Calamity May should resign

The G4S Olympics fiasco has hopefully put paid to the theory that private companies are sleek, dynamic and frugal compared to bloated, wasteful and inefficient public services.

G4S has been under close scrutiny from the Home Office. Leaked documents show that even in April, Government officials had grave doubts that G4S would be able to recruit sufficient numbers of competent staff. Against this background, it is hard to take seriously the claims of the Home Secretary that all was thought to be well until Wednesday. The Defence Secretary said today that the ‘notice to move’ given to troops was shortened at the weekend, meaning that the actual decision was taken prior to that.

Mrs May is either incompetent, or has mislead Parliament with repeated assurances that all was on plan, when her department knew that the reality was nothing of the kind. If she didn’t know, she should have done. This follows her infamous Human Rights Act cat story, the Abu Hamza farce, and she has also become the second Home Secretary in history to be convicted of Contempt of Court. In the last few weeks she has also appointed a new Chief of HMIC as a deliberate affront to the Police Federation. She has lost the confidence of the police & public alike, and should if she had any honour she would resign. She has been, head & shoulders, the most calamitous Home Secretary in living memory. She even has her own hashtag on Twitter - #NoConfidenceInTheresaMay.

It’s particularly galling for the armed forces, when in the last two weeks thousands have been told that they will be made redundant. Within a short period of time, they’re told they’re not wanted, now they’re mopping up after G4S. Had the security operation been kept within the public sector, the primary objective would have been getting the personnel trained and in place in time. The primary objective of G4S is profit. Policing functions should never be outsourced, especially never to G4S who have proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted. They have already been caught falsifying reports in order not to incur contractual penalties.

Public service is about exactly that – service. Private companies exist to make profit for their shareholders, and any service that they provide is incidental.

10 Reasons Why Police Reform is on the wrong track

10 Reasons why the Winsor reports are wrong, from the point of view of a member of the public.

1. Winsor's report says that police officers are paid about 10-15% more than other emergency service workers. I am not in a position to say whether or not this is true, but assuming that it is, it is to compensate for the following:-
• Total lack of any employment rights. Police officers are legally prevented from striking or otherwise withdrawing labour, the ONLY sector of employment (aside from Prison Officers) so restricted.
• Restrictions on private life, including being required to be apolitical and never being off duty.
• Directed overtime, which police officers cannot refuse.
• 30 years of mostly working shifts, in dangerous and confrontational situations.
• Rest days and annual leave can be cancelled at any time.
2. The report suggests that officers who are deemed to be in the bottom 10% of the performance range are subject to dismissal, whether their performance is actually sub standard or not.
3. The execution of police duties should never be subject to targets or performance related pay, if the public are to have faith that the actions taken by officers are necessary and not simply for the achievement of targets. The oath that officers take at Attestation says that they will carry out their duties without fear or favour. Further, once you have target-led anything, let alone policing, you simply end up with more forms, more bureaucracy and less actual time focused on the activity at hand.
4. The report claims to encourage performance related pay, and yet at the same time removes Competency Related Threshold Pay (CRTP) from specialist officers such as firearms teams, whose role is especially demanding, and other officers who are able to demonstrate high levels of skill & competence. Similarly, officers who are currently Public Order (i.e. "riot") trained who receive CRTP will only do so in future if these duties are required six times per year. Imagine six separate occurrences of last summer's riots! In all practical terms, this means these officers will never receive that payment. How can that be fair? In fact, Winsor suggested scrapping CRTP in his first report, "Winsor1". This was rejected by the independent Police Arbitration Tribunal. This didn't deter Winsor. He simply repeated the proposal in his second report, "Winsor2".
5. The report made several factual errors, such as claiming that 75% of male officers in the Met were overweight. The truth is that the Metropolitan Police ran a health scheme for officers concerned about their weight. Of these officers who attended the clinic, 75% of these were indeed overweight. This is far from saying that 75% of the total officer numbers are overweight. This is either gross incompetence (reason enough to dismiss the entire report) or it's deliberately misleading.
6. Under the terms of the report, officers who are injured in the line of duty, and unable to carry out warranted (i.e. full police officer) roles or meet the fitness test standards, will have their pay reduced by 8% or £2922 (whichever is lower) and by the second year of this injury, they will be sacked. That's a great reward for an officer isn't it? Remember PC David Rathband? Under Winsor's report, he would have been sacked by now.
7. The report suggested regional pay for officers from different areas of the country, because of the different costs of living across the regions. This already exists to some extent in London. Officers serving here already receive more than officers from other areas. As a result, areas bordering London like Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire find that they are recruiting and training officers, only for them to transfer to the Met for the higher salary for doing the same job, and living in the same area. If this is implemented all over the country, this will lead to chaos. Besides, you don't hear MPs in favour of regional pay for MPs, do you?
8. Winsor proposes that candidates should be able to enter the police service at higher ranks, such as Inspector, up to and including Superintendent. What this does not appreciate, is the unique nature of policing. Using the NHS as an analogy, you could have someone "manage" a GP practice or even a hospital trust from a financial and administrative point of view, but they would not be suitable for setting healthcare policy or critiquing the work of doctors, nurses and surgeons. In fact, find someone who works in a hospital, and ask them how popular these "parachute" bosses are, and how "in touch" with the front line they are. It is possibly the worst suggestion in the entire report. Watch an episode of The Apprentice, and now imagine those same people in charge of your local police station, or even a whole policing division. That is a truly frightening thought.
9. Winsor says that he wants to make the service more "professional" and as such, wants to raise the educational requirements for entry, but at the same time reduce the starting pay for the office of Constable to less than that of a PCSO. Recently during a debate on MPs salaries, they said that it was necessary to keep the salary of an MP at the current (£65000) level "to make sure that the right calibre of people were encouraged to become MPs". How can it be right to increase MPs wages to increase professionalism, yet reduce wages to increase professionalism in the police? It seems that this suggestion is simple market economics. Each police officer vacancy is vastly over-subscribed. The logic seems to be to reduce the starting wage to discourage more people from joining.
10. Winsor says that a role which does not require the warranted powers of a constable should be paid less. What this does not account for are roles where the actual knowledge and experience of the role are absolutely crucial, such as training, control room supervisionand, perhaps to a lesser extent, call handling. Officers will not volunteer for these roles if it is going to mean a sizeable cut in pay.

