What's wrong with the NHS? Bureaucracy - that's what's wrong

Let me introduce you to the Bradford and Craven Integrated Workforce Programme's workforce strategy (this will be referred to as the IWP so often you'll forget what it stands for at some future point). The IWP - Integrated Workforce Programme - reports to the Bradford and Craven Integration and Change Board (ICB) and "aims to work collaboratively to address the commonly identified system wide workforce challenges..."

OK so far? The ICB and the IWP that reports to it works in the context of the Five Year Forward View and the Five Year Forward View Next Steps for Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) and the work of these STPs will be delivered through new Accountable Care Systems across the Bradford District and Craven. Part of this delivery cross institutional boundaries and there is an Integration and Better Care Fund Narrative Plan 2017-19 for the Bradford District.

In amongst all this there are "a number of national, regional and local drivers and associated service strategies and plans..."

Five Year Forward View sub-strategies (GP Forward View, Mental Health Forward View etc. etc.)
West Yorkshire and Harrogate STP (WY&HSTP)
Better Health Better Lives (part of Bradford Council - BMDC - plans)
Bradford District and Craven Health and Wellbeing Plan
Bradford District Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy
North Yorkshire County Council's Health and Wellbeing Plan
Home First Plan
Children, Young People and Families Plan
CCG Primary Care Strategies

This list is preceded by the word "including" which implies that there are perhaps some other plans and strategies not referenced.

In order to "support the delivery of the transformation agenda" there are a "number of collaboratives" which include:

Local Workforce Action Board (LWAB, WY&H)
West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT)
WY&H Mental Health Partnership
'Team Bradford' Employers Conference
Bradford Health and Care Education, Employment and Skills Partnership (BEESP)

Apparently the IWP will "ensure alignment with these enablers" and will "work on the footprint deemed most appropriate in facilitating realisation" of the plans. (Takes a deep breath).

There are some workstreams including plans for a West Yorkshire National Skills Academy Centre of Excellence for Support Staff Development and plans for a new medical school in Bradford (apparently the University has to have permission from the NHS or the government to train doctors something that further underlines how stupid this whole system has become).

Somewhere in all this soup of bureaucracy and management mumbo-jumbo there's perhaps some good work going on. The difficulty, however, is that reading the reports reveals little but an enormous and costly bureaucracy directed, in this case, to answering the relatively simple question "how do we improve the quality of our workforce, reduce turnover and meet future needs." Multiply this 'collaboration' across all the UK's myriad health bodies and the result is uncounted millions in taxpayer cash splurged on a pyramid of acronyms, plans, strategies and (new one to me this) narratives.

The NHS doesn't work. And it's only the persistence and creativity of front-line staff (most of the time) that stops the bureaucracy completely preventing anything happening at all. This isn't about funding - most cash will likely, as we've seen with Better Care Fund, result in more new bureaucracy. Indeed what is clear from any encounter with the management of the NHS is that the organisation is at its most creative when it comes to inventing new and ever more complicated systems of bureaucracy.

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Government...

A couple of examples from John Stossel at Reason:

But New York City's bureaucrats are unapologetic about their $2 million toilet. The Parks Department even put out a statement saying, "Our current estimate to build a new comfort station with minimal site work is $3 million."

"$3 million?!" I said to New York City Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver, ingcredulously.

"New York City is the most expensive place to build," he replied. As a result, "$2 million was a good deal."

I pointed out that entire homes sell for less. He said, "We built these comfort stations to last... Look at the material we use compared to that of a home. These are very, very durable materials."

They have to be, he says, because the bathroom gets so much use. "We're going to expect thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of visitors... So we have to build it to last."

Yet not far away, Bryant Park has a bathroom that gets much more use. That bathroom cost just $300,000. Why the difference?

Bryant Park is privately managed.

Or in Canada:

Toronto's government estimated that a tiny staircase for a park would cost $65,000-$150,000.

So a local citizen installed a staircase himself.

Cost? $550.

