Month: Feb 2006

Categories
Health, housing and adult social services Public sector waste

NHS non-execs pay boost

Non-executive chairmen and directors of NHS bodies play a vital role in the governance of these bodies. There is no shortage of public-spirited people who want to do these jobs. I have been turned down myself so I guess that implies that are lots of talented people that want to do them who were chosen ahead of me. But the NHS seems to want to throw more money at these people at a time when NHS budgets are under pressure. The Telegraph reports today that chairman of these bodies will be getting £30-60,000 for these part-time roles rather than the standard £21,882 now. Non-exec directors will also be getting £7,500 for 2-3 days work per month.

These jobs once had a whiff of volunteerism about them but clearly the NHS is thinking that they need to be “professionalised”. By raising these stipends the NHS is looking to buy these boards. It is hard to challenge producer interests and criticise the norms promulgated by the nomenklatura of modern British civic life if you are bought and paid for.

The article quotes both NHS Confederation and Department of Health sources who have the effrontery to make comparisons with the private sector. How can we afford a National Health Service, free at the point of delivery, if these people all want top dollar? Where is the public service ethic that is expected of frontline staff? Not in the boardroom clearly.

The nomenklatura is alive and well and looking forward to large windfalls in Ealing. The Ealing PCT Chairman, Marion Saunders, currently gets £21,882 (to rise to £30,000 to £40,000). Her background is working in Ealing Social Services. Non-exec Philip Portwood will be looking forward to £7,500 instead of £5,673. As an Ealing Councillor he already received £18,000 in allowances last year. The other non-execs come from a range of health and social care backgrounds.

Talking of Ealing PCT I received a letter from Robert Creighton, the £110K+ Chief Exec, this morning detailing the costs of their “Your NHS” publication. To their credit they have been able to get this publication out 315,000 people for only £22,000. To be curmudgeonly it does not change my two week wait for a GP’s appointment to the two days they claim. See October story. It took me a while to write to them, their response was pretty quick.

Categories
Communications disease

DRC spends £1.2 million on ad campaign

Tom Berry, Head of Campaigns & Marketing, at the Disability Rights Commission very kindly wrote to me tonight to tell me how much the “Are we taking the dis?” campaign cost. £1.2 million for a national billboard and press campaign out of a £22 million overall budget for the DRC.

The DRC was set up by an act of Parliament to eliminate discrimination against disabled people, promote equal opportunities and encourage best practice. I am not sure that their campaign is a good use of this money I am afraid.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Ealing 6th in parking appeals league

The Evening Standard reports that last year Ealing was sixth worst in the league of London boroughs for parking appeals. Over 2,000 drivers had to take their parking disputes to appeal. In 29% of cases Ealing’s Parking Services did not contest the matter. Overall Parking Services lost 60% of cases. The best performing borough, Enfield, only had 257 appeals of which it won 65% – now that is performing. Ealing by contrast seems to be competing with Islington and Lambeth to fleece drivers.

Categories
Uncategorized

Marxists rule the roost

Peter Hitchens totally made my day this morning on the Today programme. In a debate about the state of the left Peter Hitchens pointed out the success of the left by identifying that John Reid, the Defence Secretary, interviewed previously on troop withdrawls from Iraq had just quoted the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci with “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”.

John Reid is one of those academic failures who annoy and confuse everyone else by calling themselves Doctor. His doctorate from Stirling University in Economic History is where the Marxism was learnt I guess.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

11.3% in Ealing choose to go private

The Evening Standard tonight published some figures from the Department for Education and Skills that were provided in a parliamentary answer. 11.3% of Ealing’s pupils are a private schools this is 21st equal in ranking. This puts us in the same league as Barnet, Croydon, Harrow, Merton and Southwark. 20 boroughs did better than Ealing with 12 getting down below the national average of 6.3%.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Ealing Conservatives to spend £1.8 million more on the environment

Ealing Conservatives yesterday announced that upon taking control of the Council they will immediately move an additional £1.8 million into the environment budget.

This sounds like good news for our battered environment that has been neglected throughout 12 years of a Labour council.

It should not be hard to do either. Next financial year the Council plans to spend £457,000 on its useless Around Ealing magazine that hits the recycing bin unread. It plans to spend £485,000 on the Tram. Finding the rest should be a doddle.

Categories
Public sector waste

Merger = cost?

Another of those public sector mergers cost us money stories from the Conservatives today. They have got hold of a leaked document from the Office of the John Prescott that shows that mergers of district and county councils might cost £358 per household. Private sectors mergers are usually predicated on cost savings. How is it that public sector mergers cost us money? You might think that merging would reduce overheads and quickly deliver savings to tax payers.

Categories
Communications disease

Ministry of the obvious blows £334 million on PR

The Sunday Times today uses figures from the Central Office of Information annual report to have a go at Government spending on nannying, statement of the bleeding obvious advertising by Government. This spending has tripled since Labour came to power. £334 million in 2004-5 up from £111 million in 1997-8.

Going back to the annual report, the expensive pictures of plain, middle-aged people on pages 4 and 5 are typical of the breed and of no value whatsoever to taxpayers. Looking back on previous reports it is noteworthy that they have gone from plain to jazzy with lots of specially commissioned photos. This is brutally expensive and a total waste of money because they are not trying to sell themselves. We have no choice about using the services of these self-aggrandising twits.

These are the same figures used by the Telegraph back in October but they only included advertising not other activities. The message is the same though: spending up by a factor of three since Labour came to power.

Categories
Communications disease Ealing and Northfield Public sector waste

Ealing ramps up communications spending

It is perhaps natural, given the background of Labour council leader Leonora Thompson, that Ealing is currently ramping up its spending on communications. Instead of spending some £40,000 per annum on Around Ealing 4 times a year the whole thing is being upgraded to a monthly, even bi-weekly, publication that will cost almost £600,000 over two years.

To time this upgrade at the start of the year, a few months before local elections on May 4th, leaves the council open to the charge that it is using council spending in a political way.

The council’s plans envisage that the costs incurred will be partially offset by an increase in advertising revenue. The plans foresee advertising revenue rising from £19,500 to £185,000 in year. This raises two questions. Firstly, even the most aggressive private sector operation would be hard pressed to increase sales in this way. Can the council really hope to perform this well? Wishful thinking surely? Secondly, by taking revenue off local press the council will ensure that the papers have less cash to pay journalists’ salaries and we will be the poorer for not having the council held to account by the press.

Apparently £275,500 of this spending is going to be financed from the Response budget. You might think that this money could be re-deployed to fund frontline services rather then being used to puff the council. Using Response as a slush fund to subsidise political advertising is not a council taxpayers’ priority.

Council leader Leonara Thomson obviously thinks that if she spends enough of our money telling us how good Ealing council is we will eventually believe her.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield Policing

Police blow their trumpet before they deliver

Today the Ealing & Acton Gazette published a full page ad from the Metropolitan Police and Mayor of London promoting Safer Neighbourhoods. This is part of a wider campaign.

In Ealing we still only have 8 of 23 wards covered by these teams (see MPS site). It seems a little early to be be advertising these teams before they are all in place.

Furthermore both the ad in the Gazette and the radio ad show two policemen on the beat together. It seems that London’s streets are so dangerous that they cannot patrol alone.