Quote of the Day

"University is free at the point of use to the student, and graduates face an income-related payroll deduction when they start earning. Labour should be loudly cheered for bringing in the system and bashed around the head for its complete failure to get across to the public that this is how it works."
- Lord Browne

It's totally true, the public do not understand how it works, the state will even lend you money for living costs! The current government really needs to hammer this point home as they implement Browne recommendations.

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Stratford District Council Officers and the Transparency Agenda

At this morning's Stratford Business Forum Breakfast Paul Lankester, Chief Executive of Stratford District Council, spoke and detailed some of what the Council were doing to reduce their costs given the current and future budgetary pressures on them. All good stuff you'd think but then he moved on to talk about the transparency agenda that is being driven by the Department for Communities and Local Government, and it's head Eric Pickles MP.

For those that don't know DCLG are forcing Councils (and they really are having to force them) to publish all of their expenditure over £500 on their website. The idea is that this level of transparency on spending will make them think twice about what they spend money on, how much they spend and even if they need to spend it in the first place. If officers know that Mrs Smith at no 22, or even the Stratford Herald, can see that the council is spending £5,000 on renting meeting rooms at a Race Course for example they may think twice about if it's necessary.

What was Paul's view on this, remembering that he is the Chief Executive earning £107,574  for managing about 300 staff, well he said "I believe that all Council spending over £500 will be online today, for anyone sad enough to want to look". In one line he told you everything about what he, and presumably his team think about this powerful agenda to open up government at all levels.

But he didn't stop there he went on to talk about Freedom of Information Requests, stating that only 10% of them come from local residents and that the remaining balance come from journalists and special interests groups, no doubt alluding to the excellent TaxPayers Alliance, who are well known for their FoI requests. He made a good point about the resource requirements to deal with them, however the obvious response is that if data is routinely made available internally anyway then they shouldn't need 3 or 4 staff dealing with them.

Ultimately though what is wrong with anyone, be they a local resident or an interested body, or journalist having a right to information, a right to question what a public body is doing and a right to challenge them on it? Before FoI's particularly ones made in the area of finance the media and hence the public had no real way to know what public authorities were spending or doing with their tax money. Perhaps Mr Lankester has forgotten that he runs a public body and spends tax payers money not his own.

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Red Ed's Wordle

So I've quickly wordled Ed Milliband's conference speech to see if his main message really was generation. Unsurprisingly "Generation" is right up there, but "Must" is mentioned just as often, not to mention "Country" which is interesting, and then along comes "New" and "Change". If you look at the rest you can see just how many words were frequently mentioned reinforcing the view, in our office anyway, that the speech was a mess and all over the place.

NB: For those that don't know the larger the word the more times it was mentioned

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Quotes of the day - Vince Cable vs. Adam Smith

Vince Cable:

"Capitalism takes no prisoners and kills competition where it can, as Adam Smith explained over 200 years ago."

Except he didn't say that Vince, he said government kills competition

Adam Smith:

"Where free competition reigns, businesses cannot keep out competitors. Government policy should focus on increasing competition, ensuring that trade is honest – and on reducing other regulation."

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The state shouldn't compensate the poor - Clegg

'Welfare needs to become an engine of mobility, changing people's lives for the better, rather than a giant cheque written by the State to compensate the poor for their predicament.' 

Nick Clegg

You've got to hand it to Clegg he's got balls. On the eve of his conference he picks a massive fight with the left of his party by saying he basically disagrees with everything they stand for. 

After the defection of a Lib Dem councillor to the Conservatives here in Stratford, one wonders if Mr Clegg is lining himself up for something similar? If he carries on at this rate he'll be ousted as leader at the first opportunity, if that happens, maybe he'll be looking for a new home....

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Those Fringe Diary emails

Like many people I was fed up with the daily email coming from FingerPrint events about fringe events at Party Conference. There's no indication of why you're getting them and no unsubscribe, to be honest they feel a lot like spam.

So I fired off an email to FingerPrint saying I wanted to unsubscribe and considered them spam and got a nice reply back from one of their directors.

Dear Simon
I hope you do not mind me replying but please note when you registered you left ticked the option to receive conference related information.
I shall remove you from receiving further fringe diary emails.
However the Party may have you on other mailing lists because that option was left ticked - so you may need to ask to be removed from other emails separately.


Kind Regards


Shama Hussain

Director

 So there you have it, everyone is getting them becuase they left the box ticked to say they wanted to receieve information by email about the conference. As a result you get one email a day totally unrelated to you and your interests. Personally I disagree that these are related to the conference, is the fringe really  the conference, or by definition something else, a fringe to it? I expected to be receiving updates about the conference agenda, sessions, speakers etc, not these.

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Does the NHS have to cut the frontline?

The NHS has had its budget ringfenced, meaning no cuts in spending. However stories are starting to emerge, such as this one from Nick Robinson, suggesting that because NHS funding won't continue to go up at the phenomenal rates that it has over the past 13 years, hospitals will have to start making cuts of up to 12 %, and obviously this means less nurses and doctors.

Except it doesn't have to. I've spent this morning sat in the cafe at Warwick Hospital, whilst my wife has her gallbladder removed in the Day Surgery Unit. Whilst sat here I've noticed that on every table there's a little pop-up notice about the NHS pension choice packs that apparently all members of the NHS pension scheme over 50 on 1st October 2009 will soon be receiving.

So what's this got to do with cutting the frontline. Well inside this pack there will be:

• A Pension Choice statement
• The NHS Pension Choice Guide
• The NHS Pension Choice Guide DVD featuring financial educator Alvin Hall and ITN news reader Faye Barker

Yes that's right, the NHS produced a DVD featuring two "celebrities", who I somehow doubt did it for free, to help NHS staff make a difficult decision about what to do with their gold plated public sector pension.

When we talk about NHS spending it's important to remember that such a lot of it goes on things like this, all coming from the NHS Business Services Authority. The NHS doesn't just spend money on nurses and doctors, drugs and MRI scanners, there's a lot of this too, that can easily be cut out without affecting the frontline.

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