Did the bureaucrats thank him? No. They say they will tear his staircase down. Can't have private citizens doing things for themselves. (Update: The private stairs have been torn down, and the city says it will replace them for $10,000.)

Most places, most of the time, government is rubbish at everything.

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"Yet in thy dark streets shineth, The everlasting Light." - thoughts on crime and streetlighting.

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It's the longest night of the year (or pretty close to it) so what better choice of subject for a Labour Party press release than the practice of councils - as a cost and carbon saving measure - turning off or dimming street lighting. Unsurprisingly the Labour chap doesn't like this:

Labour’s shadow communities secretary, Hilary Benn, warned that ‘significant areas’ of the country were being ‘plunged into darkness as a result of David Cameron and Eric Pickles’ policies’. ‘Streetlights ensure that people are safe on our roads and feel safe walking home, especially at this time of the year when the nights have drawn in,’...

And I'm guessing that you will probably have a similar response after all as Roger Ekirch, author of 'The City Dark' observed:

...humans have long feared the dark, and...crime was the original impetus for widespread street lighting on the planet. 

The cloaked figure skulking in the shadows, of the thief using the cover of darkness for his crimes and the frisson of terror as we scoot past the entrance to the dark alley on the walk home - these are what comes to mind when we consider the dark. Nighttime is when evil does its thing, the domain of the robber, the murderer and the thief. So Hilary Benn, by appealing to this instinct is playing good politics.

The problem is that it's just not as simple as this - the link between the dark and actual crime (as opposed to actual fear of crime) really isn't a clear cut as Benn's comments make it out.

...some research indicates that an increase in number and brightness of streetlights actually increases the occurrence of crime, noting that street lighting allows perpetrators to monitor their own actions without the use of flashlights or other lighting devices that would make them visible to others. A case has also been made that offenders need lighting to detect potential targets and low-risk situations.

Indeed there is a catalogue of evidence suggesting that additional lighting has at best a marginal effect on levels of crime, that most crime takes place during daylight hours or where there is good artificial lighting, and that there is a point (accepting some crime reduction benefit) when lighting makes no difference.  After all there is some logic - assuming your typical criminal can't see in the dark - to the observation that ne'er-do-wells need light just as much as us law-abiding folk.

None of this is to suggest that turning off the lights is always a good idea or that the installation of better lighting (such as the LED lights we now have in parts of Cullingworth) isn't a consideration. However, we should look carefully at the extent to which we are lighting up isolated stretches of road throughout the night when only a very few cars and no pedestrians are making use of the lights. Rather than indulging in a typical piece of modern politics - a shouty press release designed to scare people rather than cast illumination on the issue - maybe we should be discussing how to reduce the waste (and it is a waste) of lighting up large parts of the country merely on the off-chance that somebody might pass by.

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The Guardianista solution to food waste - reintroduce rationing!

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There are times when the Guardian reads like a parody of itself. So part of me wants to roll about laughing at the woman who is so concerned about food waste she wants rationing back.

But then I stop and think - a national newspaper (with a growing international reach) has given this person space to write an article that opens with this:

Nobody does as they're told unless they're forced to...

And this wasn't just some sub-editor getting carried away - the writer, one Michele Hanson, really means it:

Don't they realise that hardly anyone does as they're told unless they're forced to? Especially if it means less money and less of what they like. I long for a strict nanny state, to bring back rationing, so no one would be allowed to over-stuff themselves with great slabs of meat daily, or waste their crusts or peelings, reject twirly cucumbers or knobbly fruit and veg.

The whole (blessedly brief article) reeks of that smug superiority the Guardian does so well. Telling the proles out there that they are victoms of something called 'consumerism', that they are fat and greedy, and that they would be better off if people like Michele Hanson stood over them to make sure they rendered down bones for stock.

As it happens I was brought up to dislike wasting food. But that's my choice. If another person wants to buy loads of food and then throw it away that's there prerogative - the secret is in the word 'buy'. This amazing innovation means that the food becomes the property (another term foreign to Guardianistas) of the buyer. And if they want to sit and watch it rot in a bowl, they can do just that. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with the EU, the House of Lords, the Guardian or Michele Hanson.

