On hearing from a guru...

Went to a seminar today. Well rather a sort of round table with this incredibly famous and important man who was going to impart his wisdom, show us the way forward, direct us to the sunlit uplands of Elysium.

I was tardy so when I arrived most folk were sat and were, one after another, introducing themselves. I'd missed most of this so most of the attendees fell into the category of "familiar faces but have to dredge the deeper recesses of the mind to remember how I know them". I introduced myself.

The event took the form of the incredibly famous and important man telling us how he came to be incredibly important and famous. He gushed with positivity, with witty self-deprecation and with little asides demonstrating how he was so much more insightful than the usual run-of-the-mill sort of person you'd encounter. He spoke the fluid language of the guru all mish-mashed with the jargon of the professional in his line of business. It was a tour de force delivered at breakneck speed that demonstrated that us mere mortals were in the presence of genius.

Amongst all this our guru dropped names, spewed contacts and indicated that he had the ear of ministers, engagement with policy-makers and, for all we knew, a direct telephone line to god. He managed to condemn government policies with one rhetorical flick of his hand implying that if only they'd asked him first it would all be so much better. He dismissed one urbane and worldly-wise politician as a "right wing bastard" and then slightly sniggered at what he called "Tory words".

In all this we got no facts. No evidence. No substantiation to his claims of unique insight into the solutions in this area of policy-making. Oh it was good and there were some things - most tactical things - that cried out to be stolen for the benefit of our town. But the impression wasn't of shared experience but rather the implication that we were some clumping centre-back to be dazzled and bemused by his Lionel Messi. It was, in short, a master class in oh-so-modest self-celebration rather than something to be learned from.

Sadly this sort of event is legion. We troop to the feet of the guru, suck up their pronouncements and seldom - if ever - ask whether the guru could use a dressing gown. Today I learnt nothing about how we might actually meet the challenges we face in the famous man's area of 'expertise' but I also know that some of those colleagues present will hark back to the seminar, eye-sparkling with excitement as they recount the sage words of our guru.

It is a reminder why we have politicians. Not because we're immune to being self-appointed experts or to showing off - we're some of the worst offenders here. But rather because you lot have the ability to deflate the balloon of our ego by kicking us out at the ballot box.

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Does the public sector see some complainants as trolls?

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Or something along those lines. Lawrence Serewicz explores this question asking whether the easy way in which the public sector leaps to use the word 'vexatious' in closing off the ability of the public to complain about how that public sector treats us:

The public sector in the UK, which has to do the same or more with a reduced budget, has sought way to limit those customers that take up the most time. These customers were often called “problem customers” or “serial complainers” who, for any number of reasons, take up the organisation’s time and resources. They are considered persistent, prolific, or vexatious applicants and organisations, and their customer services, need a way to deal with them. The preferred approach appears to be to declare them vexatious. Once declared vexatious, the organisation can refuse them services, reduce them or manage them in a specific way.

I suspect Lawrence has a point here - he cites the easy avoidance of Freedom of Information Requests (a good illustration being this one) as a good example of how public bodies avoid what might be seen as their responsibility under the law. As a Councillor I have a little bit of sympathy for public bodies - they can't ignore enquiries or complaints but after the twentieth iteration of the same question it can get to be a little galling. Partly this is because it's not a lack of  'customer service' that drives someone to submit over 50 enquiries about the use of around £120 of council resource (in the case I'm thinking of the motivation might be called the 'politics of vengeance').

However, Lawrence's point is a good one and reminds us that most of the time it's those in authority that hold the cards, can call the cops (and have those cops respond) and are often minded to act to protect their own rather than seek to resolve public grievance.

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Sacked for thought crime...

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The public sector is using its broadly written contracts of employment to sack people who say things that are deemed unacceptable.

NHS administrator Abdurrahman Siddique said HIV is a form of divine punishment for adultery and suggested British aid worker Alan Henning deserved to die at the hands of Isis terrorists because he was a “kafir” or non-believer.

