Every Child Does Not Matter

Prior to the credit crunch the estate agents reckoned 3 out of 4 house sales fell through following agreement on best and final offer. Reasons range from change in personal circumstances, lack of access to funding and deciding not to move at the last moment. One of the more interesting reasons is to get your kid into the local school. The scam works like this:

• Put in an offer on a house in the post code area for the school of your choice;
• Apply to the school;
• Get the place;
• Pull out of the deal.

Scam is probably a strong word because who could blame the perpetrator for trying to get their kid a decent education. In this particular story the plaintiff lived on an estate with known problems and would never be able to afford a house in the catchment area for the school she had set her sights on. Who could blame her? The ratio to class sizes between in the public and private sector is 28:14. Assuming that the 28 is well behaved and not suffering from any psychological or physical condition requiring significant teacher attention is unrealistic. Further degrading the teacher's capacity to educate instead of control behaviour. School facilities across the local area differ in the area of ICT, sports facilities, scientific equipment and art supplies. The closely you go to the inner city the worst the facilities become. Dame Suzi Leather's answer is to encourage the private sector to share their facilities with the public sector (working class hero...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzi_Leather). The Learning Skills Council wastes 300 million on a college building scheme and spends 60 million because the administration of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) policy is complex. Are these the best recommendations costly quangos can think of? Why don't we take all this money spent on the Charity Commission (http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/hc438_charity_18.pdf), failed construction schemes and costly adminstration schemes thne give 30% to social enterprises who enable social mobility and 70% to fund extra teachers. The tax payer spends a fortune on the public sector education system. Is their not enough public money but spent doing the wrong thing? I had a dream where for 1 whole term the DFES just let the primary schools do their own thing without any targets. Parents, children and teachers agreed the targets. Wonderful things happened.

What happens in the USA tends to happen over here. Shame of a Nation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pB-niRGNms&feature=related

Investment Bankers : Emperors New Clothes

One day, two Masters of the Universe went to the Emperor and promised him that they would sell him the greatest financial instrument ever. This derivative, they told him, was incomprehensible to anyone who was either stupid or unfit for his position. The Emperor could not understand the derivative, but pretended that he could for fear of appearing stupid; his financial advisors do the same. The Emperor then shows off the derivative to the market. The crowd in the market admires the complexity and depth of the financial instrument, until a small child cries out, “But it is worth nothing!”. www.mastersuniverse.net

Check out this brilliant website.

More Melons, 1.6 Million Tonnes of Wasted Food & Anti-social Behaviour

Co-op are a pretty decent company. They make more of an effort than their competitors where ethical business is concerned. http://www.co-operative.coop/ethicsinaction/sustainabilityreport/Ethical-Consumerism-Report/. I guess the message behind this story is about however hard companies like Co-op try at being responsible they just don't understand their role in the havoc we are seeing in our neighbourhoods. The result is stoopidnesss that even the most of creative abstract thinking satirist could never think up. I spotted the last melon. It just stood out in the fruit section hypnotised me and convinced me to stick it in the trolley. Got to the till and noticed there was a queue behind me. Disaster strikes. Apparently, the cashier cannot sell me the melon because there is no label on it. Something to do with EU law. I politely suggest searching for the code on till representing a melon. The code is a key to price information about the melon. These codes are either programmed locally into the till or downloaded from some computer hosted in a datacentre in the middle of nowhere. I offer 3 quid for the melon as some underage hoodies trying to buy booze start to get agitated. Now I'm screwed as the cashier has to call the manager using the ringer. Store managers are normally out back doing managerial stuff where you need them most. The 'outback' is usually outside the audible range of the ringer. The kind which is a black rectangular box with a white button and a single battery. While waiting I enquire about what will happen to the Melon if I cannot have it. The answer astounds me. It cannot go back on the shelf and will have to be thrown away. Retailers generate 1.6 million tonnes of food waste each year. Have they not heard of industrial ecology where one organisations waste is another's raw materials. Are the supermarkets aware of inter-generational equity i.e. leaving the planet in a reasonable state for the next generation? 1.6 million tonnes of food is enough to prevent a lot of children in the world suffering from malutrion and starvation. Now the hoodies are saying, 'Hurry up geezer'. I tell her to serve the Hoodies while the manager makes his from the 'outback'. Clearly, the Hoodies are under-age and very intimidating. The cashier does not ask for proof that they are over 21. I give up on the melon. Later that evening the Hoodies are hanging outside my house screaming obscenities and being sick. I call the non emergency number to ask the police to move them on. As its Friday night all the police in the city centre policing the night time economy. Pub prices are too high so everyone goes to the supermarket for cheap booze to get tanked up for the early evening. You know stuff like White Lightening brewed by Scottish Courage. A 3 litre bottle contains 22.5 units of alcohol (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=white+lightning). Next day I go to the papershop for the morning paper. NHS in the headlines again about the post code lottery for new types of drug treatments to offer hope. The cost to the NHS for dealing with the consequences of binge drinking is 40 billion a year. My car mirror has been snapped off and there are cans of Fosters and fast food wrappers on the pavements. There is also vomit on my back window tinged with the odour of piss in the air. The police never got my call when I called the contact centre using the non emergency number(SNEN). It was written down on a dispatch note on paper that never found its way to the person in the contact centre co-ordinating things with the police. Think the management consultants call this swivel chair integration. Allegedly, the investment in e-government and joined up working was meant to get rid of swivel chair integration. After all the local authority and police spent 100000s of tax payer cash on 800 quid a day CRM and information mangement consultants. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w41WcTCUY_Y

