Ed – “education”…”sorry r*g**ed, r*g**ed, r*g**ed.” Start again…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11426411

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11429133

I hope he means what he said, retains it and delivers what he promised.

What do I expect from Ed?

I have been conspicuously quiet of late observing the fast paced workings of the Con-Dem [my coined phrase] Coalition Govt as if there’s no tomorrow.

Perhaps there isn’t given Ed’s positioning. But why am I so enthused about Ed Miliband given that I am Independent?

Simply because he does not appear to contraband like his elder brother who did harbour prime ministerial ambitions despite his constant denials holding a banana as his witness. Why, otherwise, would David think of relinquishing the cushy Westminster Village outside which either brother has not served?

So what do I expect of Ed?

In addition to accepting, including and implementing, if not all, some of my last manifesto, I expect him to be nationally contrite about the increased inequalities under 13 years of New Labour, about the New Labour’s Words of Mass Deception [WMDs] both in 1997 Manifesto and in the House of Parliament especially about Iraq & Afghanistan. I want him to come clean and condemn the excesses of New Labour and especially about them being economic or frugal with the truth about the economic mis-management of the UK PLC.

I want him to be humble and listen to the heart of Britain in introducing an English referendum [i] to select the new electoral system that the electorate decide upon  and [ii] to select a acceptable political governance for England.

For ease of reference see my past entries:

What is my manifesto, you ask?

https://anantmvyas.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/what-is-my-manifesto-you-ask/

Where do I stand on public services cuts, Housing Development in Milton Keynes?

https://anantmvyas.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/where-do-i-stand-on-public-services-cuts-housing-development-in-milton-keynes/

Finally, I expect him to develop an ability to introspect and correct his deviations from the promised path of non-alliance with any lobbies including the corrosive Jewish Lobby we know about.

India’s exemplary, free, nutritious, no-waste & satiating school lunches

This is an eye opener for it’s awe inspiring innovations both in terms of mass nutritive-food technology for school children, the sheer mind-boggling scale of dedicated distribution to all schools on time despite adverse infrastructures such as impassable roads and most importantly the much needed and admired theological and cultural innovation with the Haré Krishna Sampradaya [Hindu School of thought] in meeting the needs of the North Indian school children and their diversity.

I have been writing about the adverse impact on the health of Indian Indians through the excessive ingress of McDonalds, KFC & other fast-junk-food outlets in India.

Eat your heart out Jamie.

Ref: http://madhupanditdasa.blog.co.in/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Madhu-Pandit-Dasa/132740076763926?ref=ts&v=desc

2 min belated video Anant M Vyas Independent Parliamentary Candidate Milton Keynes North 2010

2 min belated video Anant M Vyas Independent Parliamentary Candidate Milton Keynes North 2010

Vote judiciously. Conservative Friends of Israel Supporting Israel and Promoting Conservatism You might choose the next Govt but will be controlled by others such as this powerful lobby group that also controls Obama Camp. Think.

VOTE4VYAS INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATE MILTON KEYNES NORTH

Can Independents crash the Westminster Parties?

Can Independents crash the Westminster party?

There’s 315 in total nationally – more than double the amount that stood five years ago.

WMD - Words of Mass Deception

They don’t have the electoral machine or resources of the main political parties, they get no party political broadcasts, and little guaranteed time on television or radio.

GB sick man of Europe?

VOTE4VYAS

Britain’s Election: Welcome to No Choice so-called Democracy

Con-Vince-ing the electorate?