In one post he is said to have claimed Isis were doing a “fine job” as the full extent of the Islamists’ brutality was emerging in July last year.

He was sacked from Hammersmith Hospital last week after his extremist rants were brought to the attention of NHS bosses.

Now Abdurrahman seems to hold some quite disturbing views. But they are just that - views. No suggestion is being made that these statements or opinions affected his work or the reputation of the hospital.

And this case isn't a one-off either:

A town hall worker has been suspended after posting an Islamophobic comment on Facebook.

Dave Balderstone, 46, replied to a British National Party post with the message: ‘Kick Islam out of Britain - we need our country back.’

Manchester council bosses took action last week after a member of the public contacted the M.E.N. in disgust.

Mr Balderstone, of Manley Road, Chorlton, has now been suspended from his position as an IT support technician while the post is investigated.

Different set of unsavoury views, same response from the public agency. Same approach - complaint from a 'member of the public' or because is was 'brought to the attention of' bosses. What we're seeing here (apart from a glimpse of the wide range of opinions out there) is that complaints about material posted outside work in a non-work related environment are used to conduct vendetta. Maybe it was a random member of the public who happened to see Dave Balderstone's Facebook page and happened to know he worked for the Council - I suspect not. And - however barking Abdurrahman Siddique's opinions might be - I'm pretty sure he's spot on when he says:

“It's very clear to me that this was a personal vendetta against me by someone who knew me and was determined to get me the sack.”

We really need to stop sacking people for saying stuff when it really has no impact on the business - the hospital admin worker can go on moving paper across his desk and the IT technician can carry on trying to fix Manchester City Council's rickety computers regardless of their dubious opinions.

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"Oh them? They're trade." Thoughts on who the Conservative Party is 'for'...

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This post is a bit of a mish-mash - partly it bounces off Chris Dillow's idle considering of who the Tory Party is 'for' and partly it extends on my own musings about the continued disdain - from professionals and increasingly from public servants - for people who make their living running private businesses. A while ago I wrote about my mum having to use the 'tradesman's entrance' to deliver meals-on-wheels to the relicts of vice-admirals:

So mum delivered the dinners to these very posh ladies, so posh that, for one, mum had to go through the kitchen door. The front door was only opened for visitors and mum, for all that she was bringing the only hot meal that lady would get that day, didn't qualify as a visitor. Mum was trade. And trade used the kitchen door.

This was pretty typical of a 'certain sort' - there was something slightly grubby about the mundane business of producing and delivering the goods or services people need. And front doors weren't for that sort of thing. However, we should be more concerned by the constant drip of 'profit is bad' arguments emanating from the publicly-employed middle classes.  Partly this argument is a response to the perceived (wrongly perceived, I would judge) threat to these comfortable public servants that comes from the disruption of public monopoly - either by fiat through outsourcing and competitive tender or else through technology throwing up different approaches to the services those public monopolies deliver.

However, I was struck by this extract from an essay by Don Boudreaux about the work of Deirdre McCloskey on the reasons for capitalism's success:

Until the 17th century, those who earned their living through trade were the Rodney Dangerfields of their eras: they got no respect.  Merchants and other people operating on the supply side of commercial activities and transactions were tolerated.  But they were viewed and spoken of with contempt.  Unlike warriors who dirtied their hands honorably (namely, with blood), traders dirtied their hands dishonorably (namely, with profit).  Unlike the nobility who got their riches honorably (namely, by idly collecting land rents), merchants got their riches dishonorably (namely, by actively trading).  Unlike the clergy who won their rewards honorably (namely, by pondering the eternal), the bourgeoisie won their rewards dishonorably (namely, by responding to what Hayek later called “the particular circumstances of time and place”).

I would suggest the 'profit-is-bad' argument justifying public monopolies (and indeed justifying creating new public monopolies) still echoes what Boudreaux is saying - not simply the view that such a public monopoly in say transport systems is a better way to run those systems but that, by removing profit, the system is morally better regardless of whether the service it provides is improved.

