kenyon, who has died aged 78, was a journalist in Brussels for the Sunday Times, Irish Times and the BBC. He held a range of posts at Reuters, including international marketing editor, economics editor and Westminster lobby correspondent. He was also a social entrepreneur, trade unionist and political organiser.
He was born in Liverpool, to Doreen (nee Harrison), a primary school teacher,
and Frank Kenyon, an electrical draughtsman who died when Peter was seven. He was a boarder at the Royal Wolverhampton school and obtained a BSc in economics and politics at Hull University, and an MA in development economics at Leeds. We met at Hull and married in 1970.
We moved to
London in 1977, when Peter joined Reuters. Locally, he chaired the Finsbury Park Action Group, and was integral to the campaign to elect Diane Abbott as Britain’s first Black female MP.
Peter worked for the Voluntary Committee on Overseas Aid and Development in the early 1990s, advising Judith Hart, the then shadow minister for development, on the relationship between the EU and the UK, and the impact of Britain’s membership on developing economies.
He co-founded the Finsbury Park Community Trust, hosting a visit from the then Prince of Wales. His proudest achievement was successfully chairing the
Save the Reservoirs campaign – preventing both east and west reservoirs in Hackney from being built over by Thames Water. The sites are now a nature reserve and water sports centre.
He served as a Hackney councillor and chief whip from 1995 to 1998, chaired the Newham Community Health Services Trust and showed his dedication and leadership to promote and improve mental health care. He was elected as a member of the
Labour national executive committee in 1995 and was clerk to the Labour commission. For the last 20 years he was an editor for Chartist – a democratic socialist magazine.
Peter loved music and played with local orchestras on double bass. He maintained his passion for gardening, encouraging his grandchildren to learn how to propagate, to cycle to the beach, or sail in Poole harbour, where we spent holidays.
He is survived by me, our children, Christopher, Jonathan, Elizabeth and Catherine, and nine grandchildren.
Metropolitan police out of special measures after ‘good progress’
Текст: The Metropolitan police have been judged to be turning around extensive failings and removed from special measures after more than two years under extra scrutiny.
The decision was announced by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services on Thursday.
The Met, Britain’s largest police force, employs almost a quarter of officers in
England and Wales.
The news represents a symbolic success for its commissioner, Sir
Mark Rowley, who took office in September 2022 and is halfway through his five-year term in charge, having promised to reform the force after a succession of scandals.
The Met
was placed in special measures, known officially as Engage, in June 2022. It was the first time it had been officially judged to have fallen so low, and was seen as a humiliation.
Its former commissioner Cressida Dick
was ousted in February 2022 after a series of crises and scandals, including the murder by Met police officer Wayne Couzens
of
Sarah Everard in March 2021. Dick was seen by national and local government to have
mishandled the aftermath.
The Met’s time in Engage was extended because after some serious issues were addressed, inspectors found other critical failings.
One inspection found officers tried to put off children from
making complaints about alleged sexual abuse and privately blamed young people for crimes suffered, with most investigations into child exploitation rated as inadequate.
The Met has now put an extra 500 officers into public protection and has trained most officers in changing culture.
The force has shown improvement after being found to be failing in answering and assessing calls, investigations into missing children, stamping out victim blaming, addressing mistakes in managing offenders, and tackling failings or corrupt officers.
Rowley’s tenure has been rocked by scandals, most of whose roots lay in the Met’s recent past.
As well as Couzens, who an inquiry found
should never have been a police officer, the force missed a series of clues that allowed
David Carrick to stay as a Met officer despite being a serial rapist.
In February 2023, a report by Louise Casey found the force to be
institutionally racist, homophobic and anti-women. Rowley refused to accept those findings.
His majesty’s inspector of constabulary, Lee Freeman, said: “I am pleased with the good progress that the Metropolitan police service has made so far. While there is still a significant amount of work to do, I have recommended removing the service from our enhanced level of monitoring, known as Engage, and return it to routine monitoring.
“I am reassured by the plans that the commissioner has put in place to continue making sustainable improvements. We will continue to monitor the progress of the Metropolitan police service to make sure those living and working in the capital are getting the service they deserve from their force.”
The fact that the Met languished in special measures for more than two years was a sign of how deep its failings were, an embarrassment for the force, and for the mayor of London,
Sadiq Khan, who has responsibility for it.
Rowley said: “The whole of the Met has worked to fix our broken foundations and make sure our officers are set up to deliver for
London. Their achievement is all the more extraordinary in a budget-constrained, shrinking Met, which is facing increased demand.”
Khan said: “I welcome his majesty’s inspectorate confirming that significant improvements are being made by the Met police on both improved performance and transforming culture.
“Emergency calls are now being answered faster, vetting is being strengthened and neighbourhood policing is being revitalised.
“Having asked the HMI to look in particular at concerns around child sexual exploitation, it’s reassuring that the Met police have made significant improvements in this area, including around missing children and victim blaming language. There’s still more to do.”
One senior source with knowledge of the process said of forces coming out of Engage: “It means they have gone from very shit, to shit.”
The inspectorate needed to be convinced the Met had a credible plan for changes that was likely to work.
The Met still cannot recruit enough officers, a crisis expected to worsen, and Rowley says the force is hundreds of millions of pounds short of what it needs.
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