Oh boy, it’s a great read – and on desks now.
From the monthly editorial:
What is not said, and the people who do not speak, I have come to find as significant as who says what. I grant you, that principle applied throughout Professional Security would make for some blank pages. But there was no queue of security contractors and industry bodies to support the Security Industry Authority on November 11 and 12, the days the mainstream media assaulted over illegal immigrants with SIA badges. After I emailed it all in my regular email newsletter by 9am on the Monday – do you know what youโre missing?! Itโs free to sign up at professionalsecurity.co.uk – opinions I got back were mixed. Some had sympathy for the SIA. Yes, it is, they agreed, for the employer and no-one else to be sure that someone has the right to work here. Another emailer, shall we say less sympathetic, suggested (the news broke on Poppy Day) an annual โSIA Dayโ: โPeople could wear self-adhesive paper versions of the SIA badge (endorsed with ‘Not evidence of SIA approval’) to show their solidarity with all the illegal immigrants who are working in the security industry.โ The mainstream media lost interest after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith saved her skin in parliament; but I doubt the industry dust has settled yet. How can it? Catch up on page 14.
The talk at the annual Skills for Security conference equally was all about upskilling and 2012 (page 42), if not 2020. Only one speaker, from City and Guilds, mentioned in passing the need to enforce standards in what training is done now. And yet consistently when I speak to guarding contractors, and trainers, the short-cuts in training towards the SIA licence crops up. Again, views are mixed. The authorities say, we can only investigate what you tell us; we need more than rumour and anecdotes. On the other hand, guard firms and trainers have businesses to run and is it asking too much for the authorities to go out and check? You begin to wonder how hard the executives of skills and qualifications bodies and quangoes want to look in case they miss their target-related bonuses.
And would you believe it; the cure for shortcomings in CCTV – because as you know the talk in the pubs is of nothing else – is for users of CCTV to be registered and licenced. (Page 66.)
Besides all the news I am glad to stand back to look at some less pressing questions, such as: should security people trust a TV documentary-maker (page 26); and, is health and safety the new security? (page 40).
As always, you have to come back to people. Because what is news but people? To give two examples: a head of security got the chop in the company reshuffle – or whatever the latest word is for sacking people because of somebody elseโs mistakes. As the former head said: โWhy is security always first [to be cut]?โ You can be as good at your job as you can, but your organisation sometimes will not let you be as good as you would like. And the MD who left his company, simply, as he told me, because he wanted a job so he could go home in the evening. As I have seen his wife, I could understand what he meant. Should I have said that?
Mark Rowe,
Executive Editor
mark@jtc.u-net.com