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Bradford and The Cuts

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There are some useful figures here about the actual changes to Bradford Council's budget since 2007/8 on the Conservative Group blog. It concludes with this paragraph which rather sums it up:

The truth is that Bradford Council has faced significant reductions in grants and that, outside the protected areas of education and public health, this has had quite an impact on service provision. However, we can find over £500,000 for union officials and their perks, can spend nearly £5m on ‘strategic support’ and can willfully turn down government grants so as to make a political point about council tax. This isn’t the sign of an organisation in crisis but of one that is only just getting to grips with waste and excess.

Do have a read of the whole piece.

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The BBC is completely out of control...

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Yesterday I noted that the BBC had sent 140 people - at the cost of over £1m - to South Africa following the death of Nelson Mandela.

Today a couple more examples of our state broadcaster's egregious waste of tax money:

The BBC is spending up to £500,000 on a major refit of its £1 billion new headquarters because staff have complained their state-of-the art surroundings ‘lack character’.

The high-spec London HQ was only opened in June – four years behind schedule and £55 million over budget.

But the Corporation has already decided to revamp two floors of New Broadcasting House to make them ‘more creative and vibrant’ – following a string of gripes from staff.

And...

The corporation said it had no choice but to have two studios, which are expected to cost it close to £500,000 in building costs and rent...

That's right the BBC is not only lavishing money on the sports coverage of next summer's World Cup finals in Brazil but is planning on sending a whole news team over to Brazil as well. And building them a studio (apparently because of some nonsense about 'broadcasting rights') - in Rio where England aren't even playing!

Accountable? Not in the slightest.

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The BBC really is a joke....

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...a cruel joke on all those poor folk in council houses coughing up for the license fee (and filling up magistrates courts when they struggle to pay it):

The BBC sent 140 crew members to cover Nelson Mandela's memorial despite receiving more than 1,000 complaints over its 'excessive' coverage of his death. The number of staff dedicated to the iconic leader's death was far greater than its rivals, including ITV which reportedly despatched just nine staff to South Africa.

I'll grant it's a leading news story, I concede that it merits high profile coverage but this scale of indulgence - it has cost the BBC over £1m to cover just this one story - is an insult to all the people who fund the BBC.

Apparently this degree of coverage was justified because Mandela was:

 “the most significant statesman” of the last 100 years. 

Seriously - not Churchill who led Britain through the war, not Kennedy who started the space race, not Gandhi who help create the world's biggest democracy, not Thatcher and Reagan who with Gorbachev brought the 'Cold War' to an end, not Roosevelt who led America through depression and war, not Kohl who unified Germany, not any of these people.

I give up with the BBC. And so should the rest of us, it doesn't serve us, it just exploits our credulity and indulges its own bias. At an unnecessary cost in taxation.

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Sorry but state direction of the food system won't reduce waste...

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On the face of it seeking to reduce the amount of food we throw away unused is a good thing. It certainly makes sense and I'd be up for encouraging people to try and reduce the amount of grub we trash.

However, the food fascists don't quite see it this way:

For starters, food loss and wastage needs to be seen as a cross-cutting policy issue, rather than a lifestyle choice to be left in the hands of individual consumers and their consciences.

You are not to be allowed. Throwing stuff away will be banned. Action will be taken.

Now, if the article from which that quote came was from George Monbiot or some other slightly batty green obsessive then we could shove it to one side, smile and move on. But the authors are the Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Program. These are big panjandrums of the international boondoggle circuit, blokes whose words are hung upon by lesser mortals, people who can effect change.

And the change they want is to say to those managing bits of the food system - farmers, truckers, supermarket managers, market stall holders and, of course, us consumers - that the government knows better. Taxes will be raised and "invested" in preventing waste (as if those producers and distributors aren't already pretty bothered about reducing waste as it represents lost income or extra cost), conferences will be held and grand food strategies replete with ideas of 'security', 'climate change' and 'fairness' that corrupt the very idea of liberty and choice.

