If you don’t want LTNs, ULEZs and 15 Minute Cities, STOP voting for the same politicians and the same parties that will keep on putting them everywhere!

Question: Do you understand that there is a direct relationship between how you vote in EVERY election, and what happens between then and when the next one is called?

No. I’m not talking about the policy you were told about during the election campaign. I’m certainly not referring to the national policies of the party your local council candidate may be affiliated to.

They have NOTHING to do with each other. They are not in any way the same.

I am asking this question, because no matter what the candidates you might have voted for or may now even be considering voting for, perhaps as early as this coming May are telling you, what the Tories, Lib Dems, Labour and Reform candidates will do once elected or reelected, will be based only on what they and their parties want then. Now what they think you want to hear when they are selling you a story at the door.

As everything disintegrates around us – not because of Brexit, Covid or Ukraine and the responses that our national Tory Government has made to them – but because of decades of politicians from all of the parties failing all of us whilst doing everything for themselves, the thin but nonetheless convincing veneer of respectability and consideration for democratic principle is being shown to be the lie that it is. Not least of all because of the implementation of Low Traffic Neighborhoods (LTN), Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) and now the 15 Minute Cities that Councils such as that in Oxford are attempting to impose on entire populations without ever having gone out to local people and given them the opportunity to engage in a meaningful democratic referendum or vote.

The System is now rotten everywhere, through all areas of government and the public sector. And that rot certainly began infecting everything from the top-down.

Hard to believe as it may seem, the processes that have been in place for so long, such as public consultations – so that you and other members of the public can have your say – are one of the cleverest lies. They were created and perpetrated to divide opinion and make real people with valid arguments believe that they have been heard, when the truth is that they haven’t. They were never supposed to, in any way.

In this specific instance, I am referring to decisions that are overtly being made primarily at County Council or Unitary Council levels – as they have responsibility for Highways. But this also includes the actions of District or Borough Councils and even some Parish or Town Councils too.

What isn’t so clear, is that whilst the Councillors sitting on these ‘local authorities’ are voting these ridiculous schemes through, they may be doing so because of the promise of money or something else from Central Government (That’s Westminster and Parliament), tabled to council officers and politicians in a way that is in effect little more than a bribe.

Central Government does this, so that they don’t end up being seen to be the ones with ‘blood on their hands’. But the effect is pretty much the same. Whoever we are voting for, whether it is for a Parish, a Town, a Borough, a District, a County, a Unity, and Assembly, a Parliament or some other, NONE of the politicians we have, supposedly representing the British Public today, are playing with a straight bat. They are only interested in what works best for them – rather than what is in the best interests of you or I.

The uncomfortable truth that the politicians, civil servants and government officers won’t speak out loud, is that there is absolutely an agenda to reduce the number of cars on the roads, get people on bikes, walking to the shops and to work, and to make it impossible to travel anywhere using anything other than a sustainable mode of transport, IF we really have no choice when it comes to travel that they, not you or I, will proscribe.

Regrettably, whichever side of the green debate you may be on today, the reality is that in the long term, there really is no choice.

However, there really never was any need for the 4-car households, holidays in every part of the world and rejection of local public transport either.

The so-called need for these was also completely engineered by the people who have been behind globalisation and the ‘money is everything’ way of living all along.

We only believe that we cannot live without these things, because it has been in their financial interests for us to believe that there is no other way for us to live.

The problem they have, is that by encouraging us all to engage in unnecessary practices, ways of living and ways of being that have been damaging the world, our environment and our own personal health for so very long, they let the genie out of the bottle. They have used manipulation through advertising and clever placements to make it feel like a personal choice.

Now, faced with having to implement change, those right at the top of all this know that to keep the plates spinning and for them to maintain control in the best way that works for them – and that means to keep the money flowing where they want it to – they now have to impose change upon us all, but use every trick in their play book, so that it all looks and feels like it was a choice, all along.

The chances are that if you are reading this, you know and value just how wrong all of this really is.

However, you are also just as likely to believe that all this can be changed by voting Labour, Liberal Democrat of even Reform at the coming General Election, or in the next May Elections you are called to vote in within your local area.

Yet the reality is that ALL of these Political Parties are made up of politicians who don’t represent anyone other than themselves – and whilst they may sound and even look different, by electing any of them again, we are just condemning ourselves and our future to nothing better than worse or at best, a whole lot more of exactly the same all over again.

It also doesn’t matter how loud anyone else voice might be, the number of followers or likes that they have, or how much time they are getting to speak on YouTube, TikTok or even mainstream TV.

The only solutions that are going to keep coming from the top of this top-down system are solutions that arrive without warning, as they all seem to be doing so now.

Solutions that work for those at the top of this ridiculous pyramid system we are being abused by. Not for anyone who is part of the majority being manipulated and mistreated below.

Regrettably, far too few of us really appreciate just how much of an impact that we could make, by running independent grassroots-focused candidates in all our local authority elections.

These are the elections currently held somewhere every year, where real effort and commitment mean that ANY candidate has a genuine opportunity to win.

We may not all see it yet, but it is at local level, and by taking over government at local level – whether through the electoral and government structure as it is now, or through a better grassroots-up system that really engages everyone – that the real change that we all need for a better life, will come.

If any of your local authorities have elections this May and you want to champion and demonstrate the message and way of change, why not run in your area and recruit others to help you or even do the same.

I’ve written a book to help called How to get Elected, which is FREE to read at www.howtogetelected.wordpress.com or you can download for Kindle from Amazon for only 99p.

Alternatively, ask me a question on social media or e-mail me at diypoliticsuk@gmail.com

The new Pub rules scapegoat the Licensed Trade in an abuse of existing powers resembling the actions of a police state

As we begin to stare Monday and the reopening of pubs and licensed premises in the face, the imbalance and general lack of fairness that the Government has applied to managing the Lockdowns is beginning to look even more sinister than it ever did before.

The way that pubs and the licensed trade have been singled out and placed right at the top of the scale of unfairness is quickly becoming a scandal. One that only fails to shock as it should because the whole Government narrative of control through fear is beginning to look completely perverse.

Not satisfied with the social distancing measures that accompanied the reopening of Pubs last summer that made many great locals feel sterile, uncomfortable and out-of-touch, the Government is now intent on ratcheting down the Pub rules even further.

