Unimpressed

It would probably be unfair of me to suggest that only the Western Mail could dedicate 900 words to recounting what 60 people apparently think about themselves (by asking half their number) but I will somehow manage to live with my guilt.

I suppose we should be used to the near-anal obsession of the Welsh media with the innermost thoughts of the egotists who inhabit CF99 during family friendly hours. But for me poll raises only two important questions: (1) what fucking ass-wipe commissioned such a pointless exercise and (2) are we really supposed to give a shit?

Every little helps

I see that Tesco continues to do its bit for the economy with the announcement of 1000 jobs in Newcastle – which follows a grant of nearly £2 million from One North East, the regional development agency.

When the same supermarket giant decided to move 750 jobs from its distribution centre in Chepstow to Avonmouth, the big move was for the local AM to call for employees to have help in paying the bridge toll.

I think I detect a difference in approach.

Fair's fair - or is it?

At one level, I have to admit to having some sympathy with Labour MP Frank Field who claims that a decision on MPs expenses, applied retrospectively, has transformed him from being a winner to a sinner overnight. On the grounds of fairness alone, the process is arbitrary and demanding repayment of money claimed properly and in good faith at the time seems wrong.

Just as wrong as in the situation I read about that ex-Visteon (formerly Ford) workers in my neck of the woods stand to lose substantial chunks of their pension as a result of their firm going into liquidation earlier this year. The circumstances surrounding the collapse appear a bit dodgy in that the firm is still trading in the US and Europe and even has a UK subsidiary still operating. (Watch out for Channel 4's dispatches programme for more details).

Luckily, it looks that the government’s new pension protection fund will be able to put a partial rescue of the pension fund into effect, albeit at a reduced rate. The bad news however is that pensioners will also have to pay back thousands of pounds to the fund’s trustees because of rules which cover prior ‘overpayment’ by rescued schemes.

Many workers opted for early retirement based on company and union assurances that the system provided for this sort of thing and that they were protected by hard-won terms and conditions. Now they find themselves substantially out of pocket because of backdated claims placed on them by arbitrary rules imposed by a third party. Any of this sound familiar?

The car industry in the past had a reputation of being a very well paid one and it cannot be denied that some of the pensions involve sums that are above average current wage levels – although they are considerably below what an MP could expect.

But whilst honourable members are taking tough about refusing to repay the cash, Visteon pensioners face a much stiffer sanction should they opt for a similar stance.

On the matter of security

I cannot help but feel that when the media haven’t got anything better to do, someone in charge decides that it’s time to write the usual scary stuff about identity theft and all the sensitive data which is out there waiting for the bad people to use in ripping us all off.

Now I have to say that I have never had my identity stolen or borrowed and I don’t know anyone in my immediate circle who has either. That is not to say however that it does not happen or that it isn't a traumatic experience for someone that gets hit. But I do wonder if all the stories and warnings from the security experts should be put in the same ‘keep-in-perspective’ category as articles on how eating several times your own weight in certain fruits can cause/cure/prevent cancer, etc, etc.

I used to work in an outfit where a lot of sensitive customer and product data was held on microfiche (yes, I’m that old). As the office junior, one of my jobs was to feed huge piles of plastic viewing cards, sheet by bloody sheet, into an industrial shredder that did cross-cuts and stuff like that. It was boring, mind-deadening work made bearable only by a happy coincidence that it was done in a room next door to the canteen area which meant frequent breaks when patrons complained about the noise.

Two things occurred to me during those days of bottom rung penance: Firstly, that all those spy films which involved someone concealing the secret plans for a new jet fighter on a reel of microfilm were absolute bollocks. (I was shredding technical specs for hand-held widgets that would fill a small filing cabinet). The other more meaningful observation was that if I had chosen instead to ‘lose’ the dozen or so black bin bags of microfiche in the skip behind the labs then anyone finding the data would need to know what they were looking at – assuming they had the specialist kit to do so – and have the time to analyse the figures. Surely it made more sense to have someone on the inside, i.e. bribe an analyst for the synthesised output rather than juggle with the raw background.

As it happens, I landed an analyst’s job a few months later and it was a continuing disappointment to me for the time I was there that no-one from the outside ever even expressed an interest in what I did for a living let alone tried to suborn me with money for what I knew. The bastards!

The point I’m making, albeit a bit clumsily I admit, is that it seems more likely (and cost-effective) that someone working in a technical call centre, for example, would hack customer database records for re-sale to other villains than some opportunist identity thief would choose to root around in my bins looking for crumpled receipts.

OK, I’m probably simplifying – and possibly rationalising - but I can’t help feeling that all those stacks of domestic-sized shredders in in Tesco and the constant messages from McAffe are more about creating and sustaining a market than protecting me from the bad guys. I’m also not too sure as to who just is is likely to cost me more in the long run.

Bean-counters Rule, OK

Nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems in politics in my experience - and especially in the run-up to a general election. I admit to have taken only a fleeting interest in the conferences; mostly because you no longer get to see the acute discomfort of a party hierarchy getting stuffed by the membership on an internal policy issue (which is usually of vital importance to delegates but completely irrelevant to everyone else). Sadly, in these days of voting by acclamation the only discernable protest is the duration of the applause.

Nevertheless, the trend I’ve picked up on despite my inattention, and probably because it is mentioned by a few commentators in the semi-serious press, is the debate as to whether or not size actually matters. By that I mean the scale of government involvement in our day to day lives and the size of the apparatus backing it all up.