In the end, if I want to chuck half the food I buy away that's my loss. And frankly nothing at all to do with the UN or indeed any bit of government beyond the part that runs the bin wagons. State direction of the food system won't reduce waste, will almost certainly make food more expensive and will problem make matters worse - more starvation, more tonnes of food heading for landfill and a new army of fussbuckets sticking their unwanted fingers into a system that works pretty well.
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For starters, food loss and wastage needs to be seen as a cross-cutting policy issue, rather than a lifestyle choice to be left in the hands of individual consumers and their consciences.
Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/on-the-massive-costs-of-food-wastage-and-loss-by-jose-graziano-da-silva-and-achim-steiner#DKFRGYPi5AwpPVUj.99

How the police waste resources...and then blame the public

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Shock, horror, scandal! One drunk takes 17 - yes, folks one seven, seventeen - coppers to respond. Now leaving aside that I don't believe a word of it, what a waste of resources. This is today's instalment of Chief Constable Adrian Lee's tinpot fascist campaign against people having a good time.

Four policemen to arrest one drunk - two in a patrol car! Aren't the police patrolling the town centre anyway? What this report tells us is that policing in England is a bureaucratic mess and that, under the leadership of men like Mr Lee, the service couldn't manage its way out of a wet paper bag.

Apparently police resources would be better deployed elsewhere:

And those resources would be put to much better use in local communities rather than being called into town centres every weekend to deal with people who wouldn't cause problems if they hadn't consumed so much alcohol

I've really no idea what those "resources" would be doing in "local communities" at midnight on a Friday other that sitting about drinking tea or pointlessly patrolling empty streets. I guess they could use the time to keep up with the paperwork that people like Mr Lee create for them?

Drunken assault is anti-social. But then so is much of the rest of the things police deal with - burglary to feed a drug habit is anti-social, shoplifting is anti-social. In truth all crime is anti-social, the police spend most of their time dealing with people who, for whatever reason, cause problems. It's why we have them, it's what we pay Mr Lee and others to do.

It seems however that, in Mr Lee's world, the problem is with the public not the incompetence of police systems.

Oh and while we're about this - there is no such thing as "24 hour drinking" but since the liberalising of licensing laws alcohol consumption has fallen. Every single year and the biggest fall is amongst the young - the very people Mr Lee blames for the police's bureaucratic uselessness.

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Permission to dump, Sir? Some rubbish bureaucracy from Bradford Council

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In this year's budget Bradford's Labour leadership - supported as they are by the watermelons from Shipley - forced through a decision to introduce a permit for residents wanting to make use of 'household waste recycling sites' (or 'tips' as most folk call them). Officers have been trying to introduce this tidy little scheme for some long while but it's only this year that they've found - in Labour Cllr Andrew Thornton - someone stupid enough to agree to the idea.

We're told - without any evidence other than the opinion of officers - that Bradford is a net importer of waste. People from Leeds, Kirklees, Halifax and Skipton are driving into Bradford to deposit their broken furniture, bags of coat hangers and knackered white goods. Oddly enough, all those other councils believe the same and are introducing similar schemes - presumably the extra rubbish is freighted in from Maastricht or perhaps even deposited by visiting Martians.

So far, so bad. A problem that isn't a problem is identified and a solution - introducing a permit - is proposed and accepted by an idiot politician (Cllr Thornton in this case who was told that it would save loads of money). But it gets worse.

To introduce the scheme the Council has sent every resident a form that they are asked to take to their nearest tip along with their Council Tax bill and their driving licence. Information - address, driving license number and the tip the resident uses - is collected. The instructions say that the operatives at the tip will issue the license and off we go.

Sadly, the Council had forgotten to tell the folk at the tip - who didn't know about the forms and didn't have any permits to issue. So the forms were gathered, placed in a box and, one assumes, the Council will post out the permits. Asked about why all this personal information is needed, the Strategic Director in charge said this:

It is not, all we need is proof of adress (sic) that is the same as the Council tax bill. More often than not people show their driving license (sic) for this purpose but any other appropriate formal document traditionally accepted will do

The intention is for proof to be shown and the permit can be issued. There was no need for a form, no need to collect the data and no need to gather thousands of pieces of paper containing sensitive personal information (address and driving licence number - what could Mr Huhne have done with that, I wonder?).