We see, in the ever more shrill and strident verbal assaults on News Corp and the Daily Mail, another echo. Indeed, the attack on free speech implicit in the Leveson witch hunt should remind us that the target wasn't the press in general but the for-profit press and especially the part of the press making profits for Rupert Murdoch. The behaviour of The Guardian (owned by a trust) or the BBC (a public sector body) was not under scrutiny in this process because these are noble undertakings whereas Rupert and Paul are merely trade. Indeed the sneering dismissal of Rebekah Brooks on the basis of her working-class - 'trade' - roots amplifies the echoes of the time when business was grubby. Reading some pieces you can almost hear the shock at hearing Rebekah, the daughter of a 'tug-boat captain', was allowed in through the front door.

So when Chris Dillow observes in stumbling around the target audience of the Conservative party comments that:

Now, you might reply that this merely shows that Tories are the party not of big business but of economically illiterate little Englanders - hence its vulnerability to Ukip.

Even this, though, isn't wholly clear. Austerity has clobbered a lot of traditional Tory voters - older, wealthier people who have suffered from low returns on their savings. This makes me wonder whether our (OK my) longstanding prejudice is actually true. Maybe the Tories are not any longer the party of big vested interests in general.

...I am struck by the realisation that the Conservative party is 'for' (if that means much these days) people who work in the world of making goods and producing services that are sold in markets, some of which might be free and open. And the Conservative Party isn't just 'for' the owners and directors of these free enterprises but it is 'for' all the people who work in those businesses - from the boss to the tea boy, from the financier to the cleaner. In the broadest sense of the word, embracing the sneering meaning 'trade' held for many in the traditional elite and in the professions of law and medicine, the Conservative Party is 'for' trade and 'for' the people who engage in trade.

And I would like to think, against those people who literally or metaphorically make people like my Mum use the kitchen door.

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On what makes for successful cities...

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Aaron Renn reviewing research by the Manhattan Institute:

Among the commonalities they did see, they noted that successful cities tended to have higher educational attainment; a higher professional, scientific, and technical job share; more large corporate headquarters, and less dependency on government spending in an era of state and local fiscal retrenchment. Laggards suffered disproportionately from over-dependency on housing construction.

A familiar list of reasons - we hear often of the importance of 'STEM' jobs, high order skills and corporate HQs. The bit that we aren't reminded of often enough is that high levels of dependence on government spending holds back regional economic development. This isn't just about benefits or the relocation of government jobs to depressed areas but encompasses other parts of popular regional development strategies such as university-led schemes of research funding.

The challenge here is for government - local or national - to develop strategies that promote regional development without its spending squeezing out private-sector growth. This is especially noticeable when we look at how middle-income jobs are distributed - in the big northern cities a far higher proportion of these jobs are public sector workers (teachers, social workers, local government officers and so forth). If the route to a decent living is seen to be via the public sector then people will choose that route.

Finally that point about housing construction speaks for itself.

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Callers at Police Stations and the closing down of police stations

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From this gentleman:

Police Constable 3415 Michael Walls Retired
Holder of the Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medal

Comes an e-mail (Michael is also a Bradford Councillor) - it says a lot:

Once upon a time there was a Police station in Bradford Called Toller Lane, it used to be open 24hrs a day and lots of people called in for help and advice as the Police officers who worked there were very friendly and helpful and took the time to talk to people, and the people liked this and thought very highly of the Police Officers but eventually when some Senior Police officers became involved in running costs and forgot why they joined, they decided to limit opening to 0800 to 2400 hrs. But people could still call, which they did in large numbers. Then one day a certain Ch Supt who we shall call Long called at the police station to park his own car and drive down to H Q in the Div Police car to save his petrol as he did every day. One Day he said to one of the office PCs... stop keeping the Callers Book (this was a book...was one in which every caller at the police station was logged.) Being a very astute officer this PC took no notice and continued to keep the book.