Britain\’s Election: Welcome to No Choice Democracy

VOTE4VYAS

Check-out my Milton Keynes North Constituency MP candidate survey

Milton Keynes North Constituency MP candidate survey

Extracting the truth about funding for health inequality

Civitas Press Release

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Institute for the Study of Civil Society 2nd May 2010 Media Information: for immediate release PCT funding formula ‘adjusted’ to the tune of £10billion Extracting the truth about funding for health inequality England is now in its 16th year of using an unscientific formula for funding NHS primary care trusts (PCTs). In a new report from Civitas, Formulas at war over two sorts of inequality in health funding, Mervyn Stone, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at University College London, examines the evidence presented by expert witnesses at a hearing of the Rural Services All-Party Parliamentary Group in February 2010. He argues that the current PCT-funding formula cannot be defended on any rational grounds: ‘…the formula is a grotesque construction – and it became grotesque in the absence of any independent statistical assessment of what was being done’. (p6) In 2008, a new formula (CARAN) was devised to take account of regional variations in age-profile. The authors of the new formula were commissioned by the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation (ACRA). However, the new formula was undermined when ACRA encouraged Health Services Minister Ben Bradshaw to cut billions of pounds from the funds to be allocated by the new formula before it had even been put to work: ‘…ambitious civil servants were exploiting the new discipline of health economics to go where statisticians would not dare to tread’ (p16) ACRA insisted that there was some case for adjusting CARAN in 2009 to divert money to maintain the existing ‘balance’ of funding between ‘deprived’ urban areas of England and ‘affluent’ or rural ones. However, in Formulas at war over two sorts of inequality in health funding, Stone reveals that ACRA had absolutely no idea how big that adjustment should be: ‘Due to lack of evidence, ACRA concluded that it is not currently possible to technically determine the cost of reducing health inequalities between PCTs… Ultimately, ACRA considered the weight to be applied to each formula to be a ministerial decision.’ (p9) It was left for the Minister to ‘cut and paste’ the formula and to simply choose a figure: ‘Bradshaw top-sliced £10billion out of the PCT budget of £80billion’. (p4) According to Stone, Ben Bradshaw’s 13% re-allocation is now being spent by the thereby favoured PCTs just as it has been spent since 2003, except that it comes with an unobjectionable label – the reduction of long-term health inequalities. It is a sum of money that far outweighs the cost of what witnesses for the government acknowledged to be the largely ineffective public health programmes already attempted. Stone sees a connection between this administrative scandal and the recent revelation of what Baroness Morgan told the undercover reporter for Channel 4’s cash-for-influence Dispatches expose: “Getting through the door is the key thing… They’ve all got their Key Performance indicators, they have all got to deliver this healthy living stuff… they don’t know how to do it…” (p5) Stone’s intention is to alert people to the neglect of statistical thinking in the way government disposes of huge sums of money in mathematically nonsensical formulae. The question, as one witness put it, is: ‘…on what basis the decision was made to ignore that academic evidence’. (p13) Stone’s analysis is particularly relevant in the run-up to next week’s General Election, as he identifies a wider concern that politicians are avoiding discussion of this difficult issue. He calls for the government to be obliged to publicly defend its decision to “adjust” the formula. For more information contact: Mervyn Stone on 01895 674 715 Civitas on 020 7799 6677 or info@civitas.org.uk Notes for Editors i. Formulas at war over two sorts of inequality in health funding by Mervyn Stone can be downloaded at this link. ii. Mervyn Stone is Emeritus Professor of Statistics at University College London. iii. Failing to Figure by Mervyn Stone includes 19 pages worth of powerful and clear argument against the funding formula. It received the full support of the statistical profession and is available here. iv. Civitas is an independent social policy think-tank. It receives no state funding and has no links to any political party.

Hospital food designed to appeal to the taste buds of the elderly has been launched by TV chef Heston Blumenthal and a team of scientists.

Hospital food designed to appeal to the taste buds of the elderly has been

Taste test

launched by TV chef Heston Blumenthal and a team of scientists.

Flavour in foods, especially savoury ones, is enhanced by umami – known as the fifth taste, and also the Japanese word for delicious and savoury.

That’s all very well so long as the umami experimentation does not give these older, malnutritioned, patients the fatal colorectal tsunami.

My sixth sense warns me ‘Better malnutritioned than mortified.’

We know what happened when the Govt engaged Lloyd Grossman last time to titillate the taste buds of the British patients.

Reforming Public Services + cut fraud £22bn + retiring all public service consultants

Reforming Public Services? You thought that New Labour started that in 1997? Quite. You’re right but they failed to deliver because there were too many meaningless targets and too much micro-management which continues to-date.

Hence, the need to re-reform public services. But how?

Irrespective of what the centre says, first, there has to be political will from the leader of the Council and the Chief Executive to [1] thoroughly clean up the political governance and service delivery governance [2] separate wood from the trees [3] retain ‘change champions’ empowering them in the front-line to ‘break rules’ in-line with my tuppence-worth [below] think of and implement service changes to that reduce duplication, unnecessary bureaucratic effort, simplify and streamline delivery, save time and money [4] similarly identify areas of fraud and incisively deal with them including reforming procedures removing silo-mentality, sharing information within and external partners. [5] carry out root and branch reform of the entire culture without fear or favour.

How to reform public services?

As mentioned above my view is to start with the root & branch reform of the entire culture of the organisation.

Establish a TQ Culture Total Quality Culture where the Cultural implications of providing such a service to the customers of any Local Authority service provider are that it essentially involves the whole organisation, every department, every activity, every single person at every level. For such an organisation to be truly effective, each part of it must work properly together, recognising that every activity affects, and in turn is affected by, others.

The purpose and importance of policies and procedures is to translate the Government Legislation, Initiatives, Agendas, and directives  (through LA’s Strategies) into processes by which those could be delivered consistently, reliably, cost-effectively and within time. Such delivery mechanisms would in their own turn introduce a way of monitoring performance and to clearly identify (through the audit trail) where something went wrong, why and how best to address the failing so as not to repeat the same mistake again. Thus introducing such a (motivated) culture to the first step change into continuous improvement cycle.

I have numerous policy, service, procedural and processes innovations. All my innovations have been self-motivated business critical ideas delivering value-for-money or realisable efficiency gains. It is my Dharma, my true inherent nature, to find the most efficient and effective ways to serve – to cut through bureaucracy and wasted effort and to go beyond expectations in delighting the customers. That is the only way to repeat the business. True to that Dharma – my work ethics have always been: “I’ll conduct my life’s work on the basis that the question is not if the opportunities of improvement exist but how they will be taken.”

