A good half hour of my morning was spent making increasingly sarcastic comments at each of theToday Programme's news items confirming to me that the world would be a much better place if I was involved in running it!
Can somebody just explain to me how the Ministry of Defence came to be writing lesson plans? I mean, putting aside the obvious opportunities for propaganda, isn't that what teachers are supposed to do?
Does this government and Gordon Brown's need to be in control of everything mean that teachers are reduced to acting as government talking heads?
What other lesson plans are being provided by government departments?
The fact that I was in work at any sort of time resembling 'on time' was as a result of being forced to get up and move away from the radio before the absurdity of labour apparatchiks belief that they know better than everybody about everything, made me do something regretable to it. Left to me and Southern Railways I would have indeed been my customary 'gone 9'!
Showing posts with label Labour Government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labour Government. Show all posts
History according to the MoD
Posted in History, Iraq War, Labour Government, Ministry of Defence, Propaganda, Schools, Teachers on by
The trouble with targets
Posted in Crystal Palace, Labour Government, Police, Safer Neighbourhood on by
The police federation is complaining about targets and saying that this is not what they all joined the police force for.
OK but all organisations that are spending someone else’s money, whether shareholders or tax payers, should be accountable and transparent in showing what they’ve done with the money.
BUT, lets face it, the government has a real blind spot when it comes to setting targets.
You get what you measure and when setting targets, you have make sure that you actually want what you’re measuring.
Too often, government departments set out to measure activity rather than outcomes. So, what you get is a lot of activity. In the example of the police’s you get a lot of arrests being made rather than serious crime being reduced; in education, you get good test results but kids who get to university unable to spell and in health you get short waiting lists but a rise in hospital acquired infections.
The trouble is, this government, does trust people to deliver those outcomes, it is unconvinced that it will be done their way and so, in the manner of a control freak (and Gordon isn’t even in charge yet) it sets out to measure what actions are taken as opposed to as what outcomes are achieved.
Outcomes are invariably harder to measure and often subjective and qualitative rather than easy numbers but it can be done. I have filled in enough Lottery and other Grant application forms to know that it can be done; it just takes more work and a bit more vision…or…..trust, even.
That said, one concern I have about the call from the Police Federation is their suggestion that dealing with small crimes isn’t what they all joined the police service to do and they should be focussing on large, serious crimes. Well, maybe they didn’t, but an awful lot of money been spent on a new focus, particularly in the Metropolitan Police Service, on community policing and dealing with low level crimes.
Safer Neighbourhood teams are the physical incarnation of that focus and they are as much about the perception people have of crime and dealing with their fear of it as they are about dealing with the big things – there is definitely no rushing around in police cars with the sirens on allowed – our PSCOs, in Crystal Palace, have bikes when they’re not on foot!
Key to this is dealing with signal crimes like graffiti, fly tipping, unruly teenagers and unruly adults and crime prevention. It is slow burn stuff but here in Crystal Palace Ward (where I chair the resident’s panel that provides direction to the team) we are just beginning, after two years, to reap the benefits. The police are starting to get more information about the drug dealing that goes on in the car parks of one of our estates because the residents are starting to know and trust the beat officer. This kind of success will eventually be measured in terms of arrests but in them mean time we need to protect and support the activity. Because what it seems do is change people’s perception and fear of crime and above all improves the quality of their lives.
This approach to community policing and its focus on dealing with low level crime is important and over the last 40 years the direction of the police, particularly in London has oscillated between the ‘Bobby on the beat’ and dealing with the big, ’important’ crimes that the Police Federation and John Denham (Chair of the Home Office Select Committee) seem to want them to go back to pursuing.
However, the model of community policing that is being implemented by the Met and funded by Londoners has not been made up on the fly…it is based on a model developed in the US and the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy that has been in place and successful since 1993.
What it really needs is consistent funding and a belief that successful outcomes will be delivered in the long term and not necessarily in the short term; although, I have to say our experience in Crystal Palace is that it is a bit of both. The Government, the Select Committee and the Police Authorities all have to hold their nerve and not veer back to measuring just large scale crime detection.
I know that I am beginning to sound like a broken record on this, again, but the government and the centre has to trust locally accountable organisations (although not as accountable as I’d like them to be) to deliver and not force them to use just one method of getting to the right outcome.
We must stop measuring just activity; a good start would be to measure levels of satisfaction with the service provided or perception of crime or quality of life.
OK but all organisations that are spending someone else’s money, whether shareholders or tax payers, should be accountable and transparent in showing what they’ve done with the money.
BUT, lets face it, the government has a real blind spot when it comes to setting targets.
You get what you measure and when setting targets, you have make sure that you actually want what you’re measuring.
Too often, government departments set out to measure activity rather than outcomes. So, what you get is a lot of activity. In the example of the police’s you get a lot of arrests being made rather than serious crime being reduced; in education, you get good test results but kids who get to university unable to spell and in health you get short waiting lists but a rise in hospital acquired infections.
