So much for the rule of law ...

SubJeff on 18/12/2006 at 18:07

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and they aren't held responsible for the damage they cause.

Understatement of this Labour term. At least with the Tories you felt that if someone was caught doing something wrong they'd man up and admit it before resigning gracefully. This lot have no shame, and no matter what dirt they find themselves in they are never compelled to go, and no-one makes them. It's insane.

I used to be all for socialist ideas, but the British just aren't able to deal with it without abusing it. Labour think the answer to everything is having a bodies that set and check standards. Newsflash: you can't do that with everything when you've got managers and standard setters who have no idea about the thing they are standardising.

My pet favourite hate at the moment under Labour: NHS performance targets. A&E depts have a 4-hour-to-ward-or-discharge target. If they fail it the department incurs a monetary penalty in the next budget round. This means that:
a. Patients may get moved i. to inappropriate wards/units ("hi is that itu we need a bed for this patient with fractured toe kthanks") or ii. when they are not stable ("Cardiac arrest in lift 3 run run run it makes no difference they goona die anyway."). Happens. Believe.
b. Underfunding causing failure to meet targets causes FURTHER underfunding.

It's Kafka-esk I tell you. And this is by no means the only example. Random other one - "ID cards will make the UK safer as you can trust people with a card more". Oh no didn't think about this did we? That means that a criminal with a fake card is "more" trustworthy too, no? CSA debacle? Arrrrgh.

Paz on 18/12/2006 at 19:03

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

At least with the Tories you felt that if someone was caught doing something wrong they'd man up and admit it before resigning gracefully.

Did you now.

Dame Shirley Porter and her council house scam? Never did manage to pay those court costs (well, she is short of a few bob)

Jonathan Aitken; let's relive his graceful court battle to avoid resignation: "If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play, so be it. I am ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it. My fight begins today. Thank you and good afternoon." Oh hang on he was guilty too.

Neil Hamilton - another graceful resignat .. oh shit, it was another unsuccessful libel action from a guilty man.

We've already discussed Mark Thatcher. Whilst he wasn't an MP, mumsie made sure his murky dealings were untouchable. Or, in the case of BAE Systems, actively supported them.

Heavens, they were whiter than snow. It was really a glorious era in comparison to this one.

We can probably compile a similar list for this government too, but jesus christ man, do you have selective memory for the Tory era or something? This shower of shite is nothing new because they learned from watching the best.

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I used to be all for socialist ideas.

So did Labour - lollers! Bit of political comedy for you all, there.

The targets rubbish started long before 1997, when ideology had to make way for performativity in the political arena, but I don't have time to go into that right now (a lot of it is broadly in line with what scumble has been saying, actually).

scumble on 19/12/2006 at 11:19

Ideology is all well and good, but it doesn't make very large, complex organisations work as intended. Still, I'm wondering exactly what you mean by "performativity". Target setting isn't a new thing of course, and I've got a feeling that it grew out of the new project management ideas of the 80s. To be honest, there isn't anything wrong with measurable targets as such, it's just a case of who sets them. At our local hospital, which is rather good overall, people have been told not to treat patients because their targets have been reached, so I hear, so consultants have been working for free because they have the capacity to treat more patients, but the NHS won't pay them. This is epic wankery, clearly as it indicates the targets are quite low and they obviously want the targets to indicate "excellent".

Really, targets should be related to the local region, and not some arbitrary central government scheme to make politicians look good before the next election. Only the people working in the local hospital have a clear idea of what people need in the area and they should really set targets, perhaps monitored by some impartial agency. It's just rather difficult with the NHS also being a big centralised organisation that sets internal policies which tend to disregard local variation and individual needs.

Paz on 19/12/2006 at 14:44

Quote Posted by scumble

Still, I'm wondering exactly what you mean by "performativity".

Broadly speaking (in this context), that the desire for efficiency and productivity trumps everything else.

For politics, the APPEARANCE of efficiency and productivity becomes key. Hence, rather than trying to function "well" a school/hospital or whatever is drawn into focusing on meeting "a target" - often entirely unrelated to the functioning process, as we have seen - as this is the yardstick by which they (and perhaps future funding) are now measured.

A brief example: I had a few excellent lecturers at university, but the only day they were not excellent was whenever they had a guy at the back of the hall monitoring them with a clipboard. On those days, they had to follow what the government decided was the most "efficient" way to teach an hour of philosophy (or whatever) - which I don't need to tell you was highly structured, tedious and roughly half as effective as just letting the lecturer do his own thing. But it was necessary to make this compromise so that the university got a good score, stayed high in the league table and received the requisite amount of prestige and funding for this position. It was all bollocks and the other 100+ days we got brilliant lectures.

What makes this slightly more ridiculous is that EVERYONE INVOLVED probably knew it was a charade. I'm quite sure the inspectors realise that most lecturers will switch into "government guidelines" mode for their visit and then change back to their usual methods (for better or worse) when they leave. It was all just a bizarre act that had to be gone through for the sake of performativity.

You can take a few things from this example. Does it show that those at the highest level are so far removed from what they're writing guidelines for that they haven't got a clue? Or does it merely show that THEY are in on the "act" too and writing what they think a set of government lecture guidelines should look like? Maybe it also shows that there's nothing to worry about, as it only takes a few days out of the year to keep the government happy. But of course this undermines the whole concept of monitoring university performance.

Obviously, somewhere like a hospital this becomes far more serious as it begins to directly affect patients and soforth.

On the political stage it blends the vast majority of political discourse into a soupy, indistinguishable mass. The only variety comes from single-issue debates (abortion, gun control in the US - perhaps the environment here), or the self-creation of a narrative which the government will use to justify its own existence (currently, the ludicrous claim "we can protect you from terrorism").