Some months later The Chief Supt called as usual to use the police car to drive to and from work and informed the officers at the station that it would soon be closed in the evening as there was no demand for it to be open. The PC produced the Callers Book and said what about this demand! Mr Long was very angry and snatched the book from the PC and threw it across the room.

And so the police station was closed in the evenings and eventually closed down completely and the people who would have called in now started to ring in and ask for a police officer to come and see them, and so the police officers were very busy!

And so our police "service" continues to fail to serve!

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The only bit of the economy that's growing is...

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...government.

As I observed yesterday in a point about jobs, these cuts, this austerity - at least as far as the public sector is concerned - seem pretty illusory:

Well, strictly, “government and other services”, so it includes defence, the National Health Service and so on, but also private education and private healthcare. That sector of the economy has expanded by more than 5 per cent since 2008; health and social care has expanded particularly strongly.

The only austerity measures have been tax rises - higher taxes on buying stuff, the closing of so-called loopholes and an avalanche of increases in duty on things like booze, fags and petrol.

The public sector - and all us politicians hovering round its honey pot - isn't where the austerity is biting. We're OK - it's the bloke who hasn't had a pay rise in five years and can't afford his pension any more, the pensioner on a fixed income while inflation rockets and the mum juggling a part-time job with a couple of children, who are being bitten.

And - however much it may pain the big unions, the Labour party, the panjandrums of civil service and the state employees at the BBC - the answer is still just what is was back in 2008, and 2009, and 2010, and 2011...

...cut taxes on incomes, reduce the tax on jobs that is employers national insurance and stop treating businesses as if they are the spawn of Satan rather than the only hope for us seeing out the recession.

Get on with it...

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An interesting little jobs statistic...

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Back in June 2008 - before the age of austerity, before the cuts, before all those civil servants were cast on the scrap heap, public sector employment in the UK was:

6,019,000 - that's 20.4% of the workforce

Now, after all the austerity, the draconian cuts and Osborne's reign of terror, public sector employment in the UK is:

5,942,000 - that's 20.4% of the workforce

Interesting don't you think?

Source: ONS (table EMP02 here)
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Get the right skill and you should have no problem getting a job...

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...or so it seems:

Job opportunities were 17% higher in December 2011 compared with the same period in 2010, and were more than one-fifth higher than in December 2009, according to figures published today by reed.co.uk. The most recent Reed Job Index data highlights growth in demand for new staff in 2011 compared with 2010. According to Reed, this trend was largely driven by demand for technical staff, such as engineers and IT and telecommunications specialists, with an annual increase in job vacancies of more than 40% across these roles.

But a couple of sectors continues to decline:

Unsurprisingly, decline was reflected in the figures for public sector activity, with demand in that sector 15% lower than during the same period in 2010, and at one-third of its 2009 level.

Meanwhile, demand for staff in financial services fell slightly in December 2011 to a little below its level of 12 months earlier, although it is still above its level two years ago when the index began.

Not surprisingly the UK can find jobs for skilled people who contribute to production and create wealth but not for parasites like me!

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Do public sector employers "buy" union reps?

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Not my usual source for interesting stuff but a very interesting observation from the loonier part of the left here:

My own experience of partnership working has been in the public sector. It was nothing more than a social club, monthly committee meetings, followed by a huge buffet and chit chat. The organisation decided that the senior union committee members did such a good job for the workers, that they would give them all a pay rise of between £10,000 - £15,000, over and above their substantive post and for the duration of their time in a full time union position.

All the facility time was given to reps that the staff side ‘leaders’ wanted, rather than who requested it. This meant that the union leaders would always win the annual election, as most of the reps had their facility time and other perks tied in to certain individuals winning elections.

All very cosy and, for the lefty agitator the result:

Certain individuals saw themselves as part of the board of directors, naively thinking they were part of making decisions, when in actual fact they were ridiculed and laughed at behind their backs. There was actually was ‘partnership’ working that took place. It was the board of directors and the unions working in partnership to try and soften the blow on every bad thing that was handed down to workers.