The trouble is, this government, does trust people to deliver those outcomes, it is unconvinced that it will be done their way and so, in the manner of a control freak (and Gordon isn’t even in charge yet) it sets out to measure what actions are taken as opposed to as what outcomes are achieved.
Outcomes are invariably harder to measure and often subjective and qualitative rather than easy numbers but it can be done. I have filled in enough Lottery and other Grant application forms to know that it can be done; it just takes more work and a bit more vision…or…..trust, even.
That said, one concern I have about the call from the Police Federation is their suggestion that dealing with small crimes isn’t what they all joined the police service to do and they should be focussing on large, serious crimes. Well, maybe they didn’t, but an awful lot of money been spent on a new focus, particularly in the Metropolitan Police Service, on community policing and dealing with low level crimes.
Safer Neighbourhood teams are the physical incarnation of that focus and they are as much about the perception people have of crime and dealing with their fear of it as they are about dealing with the big things – there is definitely no rushing around in police cars with the sirens on allowed – our PSCOs, in Crystal Palace, have bikes when they’re not on foot!
Key to this is dealing with signal crimes like graffiti, fly tipping, unruly teenagers and unruly adults and crime prevention. It is slow burn stuff but here in Crystal Palace Ward (where I chair the resident’s panel that provides direction to the team) we are just beginning, after two years, to reap the benefits. The police are starting to get more information about the drug dealing that goes on in the car parks of one of our estates because the residents are starting to know and trust the beat officer. This kind of success will eventually be measured in terms of arrests but in them mean time we need to protect and support the activity. Because what it seems do is change people’s perception and fear of crime and above all improves the quality of their lives.
This approach to community policing and its focus on dealing with low level crime is important and over the last 40 years the direction of the police, particularly in London has oscillated between the ‘Bobby on the beat’ and dealing with the big, ’important’ crimes that the Police Federation and John Denham (Chair of the Home Office Select Committee) seem to want them to go back to pursuing.
However, the model of community policing that is being implemented by the Met and funded by Londoners has not been made up on the fly…it is based on a model developed in the US and the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy that has been in place and successful since 1993.
What it really needs is consistent funding and a belief that successful outcomes will be delivered in the long term and not necessarily in the short term; although, I have to say our experience in Crystal Palace is that it is a bit of both. The Government, the Select Committee and the Police Authorities all have to hold their nerve and not veer back to measuring just large scale crime detection.
I know that I am beginning to sound like a broken record on this, again, but the government and the centre has to trust locally accountable organisations (although not as accountable as I’d like them to be) to deliver and not force them to use just one method of getting to the right outcome.
We must stop measuring just activity; a good start would be to measure levels of satisfaction with the service provided or perception of crime or quality of life.
How to be happy
Posted in Education, Health, Labour Government, Localism, Young People on by
The government wants us to be happy and well. So now GPs should be prescribing country walks as medicine for those suffering from depression (actually, it’s called an ‘ecotherapy’) and happiness lessons for school children.
I am not going to do a rant about it all being common sense etc, etc because I do understand that the study on country walks, was looking at non-chemical responses to an illness that by its very nature leads the suffers to not believe that anything can improve their life, let alone something like a bit of fresh air. They are therefore are unable to apply such a self help approach without prompting. I am a great fan of cognitive therapies and this one sounds much better than filling someone full of drugs.
But it doesn’t take much to imagine how we’ll soon be getting leaflets through the door and adverts on TV about the anti-depressive benefits of a walk in the park.
What this has a whiff of, and the teaching happiness directive from a government advisor reeks of, is the habit of this Labour Government, promulgated by Blair, Brown and practically every member of the Labour Party I’ve ever met, of trying to legislate for human behaviour.
For some people this does lead them to wander off ranting about the glories of common sense (or maybe that’s just my Step-Dad!!) but what those rants fail to do is find a solution to the problem...which is, for the Labour Government at least, how to ensure that everybody applies the benefits of collective common sense to their lives.
So, Labour takes a typical process driven response which is to ensure that everybody follows the best practice route to achieve happiness. Rather like I, as a project manager, tend to follow a recognised project management approach to ensure the correct outcome for any change I am attempting to bring about is positive.
Many companies and organisations and, indeed, the Government make it ‘policy’ for their employees to follow these project management processes as otherwise they would have to rely on wisdom, experience and talent… which may or may not be there!
And the Government is trying to make it their policy that we too follow the correct process to deliver ‘happiness’ and ‘well being’.
They have to channel the implementation of these polices through the health service, schools and the police as even they cannot currently reach into our homes and make us do it for ourselves; hence why the responsibility for producing happy children now seems to be the responsibility of the teacher and not the parent.
So far, so logical; if not entirely common sense-ical.
But of course, what this betrays is the fact that the Labour party is pretty much convinced that we have neither the wisdom, talent nor experience to be happy or well human beings.
They do not trust us, and so, they step in and sort it all out for us.