They are piling on the risk of closure for countless pubs and community hubs that had already been at risk well before Covid arrived, due to the way that legislation had pushed hundreds and thousands of pub properties once owned by breweries into the hands of property speculators or ‘pubco’s’. ‘Money men’ obsessed with draining every penny of profit from bub businesses, causing countless bankruptcies and closures along the way.

However, what is about to be imposed in the coming days as part of these supposed Lockdown-loosening measures is enough to make anyone wonder if there is some kind of agenda at work, aimed at destroying what remains of the industry once and for all.

It began with the dubious requirement that has meant every pub business with outside space available and therefore able to open next week must hire marquees for what may become many months ahead. Yet there is no practical, real-world explanation telling anyone why the environment inside a temporary indoor space is safer than one that is in fact permanent.

Then it progressed to all payments having to be taken outside, when a substantial number of the pubs that can open next week don’t have payment systems that can be used or can actually function outside of the premises they are in. Let’s not forget that this news emerged yesterday, some 5 days before reopening, when there simply isn’t time to install new equipment – if it would be possible for it to work. And that’s before consideration is given to the additional cost.

Last there is what some will see as the final nail in the coffin. The requirement for customers to download and use the NHS Track & Trace app to log in at pubs at the time their visit began.

Of all the new measures, the requirement for customers to use the NHS App is the most questionable. Not least of all because the same requirement will not apply in many other settings such as supermarkets and DIY stores where anyone visiting in recent days will tell you that they have become far more crowded and create close-contact of a kind that you are unlikely to see even at 11pm at the local pub.

It is clear that pubs and licensed premises are being singled out. Pubs and restaurants are now being used in a blatant attempt to coerce everyone into signing up to and using an information gathering and monitoring system that in this basic form constitutes abuse. One that when accepted or imposed in other sectors and in other forms could easily become permanent and used for much worse.

So why is the licensed trade being hit so hard when other sectors selling direct to the public seem to be having it so much easier?

Each and every local authority that we pay our Council Tax to has a Licensing Department. District Level Authorities (Borough & Unitary too) double up as your Local Licensing Authority. They all have a team of Licensing Officers and Legal Advisors already providing a localised regulatory service that monitors and enforces Licensing Law not only for pubs and the licensed trade, but for taxis, gambling, sex shops and scrap metal dealers too.

So the apparatus and infrastructure already exists to police pubs and the licensed trade in a way that no other commercial, publicly facing business can be monitored and policed.

The Government knows this. It is deliberately abusing the power that it has available to control people wherever and however it can. We should be grateful that the Government doesn’t currently have access to the same functionality within the public sector to police other businesses and sectors – or on experience to date, you can be sure that it would be doing so.

Good leadership isn’t using the power available to you because you can. Good leadership is using restraint and doing the right thing for everyone when it appears to be the more challenging pathway to take – even when it appears there is a much easier way.

One of the greatest problems that this Country now faces is the diminishing levels of humanity and understanding that exist between people. Historically, we have learned and become adept at understanding others through the interactions that happen face-to-face within our communities.

Greed on the part of the few had already meant that many local pubs where locality and localism could reign were at risk. Now the Government wants to pursue policies that will finish them off so that it can bluff its way to the end of the Covid pandemic and to the next General Election, and somehow convince everyone else that this Conservative Government has been good for us and that it truly deserves to win.

Whilst many will refuse or will find themselves unable to believe it, we are in the position that we are today – 12 months on since the first Lockdown began, facing the things that we are, simply because stupidity in Government has been allowed to rule the day. It has been fuelled by the fear of those leading us and an obsession with saving their own necks – no matter the cost to everyone else.

The Government cannot see the damage that it is doing and how far reaching it will become. Yet we cannot get rid of them before the next general election.

By then, for pubs, the licensed trade and whatever follows next in their dangerous and disproportionate abuse of power – the damage will have already been done.

Power and decision making should be as local to people as possible. It’s because it isn’t that so much with Public Policy is wrong

It’s been a long time since we have had government in the UK that has been competent enough to look proactively at changing things for the better, if that change would itself compromise the desire of politicians to endlessly keep increasing their control.

For decades, since the seismic changes that accompanied the end of Empire and the onset of the Cold War age following the end of the Second World War, the incompetency of generation after generation of Westminster politicians has seen power hoovered up and removed from the hands of local people. However, rather than holding on to it themselves centrally, politicians have passed more and more of their responsibility onwards to an outside power called the EU which has successfully indoctrinated the political classes across an entire continent into thinking that the creation of a supranational state is the ultimate tool of localism.

SPOILER ALERT: It is not.

I have been a Eurosceptic since I was a teenager, but gained no pleasure from seeing the debate unfold in public and the damage that was done from the moment that David Cameron committed the UK to a Referendum on Leaving the EU. It was unexpectedly won by those who identified with the localised side of the argument rather than the nebulous way of thinking that big (and centralised) is always best for everyone.

Remainers often cited the inability of Leavers to tell them what benefits there would be to Leaving the EU as clear evidence that there was no question to answer and that the UK should Remain a Member. Yet they overlooked that they couldn’t give a plausible argument that it was in our collective interest to stay.

The argument for Leaving the EU that was never heard and which should have underpinned everything, is power should be kept as local to voters as possible. Then decision making is kept real, in touch with the issues and our local communities are always kept at the centre of what politicians do.

When people can access decision makers easily and see that they themselves have the power to influence the decisions that are important to them, they are much more likely to be and to remain engaged. They will be much less likely to be disenfranchised from a political system that in its current form today is seeking to remove the power that remains in local hands and move it further away into the hands of highly political regional mayors.

The genuine change or reset that is coming in the near future (rather than the one that some are falling into the conspiracists trap of believing has been created by deliberate design) will create a massive opportunity to restructure, reform and relaunch government and the public sector comprehensively across the UK. It will be the chance to get every kind of pubic service working as they should for us all.

The real opportunity for improvement in the way that decisions on public policy are made in the future will be the voluntary return of power to the lowest tier of government that it is possible to do so, thereby ensuring that genuinely local decisions are locally made.

By local, this means a real shakeup of Town & Parish, District & Borough and County Councils with the disbanding of so-called Unitary Authorities and the list of powers these lower tiers of Government have redirected to the lowest level possible.

The responsibilities lower tier authorities have now should be topped up by the return of everything that has a very localised impact. Power must be returned to the local government structure and directed away from Westminster where it has been sat and used without appropriate care and consideration for too long.

