Right Wingers are less intelligent...

[El Pibe]

The thing is you're analogising by making parallels with a blantantly commercial environment.

That doesn't translate to making kids optimistic or enjoy learning.

It has tied schools to following strict curricula and tied teachers' efforts to achieving exam targets. Concentrate efforts on those that will achieve and damn the rest. All efforts will be channelled into achieving the presentation of a reality* (something New Labour knew all about) rather than to create a genuine better reality.

I've already said where appropriate they should be used, and yes the Tories brought in some targets.

Labour introduced an ethos of managerialism into the public sector as the very philosophy under which everything could be marshalled, quantified and compared. It's a nonsense, and panders to the idea that complex (human) systems are controllable, when we all know they are inherently chaotic.

I think this was a fools errand, its undermined the quality and indeed purpose of our services, has cost millions and isn't being undone nearly quickly enough.

*juking the stats as the wire referred to it as, a marvellous expression

[StraferJack]

Can we back up a second... whatever the rights and wrongs of targets and measuring, most people I know are able to say there were noticeable and significant improvements in the service they received from the NHS in the first decade of the 21st century

It just WAS much better after years of investment and (possibly) targets

[Huguenot]

Agreed with SJ, with some passion!

[El Pibe]

I for one don't accept that. Again how do you quantify better? Waiting lists down?

THey probably are, but then we were released from hospital 4 hours after the birth of our child after a 60 hour labour, once upon a time you might have had at least a day to recover.

Also tell that to my consultant surgeon uncle who retired, utterly dissillusioned by what had happened to the NHS.

Or my mum who had also devoted her life to the NHS.

Treated like a human being when seriously ill in the early 90s, treated like a number during her cancer treatment recently including being pumped full of a drug she was allergic to by a nurse who ignored her when she pleaded with her to double check.

[Brendan]

Do I have to attempt to make an argument against some sort of one-size-fits-all management that is as effective for salesmen as it is for teachers and nurses or can I just make a face of aghast indignation secure in the knowledge that most sensible people will agree with me?

Look. This is my face being aghast and indignant.

[Brendan]

Anecdotally my wife has just gone back to working for the NHS and is appalled by the lack of care she as a midwife is able/allowed to give to women and the amount of energy spent on box ticking and arse covering. So much so that she?s going to leave again the first chance she gets.

[Huguenot]

I'm not saying it's one size fits all - but if one Key Performance Indicator was 'don't pump drugs into mums that are allergic to them' it hardly needed writing down did it?

Because I didn't write 'don't shit in the foyer' after 'answer calls within four rings' didn't mean that it wasn't a component of reasonable performance.

Nor did the call answering dictat make shitting in the foyer a reasonable behaviour in pursuing this goal.

In fact, if some prick had shat in the foyer and used the call answering goal as an excuse I'd probably have punched them in the face.

Citing examples like that as a reason for not having targets is the last redoubt of an objectionable worker. It's also the kind of 'crap' (yes) that uncooperative unionised workforces come out with as a deliberate block to asking them to do their flipping job.

[El Pibe]

"workforces come out with as a deliberate block to asking them to do their flipping job"

whereas ironically its the mangerialised desire to have boxes ticked that actually prevents them from doing so, or rather that becomes the job and even a bear can't shit anywhere reasonably because he doesn't know what a wood looks like anymore.

Life's funny like that.

[Huguenot]

Re. Brendan's views on documentation, that was the same protest I had from guys at the bottom of the list.

I pointed out that if they couldn't chat on the phone and jot a few notes at the same time it rather undermined their claim to literacy which was an underpinning knowledge requirement for the job.

I don't imagine for one second that Brendan's lucky other half is playing the same game, but accountability is a key element of collaborative working.

If it's become crazy, then fine, but I suspect it hasn't, and it's being used as a 'duck and cover' excuse by underperforming workers who are manipulating others to join the protest.

[david_carnell]

But then I would imagine your knowledge of NHS form filling is about the same as my knowledge of Singapore's bar scene.

[El Pibe]

I think I said before that sensible performance measurement is, well, sensible.

It's when punitive targets are introduced that things become iffy.

I have no doubt that a focus on waiting lists (made for political reasons) have reduced standards of care which are much harder to measure because these are perceptional (bar how many of them died).

Mind you if the election promise had been:

"I'll shorten waiting lists 50% in three years...