Truth is that there's no need for the scheme at all - the bureaucracy alone negates much of the saving. And that's before all the aggro from people who lose their licence, leave it on the side in the kitchen or generally do what we all do from time to time. And what about the bloke from Pudsey who takes some stuff from his elderly mum's house to the tip? I guess he'll have to go to Leeds?

So we have here a typical council initiative - not really necessary, disorganised, unclear and unsafe. All in the name of some savings that they'll never be able to prove came about because of the scheme!

Well done Cllr Thornton. You win Numpty of the Month for March!

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Haringey Council - fussbucket central!

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Although I fear that Councils elsewhere will be rubbing their hands in glee at the opportunity to fuss and bother over petty regulation:

Cllr Nilgun Canver, Cabinet Member for the Environment at Haringey Council, said: 'We will continue to work closely with our partners in the police and the courts to tackle illegal activity around vehicles, especially looking out for unlicensed waste carriers that are responsible for so much dumping in our borough.
 

Now I'm pretty sure that this nannying politician didn't write that quote - it was crafted by a well-staffed press office and approved by layers of bureaucrats. I could launch into a rant about so-called "unlicensed waste" and the obscene targeting of tradesmen in vans going about their everyday business. You know why the carpet fitter won't take you old carpet away? And you have to take your own waste to the council tip?

It's because councils have a nice little earner ripping off tradesmen and the Environment Agency has some expensive regulations for people moving "waste" about. Most of these regulations are not there to save the planet, to promote recycling or any such noble aim - they are there to protect primary manufacturers, they a simply protectionism via regulation.

Cllr Canver (or rather the jobsworth who wrote the quote she approved) assumes that Fred the plumber with some household waste in his van is going to do some "dumping in our borough". Rather than take it home, transfer it to his private vehicle and then take it to the tip - thereby avoiding tipping charges from the Council.

The report - understandably - focuses on the utter nonsense of fining a non-smoker driving a brand new van for:

Clipboard-wielding council officers then, however, spotted that he didn't have a 'no smoking' sticker on his gleaming van and he was given an on-the-spot fine of £200. 

And Cllr Canver (without thinking because she probably didn't) had this to say:

We will continue to protect those workers who are forced to sit in smoke polluted environments because their employers don't comply with the law which bans smoke in company vehicles.'

The mind doth truly boggle - this was a brand new van, pristine and shiny, being driven by someone who had never smoked.

However the real lesson of this is that the authorities had no good reasons at all to stop this vehicle. Councils and police have adopted an aggressive and illiberal approach to anyone who has the audacity to use a van for work. I've no issue stopping a van if it's being driven badly, seems unsafe or might have been involved in a crime. But stopping every van that passes and trying to find things to fine the driver for - this was a deliberate and targeted attack on people going about their daily business.

Finally, the Council claims the caught "several fly-tippers" - given the location (Wickes DIY) and the presence of a load of hi-viz clad clipboard-wielders, this is almost certainly not the case at all. What they found were people without a waste licence - not the same thing at all. One is dumping stuff by the roadside, the other is not complying with an expensive piece of petty bureaucracy.

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The brave among you might care to check out Cllr Canver's CV - it's a paen to left-leaning fussbucketry!

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Hello Chief Constable, gotta new motor?

While the Police Authority has insisted on savings in front line policing - closing down public access to Bradford's police offices, for example, this doesn't extend to looking after the "Command Team". Yesterday I was e-mailed this:

West Yorkshire Police in its efforts to cut spending have just spent £40,000 each on 7 vehicles for its command team. Top cops in West Yorkshire are driving a fleet of flash cars – as the force struggles to save £96m.