It is no longer acceptable that laws effecting the lives of everyday people locally that were created by bureaucrats in London (or Brussels), who have a one-size fits all mentality are made and then only interpreted by officers and rubber stamped by councillors – who often believe they have no other choice – even though it is the will and needs of voters that they are there to respect.

The contrary argument is a good one. That there simply isn’t the funding available for these lower tiers of Government to exist and function now as they once did.

Yet the economic argument is now a hollow one as the technology that we have available dictates that very local authorities no longer have the need to retain the massive administrative or executive functions that they once did.

Whilst cost cutting means that pooling technical delivery services such as environmental health services or bin collections make sound economic sense, there is absolutely no reason that decision making has to be run or modelled in the same way.

That is before you cross the Rubicon and tackle the question of the what the financial impact of the local Government Pension Scheme on local Council Budgets involves and the savings and therefore money it would provide for services to be resumed that have been stopped today.

If we have a Westminster government that treats the whole of the Electorate as the adults that we are, it stands to reason that the same government must also treat the politicians within the localised tiers of government as adults too.

The additional powers that local Councils would have right down at neighbourhood and village level would immediately see people and more suitable candidates for elections becoming reengaged.

The real change that must come to make the difference at local level (at the very least) is the removal of political parties from the electoral process and action taken to prevent outside influence and money from holding sway.

It is not only possible and practical for independent candidates to run their own election campaigns, but would also be a highly democratic step to require that those seeking election to Councils of any kind are able to communicate and connect with the electorate during a campaign without the support of a national brand.

The current approach only ensures that we have too many people representing themselves and the interests of ‘their people’ instead of us all throughout government at every level.

We must take the coming opportunity to work to elect the right people to public representative offices of every kind and support this process by removing all of the tools that make it easy to place power in the wrong hands with the massive cost to us all that then involves.

This Government tyranny will be made worse by localising Test & Trace

So, 6,000 of the fake jobs created to support Boris’ white elephant Test & Trace Service are being cut and the other 12,000 are being re-tasked to make the whole thing ‘local’.

The man-made catastrophe that is the Johnson Government’s handling of the Coronavirus Pandemic made manifest through the Lockdown, the implementation of Social Distancing and every other follow-up action of these political clowns was already lurching from bad to worse with every new day. Now they want to get all their local authority chums in on the buffoonery too.

If you think that what the Westminster Government has done is already as bad as it can get. Think again.

We haven’t even reached September when the Schools are supposed to go back with the promise of all sorts of additional social distancing delights to go with it. Nor have we got to October when the great Furlough Money giveaway is currently scheduled and the fallout from the real economic smash will begin. Yet we are now facing the menace of local Councillors and apparatchiks getting in on the totalitarian action too.

Make no mistake. If you think you have to be in a role that suggests you are in charge of the Country to be intoxicated by the power (and glory you think) you have, be assured that the same mentality exists throughout local government and the public sector too.

We have been fortunate so far that there is so much relevant procedure already in place to deal with crisis situations.

Believe it or not, the problems that we are experiencing have so far been restricted because the stupid politicians we have only been able to fuck things up when decisions have been necessary to take care of issues where no relevant policy (or textbook example) for them already exists.

Passing the buck for the unnecessary and completely flawed service that Test & Trace is to local authorities and government organisations who are filled with people desperate for their own moment of fame, is set only tom amplify the impact and consequences of this political stupidity for us all.

Problems will be creatively found that simply do not exist, simply so that the people employed to do this work can justify what they are being paid to do.

Common sense in the public sector no longer exists. Not because the officials are not intelligent enough or capable of thinking in a rational or logical way. But because the protectionism that has been allowed to flourish dictates that the frameworks of legislation and regulations that were once used as mere guidelines are now rigidly adhered to. Ironically not to the letter. But to the level of detail that any individual delegated with those powers interprets those regulations to materially be.

Prepare yourself for local Lockdowns on a massive scale, with pub, business, shop and school closures simply because that’s what those invested with these new powers from above think that it will take to administer the powers created to address the spread of a virus that even the Government doesn’t understand.

Don’t buy in to any propaganda or other drivel that suggests that local administration of Lockdown and Social Distancing Policy will be any greater help or in any way more benevolent to us all.

The bottom line is that this is a very cynical move on the part of Boris & Co. to pass the buck on the very unpopular and equally unnecessary decisions that their stupidity and keeping the lie going requires them to take.

They will now just be able to distance themselves from it and use the opportunity to suggest that the hardship they have caused has increasingly been just a very localised mistake.

None of these people are politicians that we can trust. We need them all removed and replaced by people who care more about the people they represent than they do about themselves.

That is when we will begin to see some real justice for us all across the UK.

There’s only one way to exit the Lockdown: End it NOW – and stop trying to please everyone

Without realising that they have done it, the Government has given us a master class in divide and conquer.

The financial support being provided for some of those who have lost income as a result of the Lockdown is so piecemeal and all over the place, it has literally played up to the way that we think culturally. It has left different groups falling over themselves to try and secure the same payouts that they perceive to have been already given to everyone else.

The upshot of all this has been that the only thing the Government has done which unified people was to create and then perpetuate the myths about their efforts to ‘protect the NHS’, using it as leverage to create groupthink and a false populism about key workers that has led to people clapping on their doorsteps like clockwork once a week.

If a) protecting the NHS was the only thing that was important and b) it was actually what the Government intended to do, this strategy would go down in history as a stroke of genius.

However, what ‘protecting the NHS’, the creation of the Nightingale Field Hospitals, the Lockdown, Social Distancing, heavy-handed Police enforcement and a growing list of other things tell us is there is a complete absence of rudimentary management practice at the heart of government that looks at all the different factors and influences across this situation and then comes up with plans that join up all the dots.

Doing so would be an approach that may not be immediately popular. But it would at the very least consider everyone and therefore would actually work for us all.

The Government’s key error from the start of the Coronavirus pandemic has been an over reliance on words, views and influence of scientists, medical specialists and epidemiologists to manage a national crisis, purely on the basis of prioritising only the medical issues that relate to it.

This has served to sow fear on an unprecedented level across the UK population in such a way that COVID-19 has become an irrational motivator that in the minds of many. A false populism has been deliberately created that means normally intelligent and sensible people will prioritise Coronavirus above all else – even to the point where it will run counterintuitively to the specialisms and ways of doing normal things that they themselves know best.