There. Ten reasons, written quickly, by a member of the public. It didn't need a great deal of analysis or time to come up with these reasons why the reports should be rejected. It's simple logic and common sense.

I haven't even mentioned the cuts to officer numbers which will risk the safety of the public and officers alike. The Government will tell you that these "cuts" are necessary. Let me tell you something. This isn't about savings. It never was. How do I know? Have a look at the full speech by David Cameron on 16th January 2006. The speech can be found here. He's been itching to get his hands on the police for years. Even before 2006, in fact. Cameron was a major contributor to the Sheehy report in the early 1990s. Some of the suggestions in Winsor's reports are simply Sheehy re-heated and served on a nice plate.

Oh, by the way, Policing Minister Nick Herbert, and the Minister for Government Incompetence Theresa May, will tell you that this report by Tom Winsor was "independent". Read Cameron's speech from 2006, and decide for yourself how independent it is.

Playground or Parliament?

"I will put an end to Punch & Judy politics." - David Cameron

Do you remember that line from Mr Cameron when he became the leader of the Conservative Party? If I was a cynic, I might say that this was his first failed promise, or even the first claim as leader that he had no intention of seeing through.

In all seriousness, though, regular readers of this blog will no that I am no fan of career politicians from either side. A few moments ago I saw on the news some of the exchanges from the House of Commons today. Cameron, Miliband et al could scarcely have cut a less childish figure had they been dressed as Peter Pan & Captain Hook, complete with prosthetic hand.

The facile and boorish behaviour on the part of both sides does not serve well as an advertisement for British Politics. The backbenchers shout and jeer over the top of one another whilst the front benches, the supposedly "senior" politicians, seem to little but pull faces at each other. Never could a title have been less deserved than "the Right Honourable Gentleman".

Cameron seems to be developing a nasty little habit of belittling and attempting to humiliate female parliamentarians. In the past we've had episodes of "Calm down dear". Today when he received a question during PMQs from Shabana Mahmood, he sarcastically congratulated her on it being "well read". I say "developing", I wonder if a better word would be "revealing".

Just to prove that a real MP never misses an opportunity to score a cheap joke at the expense of their opponent, during the speech by Jeremy Hunt, Labour's Dennis Skinner stood to tell the House that "when the posh boys are in trouble, they sack the servants". A reference to the comments made earlier this week by Nadine Dorries, yes; humerous, yes, but not a single substantive political point was being made.

In other news, it turns out we are back in recession. So far, the Coalition have offloaded parts of the NHS to Virgin Care & other private companies, parts of the police service to G4S, cut frontline officer numbers, cut the numbers of teachers, cut services left, right and centre, and yet not only is there negative growth, Government borrowing is more than expected, and the deficit is growing by the second. At the risk of stating the obvious, where's the money saved by all these cuts going? The IMF?

Now, I'm not an economist. I'm not even an accountant. However sometimes I think that politicians attempting to control the economy is futile. The economy controls the politicians. They might as well try to take credit for the weather.

I'm not saying that Labour necessarily handed the crisis of 2008 well, but it is the Conservative's "Inconvenient Truth" that the financial crisis started in the US. Despite this, faced with difficult questions about going back into recession, Cameron reverted to the desperate "all Labour's fault, we inherited this mess" line. That might have worked in the first 6 months of this Government, but the Tories must think we're all thick if they think we're going to fall for that two years into this term.

"Haven't you got anything better to do?"

It's been a tough few weeks for the Government - Qatada, Charitable donations, pasties, fuel shortages etc. Now we've had the comments from Nadine Dorres about Cameron and Osbourne being "arrogant posh boys".

It's a dream for comedians, satirists and yes, opposition politicians. So many opportunities to poke fun at the Government, and I suspect we've all had a go at least once. What does concern me however, is when I see an endless stream of tweets and retweets from people like John Prescott and other Labour politicians making jokes at the expense of Cameron & Osbourne. I fully realise that the House Of Lords is an unelected body at present, but does that really mean that Lord Prescott and chums can sit back and toss it off all morning making fun of their political opponents? I've seen little else from Prescott lately; jibes, insults and demonstrations about pasties.

I'm no fan of the Tories, or indeed any other party. If the boot were on the other foot, you can be sure Cameron would be leading the hilarity.

This is why I think politics in this country in going down the pan. Ask him (or his colleagues) a serious question about politics, (or indeed, in Prescott's case, his candidacy as Humberside PCC) and you'll be met by a deafening silence. Crack a joke about the Tories or pasties, or granny tax, and you can guarantee a retweet.

Get on with it you lazy sods! Maybe the Lords should be an elected chamber after all!

"None Of The Above"

The local elections, for many voters, are only a matter of days away. Doubtless many will be asked, personally or by leaflet, for their vote. There are some, for sure, who vote for a particular party regardless, and nothing could make them change their minds.

David Cameron kicked off the Conservative campaign with the following, apparently not ironic, statement:-

"If you look at what Labour did to our country why on Earth would you let them anywhere near your council?"

One could well ask why on Earth you would let the Conservatives near your council after what they've spent the last two years doing to our NHS, Police, libraries, education, European negotiating rights, and economy. That's not the point of this blog entry. 