Henry Mintzberg : Managers Not MBAs & the Credit Crunch

In the early part of this century Henry Mintzberg a leading management thinker became very concerned about those who lapped up his every thought. The MBAers. A MBA is a Masters degree in Business Administration seen as the defacto qualification to elevate you up the corporate greasy pole. Where you study your MBA determines the kind of corporate doors you can unlock. The golden ticket is a Harvard MBA. A Harvard MBA will guarantee you a place in the upper echelons of power whether it be government, industry, investment banking or management consultancy. Prior to the credit crunch Mintzberg spoke about MBA courses of study instilling a sense of hubris in those destined for a career in the investment banking sector. Mintzberg argues compellingly that this has had a corrupting and dehumanizing effect not just on the practice of management, but also on our business, non-profit and community organizations, and even our social and cultural institutions. I just wonder how many of those bankers and consultants whose ways of working led to the credit crunch had MBAs. We will probably never know. What is evident is their management training may have led them to act in a way that has probably limited the life chances of those at the bottom of the social mobility ladder. Did Henry Mintzberg spot something worrying in the behaviour, conditioning and beliefs held by the next generation of managers that led to the credit crunch? All you MBA alumni judge for yourself and all you wannabee MBAers reflect. http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/302/

Melons

I love melons. No, not the kind in magazines Mary Whitehouse hates. Healthy juicy Honeydew, Galia and Water melons. You can do loads with a Melon. 5 years ago I was invited to a penthouse in Canary Wharf to a houseparty. It was full of high powered thinkers who worked in the Square Mile. You know the ones who now have jobs as a result of being bailed out with tax payers cash. The host had soaked a load of Water Melons with vodka. The illuminating thing about the night was watching the Square Milers gorge themselves on vodka soaked water melon. Water melon is not something you should gorge on as it drips everywhere. Over dosing on something soaked in vodka is generally not a good idea. The thing about pre-credit crunch Square Milers is they get increasingly cynical about those less fortunate than themselves as they get drunker. Square Milers who gorge on melons, get pissed on vodka and slag off the rest of us need some of this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FpZJUw6RYQ

Audit Commission : In denial?