Herein lies a real problem as the Government now attempts to create a strategy for the next set of fudges that will be inflicted upon us. They will be sold to us all as a reasoned, stepped or traffic light approach to ending the Lockdown in stages.

The Government will sell the exit as being fully considered and thought-out. But instead of weighing up the pros and cons and taking an equitable and fair approach that is in the genuine interests of everyone, the Government will continue to be swayed by yet more specialists in specific fields where their ‘advice’ and their ‘view’ will be given through the myopic lens of their own specialisms coupled with their own fears of Coronavirus. It will not be what will be best for everyone just to get on with and complete their own jobs in times that we are all finding very challenging.

For instance Education specialists are already making noise about a staggered or piecemeal approach to facilitating the return of children in different age groups to schools at different times instead of just treating them all the same as they should. The exams have been dealt with and education is equally important for everyone.

You cannot please everyone at a time like this.

There will be some who are happy and others who will end up completely miffed.

What the Government should be committed to is working only with what they can control. They must accept and work considerately with the limitations that exist in respect of everything else.

The reality is:

There is currently no cure for Coronavirus.
There is no definitive timeline for when a vaccine will be identified, tested, produced in sufficient quantities and then given to everyone who will still need to be vaccinated at that time.
Everyone is at risk of contracting Coronavirus without a Vaccine
Of those who catch Coronavirus, some will die, some will become very ill, some will have little or no symptoms at all.
Other illnesses, diseases, health conditions and deaths from natural causes are responsible for killing more people than COVID-19 each and every day.
The Lockdown has began to destroy the economy. Businesses closed down temporarily will never reopen and this number will rise each and every day that the Lockdown continues in any form leading to loss of income, job losses, bankruptcies, debt and then all of the personal issues such as depression and anxiety that follows. It has already led to a rise in suicides since the Lockdown began.
The Lockdown is creating significant safeguarding issues across society. Domestic violence has risen since the Lockdown began. Divorces will rise. Vulnerable people are at increased risk because they cannot escape or even have a break from contact with their abusers.
The Nightingale Field Hospitals are nothing more than a white elephant. They are not offering the additional capacity that the Government promised and are there for little more than publicity purposes so that Politicians can claim they are getting things done.
Likewise, the Private Hospitals that have been ‘taken over’ at significant cost to the Taxpayer, are not being fully used.
The existing NHS facilities are running as best they can but have been beset by supply chain and resource management problems that the Government was already aware of, but had done little or nothing to head off.
The NHS is severely understaffed. During a time of national crisis, it stands to reason that rules and regulations can and should be relaxed to allow on-the-job training for healthcare assistants within all of our Hospitals.
The only plan the Government has is to keep the flow of ill COVID-19 patients into hospital at the level of capacity which is available within the existing NHS.
The only way the Government ‘Strategy’ can succeed and be maintained is either to maintain the Lockdown until the Vaccine is ready or to allow some loosening of the Lockdown once patient numbers drop, until they go up again and then reintroduce the full Lockdown. This process would need repeating over and over again until Coronavirus is no longer any risk, with a full Lockdown being implemented many times.
There is and will be no level of certainty that any lives can genuinely be saved until mass vaccination has taken place.
There is no guarantee that the lives of any Coronavirus patients can be saved by the Lockdown, whilst we can be sure that the Lockdown is already on the way to causing significant economic and social harm to the whole Country – which will result in the loss of many more lives over the long term than would be lost to Coronavirus if everyone were to be infected by the Virus at the same time.
The hysteria that the Government and the Media have created is promoting an irrational fear of catching and dying from Coronavirus, when it is most likely that everyone will die from another cause.
We don’t know what Coronavirus can, will or won’t do and who it will effect.
We do know what the Lockdown is already doing, will do and who it is going to do it to.
The Lockdown MUST be brought to an immediate END. Not in part, but in full, allowing people to behave like adults and allowing them the choices of what to do.

If the Government continues to complicate its responses and all that it is doing to manage the COVID-19 Crisis, rather than taking the most simple approach, it will simply continue to create even more problems for the Country and for each of us as individuals.

Yes, people are genuinely concerned about people dying from Coronavirus. But people are dying all of the time. The only thing that is different with COVID-19 is that it is new and the Government – with the help of the media – has sensationalised it and given it celebrity status in many minds.

The only way that this Crisis can be managed for the best interests of the many rather than the few is to end the Lockdown and then manage the symptoms of those who have Coronavirus as and when and where they arise.

The fact that the Government is failing to resource the NHS as it should is not good enough reason for the Lockdown to continue as it is right now.

In the Second World War, Churchill mobilised the British People with brilliant rhetoric that looked reality straight in the eye. When the call went out for metal to build Spitfires and paper to make bullets, everyone did their part. They felt they were making a genuine contribution and had some ownership or investment in everything that was being done.

If the Government were to come clean and stop trying to hide its weaknesses, many more people and their communities would want to help and do their bit.

Some would happily make PPE. Others would be happy to begin working with the NHS.

They cannot do this whilst they and the whole Country are locked down and their freedom to be who they are is being curtailed.

With things as they are, people are understandably more worried about whether their jobs and businesses will continue to exist in a few weeks, rather than getting down to doing what they are all good at and genuinely helping to get this all done.

The following suggestions for ending the Lockdown and getting the UK moving again are taken from my Blog Why it’s time to end the Shutdown & how to let life resume and face whatever happens next and was published on this Blogsite on 6th April 2020:

It’s time for the Shutdown to end now. It’s time for life to restart.

There is no perfect way to plan the fight against Coronavirus, or to put together a strategy for ending the Lockdown, letting life restart and managing cases of Coronavirus either now or thereafter. There are simply too many unknowns and variables within what is a live and evolving Crisis for that ever to be the way.

However, we can ask that the Politicians do their best, and in terms of ending the Lockdown now and getting life back on track, these are some of the key things that they can now do.

Notification of Coronavirus Symptoms

Perhaps the key factor or source of information that the Government needs going forward, is clear and decisive record of who has experienced Coronavirus symptoms – even if no medical intervention has been involved.

