It's not exactly a surprise that things have got this bad. In fact, it's completely predictable. From the start the coalition has talked strongly about public sector cuts and the mantra of austerity. (Interesting to note, though, that austerity doesn't extend to their own public spending with £400,000 wasted on renting fig trees for Portcullis House.) But the public sector cuts were to be offset by private sector growth. The trouble has always been that there has never been a strategy for creating those jobs. What kinds of jobs? In what sectors? In what locations? How supported? If the public sector redundancies really are about cutting out waste, then those jobs won't be replaced in the private sector. And there are many functions carried out at present by the public sector that just couldn't generate a profit. at least not without dropping down wages and conditions, or increasing public purchasing budgets. Probably both.
The absence of any kind of growth strategy is really disturbing. It's fantasy economics and fantasy politics. I wrote in this blog back in October 2010 that government 'will also have to deal with the unfinished business from the 1980's of how to restore exporting industry, and what to do about all those communities that have lost the reason for their existence'. In contrast, their policy seems to be to cross their fingers and hope for the best.
This is a little PS. This morning I saw three young men emerge from the building that houses the local probation service and NHS addiction service. I don't know which they had been visiting, possibly both. All three were pasty, emaciated figures stumbling along in their matching Burberry baseball caps. (How Burberry must hate that : its a sort of anti-marketing to have your stuff adopted by your least welcome demographic.) One had crutches. Quite a common site around this building. It's because they damage their ability to walk by injecting in their groin.
Anyway, it got me thinking on what it would take to get that three into work. They have probably never worked. They are drug users. They probably have a criminal record. Who will ever employ them? The most worrying thing is that, if not already then soon they will have kids. Kids they will ignore but kids who will, in 20 years time, also look like these three : permanently unemployable. And what is the strategy for breaking that cycle? I suspect that, once again, it's cross your fingers and hope for the best.
Thursday 16 February 2012
Wednesday 15 February 2012
NHS REFORM
I'm so glad to be living in Scotland and out the way of these unnecessary and wrong NHS reforms. It has, incidentally, been a very long time since there was, as Labour likes to say, one NATIONAL health service. Things have been very different in Scotland and England for a long time. In fact some of the resentment that fuelled the rise of the SNP derives from the last time the Conservatives were in power when unacceptable policies were imposed : poll tax, de-industrialisation, introduction of markets into the NHS. That's why the Tories still have only one seat in Scotland.
The current NHS reforms are hard to understand. Why are they doing it? David Cameron said that the NHS would be safe in their hands and that there would be no 'top-down re-organisation'. While we are used to politicians telling lies, this is a breathtaking example of promising one thing to electors and then, once elected, of doing the opposite. Whatever else it is a gift to Labour. You can be sure that much will be made of it in the next general election campaign. And its the most important issue for many voters. I saw the NHS described as the closest we have in the UK to a state religion. For a PR professional the Prime Minister has a very uncertain touch.
So, why are they doing it? I think its in their DNA and its unfinished business. When the Thatcher government came to power in 1979, they did have a mandate to privatise and got busy on coal, steel, rail etc. They were then keen to extend this approach to the NHS but found that it was such a shambolic organisation in business information that there was no basis for either separating out elements of service (because everything was so integrated - generally regarded as a good thing) and because nothing was properly costed. No one, famously, could tell Ministers how much a hip replacement cost.
All of the re-organisations that have taken place in the intervening years have been attempts to resolve these structural problems. The NHS is now divided up into business units. And everything is costed. But these changes have largely been to the detriment of the NHS. The rot set in early. When they found that they couldn't privatise in 1979 the then government started to prepare the NHS for a future privatisation. They commissioned Roy Griffiths, then the Chairman of Sainsburys, to report. He found an organisation without adequate information and cost systems and recommended the introduction on general management.