The point I want to make is slightly different. Unless you are an ardent supporter of any of the particular parties, the choice of who to vote for is not necessarily clear. You might wonder why. Surely, if you want Labour out of council or Government, you vote for the other lot don't you? You could, but here's the rub. Politicians, bless them, are but simple souls (childlike actually) in that they only see votes in terms of how it relates to them. Your vote for party X might have been chosen in order to oust party Y from power, regardless of whether you actually wanted party X at all. Party X will announce, victoriously, that they have received a powerful mandate for their policies from the electorate, when often it's nothing of the sort.

Take the next general election, due in 2015. If the current course is maintained, there will be those who will vote Labour or Conservative, and would have done, come what may. The election will be determined, as usual, by those voters horribly described by pundits & politicians alike as "floating". These are people of no fixed alignment in favour of any party. It is a measure of the mediocrity of the UK's current political stock that with a Government as unpopular & incompetent as the last Labour government, that the Conservative Party could not win an overall majority. How badly did Labour have to have messed it up before Cameron was elected outright? It's shocking to contemplate.

My proposal, albeit incomplete (and slightly tongue-in-cheek), is for the voting system to reflect a difference between a voter saying "I want X candidate" and "I don't want Y candidate". You could even have a "None of the Above" box to tick.

Some will say that this is not necessary because the options exist to not vote, or to spoil your ballot paper. It's my belief that people who don't vote currently are either completely apathetic, or they do take an interest but feel that there's no difference between the candidates. Some people currently do use spoiling their ballot paper as a form of protest, but the protest itself is not recorded as such, it's just a "spoil". I worked on the 2007 Scottish elections. Each voter had three ballot papers to mark on the day, each with a different voting system. Many people simply did not understand the instructions for some papers, especially the Single Transferrable Vote paper, and these too were recorded as spoilt. The number of spoilt papers that evening counted across Scotland was astounding, and made a significant percentage of the total ballots cast.

In my system, each candidate would have a "YES" column and a "NO" column on the ballot paper. If you want a particular candidate, you put a X in his YES column. If you don't have a specific desire for any other candidate, but you really don't want someone to get in, you put a X in their NO column. You are only allowed to put one X on the ballot paper.

At the count, NO votes are subtracted from YES votes. A vote for None Of The Above would subtract one vote from all candidates. We would then not have the situation where, to all intents and purposes, a bag of lard was elected simply because it was not the other candidate, and then the bag of lard claimed support from a majority of voters.

It'll never happen, of course. Politicians are far too self-important for that. They would far prefer to delude themselves and everyone else that a vote for them is a vote of support, not a protest against someone else. It's a shame though. I'd love to see their arrogant, smug faces when they see how many NO votes have been cast. I'd like to think that it'd make them raise their game, and stop mistaking protest for support.

Statistics Substituting for Logic

You see and hear a lot of statistics in the media. Maybe it's my nearly-middle-aged curmudgeonly nature, but it seems to me that statistics feature strongly in more news stories than ever before. No news items seems to be complete unless there's a statistic or two to underline the concept.

So what's wrong with that, you say? Statistics would appear to be an unbiased, objective analysis of data relating to the subject at hand. We've been brought up to trust statistics.

It's my view that too often, statistics are used as a substitute for a persuasive, well constructed argument. How can that be?

Firstly, the reader has to remember that the writer of the article has selected the statistics that they're giving you, specifically to support the main thrust of their argument. The author, unless it's an academic journal, probably did not include contrary statistics to lend balance, to let you make up your own mind. This does not mean that such adverse evidence does not exist! The source of the statistics is crucial. Are the statistics provided by, or funded by, someone with a vested interest? Is the data even statistically significant? My favourite example of this is advertisements of cosmetics or hair products. Next time you see one of those, along with the strapline of "87% of women agreed that it worked for them", look for the small print that says how many people it was tested on. More often than not you will find that the number of testers was under say, 200. It really beggars belief, doesn't it? Huge, multinational cosmetics companies with advertising budgets of millions, can only find a couple of hundred people, at most, to test their 'fabulous' new product one. Suddenly, when you consider that 87% of 78 people "agreed" or reviewed positively, it doesn't seem such a convincing figure, does it?

Next, it's crucial to read between the lines of the data that's presented, to try to see what the author didn't want you to see or think. Of course, it's often difficult and time consuming to do your own research on any given subject, but a good rule of thumb is that for every statistic pointing in one direction, there's often another statistic pointing equally strongly in the opposite direction.

However, my biggest bugbear is the use (or misuse) of the term "average". Think for a moment about what the word "average" means to you? One of the definitions offered by dictionary.com is "a typical amount, the norm". I'd suggest that what occurs to most of us when we see that term used. How accurate is that perception though?

Consider this graph:

Figure 1: Normal Distribution curve

This is what's called a "normal distribution" graph. It is typical, for example, of exam results, where most results are in the middle of the range, resulting in the peak you see in this graph, with fewer results at either end of the spectrum. You might hear it referred to as a "Bell curve", so named for its shape.

You'll also notice that there are three terms on the graph; mode, median and mean. I'll attempt to explain each of them briefly.

• Mean - this is what we typically think of as "average". You add all the results together, and divide by the number of samples.
• Mode - this is the result which occurs most frequently. If you are looking at exam results, then the Mode is the result which most students achieved. This will always be the peak of the graph, as there are more samples at that size (result) than any other.
• Median - this literally means 'middle'. If you arranged all of the samples (or results) in numerical order, the median is the middle value. For example, the 50th result out of 100, or the 10th result out of 20.

So what? By now you think I'm being overly technical and pedantic, don't you? You can see from the graph above that mean, mode and median are all roughly the same, right? What does it matter if someone refers to "average", or "mean" or "median". It makes no difference, surely? Sometimes it doesn't. Figure 1 is an example of an instance where there may not be much difference.