The union reps behaved like arrogant, pompous, slippery politicians. Never answering the questions of members directly, patronising workers, telling them that they ‘don’t understand’ etc. etc. They also colluded and collaborated with senior management when reps get out of line.

The solution? Stop funding trade unions representatives with tax money and start funding them from union subscriptions. Simple really.

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A moment of rage at public procurement...

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The Arts Council. Tender for a freelance contract asks for:

Three years of accounts
Bank reference
Equal Opportunities Policy
Diversity Policy
Health & Safety Policy
Environment & Sustainability Policy
Three different types of insurance

...and they say this is 'accessible' tendering!

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...about that public sector pay

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Seems like the private sector is still taking most of the pain:

Take home pay in the public sector has increased, showing annual growth of 1.7% for the three months to August, according to this month's VocaLink FTSE 350 Take Home Pay Index.

This contrasts with the private sector, where pay growth has declined for the second consecutive month, hitting 2.7% in August, down from 2.9% for the three months to July

Why am I not surprised.

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Public procurement and framework contracts - inefficient, anti-competitive and expensive

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In public sector procurement we have got used now to the system of “framework contracts”:

A ‘framework agreement’ is an agreement between one or more contracting authorities and one or more economic operators, the purpose of which is to establish the terms governing contracts to be awarded during a given period, in particular with regard to price and, where appropriate, the quantity envisaged.

In layman’s terms a framework agreement limits the market from which the public body procures its goods or services in a given time period. Rather than a long-winded procurement process for each contract, the public body can “call off” for each purchase from the organisations in the framework. Nobody else can bid.

And these frameworks are used for multi-billion pound contracts:

Willmott Dixon, Morgan Sindall, Mansell and Thomas Vale have all been appointed to a regional framework worth up to £3 billion.

The companies were chosen by Birmingham Council to work on projects secured through the Constructing West Midlands Framework.

The quartet will work on the four-year framework covering work costing more than £500,000-a-year.

The framework has the potential to be extended to eight years and is available to all public sector bodies in the West Midlands.

So there you are – a small group of construction businesses have been given the exclusive right to bid for £3 billion in public contracts. During that time no other organisations can bid for that work – the councils involved have granted to those in the framework a degree of protection that should not apply, is anti-competitive and cannot possibly represent value for taxpayers’ money.

These contracts are done for reasons of procurement efficiency and administrative convenience. They cut out smaller contractors – the ones for whom £500,000 is a big contract but who do not have the financial elbow to get chosen for a large framework. Yet nothing is done. There is no outcry when the DWP carves up valuable contracts for delivering the Work Programme between fewer than 20 organisations – a process that allows BEST, A4e and others the opportunity to further extend their market dominance. Mostly at the expense of smaller, regional and local providers.

Framework agreements are now standard practice and the numbers of businesses on frameworks gets smaller and smaller. One “pre-qualification questionnaire” (PQQ) run by Leeds City Council to procure a framework for redundancy support across Yorkshire was explicit in seeking to limit the tender to just six organisations from which five would be selected to form the framework.

This is an example – increasingly common with large authorities like Leeds and Manchester – of the use of the PQQ as a shortlisting device rather than as a means of established whether an organisation is qualified and has the capacity to deliver. This is an abuse of the process and misrepresents the PQQ – it is not pre-qualification but a two-stage tender process. Again it is designed for reasons of administrative convenience and procurement efficiency rather than for reasons of good purchasing practice.

If there is one area in desperate need of reform, that is ill-managed and run for producer interests rather than for the good use of taxpayers’ money, it is the system of public procurement overseen by the Office for Government Commerce and implemented by local authorities, government departments and quangos up and down the country. It may not be corrupt but it is certainly anti-competitive, wasteful and produces overpriced and inflexible contracts.

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A question - does this view reflect the age profile?

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From a survey:

A survey of 1,000 employees working in public sector organisations found they were “desperately” holding onto their pension packages in the face of planned changes announced by the government.

Teachers and civil servants have already taken strike action over the reforms and unions continue to threaten further disruption later in the year if the row is not resolved.