The Tories, as exemplified by David Cameron, seem to have got this thing about “Big Government” whereby the state appears to be just as keen on surveillance as it does on social improvements, or possibly more so; demanding conformity from the public whilst breaking constitutional convention seemingly at will. The theme is reminiscent of the old ambition to roll back the tide of something or other but without all the handbag brandishing. It’s good stuff but the approach feels half finished in places and any attempt at moral high ground stuff leaves them standing knee-deep in designer duck ponds.

All the consensual hindsight tells us that the near-meltdown of institutions – along with the world economy – was a result of too little government in an under-regulated financial sector rather than too much. Or was it possibly just government being in the wrong place? Either way, it’s too big an anomaly in an otherwise fine-sounding theory to ignore for the present.

Tories are not alone in portraying the Blair-Brown legacy as one of burgeoning agencies staffed by prolific apparatchiks who try to control the shape, colour and consistency of our breakfast cereals. But the reality is probably not too far removed since ‘public sector reform’ has merely been translated into a tick-box regime supported by battalions of acronymic organisations obsessed with the process of weighing anorexic pigs whilst criticising everyone else for a ‘lack of strategic thinking’.

As every civil servant knows, each piece of legislation designed to address a social ill spawns its own plethora of statutory guidance along with the costs of setting up and sustaining implementation, enforcement, monitoring plus all the compliance checks without having to actually deliver what the minister had in mind before he or she moved on, got promoted or resigned to spend more time with their pension.

I could not really get a grip on the Lib Dem outlook other than that nice Vince Cable thinks it all too expensive. In fact, their whole service-cutting scenario is a bit difficult to take in at the moment and seems too much at odds with their honest revenue-raising image that has gained them solid if limited support in the past.

I suppose it is inevitable that the NHS would be the popular target for parliamentary wanabees eager to deliver a taste of austerity upon a well-fed public sector – even if it is a devolved service in Wales. Alun Cairns [who is also a tory AM so he is entitled] had a go at the number of managers employed in the local trust, or whatever incarnation they presently hold, but his idea of hanging HR staff from the lampposts didn’t really resonate with me at all as it sounded just too opportunistic.

Of course, the other well rehearsed point is that if you cut back on the number of bean-counters in the NHS in order to put more resources into vital work such as cutting back on waiting times, then who is going to check and report on the improvements? After all, isn’t the current problem with the police that too many of them are swamped with paperwork instead of tackling local crime?

No doubt the politicians of all parties will talk about “striking the right balance” without having a clue as to what it might be or how you achieve it. But in this age of entitlement where services are indistinguishable from commodities and in which we all know our rights as consumers, clients and citizens, any would-be government is going to find it tough to offer ‘choice’ if it is not also willing or able sustain the means by which individual choice is informed.

And Mr Cameron can thank one Margaret Hilda Thatcher for that conundrum.

Victimless crime?

Meandering my way through the blogs that normally take my interest, I was suprised to stumble upon a number of active/passive links to a BAE Systems website explaining how much the company contributes to the UK economy. It cannot be a coincidence that this campaign is launched as news emerges of a Serious Fraud Offfice action against the company.

The extent of the company's 'marketing abilities' were exposed by the Beeb a few years back and the jury is out (literally in some cases) as to whether these actions constitute a crime in the country in which the company is based or whether the 'consultancy fees' are paid or both.

I have to say though that the whole affair is made all the more confusing by suggestions by La Peston on his blogsite that BAE actually want to pay up and move on. I just wish the a few bankers displayed the same degree of contrition at getting caught and willingness to make amends.

A little less compensation, a little more sanction?

The Western Mail has been looking at NHS finances in Wales with special emphasis on the new-fangled health boards intended to replace NHS trusts & local health boards. It seems that they stand to pick up deficits ranging from £15m to £60m through some form of public sector equivalent of card balance transfer.

Whilst creative definitions of what is debt (and what is not) provoke justifiable commentary there is little on offer from opposition types in the way of actual alternatives – other than non-specific ‘savings’ which seem to headline so regularly in conference speeches. Not much better can be said however of ministers and their coded talk of cuts which only serve to signal a strong possibility that well-intentioned pledges of no redundancies may prove to be as insubstantial as the stance on kidney cancer drugs or promises of an equitable outcome for the location of neurosurgical services.

As ever, a driving sense of the ‘needs must’ tendency which still pervades the health service has provided promising localised solutions but no-one can pretend that these are pathfinders for the future or even entirely suitable solutions in themselves.

If the inevitable comes down to having to do more with less then for an extended period of public parsimony then I would argue that a start is made in squeezing down hard on those telephone-figure sums that NHS trusts set aside for compensation payments. To the outsider like me, provisions of £200m plus a year seems little more than a clinical cash-back arrangement within a culture that expects to cock-up.

And Patients Charter notwithstanding (or whatever its called these days), I get really annoyed at the projected £180 million cost of missed appointments in Wales. It is a downright bloody scandal and it is one of our own making. Yes, I know it’s ‘our NHS’ and we pay for it but that doesn't mean that users have the right to abuse its principles any more than they should be able to ignore publicly-funded traffic lights.

The NHS Confederation doesn’t think that fining no-show patients is financially viable but the same could be said of employing traffic wardens I suppose. For the meantime, I am quite happy to see someone who misses an appointment go to the back of the queue – until I come up with a new penality (or analogy).

I am not advocating the return of good old days with nurses in freshly starched uniforms (well not on this site, anyway) but I really do look to our politicians to at least show they understand that working smarter involves re-visiting the basics. They might also take some time in realsing that change happens at all levels - and it happens even when you didn’t start the process yourself.