*every numnut at conference obsequiously cheers*

...and I'll ensure that you'll be chucked out of your bed a the first opportunity.

*yeaahh....eerr....*

...face to face time with the doctor will be reduced if you're lucky enough that they bother to talk to you

*what hte...*

...and the nurse will simply see you as a number to achieve in the beds turned per hour stat she has to deliver to her manager so that the CPT's overall beclothing maintenance target will be achieved

* huh , that's not right*

...so you'll probably have a crappy time once you make it to hospital"

by then I reckon that applause may have petered out somewhat.

But then Blair never was one for telling the truth was he.

[El Pibe]

CPT, I meant PCT, freudian slip perhaps

[Huguenot]

I don't know d_c, but it's geuninely unlikely to have been created by people who want the NHS to fail. That's not human nature.

I couldn't understand for a while why sterling and capable recruits became sullen and inert after a week in the job. It turned out that during their entry week social with the best players (that I encouraged) a couple of the long timers had informed them about how they were expected to respond to 'management' in order to meet their team obligations.

It's clear that the biggest and most rewarded performers were protecting their positions, in the mistaken belief that they were untouchables.

Fine. But I have a responsibility to all employees to make their careers successful, and I'm sure the brutal and public resolution was testament to who called the shots.

The unions would have blocked this, and I was subject to offensive and inaccurate tribunal claims that I won.

The reality is that we have good workplace laws, but we must allow capable and trustworthy management teams to do their job.

Accountability allows us to achieve this, that's why the unions block it.

[david_carnell]

I understand that you, as a manager/small business owner, have had run-ins with unions that have influenced your opinion.

And, just as in all stratas of business or walks of life, some trade unionists will be jobsworth layabouts who do nothing constructive and actually damage worker-management relations. But they are a minority.

Your constant belittling of the union movement is beginning to get as tiresome as it is misguided. For every instance of a dodgy tribunal, I can point to fundamental employment reforms that have benefitted workers.

You seem to think that without targets nurses would seek to do as little work as possible, completely failing to notice the difference between choosing a career in nursing and one working in sales. It's absurd.

[Huguenot]

Yeah, I take the point d_c but it's not the polarisation I'm looking for, I'm not absolutist on this.

I don't believe that people don't want to do a great job, my experience is that they do. But I also recognise that sometimes organisations need a restructure of opinions and attitudes.

The brightest and most capable ideas can be brought to ground by inertia from vested interests. In public large organisations the consequence of compromise is too often a result that benefits the least capable.

I'm not prepared to concede that this requires mismanagement, more often the failure is an inability to enact change and a bodged compromise.

Outfits like the NHS are just too big to have that many incompetent or self-serving managers who want to screw it.

Neither do I believe that politicians are the best people to resolve it.

However, I do not believe that a nation like the UK should have the biggest 'army' in the world. The NHS is that. The UK and the NHS needs to grow up. It is not an appropriate way of dealing with public health for the next 100 years, so when does it change?

[Otta]

I don't work in the NHS, and I would agree there have been great improvements over the last decade.

HOWEVER, I would argue strongly that these are nothing to do with PIs, and I suspect if you ask most staff, from consultant, to secretary, to hospital porter, they would tell you that PIs have been a hinderence.

I work across social care and education, and I admit, I can be a right lazy git at times. However, I have worked with lots and lots of very hard working, and dedicated people, from OTs, to Social Workers, to managers, to teachers, top nursery nurses, and I can assure you, the vast majority of them would tell you what I am telling you when it comes to Performance Indicators.

[indiepanda]

Undisputedtruth Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> It's telling when you see all these right wingers

> spouting hearsays as facts. Obviously indiepanda

> hasn't heard of the dot com crash and its implact

> on global economies including Europe but excluding

> the UK.

Seriously, the dot com crash didn't affect the UK???? Stock market late 1999 c 6900, never been anything like the same level in the 12 years since? I was working for an insurance company and was calculating on a weekly basis whether we were still solvent when that crash happened. We had to pump in tens of millions of pounds to ensure it did remain solvenct, and this was a tiny company with only a few thousand policyholders. Many of those policies are still worth less than they paid for them now (unit linked so the policyholders took most of the financial risk) so I am guessing they wouldn't agree with your statement that the dot com crash didn't affect the UK.