I think Griffiths was probably correct and I don't agree with those who think his approach was to turn the NHS into a supermarket. The NHS in those days did need to modernise systems and management but the scale of the changes has gone far beyond anything Griffiths could have imagined. Part of the problem is that so many NHS managers are not really managers, they are at best administrators, and the sub-divisions of NHS business units are so unwieldy that integration, once in the bloodflow of the NHS, is now a full-time demand on those administrators. Another problem is that anytime anything becomes an issue civil servants advise Ministers to introduce another role to determine policy, monitor implementation and interpret results i.e. someone just like them. That's why there are so many civil servant type roles in the modern NHS.
So, Conservatives always want to privatise. It's the Conservative way. And they are completing the work they were frustrated in back in 1979. They are completing Keith Joseph's dream.
Whatever you think of it, it will lose them the next General Election.
The current NHS reforms are hard to understand. Why are they doing it? David Cameron said that the NHS would be safe in their hands and that there would be no 'top-down re-organisation'. While we are used to politicians telling lies, this is a breathtaking example of promising one thing to electors and then, once elected, of doing the opposite. Whatever else it is a gift to Labour. You can be sure that much will be made of it in the next general election campaign. And its the most important issue for many voters. I saw the NHS described as the closest we have in the UK to a state religion. For a PR professional the Prime Minister has a very uncertain touch.
So, why are they doing it? I think its in their DNA and its unfinished business. When the Thatcher government came to power in 1979, they did have a mandate to privatise and got busy on coal, steel, rail etc. They were then keen to extend this approach to the NHS but found that it was such a shambolic organisation in business information that there was no basis for either separating out elements of service (because everything was so integrated - generally regarded as a good thing) and because nothing was properly costed. No one, famously, could tell Ministers how much a hip replacement cost.
All of the re-organisations that have taken place in the intervening years have been attempts to resolve these structural problems. The NHS is now divided up into business units. And everything is costed. But these changes have largely been to the detriment of the NHS. The rot set in early. When they found that they couldn't privatise in 1979 the then government started to prepare the NHS for a future privatisation. They commissioned Roy Griffiths, then the Chairman of Sainsburys, to report. He found an organisation without adequate information and cost systems and recommended the introduction on general management.
I think Griffiths was probably correct and I don't agree with those who think his approach was to turn the NHS into a supermarket. The NHS in those days did need to modernise systems and management but the scale of the changes has gone far beyond anything Griffiths could have imagined. Part of the problem is that so many NHS managers are not really managers, they are at best administrators, and the sub-divisions of NHS business units are so unwieldy that integration, once in the bloodflow of the NHS, is now a full-time demand on those administrators. Another problem is that anytime anything becomes an issue civil servants advise Ministers to introduce another role to determine policy, monitor implementation and interpret results i.e. someone just like them. That's why there are so many civil servant type roles in the modern NHS.
So, Conservatives always want to privatise. It's the Conservative way. And they are completing the work they were frustrated in back in 1979. They are completing Keith Joseph's dream.
Whatever you think of it, it will lose them the next General Election.
Tuesday 7 February 2012
BONUS vs. PUBLIC MOOD
Observing the backlash against those on top pay having to pay attention to the public mood by refusing bonuses. One top analyst says that big pay and bonuses are necessary to provide motivation, which will lead to success for the country.
I was thinking about all those who manage to do a good job without such additional financial motivation : bus drivers responsible for the safety of their passengers, nurses, home helps, teachers, technicians..........complete you own list.
And those who do need to be 'motivated' : investment bankers, financial traders, management consultants, hedge fund managers.........
No wonder Adam Smith backed off his original perception that 'greed is good' and concluded that social responsibility was important.
We are all in it together!
I was thinking about all those who manage to do a good job without such additional financial motivation : bus drivers responsible for the safety of their passengers, nurses, home helps, teachers, technicians..........complete you own list.
And those who do need to be 'motivated' : investment bankers, financial traders, management consultants, hedge fund managers.........
No wonder Adam Smith backed off his original perception that 'greed is good' and concluded that social responsibility was important.
We are all in it together!
Wednesday 1 February 2012
THE POSSIBILITY OF REDEMPTION
Redemption? What does that have to do with welfare reform? Patience. Patience. One side of welfare reform is spending. The other side is Government income. All will be revealed.