Recruitment firm Badenoch & Clark said its study showed a majority of public sector workers believed their pensions were worth striking over.

And the age profile of public sector employees? I can't speak for the whole sector - although I suspect the profile will be pretty similar - but in Local Government 68% of the workforce is aged over 40. So it shouldn't really surprise us that pensions are perhaps more important than pay - especially when they are final salary, index-linked pensions.

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A depressing thought for those who like the North...

From a conversation this evening:

All the professional jobs in the North are in the public sector or in businesses servicing the public sector. If you want a good job in the private sector you have to look in the South East

I don't know if this is entirely true - although a quick scan of jobs websites does show a real paucity of professional jobs outside London and the South East.

If this is true - and it could well be - then there's no doubt at all that the public sector continues to throttle the private sector, to push it aside. There has to be a way out from under this problem but I'm absolutely sure it isn't through resolutions of councils, through economic development strategies or through another round of regional initiatives.

Perhaps we should try a little less government?

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Tell me again about those strikes?

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The latest figures confirm the public-private sector pay gap:

Information released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday revealed that public sector workers are paid on average 7.8% more than their private sector counterparts. This figure has risen by 2.5% since 2007, when the pay gap was estimated to be around 5.3%.

And an index-linked, final salary pension to boot!

Forgive me if I don't weep beef tea at the plight of public sector workers.

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How to prevent small business getting public contracts the Manchester City Council way

I know, dear reader, that you love the great city of Manchester. I know that my criticisms of that city's civic leadership have focused on their budgetary incompetence but today I want to use their procurement processes to show just how anti-business - or rather anti-small business - Manchester City Council has become.

I spent quite a lot of today - on top of a previous frustrating day - trying to complete a 'pre-qualification questionnaire' for a research and analysis 'framework' contract. Now it seems to me that this sort of contract - in essence an approved list of research, evaluation, intelligence and analysis providers - is an area where there are a multitude of smaller providers, one man bands, partnerships and social enterprises. Manchester however has clearly decided that these smaller providers are beneath them for they require the following documents:

• Two years of audited accounts - bit tricky for a start-up business, maybe a couple of recently redundant council officers just starting out!
• Insurance documents showing £10m public liability, £5m employee liability and £2million professional indemnity - that's a grands worth of insurance just to bid!
• Signed and dated policies covering equal opportunities, quality, health & safety, environmental and sustainability
• Three testimonials and three public sector references for work done for each lot - if you're bidding for all the lots on offer that's nine testimonials and nine public sector references
• Certificates, qualifications and profiles of all the people who have worked on the projects referred to in the testimonials

And in the City council's PQQ documents there's a whole sector on "sustainability" (bear in mind this is a tender process for research and consultancy rather than supplying products, digging roads or such) including such gems as:

Please summarise how you minimise the environmental impact of your work activities, including any procedures for life cycle analysis of the procurement, use and disposal of products.

And:

What environmental objectives and targets have your organisation set against which performance is measured? Where appropriate, please state your current top three objectives and their relevance to your industry.

We're talking here about small consultancies providing research expertise - these sort of questions are simply not appropriate nor to they contribute anything to making Manchester City Council more sustainable - whatever that means. It does, however, get even better:

Please summarise how your business can help the city support the Council’s Sustainable Procurement Policy’s key objectives? A copy of the Sustainability Policy can be found here: www.manchester.gov.uk

And:

Please detail your willingness to work with the city council to contribute to the city’s Climate Change Action Plan target to reduce the city’s CO2 by 41% by 2020. A copy of Manchester’s Climate Change Action Plan can be found here: www.manchesterclimate.com

This approach to procurement - adding in spurious idiocies about "sustainable procurement" and "climate change" that might make some sort of sense in the buying of gas supplies, building materials or road construction but just put off small suppliers of consultancy and research.