More than £286,000 has been spent on top-of-the range models for the six members of the West Yorkshire Police command team and its counter-terrorism chief – at an average of over £40,000 per car. The motors include a luxury Jaguar XF, two BMW X5s, a BMW 535, two Audis and a Lexus 450H. 

Not bad business being a top copper but surely the men don't begrudge the brass their nice new motors?

The news, which comes as the force seeks to slash £96m from its budget and cut up to 2,000 jobs by 2015, has been met with outrage from frontline police.

So that's a 'no' then!



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So HS2 is a project where "successful delivery of the project is in doubt"

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The Cabinet Office "major projects team" thinks this of the High Speed Rail nonsense:

"...HS2 has been given the poor rating of "AMBER/ RED". This means "that successful delivery of the project is in doubt with major risks or issues apparent in a number of key areas. Urgent action is needed to ensure these are addressed, and whether resolution is feasible".

Remind me again why we are doing this?

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Evidence that bilateral aid is wasteful?

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Not that it's a surprise:

Documents recently made public by the UK government reveal the cost of poverty reduction in the Millennium Villages Project, a self-described “solution to extreme poverty” in African villages created by Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs. The project costs at least US$12,000 per household that it lifts from poverty—about 34 times the annual incomes of those households.

In fact, as this author makes clear, the level of dissembling by the DFID on these projects is even greater:

Can the Millennium Villages Project permanently triple the incomes of many people, or even any people, at the sites where it works? We can’t even say whether or not that has happened temporarily, much less permanently, because the project has never released any data about what has happened to the incomes of the people it experiments on. The project has been collecting income data for the past seven years. But hasn’t released any data about how incomes have changed over time. It has chosen to release other data on changes in non-income social indicators, but not the income data.

Can we guess that this high profile project promoted by a celebrity academic and funded by the British government simply isn't working?  Indeed the project appears to be little different from simply handing over cash:

The Millennium Villages Project is probably causing short-term improvements in things like access to clean water and skilled birth attendance at the sites it works in. My co-author and I showed this in a paper (available here, peer-reviewed version here), while we revealed that the project typically says those short-term effects roughly twice as large as they really are. But causing short-term improvement of some kind with charity does not make a development project successful.

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How the EU wastes your money... (a further installment)

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In this case it's climate change nonsense combining with food fascism:

Our project will demonstrate the tool to define country-specific sustainable diets across the EU. Recognising the contribution of the food system to GHG emissions, the project will determine the composition of sustainable diets across the EU as an important contribution towards stabilising GHG concentration at a level that prevents global warming above 2 degrees celsius. The project will establish the viability of EU-wide introduction of the Plate by testing and evaluating the tool three pilot EU Member States - Sweden, Spain and France

There's a nice 51,750 Euro budget for this nonsense! Off you go folks and bid! The project is managed by those nice friendly people at the WWF:

WWF has recognised that the current food system has substantial impacts on the environment. As part of the One Planet Food programme we are looking at both production and consumption, and are working on seafood, soy, palm oil, meat and dairy, water and agriculture. We are aware that the current dietary habits of the developed countries are unsustainable and as more and more people start moving towards the developed world’s high livestock product diet the impact on the natural world will be magnified and will accelerate habitat destruction and climate change. This will be compounded by the growing concern around food prices since the 2008 and 2011 price spikes and global food security.

This is utter rubbish of course but that doesn't stop our European overlords and their favoured lobby friends like WWF from squandering our money on research of this kind. But right now, the European economy is crashing and burning, millions are out of work, businesses are folding and social services are under pressure.

There is no case for the research when we're flush with money - right now it's an insult.

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Fiddling while the economy collapses...the EU propaganda continues

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So the whole thing begins to resemble a rather sarcastic pantomime, a celebration of mutual incomprehension mixed with self-interest but the EU panjandrums continue with their spending of our money on promoting their myth of Europe:

The European Commission is proposing to set aside €229 million for projects that help citizens to understand the functioning of the European Union, its values and its history. On 14 December, the Commission proposed renewing the current ‘Europe for citizens’ programme, which ends on 31 December 2013, and to increase the budget by €14 million for the 2014-2020 period.