Hence, I consider myself also a Change Champion, Equality & Diversity Champion (including Older Peoples’ Services Champion), an Innovator, Public Service Improver, value-for-money & efficiency champion, and a Social Entrepreneur.

Although Sir Peter Gershon Efficiency Review insisted that efficiencies are achieved through:

• Maintaining the same level of service while reducing the resources needed or using fewer staff;
• Delivering additional outputs via enhanced quality or quantity of service for the same resource; or
• Remodelling service provision to enable better outcomes.

However, it identifies unacceptable activities as efficiency gains including:

• Re-labelling of activity viz reclassifying inspection as advice;
• Cuts that result in poorer service for the public;
• Transferring costs from one area to another without net reduction or
• Increasing fees and charges to the public.

It identified cashable & non-cashable efficiency gains by workstreams viz:

• Procurement efficiency gains realisable via greater economies of scale;
• Corporate Services – includes Finance, HR, ICT, Procurement, Legal Services, Facilities Management, Travel Services, Security Services, Marketing & Communications etc.
• Productive Time – increasing productivity of front line staff whilst increasing input by reducing absenteeism.
• Transactions – combining activities to deliver efficient services.

Whilst these all are applicable to any local authority, there is nothing new about the common-sense business critical activities that any business, private or public, worth its salt ought to be conducting to survive let alone succeed.

The latest biggest piece of Housing Legislation in a decade has become an act impacting further on the LA front-line staff who will have to take on greater role in regulating private sector housing. There are seven parts to the Housing Act – the first five cover private housing, part six deals with public sector issues & part seven with supplementary matters.

Public sector fraud running at £22bn

The culture therefore ought to identify, deal with and prevent future fraud both internal as well as external.

Slashing public sector consultancy budgets

Given the culture change I have mentioned above, the devolved budgets, accountability and empowerment to decide and deal with public needs will inevitably create a culture that thrives on learning as the keep earning good will from the service users. Such a valued and an innovative culture will in time be able to do away with expensive and unnecessary consultants, greatly reducing their budgets. But what does such a culture appear like?

Cabinet Office Research [1997-1999] confirms that local govt’s impressive track record of finding efficiencies is solely due to the innovative nature of the front-line staff who are in the best place to innovate as they know the systems inside out. The New Labour never got around to devolving controlling from the centre to know how to enable and empower the front-line services to do what they are employed to do.

My tupennys worth:

• Change – besides being unpredictable is essentially inevitable. The greatest personal skill needed for this decade will be manage radical change in order to survive as an organisation. The chaos theory emphasises that in order to lead this change one will actually need to break rules rather than keep them. Public service industry that essentially belongs to the public, there will inevitably be constant change; indefinitely.

• Thus a need for a collective organisational vision which may originate as abstract set of hopes and wishes evolving into something that makes sense for the organisation and its culture. The evidence that the vision has taken root is when people can sum it up in an anecdote or a story and begin to identify with it and live it – convincingly. To that end staff and other stakeholders must be given many opportunities to be involved in and contribute to this process over time.

• Both, political and managerial leader’s ability to make a difference by exercising control has been replaced by the need for negotiation, influence and networking. To be direct, powerful and effective in shaking up the local authority strategically they will need to empower others to act and grow in support of the vision both leaders and followers find worthy.

• This, to some extent, eases the way for the LA leadership to assist staff, averse to change, work with change that they are afraid of. Local government being a staff-rich activity must recognise the salience of staff in the reality of any change. To ignore it would be disastrous. Staff who will not go along with the change will mean no change. People are more important than structures and systems. Leaders must passionately believe in the direction and purpose of change. However, it requires that staff who are going to make that change own the change themselves.

• In order to facilitate this, the leaders need to cut across and move some of the activities outside the established pyramid hierarchies and involve change champions from across the organisation ensuring that staff freely choose the direction of change as their own preservation and survival.

• In order to work with staff’s own motivation as the main driver for change means finding out in detail what that motivation is. This process is essentially collaborative. Leading staff means being willing, able and self-disciplined to listen actively to what staff have to say and having infinite patience to communicate successfully and being able to make oneself understood.

• Hence the key skills a leader will need to lead staff through change are: (1) able to motivate their staff (2) in order to motivate their staff they have to listen to what their staff’s special motivation might be and (3) in order to be able to use that information on their motivation they need to be able to communicate with staff clearly.

• And finally, a leader must recognise that there are staff, in all organisations, wishing to change for some time who are highly self-motivated, talented and innovative bursting with ideas, energy and enthusiasm to excel but have been stopped by senior colleagues or by other barriers. The crucial managerial task is to seek out such gifted gems and to dismantle barriers to performance and productivity and channel talent into avenues that will directly contribute to the achievement of the organisational goals. This is crucial for any local authority in achieving its twin initiatives – Corporate Health MoT & deliver Valuing Diversity Policy.