OK, now look at this graph, Figure 2.

Figure 2: Skewed distribution

Figure 2 shows a markedly different distribution of results. It's obviously skewed to one side, towards the lower end of the results scale. You can clearly see that in this case, mode, mean and median are all going to be drastically different numbers. Now the distinction in the term "average" is really important.

Consider the wage structure of a typical company or organisation. Which graph do you think most closely resembles the wage structure - Figure 1 or Figure 2? Obviously, there will be a bigger concentration of incomes at the lower end of the scale, where the number of people earning the big bucks decreases the higher up the organisation you go. This explains why the mode is the lowest figure, as it's the most common. The median wage will tend to be bang in the middle of the scale, and the mean will often be distorted by the small number of higher incomes at the top of the scale. Which term more closely reflects the wage people are likely to receive working in that organisation?

Now, the next time some politician (the dictionary definition of a person with an agenda or vested interest) tells you that the "average" wage in a given industry (that they happen to be in the process of reforming) is X, think for a moment. Listen carefully to the language used. Did they say "average"? Or did they say something else?

Earlier this week, I read a mostly misleading report written by Edward Boyd, a member of the think tank Policy Exchange defending the scandalous war being waged on police wages. The report claims that 40% of officers will be better off under the new proposals, yet at the same time attempted to portray police wages as unreasonably high by stating that the median police gross wage was £40 402 per year.

Notice the language. The median gross wage was £40 402. This figure includes overtime, which police officers are obliged and required to work if so directed. Overtime that last year would have included policing the riots that spread across the country. Being the median, this also means that it was in the middle of the scale, with no regard to how many officers actually earned that. Think back to Figure 2. If the gross median is £40k, what is the realistic wage earned by most officers? Is it £40k, or is it less than that?

Let's use another analogy. If someone said to you that the average wage for someone working in the banking industry was, say, £50 000, would you assume that this is what the clerk at your local branch is earning? Of course not. That would be a ridiculous assumption; clearly the figure is bolstered by the much higher wages earned in other areas of the industry.

There is one other possibility. The author of this particular report did not understand the term 'median' and misused it. If this is the case, then the report ought to be dismissed out of hand, for its author hasn't sufficient knowledge to write with authority about the subject in hand.

So the next time someone tries to persuade you of their argument by throwing statistics at you, the chances are that the numbers are hiding large holes in the actual logic of their case.

Think carefully. Think critically. Yesterday (29th March), Sky News announced that the surge in petrol buying (caused by the potential for a strike by tanker drivers) had led to an "extra £32m in fuel duty for the Government". Cue lots of outraged people claiming that this was convenient for a Government about to enter another recession. I'm no fan of Goverments, of any colour. On the other hand, let's give this some thought. It's said that petrol & diesel sales went up above normal by more than 80%, and this is where this figure of £32m has come from. Where is this huge extra volume of fuel going? It's going into the fuel tanks of the nation's car, van and truck drivers. Some people, if they've had a total lobotomy, will be storing it in their garages. When this strike issue has blown over, they'll eventually pour this stored fuel into their vehicles.

My point here is that the actual consumption and usage of fuel will remain the same. If anything, it might actually reduce as people drive less, to conserve precious fuel. So - this figure of £32m. Is it "extra" income as was claimed by the media? Or is it simply £32m of fuel duty income that's come in during March that would have come in April had this situation not occurred. I suppose in April, after the double-dip recession has been confirmed, the same media will be claiming that fuel buying had "suddenly plunged" as a result of the recession, when actually it's because the fuel was bought this month rather than next month.

Caveat emptor.

When Logic is Outsourced

Every so often, something gains a momentum that make it seem like it's everywhere. Everyone seems to be talking about it, it's on the news nearly every day, and it seems like every company is making use of it. "Investors in People" awards were an example a few years ago. Then it was companies taking to social media to promote their brands.

A relatively recent one is loved and historic sports grounds being renamed for some incongruous commercial sponsor. Exhibit 1:- The Sports Direct Arena. See if you can remember what that used to be called, and is probably still referred to as by its regular inhabitants. Answer at the end of the blog. Exhibit 2 - The Kia Oval, one of London's Test cricket venues. Obviously, for the tenants, there's a great deal of money involved. The downside is the associative element. For the first example, I imagine a stadium full of people cheaply made, ill-fitting tops and naff looking trainers. For the second, my mind is filled with pictures of crappy cars.

But there's another, more sinister craze which although it's been rumbling along quietly for years, has really picked up the pace recently. Outsourcing. However, unlike the previous examples, I can't really see the sense in outsourcing. I really can't. OK, there are a few strictly limited situations where I can see outsourcing being a sensible option:

1. You're a company who needs a product or service you've never experienced before. You effectively buy in the knowledge and experience necessary. No sense starting from the ground up, when someone else has already been there, done that.
2. You only need a product or service infrequently or irregularly. Again, no sense employing someone full time (or even part time) if the demand for their service doesn't justify it.
3. You're a small company and need the economies of scale enjoyed by a large scale provider of a given service or product.

There may be more. Please leave a comment if you can think of more options. It makes no difference whether you are talking about a private company outsourcing tasks, or public entities outsourcing tasks in the public sector to private companies.

But this isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about situations where a large company has been doing a particular task "in-house" for a protracted period of time. They then outsource the process. Result; contractors doing the same job that the employees had been doing, on a daily basis, and apparently for less than it was previously costing. Or so we're told.

Now here's the bit I really don't understand. How can an external company possibly supply exactly the same service that your (now ex-) employees did, make a profit doing so, and for it still to be cheaper than the original setup? I've seen several instances of outsourcing like this, and in most of them I'm left scratching my head. I just don't get how it works.