That's a lot of money on promoting the "idea of Europe" especially at a time when frankly there isn't a great deal of money around (or so we're told0 to spend on such frivolity. Yet this propaganda is vital:

“The financial crisis has made Europe more important than ever before for the daily lives of citizens and for public debate. It is therefore more important than ever to support projects that allow citizens and civil society at large to become involved in EU affairs,” said Viviane Reding, the commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship.

These people really do inhabit a different world from the rest of us. They really are so wrapped up in their ghastly mythopoeisis that they believe this nonsense. Sadly, the target audience for this funding will cheer as they rush gleefully towards the honey pot that is other people's money.

If you fancy a shot at this cash, the proposals can be found here , you'll have to remember:

The programme is one of the instruments to link the democratic principles of Articles 10 and 11 TEU with a broad range of sectoral Union policies without replacing the specific dialogues with citizens, stakeholders and interest groups that the European Commission maintains. The next generation of the “Europe for Citizens” programme empowers citizens to exchange views on all areas of Union action and at all stages of the formal decision making process.

Clear?

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Things that are wrong with local government...

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I attended a meeting of Bradford's Corporate Overview & Scrutiny Committee today where we looked at the new "Sustainable Communities Strategy" - incidentally something we no longer have to produce. I asked what I thought was a pretty straightforward question - how much did the strategy cost to produce.

I was informed that this couldn't be answered as it was all officer time and any way we'd probably have to do most of the work regardless. Appalling.

Not only did we have a strategy without quantified objectives, indeed one majoring on generalised wishy-washy 'outcomes', but the extensive process of producing the strategy is uncosted. The whole exercise involved hundreds of meetings, rooms filled with paper and thousands of hours of officer time (and not just from the council but from our 'partners' too), yet no-one thought to keep track of these costs and assess whether the benefit of producing the strategy outweighs the expense of that production.

So when they bleat about cuts in Bradford, perhaps you should ask why this pointless process was undertaken while swimming pools were closed, libraries shut and disabled works made redundant.

This really is typical of local government, not just in Bradford but everywhere,

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Does it really cost that much?

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Hampshire County Council are proposing to put video of their council meetings on-line - all well and good but...

The estimated cost to taxpayers is £223,000 over five years. This includes £199,000 to install audio and video equipment in the chamber plus a mobile kit for use in other meeting rooms.

The bill also includes the cost of an outside organisation filming meetings in 2012 with council officials possibly taking over in future years. 

Surely all you need is a decent video camera and a computer? How does that cost nearly quarter of a million quid?

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..now about those BBC cuts!

The BBC’s decision to cut 2000 jobs needs to be set in some kind of context. Such as:

The BBC has sent 407 people to cover this weekend's Glastonbury festival, almost as many as it flew out to film last year's Beijing Olympics.

And:

At a time when the BBC is trying to make extensive savings across the corporation and cutting scores of jobs, it has still seen fit to have an astonishing 175 staff covering the U.S. election.

Or we could note:

Yet the Beeb, which insists it always looks for value for money, sent no fewer than 36 staff to cover the (World Economic) Forum. Sky sent one reporter, and ITV a grand total of three staff.

It does seem to me that there’s scope for a saving or two. Sadly, the BBC seems set on cutting its regional and local services – the very programming that isn’t viable commercially. All the shiny stars and the swanky executives will doubtless remain.

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...they can't stop wasting your cash can they!

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This time it's Leeds City Council:

Leeds City Council is set to take over the economic research and intelligence unit of axed regional development body Yorkshire Forward. Under a plan to be discussed by the Council’s Executive Board on Wednesday 7th September, the five members of Yorkshire Forward’s Chief Economist’s unit will be transferred to work for the Council at an annual cost of £343,000.

Wow! In these austere times the Council has found all that cash to take on an economic research unit. Presumably Leeds City Council aren't closing any libraries, shutting down any care homes, reducing the hours at any swimming pools or cutting the funding for any community groups?

But then it's a Labour Council - they'll need some help with economics!

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