Belgians Break the Record
Belgian has just broken the record for the longest time a country has gone without a government.
So does it prove that often, when you are in a real hole, the best thing to do is stop digging.
I feel that one solution to the problem of political parties that have their own opposite agendas, might well be to agree how the taxes are raised to keep the country going and then let everybody get on with it. So many things in this country perform quite well, without any political interference. In fact, in some areas like food, as I showed with the bread story, that interference actually makes things worse.
Why Are Loaves Square?
Apparently, we’ve now had the square sliced loaf for fifty years. In my years, that’s fifty years too many.
But have you ever wondered why Britain fell so much in love with this awful product? Here’s an e-mail, I’ve just written to the BBC.
In the 1970s, I did some work for a major bakery group in the UK. I dealt with top management, some of whom had been bakers. And very much of the old school, who knew their bread.
So I asked why we had so much bad sliced bread and did they eat it.
They didn’t eat it and to a man, they took a sack of flour home and then baked it themselves.
The reason there was so much square sliced bread was that van drivers in those days were paid by commission and they could get most commission by cramming that sort of bread in the van. So they wouldn’t distribute the better class of bread, which didn’t fit so well.
Another interesting fact from this period, was that a lot of bread got returned to the factory. Harold Wilson and his government felt this waste pushed up the price of bread, so they banned returns. Do you remember happy bread, which was a different colour for each day?
In fact, the non-return policy, meant that the price of bread rose, as the returned bread had a whole lot of uses like animal feed, which then became unprofitable. The returned bread just went into the waste bin at the shops and then probably into landfill.
All in all it’s a sad tale, which shows that often the reasons for things being the way they are, are not what you’d expect.
I’ve also just watched the BBC Breakfast report on 50 years of the awful sliced loaf. No wonder there are so many coeliacs or those that are allergic to wheat-based bread in the UK, judging by what goes into it. All of those bakers years ago were right!
Waking Up In Cloud-Cuckoo World
I woke at about five this morning and put the radio on to listen to the news. One of my favourite books is The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
I felt that I’d woken up in a world where everyting was being run by idiots, who had lost their sense of where they were supposed to be, but were still of course getting all of their perks and salaries. Or in the case of various dictators were still milking all their subjects for ever cent they’d got.
The first story was the problems in Syria, where all sane people agree that President Assad must go. The president used to be an opthalmologist, which in my book is a sort of doctor, so why is he blinding some of his people and killing others in an effort to cling to power? And why were we still supporting this despot until recently?
Then there was the story about Greece having a referendum on cuts. Turkeys and Christmas come to mind. Of course they’ll vote yes to the cuts!
The Germans are supposed to be efficient. But they can’t seem to find the source of their e-coli outbreak. So what does the EU do about it, have a meeting?
I could add other stories, where those in charge are going one way and doing their utmost to keep their high-salaried jobs.
Don’t get me going on the NHS, where at present I just need a repeat prescription and it seems to take days at my GP. At the previous one, I sent in an e-mail and either collected the drugs or the signed prescription on the next working day. How many highly-paid civil servants does it take to not impliment that very simple policy?
And now to cap it all, BBC Breakfast is talking about the lack of cuckoos this year. They’re all alive and well and living in politics and government, all over the world!
Child Abuse Cases, Baby P and Sharon Shoesmith
I’m not going to comment on the recent judgement in Sharon Shoesmith’s appeal, as it would appear that we have all sorts of groups and interests colliding in a Court of Law, with everybody claiming the moral highground.
I have just looked at the timeline of the tragic case at the centre of it all, Baby P. As I thought he died a few months before my late wife, C.
I can remember discussing this case in particular and many others in general with C over the years.
She often despaired at the ineptitude and sometimes downright indifference of some social workers and police and sometimes suffered mentally, as she tried to sort it all out as a barrister. Not that she did many cases as tragic as Baby P. She always said that she was lucky and could come home with a clear conscience,unlike many front-line workers. Not that she didn’t worry about some of the really bad cases she handled.
She would have argued that a lot of the problems were down to constant changes in the law, with large amounts of retraining, were cutting the efficiency of the very services, the changes were trying to improve. She would always tell stories about how she’d been involved where yet another baby had been taken into care from an abusive family. Some families were costing Social Services hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.
So now that money to these services is being cut, staff are further stressed and we have well-meaning politicians shoving their oar in, I think it unlikely we’ll see much improvement in the next few years.
More on Chris Huhne
Popbitch also dicloses two facts about Chris Huhne.
His father made his money selling speed cameras to the government. If this is actually true, then surely he should have known that you can get caught for speeding.
Hi mother used to be the voice of the speaking clock. If that is true, there is a history of public speaking in the family.
I Bet Elliot Morley Wishes He Was French!
Elliot Morley has just been jailed for expenses fraud for sixteen months.
What would he have got in France?
After all, the French believe that Dominique Strauss Kahn is innocent and it’s all a setup, so I suspect someone like Eliot Morley would have probably been given a guided tour of the Bastille.