As I see it, there are the following possibilities;

• The new company is paying its people less, perhaps by outsourcing to an area with a cheaper labour rate, e.g. call centres. Maybe it's the same people on less favourable terms and conditions. See the recent arguments over privatised/contracted out court interpreters. Or maybe it's different people, less qualified for the role, but therefore cheaper. Again, see court interpreters. (1, 2)
• The new company is using cheaper products or materials than the original company was previously.
• They aren't doing the job as thoroughly as it was being done previously.
• The original company no longer has any interest in the task it's outsourced.
• The original company didn't know how to do the task properly in the first place.
• It actually costs more to provide the service like this, but in the twisted world of corporate accounts, it makes the business look better on paper to have fewer permanent employees.

Now, I have been called a cynic in the past, and I've even been called "negative". At the risk of reverting to stereotype, I'd hazard a guess that the real reason for most outsourcing options is one or all of the last three suggestions above. I haven't even considered the possibility of corruption, the possibility of being in a position to outsource/privatise something in order to make one's chums a large pile of cash. You might say that, I couldn't possibly comment.

If you're thinking that I'm perhaps being a bit hard on accountants with that last suggestion, consider this: I once worked for a company that was privately owned by a handful of people who were principally engineers, practical people. They had a "no-debt" philosophy. If they needed a forklift truck, or a car, they bought it outright, keep it until it had depreciated to almost nothing, and then replaced it. If it was working well, they might even keep it beyond its "shelf life". The company was floated on the Stock Exchange, and soon accountants were all over the place. Within no time at all a lot of the wholly-owned items, like the cars and forklift trucks, were sold cheaply and replaced with leased items. In essence, paying a monthly fee but never owning the item in question, a situation intended to go on in perpetuity. Despite it being plainly obvious that this process was costing the company more money in every conceivably way, we were told gleefully that it was better. The explanation is that when you buy something, you hold it as an asset, and that adds to the amount of capital required to make a given profit. Apparently it's better to improve that ratio, as it's looked at by potential shareholders, than it is to reduce costs and increase profit.

I try to apply logic to most things I look at, but the world of accountants (and bankers) is, to me, unfathomable. I've tried. Really I have. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Oh, by the way, you and I probably know the Sports Direct Arena as St. James Park, Newcastle.

Peter, Dilbert and Institutional Incompetence

You've probably never heard of Dr. Laurence J. Peter, but his work goes a long way to explaining why almost every large organisation, including Governments, are totally useless and operate in spite of their upper management and "leaders".

I've been in and out of various hospitals over the last five or six years because of issues with my wife's health, in different areas and different counties, and they're all useless. Don't get me wrong - the people at the front line, so to speak, are nearly always brilliant. Polite, capable and willing, and really well qualified. The problem is the systems that they work in are not fit for purpose. On several occasions, we have arrived for appointments to discuss the results of the latest scan, only to find that the consultant doesn't have the images. If we're lucky, they'll have a written report of the scan, describing the results - but no actual image. A couple of months ago, we saw an endocrinologist who said he would like my wife to have an ultrasound scan, and then a visit to his clinic to discuss the scan.

A few weeks later, we received the two appointments through the post. The appointment for the specialist had been made before the scan. My wife realised that this was not right, so she rang the office and got the appointments rearranged. She had the scan, and we turned up for the consultant's appointment. The scan results had not been sent to the consultant's office. Nursing staff had to spend precious time phoning around and arranging for the results to be sent. We got there in the end, but not by design. We had a similar experience when my wife had an MRI. We arrived to see the neurologist only to find that no images had been sent. Again, some frantic searching bore fruit and we eventually had the images that we needed.

Virtually every other company has stories or experiences like this. The staff at the lowest levels in the organisation are busting a gut to do a useful day's work in the face of incompetence and ignorance in the levels above them. One explanation for this was provided by Dr Peter in 1969. It became known as "The Peter Principle".

This explanation holds that when someone is good (competent) at the job that they do, they get promoted to the next level up. If they do well there, they get promoted again. Eventually, they get to a position where their performance at that level does not warrant further promotion. Thus they are no longer competent. This is the general thrust of the Peter Principle - that people get promoted to the level of their incompetence. My own experience bears this out. In nearly every company I've worked for (some more than others!) most of the management positions are filled with people who are incompetent at management, leadership or both.

There is a variation on this hypothesis - "The Dilbert Principle". This was created by the author Scott Adams. His version is that people who are incompetent are promoted further up the organisation where they can do less damage. Adams' character Dogbert explained it as "nature's way of removing morons from the productive flow". I am personally aware of one such example, in a previous company, of someone who was so useless at the task at hand, that he was transferred to management where he could do less damage.

If either of these points are even half true - then most of the people in any given management position are there either because they aren't good enough to be promoted further, or they've been promoted to their current position to get them out of the way of the productive people. Not inspiring, is it?

The other reason that most large companies are institutionally useless, is that the people making decisions and policy are so far removed from reality, by which I mean the reality of what's actually happening, that they couldn't possibly do an effective job. If you've ever had the misfortune of being on one of those cringeworthy team building courses where someone has to drive a car blindfolded whilst being verbally directed by a colleague, you'll know exactly what I mean. The senior managers are so distant that by the time their latest policy is implemented, the circumstances that lead to it in the first place have shifted, and it's no longer relevant.

This is why politics is almost always a totally futile exercise from the public's point of view. It genuinely doesn't make any difference who you vote for. For a start, most politicians know next to nothing about the business of their area of responsibility. Some of them (I'm tempted to say most of them) have never done a real day's work in their lives and so can't relate to us to begin with. If, as happens rarely, you get a politician who for some inexplicable reason, does know something about their area of responsibility, all of the above applies; they're so far from the shop floor that they can't effectively manage any situation.