Councils and other public sector bodies talk a great deal about opening up procurement, about supporting small business and the voluntary sector in the procurement process and about local purchasing strategies. This one PQQ demonstrates to me that - in Manchester's case - this is just talk. The procurement process merely suits the bureaucrat and the big business, it prevents innovation, discourages small and start up business and excludes new entrants through the use of frameworks and approved lists.

But then, why am I surprised? It is Manchester City Council after all and we know they can't manage their way out from a wet paper bag!


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"Everything is within the state, nothing without the state" - today's marcher motto

Back in the 1980s – that age evoked so charmingly by Ed Miliband recently – the word “alternative” was captured and held prisoner by the forces of the left. To be an ‘alternative’ comedian wasn’t to be funny (although some were this doesn’t include Ben Elton) but to be ‘left-wing’, ‘progressive’ and above all else against “The Tories”.

In the end the alternatives weren’t really alternatives at all – there was much talk of “defending”, “fighting”, “mobilising”, “organising” and, of course, “striking” but little of substance as to the alternative being proffered.

Now, we find the same voices crying out, a coalition of the self-interested and the prejudiced descend onto London disrupting the pleasure of tourists, the weekend of locals and the choices of visitors. To achieve what is unclear except that this is a march for the “alternative”.

 For some, such as the Unions the alternative is for ordinary people to pay more taxes and for government to cripple future generations with debt so their members can continue to consume what the nations earns (and remember, dear reader, that public servants – however valued – are solely consumers, they do not produce wealth or income) regardless of the interests of those who are producing that wealth.

For others – the spoiled children of UK Uncut in the forefront – the aim is to disrupt and annoy, to make a petty point and to adopt again that squadrista role of doing what the government refuses to do (not that they will succeed in this, of course) in “maintaining services”.

Behind all this lurks to prejudice, the hatred of business and enterprise. People clutch at a specious belief in the moral superiority of public service and wallow in ugly envy of others fortune. These people – who somehow believe, like Mussolini, that “everything is within the state, nothing is without the state” – are screaming for the good state, be it motherland, fatherland or the nanny, to care for them, coddle them, provide for their every whim and need. And to take the money for it off those “other” people.

This March for the Alternative is the political equivalent of a toddler’s tantrum.

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Please God, save me from plans...especially Big Plans

Dear reader, I do not wish to burden you with too much of the content of Bradford's Big Plan II merely to give you a flavour so you may appreciate the pain us Councillors go through on your behalf. In kindness to fine bloggers such as Msrs Puddlecote and Leg-iron, I shall refrain especially from sharing the contents of the section entitled "health and well-being" - it would strain their delicate sensitivities I fear.

Big Plan II is Bradford's second "sustainable community strategy" and is all about partnership working, cross-cutting themes and a "new outcomes framework going forward". We are assured that it is "evidence and intelligence based" and that it has been validated through "consultative workshops and scrutiny committees". And the plan "overarches" other parts of the District's "strategy architecture" including the Children's Plan, Economic Strategy and Council Corporate Plan.

I am sure you all now appreciate the significance of this document and of the work that goes into producing it. Big Plan II will be the basis of planning for delivery through the "Strategic Delivery Partnerships". The plan is the culmination of work across the "key priority themes" of "Health & Well-being", "Learning & Skills", "Safer Communities" and "Stronger Communities" (plus the essential elements about environment including obligatory references to climate change as well as a mystery something called "eco-systems services").

Without a scintilla of doubt, the good people of Bradford should be grateful for the effort of these noble public servants in bringing together such a fine plan. For Big Plan II is such a beast - resplendent with statements on "active citizenship", "maximising cultural assets" and "people centred services". We have created - and shall agree and publish a paean to the benefits of effective partnership working, prioritisation and focused joint working across cross-cutting themes. A plan where there is a "delivery picture", where communities are enabled and resilient, and where the focus is on "productivity, social good and public value".

Doubtless its launch will be lauded by the populace, celebrated with street parties while, in the City Squares, the Leaders and Executives are paraded shoulder high on gilded chairs as passers by strew rose petals and palm fronds before them to ease their passing. It shall be a wonder!

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