While many have relished the downfall of Fred Goodwin, other, more careful, voices have taken a more considered line. Alistair Darling, always someone to listen to, asks : What about the others? Many top bankers and other speculative investors received honours. Many are now known to have taken outrageous risks with other people's money.
And Darling and others have warned against the too easy emotional spasm of vindictiveness against the demonised individual. It feels too much like mob mentality. And too much like a neat piece of political manipulation : it wasn't us guv, honest, it was them bankers over there. And Fred has fallen into being the scapegoat for the whole financial crisis.
Individuals can and do make mistakes. If they remain a danger to the public they get locked up. Sometimes forever. But that's not Fred and the other bankers. John Profumo famously made amends for his indiscretions (sufficiently serious at the time to bring down a government) by doing voluntary work in the East End. All prisoners are, at least theoretically, regarded as having the potential to be rehabilitated. I remember helping a friend, who had completed a long prison sentence for violent crime, to complete a job application. I told him (and I know that many would disagree with this advice) to declare every crime, every conviction, every sentence, including those regarded as spent in terms of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The rationale was that he accepted what he had done, that it was now behind him, but that he was making a fresh start. The employer, a responsible national charity, took the measure of the man and took him on. Some years later I had the great privilege of completing his "fit person" reference to enable him to take charge of a home for people with disabilities. He deserved it. He had paid the price for his mistakes. He was now rehabilitated. Redeemed.
Fred Goodwin is 53. What is he going to do now? I have a suggestion. Why not offer the possibility of redemption? Why not get Fred, and the other errant bankers, to volunteer their services to the revenue. They know all the scams. Set them to be poachers turned gamekeepers. They could retrieve billions from top tax evaders and avoiders. Let them chase down tax havens, loopholes, 'products'.
It can't be a reward deal. The knighthoods can't be restored. The obituaries are always going to major on their part in the financial crisis. But, like Profumo, they could have their equivalent to 'voluntary work in the East End'. They could use their considerable skills and experience for the good of the country.
If I were Fred, I would be offering myself now. For the good of the country. And so should all the others. They know who they are.
While many have relished the downfall of Fred Goodwin, other, more careful, voices have taken a more considered line. Alistair Darling, always someone to listen to, asks : What about the others? Many top bankers and other speculative investors received honours. Many are now known to have taken outrageous risks with other people's money.
And Darling and others have warned against the too easy emotional spasm of vindictiveness against the demonised individual. It feels too much like mob mentality. And too much like a neat piece of political manipulation : it wasn't us guv, honest, it was them bankers over there. And Fred has fallen into being the scapegoat for the whole financial crisis.
Individuals can and do make mistakes. If they remain a danger to the public they get locked up. Sometimes forever. But that's not Fred and the other bankers. John Profumo famously made amends for his indiscretions (sufficiently serious at the time to bring down a government) by doing voluntary work in the East End. All prisoners are, at least theoretically, regarded as having the potential to be rehabilitated. I remember helping a friend, who had completed a long prison sentence for violent crime, to complete a job application. I told him (and I know that many would disagree with this advice) to declare every crime, every conviction, every sentence, including those regarded as spent in terms of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The rationale was that he accepted what he had done, that it was now behind him, but that he was making a fresh start. The employer, a responsible national charity, took the measure of the man and took him on. Some years later I had the great privilege of completing his "fit person" reference to enable him to take charge of a home for people with disabilities. He deserved it. He had paid the price for his mistakes. He was now rehabilitated. Redeemed.
Fred Goodwin is 53. What is he going to do now? I have a suggestion. Why not offer the possibility of redemption? Why not get Fred, and the other errant bankers, to volunteer their services to the revenue. They know all the scams. Set them to be poachers turned gamekeepers. They could retrieve billions from top tax evaders and avoiders. Let them chase down tax havens, loopholes, 'products'.
It can't be a reward deal. The knighthoods can't be restored. The obituaries are always going to major on their part in the financial crisis. But, like Profumo, they could have their equivalent to 'voluntary work in the East End'. They could use their considerable skills and experience for the good of the country.
If I were Fred, I would be offering myself now. For the good of the country. And so should all the others. They know who they are.
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