Below is a link detailing an illuminating debate between Seddon and Walker from Audit Commission. The most surprising aspect of the debate is that most of the people commentating in general agreement with Seddon look like they are from the public sector. The Audit Commission is a classic example of command and control thinking. Why is the Audit Commission not listening? Why do central government, quangos and local government leadership refuse to listen to the front-line? Read the article and judge for yourself.

http://www.lgcplus.com/finance-and-partnership/walker-v-seddon-the-debate-goes-on/5004313.article

Loopy Lou Citizen Centric CRM & Refuse Collection

Local Government has been pretty sharp on the uptake of customer relationship management. The single one stop shop is common place. This particular story illuminates one particular local authority's approach to encouraging is council tax payers to use the contact centre. One of the biggest sources of call volume is what is know in the trade as street scene. A main cause of call volume are the antics and working practises of the waste management department:

• 'My bin was not emptied'.
• 'They've left the bin in the middle of the road and I cant put it back'.
• 'They wont empty my bin because the lid was not closed properly'.

Instead of getting the bin men to change the way they work and be a bit more flexible the answer is more investment in call centres to explain why bin men wont do what they used to do. So what was the initial experience of users when they called the call centre?

The council had not communicated to its tax payers the number to call if they had queries about bin collections etc. As a result callers did what they have always done either phoned the old number or contacted the waste management department direct. The person answering the phone could answer their question but a policy decision was made to instruct the caller to use the contact centre. Just to be sure the council changed the employee's contract to discourage them from answering a question they could answer from a tax payer.

Step 1 Upon calling the contact centre the caller had to explain for a second time their requirements or concerns.

Step 2 The call centre assistant raised a case that was to be work-flowed to the waste management department. Unfortunately, the spanking new CRM system did not talk the waste management computer system. So the waste management department employed someone to manually allocate the calls and keep the CRM system up to date. The result was that some cases got lost.

Step 3 Callers with cases that got lost phoned back to chase. Some had forgotten the 10 digit modulus 11 quadratic reference number they were given. So the call centre assistant promised to look into it then phone back.

Step 4 In frustration callers contacted the waste management department direct. Goto Step 1.

Our bin men do a vital and important job, which has more social purpose than working in a call centre divorced from reality. Bin men should be paid more instead of using the money to staff call centres who just apologise for poor service and record information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSbz5SgES-4&feature=fvw

The Rise of Fascism & the Bloated Quangos

In the last local elections 900000 people in the UK voted for the BNP and their are sections of the UK muslim community sympathetic to the cause of Al Qaeda. The BNP & the likes of Fascist zealots Anjim Choudry & Abu Izzadeen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTZJh-SYRSg, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv704B93EZU&feature=related) present the biggest threat to community relations than any other politcal or idealogical movement. Why did 900000 people vote for the BNP and why do sections of the UK muslim community sympathise with Al Qeada? Because they make promises they are unable to deliver upon.

• The UK government is soft on crime the BNP will be hard on criminals. How?
• Immigrants are taking all the jobs. The BNP will repatriate all the immigrants and give those jobs to the 2.7 million unemployed. Assuming the 2.7 million want to do those difficult and very important jobs that immigrants seem more able and willing to do.
• The BNP will make us more secure by bringing home the troops. Why does bringing home the troops make us more secure? Surely, putting in place health, education and economic opportunities for women and the poor is betting than letting Sharia law and Jihadists flourish.
• A sharia state can be established in the UK. How? Do the likes of Anjim and Izzadeen not know that just like the mujahadeen in Afghanistan the British people have always challenged, fought and beat fascist oppressors.

So as the tax payer we invest in the Commission for Racial Equality and Commission for Human Rights to try and marginalise the extremists. Their response to the rise of fascism is to protect their own self interest. Trevor Philips and Nicola Brewer must do more to challenge the BNP, discourage sharia law and champion rights for the victims of crime instead of wasting their time making videos on youtube to show off their offices. Being to soft on criminals, tolerating public sector inefficiency, encouraging +ve discrimination and just monitoring anti social behaviour in our local communities is fuelling a move towards nihilism whether the kind advocated by the BNP, gang culture or Al Qaeda. The quangos headed by Trevor Philips and Nicola Brewer are not doing enough with the money we have given them to stop the rise of Fascism and inequality. The Fascists will be laughing their heads off at our response to their plans to cause chaos. Trevor looks so bored talking about his sofa and Nicola thinks she is running a corporate business.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qTWgvofoA4&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6xxNO5EtWk&feature=channel