Upon first experiencing Coronavirus symptoms, individuals should be able to Register using their individual identification data on the Government Portal.
This responsibility to register would become that of parents, carers and guardians for children and vulnerable people
Nobody should be able to claim Coronavirus Sickness Benefit without having registered first.
In the first instance and until such time as it is confirmed whether symptoms of Coronavirus could be suffered more than once, individuals would be able to claim only once,
The data can then be used to distribute the Coronavirus Antibody Test once it is universally available and thereby technically available to all
On completion of registration, the Government Portal should allocate a unique reference number for every individual to use to claim benefits such as Coronavirus Sick Pay and payment holidays

The NHS

It will remain essential to keep resources flowing towards the NHS so that it can manage the critical stages of the Coronavirus related illness that some people will inevitable suffer – just as they are now.

Field Hospitals, Intensive Care Units, Ventilator numbers and the recruitment rate of staff will have to continue to rise until the natural infection rate and the number of people it will effect critically at any particular time has been reached.

This will not be long once the restart has begun. But there is likely to be a period of time where it doesn’t look like the NHS can cope and numbers of people are dying who might have been saved, had more resources been in place.

‘Protect the NHS’ is the Trojan horse argument that led to the shutdown as the chosen way to attempt to manage demand in the first place. It’s where the Government went fundamentally wrong.

Local Trusts should set up Designated Reception Centres, separate to GP Surgeries and Hospital Reception areas used for other purposes
Local dedicated helplines should be provided to field calls from those with symptoms
Dedicated Ambulance provision should be put in place for Coronavirus sufferers
The general emergency Ambulance fleet should be kept separate.
Serious consideration should be given to requiring benefits claimants to report for duty as healthcare assistants, with full pay, work and training options to be offered after a qualifying or probationary period.

The Restart itself

The way to lift the Lockdown isn’t to try and overcomplicate things by using terms such as calling it ‘gradual’ or ‘taking things in steps’, or anything else that even hints at there being some form of managed delay.

Whilst we might all like to think that the world as we knew it before March could just be switched back on at 9am on Monday morning it won’t happen no matter what we do. The time it will take those businesses still operating to return to full operation will take a lot longer than it took them to shut down. That is before you take into consideration the natural trepidation that many people are going to have as a result of the negativity and scaremongering that has taken place on the part of the media.

Even now, barely a fortnight in to the Lockdown, things will have changed markedly and they will continue to do so each and every day until the new norm for life begins.

People and businesses are going to work differently, travel differently and think differently. So the resumption of participating in everyday life will take time under its own steam, without anyone or anything else being involved.

Social Distancing

Social distancing in areas where people are usually in close proximity will be a good measure to retain formally, even though people are likely to keep their distance for some time as it has already become an accepted part of life.

Even if social distancing plays no further active part in dealing with Coronavirus – given that there are very recent suggestions that the Virus can remain active in air for up to three hours – it will help address any social awkwardness that will exist for some people once the Media’s negative messaging campaign is over and done.

Sick Pay

Everyone working who has unable to work because they have caught Coronavirus should be able to rely on having Coronavirus Sick Pay
The Sick Pay should last a calendar month from the date of registration
There should not be a laborious process of application involving claims for Universal Credit or applications via Jobcentres or the DWP.
The Coronavirus sick pay should be claimed on behalf of employees by employers and paid as part of the monthly PAYE process
The self employed and/or contract workers should be able to claim their sick pay back as part of their next Annual Tax Return.
The reference number allocated at registration should be used by employers for PAYE purposes and on individual Tax Returns.

People

Fundamentally, it is essential that every member of the population is treated like an adult, trusted to do the right thing and given no excuse to do otherwise. To support everyone, the Government must ensure that all practical issues people may experience if and when they suffer with Coronavirus has been mitigated against adequately and given added value as an incentive too.

Put simply, if there’s no way people can lose out, they will do the right thing.

Any individual, their parent, carer or guardian will register Coronavirus Symptoms using the Government Portal
Upon registration, individuals should be required to immediately self-isolate and remain isolated for a minimum of 14 days
Upon experiencing escalating symptoms, individuals should report to local NHS designated reception centres or call designated helplines if transport or an ambulance is required
All domestic bills, rents, leases, loans, interest and debt repayments to stopped for a month as a ‘Payment Holiday’
Individuals to use the reference number provided when they registered with the Government Portal to confirm they are on a legitimate payment holiday with debtors or those they should normally pay.
A payment of approx £100 per week to be payable to every individual Registered in the ‘Coronavirus Window’ for a period of four weeks to cover food and essentials

The Vulnerable

The vulnerable have to be allowed to make their own decision about the risk, about remaining in isolation, or returning to ‘normal life’. They should not be pressured to go either way.
Benefits Claimants without medical conditions and unemployed should be tasked with providing the support currently provided by volunteers.

For Business

Businesses of all sizes should be protected from the impact of the Lockdown for the period of time it will take things to return to or find the new normal, once the Lockdown has been lifted.
Where necessary support should be applied retrospectively to the 23^rdof March 2020, if not the point in time before that when levels of business within marketplaces are recognised as having began to decline in response to the early stages of the Coronavirus Crisis.
All businesses should have a 3-6 months ‘payment holiday’ from rents, leases, mortgages, repayments, interest, debt
Heavy fines and/or jail terms should be immediately awarded by a District Judge without trial or appeal, to any Creditor, Company, Director or Partner thereof refusing to facilitate the ‘payment holiday’ and/or attempting to recover any related sums using other or additional debt devices or levying additional payments or raising prices relating to that relationship

Funerals

For the duration of the Coronavirus Pandemic, the Government should intervene to ensure that the disposal of bodies is facilitated without delay, without price gouging or profiteering and is provided on the basis of a same-level, community service for all.

The Government should set a fixed, realistic cost for a ‘standard’ funeral with a transparent minimal fixed margin and no additional payments being made for anything not specified
The Government should pay the cost of ALL Funerals at the standard rate for the duration of the Coronavirus Pandemic
Local Authorities should administer the allocation of care of the deceased and funerals to local undertakers on a take-it-in-turns basis
Local Authorities should administer payments to undertakers and make them immediately
All funerals should be provided on the same basis and not open to change or being ‘upgraded’ by additional payments from families etc
Funeral Insurance payouts to either be split with the cost of the standard funeral being returned to the Government and any outstanding balance returned to the family or estate, or simply paid out to the family or estate

The Media

Whilst free society needs a free press, the current approach, lack of ethical standards and reliance on dressing up subjective opinion as news requires that Government take a different approach and one that doesn’t play into the system as it is.