As I said earlier, some organisations work despite their political leads and senior management. The NHS and the Police are perfect examples. A lot of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) have not been on patrol for so long that I'd be surprised if they could even remember the caution. The nature of policing has changed so much in that time, they wouldn't have a clue if they were forced to go on active duty again. It used to be the same in the military - the reasons that so many lives were lost in the First World War was that the generals were implementing strategies from their previous war experience, which were no longer effective and were actually counter productive.

The unfortunate thing for a lot of the public services is that all of these things overlap disastrously - managed by people with decades of experience, and little of it relevant, and led by politicians who know nothing about that service anyway. The current debacle over the cuts to the NHS and Police services illustrates this perfectly. The Government of the day thinks it knows all about these services, being given information and assurances by upper structures which are twenty years out of date. The result is the complete and utter shambles that we find ourselves in.

As I write this, it's Sunday evening. That means tomorrow is Monday morning. Enjoy your week at work everyone.

The Systematic De-skilling of the Police

The current coalition Government is receiving a lot of criticism at the moment for cuts and proposed changes to the Police service in the UK. Sitting Governments always get the most stick but, as with a lot of things, there is a bigger picture to this. In an earlier blog I described how my own politics have evolved as I've got older. I no longer believe that any of the political parties hold the keys to Utopia; they're all as flawed as each other. The truth is, that the political system is slowly but surely de-skilling the Police service, and it's been happening for some time.

I'm sure there are readers out there older and more experienced than me that remember other examples. The first one I'm aware of was the role of Scenes of Crime Officer (SOCO). This was gradually removed from police officers and non-sworn police employees took on these tasks.

My own personal involvement with the Police service began with my attestation as a Special Constable in October 1998. The Special Constabulary is (or was) an important resource for most Constabularies. In case you are not familiar with the Special Constabulary, they are unpaid volunteers who are fully sworn and attested Police officers, with the same powers of arrest and by and large the same equipment. In most forces, the only way of distinguishing between a Special Constable and a PC is a small 'SC' insignia on the epaulettes, and sometimes a different cap badge.

Specials come from all parts of the community, and I would imagine that most of them volunteer for duties at evenings and weekends. This works well, as it allows forces to bolster their numbers at peak times such as Friday and Saturday nights, and for other special events such as Remembrance Sunday or concerts etc requiring additional police presence. The Police are thus able to meet peaks in demand without a large increase in overtime or without diverting officers away from routine and response duties. It's no exaggeration to say that some communities would not be patrolled regularly if it were not for volunteer Special Constables.

Specials receive out-of-pocket expenses for travelling and subsistence, but no payment. We as a group had long campaigned to be put of retainers in the same way that the Territorial Army (TA) and Retained Firefighters are. The Treasury refused to do this, claiming that it would be too expensive.

In the early part of the 2000s, the Labour Government took the decision to introduce Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). These are uniformed Police employees who undertake certain routine duties for the police such as statement taking, but do NOT have powers of arrest (other than Common Law "civilian arrest" powers that everyone has). However, and this is crucial, PCSOs also patrol areas. Sometimes with fully sworn Police Officers, but sometimes alone. PCSOs do an important job, but when it comes to patrol, it's basically Neighbourhood Watch with a police uniform and radio. They often don't carry handcuffs or other protective equipment. This was the cynical part of the process that ultimately lead to my departure from the Special Constabulary. The introduction of PCSOs to patrol duties was nothing but a trick, an illusion, to fool the general public into thinking that there were more uniformed police officers on duty that there really were.

The creation of the position of PCSOs must have cost the Home Office millions of pounds. I'd be interested to hear from anyone that has the exact figure. The legislation had to be drafted, training designed and delivered, not to mention the recruitment process. This money could have been spent properly rewarding existing an new Specials - for which there was no need to create additional legislation, training or administration. The basic premise of PCSOs might have been sound, but somewhere along the line, someone in the Home Office took the opportunity to trick the public and start the mass de-skilling of police duties. The thin end of the wedge was truly in progress.

So it comes as no surprise now that the latest wheeze out of such pinnacles of logical thinking as the Home Office, ACPO and Policy Exchange that we are now staring down the barrel of private patrol services. The fact that it's no surprise doesn't make it any less frightening though. We only have to look at most examples of Government procuring and outsourcing (not to mention privatisation of national services) to say that it's a racing certainty that it'll end in disaster. There's too many examples to mention. Railways, water and energy utilities, buses..... I could go on but I won't.

So what's behind it all? The most likely explanation (apart from some weird class thing going on) is cost. It costs a lot to employ a police officer. This is no surprise because most are vastly skilled and experienced at what they do. It's a difficult and stressful job. However, the likes of Blair Gibbs and Theresa May either don't understand this or don't want to. Their agenda is to dumb down the police service as much as possible to drive cost out of it, to lower the expectations of the public as to what they can expect from a police service, and reduce the skill sets "required". They are being aided and abetted in this by unscrupulous and dishonest elements of the media who are only too happy to get their revenge on the police who've recently dropped them right in it.

Would any of this be happening if Labour was in power? Probably, but maybe with certain subtle differences in execution. They wouldn't have the overall support of the press, that's for sure. But in the end, it makes no difference. Because Governments of all colours have been engaged in the systematic de-skilling of the police service for decades.

Is there such a thing as a politician we can trust?

"If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth."

- Joseph Goebbels

It's times like yesterday that I seriously think I'll never vote again.

In the last few days, there has been a lot of comment about remarks made by the Prime Minister David Cameron during Prime Ministers Questions on February 22nd. You can read the analysis by Channel 4 news here. I won't go into the full analysis of the stats as C4 have done an excellent job.