Ten years of not being trusted to get on with things has created in many people a culture of being receivers of aid – it is not our responsibility to sort our problems out but the government’s. This is the nanny state in action and all coming on top of the previous 18 years of Tory ‘personal responsibility’, in other words responsibility for yourself, and maybe your family, but no one else.
As a civil libertarian I am all for a small government and am keen to be as free as possible to follow my own path to happiness and take advice from whom I choose on how to get there…if, indeed, that’s my aim.
But I, like many others, am concerned about reports that our children are the unhappiest in the OECD countries, that anti-depressant drugs are being prescribed more than ever before and that there are teenagers living in my community for whom the value of a human life is less than their pride at not being ‘cut up’ by another’s’ car on the Walworth Rd.
So, it is not enough to rail against the nanny state and leave it at that.
Firstly, we should not get it out of proportion; it is clear that good, well behaved and happy children and human beings do not make the news.
Secondly, we have to look to ourselves and take responsibility not just for ourselves but for our community. And. that, is why I find Liberal Democracy so compelling. At its philosophical heart it satisfies not just my need for freedom but also my desire to be free within a community.
The personal responsibility that I take on is not just a compact with the state but also with my neighbours and fellow human beings. By sucking up all the power into the centre and issuing policies on how to behave and what to do the Government undermine the local community and the personal responsibility within that compact.
Westminster politicians and the government do have a role to play and that is to give the power back to local communities and leave it to them. Of course, this requires them to trust people and communities which is why Labour will never do it, no matter how Gordon bleats on about personal responsibility because they will never be able to believe that they don’t know best, including on how to be happy.
I am not going to do a rant about it all being common sense etc, etc because I do understand that the study on country walks, was looking at non-chemical responses to an illness that by its very nature leads the suffers to not believe that anything can improve their life, let alone something like a bit of fresh air. They are therefore are unable to apply such a self help approach without prompting. I am a great fan of cognitive therapies and this one sounds much better than filling someone full of drugs.
But it doesn’t take much to imagine how we’ll soon be getting leaflets through the door and adverts on TV about the anti-depressive benefits of a walk in the park.
What this has a whiff of, and the teaching happiness directive from a government advisor reeks of, is the habit of this Labour Government, promulgated by Blair, Brown and practically every member of the Labour Party I’ve ever met, of trying to legislate for human behaviour.
For some people this does lead them to wander off ranting about the glories of common sense (or maybe that’s just my Step-Dad!!) but what those rants fail to do is find a solution to the problem...which is, for the Labour Government at least, how to ensure that everybody applies the benefits of collective common sense to their lives.
So, Labour takes a typical process driven response which is to ensure that everybody follows the best practice route to achieve happiness. Rather like I, as a project manager, tend to follow a recognised project management approach to ensure the correct outcome for any change I am attempting to bring about is positive.
Many companies and organisations and, indeed, the Government make it ‘policy’ for their employees to follow these project management processes as otherwise they would have to rely on wisdom, experience and talent… which may or may not be there!
And the Government is trying to make it their policy that we too follow the correct process to deliver ‘happiness’ and ‘well being’.
They have to channel the implementation of these polices through the health service, schools and the police as even they cannot currently reach into our homes and make us do it for ourselves; hence why the responsibility for producing happy children now seems to be the responsibility of the teacher and not the parent.
So far, so logical; if not entirely common sense-ical.
But of course, what this betrays is the fact that the Labour party is pretty much convinced that we have neither the wisdom, talent nor experience to be happy or well human beings.
They do not trust us, and so, they step in and sort it all out for us.
Ten years of not being trusted to get on with things has created in many people a culture of being receivers of aid – it is not our responsibility to sort our problems out but the government’s. This is the nanny state in action and all coming on top of the previous 18 years of Tory ‘personal responsibility’, in other words responsibility for yourself, and maybe your family, but no one else.
As a civil libertarian I am all for a small government and am keen to be as free as possible to follow my own path to happiness and take advice from whom I choose on how to get there…if, indeed, that’s my aim.
But I, like many others, am concerned about reports that our children are the unhappiest in the OECD countries, that anti-depressant drugs are being prescribed more than ever before and that there are teenagers living in my community for whom the value of a human life is less than their pride at not being ‘cut up’ by another’s’ car on the Walworth Rd.
So, it is not enough to rail against the nanny state and leave it at that.
Firstly, we should not get it out of proportion; it is clear that good, well behaved and happy children and human beings do not make the news.
Secondly, we have to look to ourselves and take responsibility not just for ourselves but for our community. And. that, is why I find Liberal Democracy so compelling. At its philosophical heart it satisfies not just my need for freedom but also my desire to be free within a community.
The personal responsibility that I take on is not just a compact with the state but also with my neighbours and fellow human beings. By sucking up all the power into the centre and issuing policies on how to behave and what to do the Government undermine the local community and the personal responsibility within that compact.
Westminster politicians and the government do have a role to play and that is to give the power back to local communities and leave it to them. Of course, this requires them to trust people and communities which is why Labour will never do it, no matter how Gordon bleats on about personal responsibility because they will never be able to believe that they don’t know best, including on how to be happy.
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