The forward briefing, advance copies of Government speeches and embargoed press releases need to stop.
Regulation needs to be introduced that requires news to be news, and for the mainstream media to promote the wider concept of the principle of charity in all things, rather than constantly looking for every opportunity to create negative spin.

Jail terms for public servants who overlook their safeguarding responsibilities sounds tough. But if the cause of the problem is actually government wide, should David Cameron be volunteering himself for 5 years in prison rather than another jolly in No. 10?

Rotherham has already reached such levels of notoriety in local government that the place name has itself become synonymous with the darkest aspects of our society and the lack of responsibility taken by those who we all somehow know simply should have done much better.

At first account, David Cameron’s announcement that any public official – whether an officer or politician – who is shown to have overlooked child safety issues may soon face a jail term, sounds exactly like the kind of tough-minded policy making that we all really want to have coming out of Westminster.

Many of us will agree with the sentiment.

But then, what if those responsible didn’t actually see a problem? What if they didn’t ask questions, because they didn’t see it as their job to do so? What if those individuals were more sure of difficult consequences as a result of speaking out than they were of being any help to others by doing so?

We do not know the specific circumstances and chronology of all the events and actions that contributed to Rotherham. But neither are we likely to do so, given that inquiries will reflect the often-accepted perception that all decisions are black and white in nature, and that the evidence will speak for itself.

On one level it will, and particularly so when there is a kneejerk response from Central Government to the idea that an individual can always be blamed.

However, the thought processes we all have are still thankfully just our own. Very few of us would willingly provide a word-by-word account of what we have ever at any one time thought – even if we could remember the exact detail for long enough to do so.

Regrettably, in terms of getting tough on those who neglect their responsibilities to the public is concerned, the PM’s plan is a measure which neither accounts for the inadequacies of the government system as it exists today, nor the people who are and who have been in the position to actually do something about it – even now.

Let us be in no doubt, child abuse is horrific however you consider it. Public officials failing to protect, safeguard and prevent the abuse of vulnerable people of any age within our communities is an inexcusable act in every sense.

But it has happened, and it is probably happening in places where we wouldn’t dream it to be even remotely possible, right now. And it may well have been missed because public servants were doing exactly what they understand their job requires them to do.

Whilst this one emotive subject has captured the public imagination and the vote-seeking cynicism of one political party as it thinks of the General Election in May, lack of responsibility on the part of public servants extends way beyond the realms of what government currently calls ‘safeguarding’.

There is an institutional failure at work, which permeates every part of the political, executive and administrative tiers of government, NGO’s and public services.

Decisions effecting the lives of you and I are in no way guaranteed to be made in our best interests by the very people we have elected and who have been employed to serve us.

Just as children have and may still be being abused when someone might have been able to stop it from happening, other people may actually be dying because people with responsibility for others at many different levels are not considering the real impacts of their decisions on the people in their care, when we all objectively know that they should.

Outrageous as this all may sound, tackling this problem, whether it is the way that a medical product is purchased within the NHS, a planning decision is made within a district council, or the action taken within social services means that a child is left exposed to the influence of someone who is considered as the member of an ethnic minority first and a pedophile second, may in no way be as simple as it may look.

Solving these many problems facing our public services is not as straightforward as punishing individuals for overlooking, or deliberately ignoring information or experiences that that public servants have had in their roles.

Before anything else, we have to understand at least some of the basic rules of the protectionist and ineffectual culture, which exists throughout our Public Services.

Only then might we begin to find solutions without automatically attacking those, whose actions would perhaps look very like many of our own, were we to find ourselves working and considering where our own responsibilities would stop in the very same circumstances.

Government is not a happy place. It stands to reason that if the people who are sat at the top of the tree behave in a certain way, the same kind of behavior will soon begin to manifest itself throughout the branches and departments of the organisation below, often with consequences that could never have been foreseen.

My own experience comes directly from working within a local authority, with a national charity, as a politician, and anecdotally through third hand contact throughout. Its real, its tested and I have experienced first hand how the whole system is failing us all, because it is fundamentally, institutionally and culturally sick.

What follows is an overview or perspective of Local Government alone. However, many of the points raised will be applicable to any government body or what we would call a public service.

Whilst I have attempted to focus my thoughts on specific areas, the reality is that there is significant overlap, and the behaviors, processes and methods discussed are very much interdependent, effecting and effected by many different factors and the input of Officers, Politicians and Central – or Westminster-based Government alike.