Liz’s Triumph
The Queen’s visit to Ireland has passed so far without any serious hitches or gaffs. But then visiting Ireland, where nearly all the population are hospitable to all visitors, is a lot less tricky than visiting some of the places governed by some of the worst or the worst, she has been told to go by successive governments. I’m sure she really enjoyed her visits to Saudi Arabia and Rumania!
There might however be a problem for the Queen on the horizon, where Ireland is concerned.
Currently, her horse, Carlton House, is favourite for the Derby. He also has entries in the Irish and French Derbys.
Many Epsom Derby winners have followed up their victory at Epsom, with a run at The Curragh. And of course, there are horses, who have run in Ireland because of minor problems that prevented them competing at Epsom.
The permutations are endless.
But it is not inconceivable that a horse as good as Carlton House is, will run in Ireland.
So as with the visit to Ireland, it’s all so far and so good!
But she has undoubtably shown politicians how to forgive and forget and move on constructively. And many of those she’s met in Ireland have shown the same positive attitude.
So many of those in trouble spots around the world could follow this lead in looking forward rather than hundreds of years into the past.
A Project Management Approach to Better Justice
The whole justice system from victims, families on the brink of divorce and criminals, to the courts and ultimately prison is very much like an enormous project, such as building a new railway line or refurbishing a fleet of airliners.
The objectives are very similar.
- Complete everything on-time and as close to the budget as possible.
- Get a high satisfaction rating from customers, who in this case are victims, their families and in the civil courts those that litigate and seek redress.
- Do all this within strict resource constraints, such as numbers of police, courts, judges and other legal staff.
So how would a good project manager build his railway line to meet the objectives?
There is an old phrase that Time is Money and I believe that this is something that the justice system in all its manifestation doesn’t address.
I can remember C coming home one day and saying that she’d finally got the details of a divorce settled, ten years after she first took on the case.
And yesterday we had the news that a new trial in the saga of Stephen Lawrence would start in November.
I doubt I could find more than a handful of people, if any, who thought either of these examples acceptable.
A good project manager would analyse why various jobs took a long time and take action to make sure that the delays were not repeated.
C often said these long times in divorce were often down to plain vindictiveness on the part of both parties and she would often ponder how they ever stopped rowing long enough to get married. There is even a story, I’ve heard of two barristers, who when they divorced managed to blow all their money on other lawyers. Somehow those that waste time in the divorce system, should be made to pay more, so that those who need help can get it.
With criminal trials it has often puzzled me, how supposedly similar trials take a very much variable time to get to court. This timeline of the Ipswich murders shows how a quite complicated case, was brought to court in just 14 months. Other much less complicated cases take a lot longer to get to court, with all that entails in terms of costs of remand and stress for the witnesses.
We must not cut corners, as quality of justice is paramount, but surely some analysis will lead to ways to improve the speed of the courts.
With all the fuss about Ken Clarke’s comments on rape, it seems to me that emotion has got the better of a decent analysis, which might indicate a few simple procedural changes, that will ensure a less stressful time for the victim and more cases coming to a result where the guilty is rightly convicted.
I remember seeing an article some years ago, where when there was a cot death, one police force tried to send an officer, who had suffered a similar experience. This simple change to procedure, showed a degree of compassion and care and removed a lot of bad emotion and accusations from the system. In my view it showed how if police respond to an incident properly in the first place they might save a lot of problems later on. First response seems to be getting better, but I’ve only reported a couple of crimes in my 63 years. Two were in France and if the French system hasn’t changed, we have nothing to learn there.
To summarise.
- A project manager calculates the resources they need.
- They then look at the systems to get each task done in the most efficient way.
- Analysis is always performed to see if speed and quality can be improved and costs can be better controlled.
In my view, with forty years experience of project mangement, it is getting better as some of the rail projects like the Western Curve at Dalston and the improvements to container routes have been done on time and under budget.
Let’s hope that those who administer the justice system are prepared to learn from management successes elsewhere!
Scottish Devolution
They are debating this old chestnut on Radio 5 Live at the moment.
Apparently there has been a poll in The Sun, which says that those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are more in favour of devolution than the Scots.
If they do leave the Union, then can they please take the Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers and its debts with them. And they can keep that banker, Fred the Shred too!
The question has to be asked as to whether the EU would admit Scotland. After all Spain has regions that would like independence and may vote against, as it doesn’t want Spain to split.
The AV Referendum was Good for the Tory Vote
A political commentator has just said on Radio 5, that the referendum on AV was good for the Tories as it got their supporters out to vote in the council elections. They did win more seats and councils despite cutting spending, which was not to be expected. Ross Hawkins also said the following on his blog.
The prime minister and Conservative leader has managed to win seats while cutting public spending, something few pundits expected.
David Cameron said the coalition was “as good today as it was a year ago”
The Conservatives emerged from these elections with more English councillors and councils, and two extra Welsh Assembly members.
There were downsides – losing the party leader in Wales, and a relatively poor performance in Scotland.
But these elections was a resounding success for the Conservatives, especially in England.
If the Conservatives can do this well in the face of the biggest spending cuts it either shows that people will vote Tory whatever, or voters understand the mess the country is in better than most politicians think. In my view, judging by the way AV literature was being read on the Dalston Omnibus and the positive vote for AV in this area of London, I would not discount the latter.
The Anonymous Widower 