Basically, what Cameron said was that there would be more visible Police this March than a year ago.

Theresa May said much the same thing about a month or so ago, and was widely criticised and ridiculed for saying this. A larger proportion, yes, but of a smaller number. Result: net decrease in "visible" police.

And here's what really gets my goat about this;

1. Was this a simple statistical mistake? No, it can't have been. One might have been able to be generous the first time, but the Government would have known that it was an unsustainable and indefensible statistic following Theresa May's use of it. Mistakes are made of course, but they should be rectified, not trotted out repeatedly.

2. Did the PM not really understand the issue? I sincerely hope that's not the case. If he did not understand the significance of what he was saying then he is not fit to be PM.

3. Did Mr Cameron simply regurgitate what he was told to say, without checking the veracity of the claim? See my answer to 2). You'd think he'd have learnt his lessons from the "45 minutes" saga.

4. Does the Government really think that we are stupid enough to unquestioningly fall for these bland statements? Probably. This is the only explanation that I can think of. They surely can't be saying these things with an "honestly held belief" that it's even partially true.

The only conclusion that I can come to is that HM Government think that the soundbite of "more visible police" is what will get the attention and that people won't read the small print. What's even more depressing, politically, is that I think all of the parties would have done the same thing. We've had 13 years of Spin from New Labour where such statistical deception was commonplace. Previous Governments have of course done the same but somehow now it seems more blatant and endemic.

It's very simple sub-GCSE maths to analyse this topic, and Mr Cameron and his aides seem incapable of this.

Is there such a thing as a politician we can trust?

Update 16th April 2012:

Turns out Mrs May has "form" for distorting the truth and misrepresentation for her own ends. Remember the "cat" story? Mrs May, during a speech to the Conservative Party Conference, claimed that an illegal immigrant was not deported because he had a cat. The Daily Mail reported the story here.

The slightly more rational view of events can be found on Channel 4's FactCheck blog.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Now, just to show I'm not entirely biased against the Conservative Party, let's subject Ed Miliband to the same scrutiny. On April 2nd, he said

“According to the British Crime Survey, violence, theft and robbery are going up – the fastest rise in a decade”



Really? The funny thing is, I seem to recall the Opposition making similar claims when Labour were in power, but the Labour Government dismissing these claims as scaremongering.

Once again, let's leave FactCheck to do the analysis. Read it here.

Evolving Politics, or Growing Up?

“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”

- Winston Churchill

I grew up in a household where my mother had no discernible politics at all, and my father was a passionate supporter of the Labour party who liked to put his point across in a well-reasoned argument which was very persuasive to a teenager. I also grew up in the Thatcher years in Britain which saw a great deal of injustice and protest across the country. By the time I was first able to vote in a General Election, in 1992, I was very hopeful that Neil Kinnock would be the new Prime Minister in the morning. Of course, it didn't work out that way. I was full of youthful enthusiasm for equality, and liberal idealism. Fast forward to 1997 and I was only too anxious to vote for Tony Blair, and delighted when they won. At last, I thought, finally we'll have a Government interested in making life better for everyone. I was full of optimism.

By 2005, I realised that such optimism was naive and unrealistic. Politics and adult life didn't have the black and white that I had imagined as a child. I still was strongly opposed to the Conservative Party, but beginning to wonder whether or not that was objective, or the result of my conditioning.

By the election of 2010, I had evolved as far as to be fairly neutral between the two major parties. I no longer clung to the optimism that Labour was the answer to all our ills, nor was I petrified or disgusted by the thought of a return to a Conservative Government.

This is the year that I will turn 40. I work full time and always have done. I fully realise that I've been fortunate never to have been unemployed, however if I were to lose my job, I would rather do almost anything than sit at home claiming benefits.

I'll be completely honest; I have absolutely no idea how many families are currently receiving more than £26000 in benefits. I know that there are some, but how big a problem is it really? Is the Government about to solve a real problem for the country in imposing this cap on benefits, or is this effectively a popularity stunt? Again, in the spirit of honesty, I don't really care. As a matter of principle, it can't be right that a family can receive more money in benefits than a lot of families that work full time.

It is true that £26000 in benefits is equivalent to a pre-tax income of around £35000. I know several families who work full time and their income is a great deal less than that. They manage, and so must those who receive benefits. Yes, there may well be some exclusions. Iain Duncan Smith spoke on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning about safeguards and discretionary measures. Not to mix metaphors, but the devil is in the detail of course, and the proof of the pudding.....well you know what I mean. We'll see about these safeguards in due course.

As I started to write this, there was a gentleman on the Jeremy Vine show who is a single father and full time carer to his mother. His sole income is from benefits, and he depends upon them. His situation may well be a deserving exception. I don't know. But should he really be paid effectively £35000 by the state for looking after an elderly relative? This country is in a dire economic situation at present, and to my mind we simply can't afford this on any sort of scale. Having said that, imagine for a moment that the economic crisis did not exist, and Britain could afford this. Surely it's still wrong that benefit claimants can receive more than a great deal of working families?

So as I near 40, with Winston Churchill's quotation in the back of my mind, are my politics evolving with the times, or am I just growing up?

Do We Really Need a High Speed Rail Link?

The UK Government announced this week that they intend to proceed with the proposed high speed rail link (HS2) from London to Birmingham.

News of the decision has generated a lot of column inches on both sides of the debate. Business leaders appear to be keen for the scheme to proceed, and it would seem that lots of new jobs will be created. You'd think it'd be universally well received, wouldn't you?

Er, no. Predictably enough, there has been a barrage of criticism of the proposed scheme. If that wasn't surprising, then neither was some of the rhetoric employed by the scheme's proponents against their opponents. If you are not in favour of the proposal, then you can expect to be labelled as one or more of "Luddite", "anti-business" or even "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard).