Managers are increasingly becoming qualification rich and experience poor, as part of a ‘textbook technocracy’. The system rewards those who dedicate themselves to playing the progression game, much as it does the politicians. Those climbing the career ladder are usually specialists in one area, rather than having had a grounding in a variety of operational areas where they will have gained a broader understanding not only of the technical aspects of other service areas, but of the life issues and behavior of the wide variety of people from different backgrounds that the staff they will soon manage are interacting with daily. This is not a problem that is exclusively attributable to the most senior levels of management. With an increasing push to share services and responsibilities both within and with other authorities, lower tier managers are now finding themselves with roles where frontline experience of service provision can be critical across many disciplines. The results are plain to see, and as experience is lost through natural wastage, redundancies and attractive jobs with private business, good management is increasingly becoming reliant upon luck, rather than good judgment. When you have deficient management, you then become reliant upon political leadership and that is often as inadequate, if not more so than the relevant officers within the executive itself.
Many people are unaware of how desperate the financial circumstances facing the Public Sector actually are. In local government, funding for services is not solely raised by Council Tax alone, and what we pay each month is itself shared out between our local parish, district, county and police authorities. Central government provides an annual settlement or grant to our councils which is being continually lowered and this process has been speeded up throughout the period of Austerity. Some of this is being given back in the form of incentives, such as the New Homes Bonus, which relates to the number of new homes built in the area of the Authority during the year. Unfortunately, payments like this are a two-edged sword and are effectively a way of coercing local authorities to implement government policy and keep doing so, simply to maintain income which is otherwise irreplaceable without cuts.
Current Government Policy is not normally to allow rises in Council Tax above 5% annually. But even with this, there is a tendency for many ruling Political Groups to keep this figure as near to zero% as possible, simply as voters are likely to respond to this form of taxation and the way it has been decided than any other. The downward side to this ‘crowd pleasing’ approach is that Council Tax income is often not increasing in line with normal price rises (inflation), whilst other forms of funding are also being cut. This means that authorities aren’t even financially ‘standing still’, and have no option but to cut services, reduce staff or share services with other authorities, which is a process which ultimately takes power further away from the people. Money is tight and decisions are being made that are effecting lives, based upon funding alone. It’s not necessarily because the person on the other end of the phone doesn’t care, but because they have to decide who gets the fixed amount of money (the budget) that they have available.
Politically speaking, ‘can do’ is actually ‘can’t, don’t’. As is the case nationally, local government is experiencing a critical shortage of politicians who are ‘in it for the right reasons’. Of those who are – or get first elected on the basis that they are, many are simply not equipped with the experience or leadership-related–confidence that ALL politicians, at every level of government need to effectively represent the people who elected them – within what is actually a leadership role. This functional naivety leaves party dinosaurs unchallenged from within their own ranks, and officers increasingly able to guide policy on the basis of what works most safely for them, or for the furtherance of their CV’s. The situation is growing progressively worse and is only becoming enhanced further by the policy coercion which comes either from Government, or from the National Party HQ’s.
Despite the perception that local government makes decisions, much of its responsibility lies in the form of interpreting law and legislation which has been created by MP’s and civil servants in Westminster. Central Government retains the right to overturn local decision making that doesn’t meet the rules that it has set. The reality of this is that decisions are increasingly made on the basis of strictly adhering to central legislation, rather than what local need may actually require. The most obvious manifestation of this can be seen within the Planning and Licensing functions, where decisions are made that are openly transparent within a process with which members of the public or business community interact. When even our local policies are made very much on the basis of frameworks which have been set in London, politicians and officers alike are becoming more and more inclined to defer reasoned judgment on real life decisions they are facing on behalf of the public, to a subservience to a ‘greater power’. The financial, cultural and institutional aspects of the problem play heavily into this process also, but the greatest irony of the controlling way in which Central Government runs every part of the government, is that the structure already exists which would allow power to be well and truly devolved to local people – were it able to work as it could. The legislative problem is reflected in the attitudes of politicians and officers alike and is becoming ever more obvious to observers. Policy making has become a truly questionable process, the machinations of which were once only thought of, or perhaps spoken about behind closed doors. It is now openly discussed in public in a way that simply beggars belief.
The bureaucratic structure within Government is continually tightening, despite the messages we hear in the media to the contrary. Common sense; being allowed to think on your feet; taking into consideration all that factors which are specific to each and every case. These are all no more than ideas in a heavily proscribed environment, which leaves officers and increasingly elected members also having to adopt a highly arbitrary approach to decision making. The Influence of the rights culture has come significantly in to play and the creation of increasingly detailed and instructive processes are removing the human touch from interaction between councils and their customers, all to ensure that risk is limited to the remotest degree. Put simply, decision-making has become increasingly black and white when real life is a very grey area. Managers report upwards through respective line management to their CEO, who in turn reports to the political leadership of the council. Less senior politicians have very limited means to address performance issues relating to officers, which have to be passed to department heads, or to a council’s delegated committee which deals with employee issues – one which is often assembled politically. When both the political and executive leadership are incompetent, there is no robust system in place which will enable anyone to do anything about it. For a complainant, speaking out to the media is a highly risky approach to take, and one which is seriously frowned upon, when you are effectively bringing in to question the actions of the Authority of which you are yourself a part.
Officers operate within a protectionist system where responsibility is the equivalent of risk and where risk is to be avoided at all costs. Staff are closed down to wider issues affecting the organisations they work for and operate often with a kind of tunnel vision which effectively thrives on passing the buck, or more often than not, simply assuming that someone else will pick the issue up departmentally or organisationally – either because the person who raised it will just assume they need to go elsewhere, or because they just don’t have to deal with anything that sits outside of their job description. The way that we see this manifested most clearly is by the way that consultants are often employed – at great cost – to write reports, giving conclusions or recommendations which departments and whole organisations already understand and will normally have had skilled staff employed to know very well before. The views of a third party are somehow and mistakenly perceived to give a level of legitimacy that nobody employed to actually do the job could provide. Decisions often become assignments for ‘contractors’ by being passed from one level of management to the next. Nobody wants to rock the boat and put at risk what has historically been one of the safest occupations to have, with gold-plated consequences at the end of a highly uneventful career, doing all that it takes to keep your nose clean.
Managers have a clear distrust, and in many cases open contempt for the members of the authorities that they work for. This is a situation which has been exacerbated by the lack of interest that many politicians actually show in the areas of responsibility that they have – if they understand them in the first place. Managers often forget that they are employed by the council itself – which is the body made up of the elected members. Indeed, even a CEO is technically the clerk to the council, a point which is well illustrated by the role and position they often take up in council meetings.
The business of government today is more autocratic in nature than it is democratic and could easily be compared with the feudal system. Democracy leaves the building almost as soon as the votes have been counted in elections and then decisions are nearly always made under the guidance of those politicians upon whom power has been centralised. Genuine debate is stifled by restrictive procedures and processes which effectively enable officers and politicians to duck drawn out examination processes which would allow real answers to be produced within public forums.
Scrutiny processes are generally very weak, ineffective and are failing to serve the public interest in any way. Scrutiny is often treated with distain by controlling political groups who believe that their elected majority gives them and specifically their leadership a level of legitimacy that should not be questioned. Scrutiny cannot be relied upon by opposition groups who are unlikely to successfully influence the decision of a majority using what is currently an arguably worthless ‘checks and balance’ process, unless there is a problem so clearly obvious with a policy, that it almost certainly wouldn’t have been adopted anyway.
The political system does not currently encourage strong leadership – usually based upon experience, which is often perceived as divisive in a system where it is normal for politicians to be working to an agenda of some kind. Ineffectual or ‘all things to all people’ styles of leadership are however in practice very weak, opening the door to poor guidance from officers which in such circumstances could be viewed as almost being coercive. When that executive leadership is itself weak, inadequately experienced or just as self-serving as many of the politicians, the results will speak for themselves.

The issues are different for each and every public service organisation, and will almost certainly cover areas that go way beyond what has been described here.

There are also many exceptions. There are some truly exceptional officers and politicians in local government who are doing what they can to ‘get it right’.

There are many more officers and politicians who could be just as exceptional. But the system simply doesn’t encourage them to give the public service that they are capable of giving, and that we, as taxpayers should reasonably be able to expect.