> Well, indiepanda spoke about the Labour

> government's financial acumen (or lack of), then

> spoke about "left wing" governments in general and

> then said "and don't get me started on

> communists". Her train of thought seems to suggest

> a lineage between New Labour and Communists. I,

> rightly, pointed out that this was a bit of a leap

> and she was being silly.

>

> Also, I was being flippant. You know, as indicated

> by the winky thing.

Trust me David, I knew full well you were being flippant. I can take a bit of teasing from someone I know, even if I am not sure that you connect my user name with my face.

You didn't quite get the point I was making, which was that where UDT was suggesting that right wingers lack of intelligence explained their economic policies, I was suggesting that the extreme left wing communist approach to running economies was hardly demonstrating intelligence either. I wasn't actually suggesting new labour were anything like communists.

I can't see me ever voting labour (though the mess the Tories are making with the NHS is testing my patience no end), but the truth is the main political parties in this country are way closer to each other in policy than either are to the extreme ends of either right or left wing.

I don't agree the the initial hypothesis of the paper that Huguenot quoted which started this thread, because I think it expressed a rather black and white view of what right wing actually means. To me it felt rather like the Daily Mail view of the world or perhaps BNP, and I think "right wing" encompasses a rather wider spectrum of views than that.

[Undisputedtruth]

indiepanda Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Seriously, the dot com crash didn't affect the

> UK???? Stock market late 1999 c 6900, never been

> anything like the same level in the 12 years

> since? I was working for an insurance company and

> was calculating on a weekly basis whether we were

> still solvent when that crash happened. We had to

> pump in tens of millions of pounds to ensure it

> did remain solvenct, and this was a tiny company

> with only a few thousand policyholders. Many of

> those policies are still worth less than they paid

> for them now (unit linked so the policyholders

> took most of the financial risk) so I am guessing

> they wouldn't agree with your statement that the

> dot com crash didn't affect the UK.

I remembered the dot com crash very well. It was just after companies in the US missed their earnings per share by a few percent. The dot com crash didn't affect Britain because Gordon Brown made sure that the economy, the fourth lagest in the world, was resilient enough. But the US was in recession.

[Loz]

The UK IT company I work for has a share price that is currently trading at about 3% of their value at the height of the dot-com boom.

You could say that it was kind of affected. Just a little.

[Undisputedtruth]

The PE ratios for these dot com companies were astronomically high during the boom years.

[indiepanda]

Loz Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The UK IT company I work for has a share price

> that is currently trading at about 3% of their

> value at the height of the dot-com boom.

>

> You could say that it was kind of affected. Just

> a little.

Quite right Loz.

And even for those of us not working it IT, many of those of us working in jobs with defined contribution pensions are still feeling the pain of the drops in share prices, all going to be working longer if we want to make up with the impact on our savings.

That crash out a lot of people off investing in lots of stocks and shares and focus on property instead, helping to create the market we have now where it's so hard for people to get on the housing ladder.

To say the dot com bubble didn't affect the UK just because we didn't end up in recession is a very limited view of what matters financially to people.

[????]

I bought a relatively conservatively invested share ISA for ?7k with some dosh from a sale of property in 1997, after the Dot.com crash it plummeted. I sold it in 2011 for ?7100, great return. FTSE is still at 5,400ish or less at the mo compared to 7200(?) just before the crash. Those with guaranteed state funded pensions don't have to worry about this sort of shite and it all feels a bit abstract but its buggered the future for everyone else. Not helped by one of Gordon's multiple stealth taxes, the one on on pension charges which buggered private pension funds even more so he could guild the nest of his paymasters members....ironically he's foooked our society even more by making it almost politically impossible for any political party to raise the basic rate of tax, something we will have to do to maintain Public Services as they are.

Pensions are boring, Brown used that to raid them for revenue to spend on politics.

[Undisputedtruth]

I remember hearing a Tony Blair speech at the British Library where he talked about the British economy, the fourth biggest in the world, being resilient enough to beat the recession. So Gordon Brown was confident enough to say a UK recession was unlikely.

The housing market also slowed down for a period as banks laid off staff.

[Undisputedtruth]

@????,

Boardroom Directors didn't find a problem when they awarded themselves muti-million pound pension schemes.

[????]

yup and there are litterrally 100,000s of them...oh, hang on a minute, actually there's a few thousand but let's proxy them together with the evil Bankers for all Private Sector workers as our avoid any debate on the Public Sector tactic