I really enjoy travelling by rail. I drive enough miles in a year that I appreciate it when every now and then, my travelling schedule overlaps the rail network and there's actually a train service to where I need to go. Occasionally, there's even a train going where I need to go, when I need to go, and at a reasonable price. On these rare instances, travelling by train becomes a no-brainer. It is a pleasant change to be able to sleep, read, look out of the window or indeed anything else I want to do. No traffic jams, no worrying about the price of fuel, no navigation. Bliss; or it would be if this wasn't an idealised view of rail travel.

Let's face it, UK rail travel is rarely that romantically perfect. For a start, it's usually prohibitively expensive. A few years ago now, the BBC motoring programme Top Gear demonstrated that it was possible to buy a cheap car, drive from London to Manchester and then scrap the car, all for less than it cost to undertake the same journey by rail. Thousands of people commute to work each day using season tickets that cost £1000s per year, and they seem to increase in cost above inflation every year. 

For my purposes, the problem is that there happens to be not much in the way of train service between where I live, and where I visit. I can get to London from Hull easily enough, and you can reach a lot of destinations via York. However the place I visit most frequently, Bedford, is difficult to get to. The problems are threefold: often there simply is no viable service to and from where I want to go and then come back; the cost is enormous; and by the time I've negotiated the train changes necessary, the whole thing takes a lot longer than it would by car.

If I could find a service for that route which took a similar amount of time as driving (or less), and the cost was similar (or less) than driving it, then I would pick the train any time. However the practicalities for me simply don't stack up and the only reasonable option for me on most of my journeys are to drive. I could perhaps reduce the cost of the journeys by buying season tickets or rail cards, I know. However you can only buy season tickets for an individual train company, not for use anywhere on the network. So if I were to leave, say Hull, on train company A and arrive at Bedford on train company B, then my season ticket is only valid for part of that journey. Bizarrely, I could get a "Friends and Family" railcard, but whilst that can be used anywhere on the network, it's only valid if I've got the kids with me. Further pain is added when we consider the "on-peak", "off peak", and "anytime" tickets.

Train companies further muddy the waters by having a different price for the same ticket depending on how and when you buy it. Buying your ticket online from home, 20 minutes before you leave for the station can be vastly cheaper than buying the same ticket half an hour later at the station. Why?

Yet, the great advantage of my car is that it costs me roughly the same to travel at 8am as it does at 2am. It costs roughly the same to have one person in the car as it does to have four, and that's important if you're travelling with family.

It boils down to this simple equation: it takes too long and it costs to much for me to use the train except, as I said earlier, in those rare cases where there's a reasonably direct service.

And I haven't even mentioned reliability. My car is 8 years old and has now covered over 130 000 miles, yet the only time it's broken down was when my wife put petrol in it instead of diesel, and you can't really blame the car for that. Other than that it has a spotless record of reliability, in all winds and weathers, even deep snow. The same is not true on the trains. At any given time, on any given journey, you are liable to be delayed severely by any or all of the following; signal failure, track maintenance, lack of availability of rolling stock, strikes, staff shortages, "wrong type of snow", leaves on the line, all manner of petty and avoidable issues which are almost impossible to solve because of the structure of the railway system, where one company owns the tracks and several different companies own all the trains. This arrangement ranks as one of the most hare-brained schemes ever thought up. As the railways evolved, there were four different UK rail companies, some even used different gauges of track. Early in the 20th century, these companies were amalgamated into one overall company to manage the lot. It wasn't an overwhelming success, granted, and the cuts recommended by Beeching in the 1960s was an attempt to streamline the "business". This might have been the heart of the problem, seeing it as a business rather than a service.

In the 1990s the then Government decided to break it all up again, and we now have the sorry mess of franchised train companies and RailTrack or NetworkRail or whatever they're called these days. All I know is that we now have a continuous Mexican stand-off, with all the companies pointing the finger at each other for the system's failures.

At one point, the train services were claiming that "over 80%" of services ran on time. Well done, take a bow. 80% is a lot, isn't it, certainly a lot more than half. As Jeremy Clarkson once put it though, that's like saying that you would tolerate a car that refused to start in the morning once every two weeks.

Why should HS2 be immune to any of the existing failings of the current system? It'll be run by the same witless groups of management, track maintained by the same people, and staffed with people from the same prehistoric RMT union. Who's going to use it? I know that sounds obvious, but who? People in Birmingham and people in London. What about those in between? Surely it'll benefit everyone in between? I don't think so. If it's going to be "high speed" then I'm assuming that the service isn't stopping more than, say once, in between London and Birmingham, let's say in or near Oxford. So the actual numbers of people using it will be small, to be generous.

There's the environmental aspect to consider too. This scar on the countryside is going to be over 70 metres wide, that's similar to the width of Wembley Stadium. No problem, say the planners, we'll stick it all in an enormous tunnel. At a cost of £500m. This was additional tunnelling added to the scheme to overcome objections. "The scheme is cheaper with the tunnel" says the DoT (source). OK then, if that's so, why wasn't the tunnel in the plan from Day 1, and why isn't the whole line underground?

Let's put this in perspective. That extra tunnel is costing £190 000 per yard! £5200 per inch! Whichever way you slice it, that's a very expensive tunnel. In addition one would imagine that the preparatory work required to lay track on the floor of a tunnel was similar to laying track on open ground on the surface. If that's true, how exactly is tunnelling cheaper?

I admit I'm getting cynical in my old age, but someone who is willing to throw an additional £500m at a scheme, in order to grease the wheels of the Government approving it, must stand to make a great deal of money from its adoption. More than £500m too.

And all of this to save a handful of people about half an hour on a journey from London to Birmingham? Gimme a break.

Martin