If you consider all of the points that have been made; allow for them to be adjusted, moved or even considered in a different place, you might begin to be able to visualise just how complex the institutional crisis facing all government or public sector organisations actually is, and how critical it has now become that meaningful reform be enacted throughout, for the best interests of all.

The required process of change can only begin from the top. The legislative levers that must be moved to instigate change, are more than ready to be pulled.

The change needed has to be undertaken with the level of understanding, impartiality and diligence that will be essential in ensuring that all forms of self-interest are not only removed, but no longer tolerated within an extremely complex system that exists and should only ever exist to serve the public.

Decisions are being made right now on the basis of ‘what if’ and ‘what will be the consequences for me’ throughout the system.

Officers and politicians are not working within a culture which equips, enables or encourages them to empathise with the people they are supposed to help, or to look beyond and consider the consequences of their decisions and actions for others in any sense.

This is itself highly reflective of the processes which successive Governments have inadvertently nurtured, maintained and developed, and there would be great difficulty in criticising officers within any authority operating at any level for taking this approach, when the example that they continue to be set by Westminster is simply telling them that this is an acceptable way to carry on.

Public servants who fail the people they are employed or elected to protect should be expected to take full responsibility for their actions.

But when the institutional culture of government and public services tells them to do everything but make reasoned decisions alone, it must logically follow that those responsible for the system itself must take responsibility for the faults that lie within it.

So before doling out 5-year jail terms for the people who may just be scapegoats and the easiest to blame, should David Cameron perhaps be volunteering for 5 years in Prison rather than another jolly in No. 10?

image thanks to unknown

Bankrupt Britain: Is the death of Local Public Service provision avoidable and will it lead communities to provide their own not-for-profit services?

Whilst it may not be generating the media frenzy or sensationalist prose that usually grabs everyone’s attention, recent days have seen a number of different stories emerge that confirm much about the state of Local Government and the services we contribute towards with our Council Tax.

The common theme is of course money – or rather the lack of it.

Those of us taking the collapse of local public services seriously may already be well aware of the perilous state of funding and how bleak the outlook actually is.

However, despite the many cuts and reductions in services that people have witnessed across the UK already, it is the continuing reliance that today’s politicians have placed in using yesterday’s methods to solve tomorrows problems should perhaps give us even greater cause for concern.

This week alone, one Police & Crime Commissioner covering a Conservative area has suggested that he will seek a referendum on raising the local Police Precept element of Council Tax by no less than 25%, whilst the Leader of Newcastle City Council is now on the record as suggesting that the reduction of funding may soon lead to social unrest, with an expectation that an incoming Labour Government will simply change the ‘settlement’ – and thereby solve the problem after May.

Whilst both of these Politicians are in unenviable positions, neither plan would work in the best interests of the electorate, even if they were to be seen to solve the problems in the immediate term. And by immediate term, we are probably talking just 12 months before the very same problem is there to be solved all over again.

Adding yet more to the Tax burden of individuals and households may be an easy decision for politicians, but isn’t sustainable for the people who are paying.

Meanwhile, more money coming from central Government when the Country is already effectively bankrupt spells disaster of another kind, as the accumulation of National Debt simply cannot continue with each successive Government that comes along attempting to shelve today’s problems for tomorrow by printing money like it was all some kind of game without any real cost.

The system of local public service delivery is broken not just because of a lack of funding today, but because of decades of mismanagement focused on targets, working conditions and the development of the protectionist culture which serves everyone’s interests but those of the very people who the services were initially created to serve.

These cultural and institutional problems have not been created locally, but they are certainly propagated locally.

One of the most serious ‘injustices’ served upon every Council Tax Payer, is the seismic amount of our contributions that actually go into the Local Government Pension Scheme. It has increasingly done so since the then Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown raided Pension Funds in 1997 and left the general public to pick up the tab for the subsequent deficit which would otherwise have surely obliterated gold-plated Local Government Pensions.

It would certainly be advisable to have a look at your Local Council’s Annual Budget and see just how much of your money goes into this Scheme. A good guess would be that rather than being anywhere near the red, your local services would be well and truly in the black if you weren’t funding someone else’s retirement plan, just because of the last Labour Government’s fiscal free-for-all, which removed many of the regulations that actually helped a great many of the very people who supported them.

Solving the problem of how to afford what local public services cost us without losing services, reducing services or there being a need to dispose of assets which basically belong to us all, may have already reached a stage where it will seem impossible to do so without the measures already discussed.

But with such options not being real choices, we will all soon have to accept that the way local public services are delivered is going to change; and that the change that comes may not be in anyway better.

Service sharing between Authorities and even Police Forces is now well under way and is likely to accelerate significantly as the reality of the UK’s financial predicament continues to bite hard.

However, the distinct irony of this pathway is that sharing services does indeed take the management and handling of public services further away from the people themselves. And the point should not be lost on anyone that the real cause of much of today’s political disquiet – i.e. taking decisions further away from people will only be made worse by what is yet to come as a result of this.

The political and government infrastructure that could have solved problems like those raised by the Scottish Independence question has already existed for at least two generations in the forms of Parish & Town Councils, District Level Councils and County Councils.

The problem is that Westminster based politicians do not want to empower local representatives at any cost.

Whilst continually paying lip service through concepts such as ‘Localism’ – which has been such a big sound bite of the Coalition era, the reality has been that all changes within Local Government have simply been pushing more and more power back to London, rather than devolving local decisions to local people as any Government focused upon what is really best for the electorate surely would.

This reality may well give the lie to the ‘vow’ which we all awoke to on the morning after the Scottish Referendum. It almost certainly paints a picture which doesn’t look good for us all locally. But when local politics is itself arguably just as rotten and as focused on itself as Westminster is, what can we really expect?

The reality of what lies ahead should hit us hard, because much of what we today take for granted in terms of services supporting both communities and individuals may soon be simply unaffordable – even though we seem to be paying through the nose for it.

With Government Organisations and structures maintained by a culture which nobody is willing to reform, Local Authorities are likely to lean ever more heavily in the future upon contractors and trading companies.

This is a considerable leap in the direction of privatisation and one which could very quickly lead to the token ability of Local Council’s to affect change and decision making on the part of the communities that they represent to be seen for what it really is.

It is a very real prospect that the only services that many people perceive as being what they receive for their money will be handled by private contractors. Companies who are delivering services to the public whilst making a profit at a lower price than what it would cost the public to deliver itself.

With even fortnightly bin collections now at risk, it is not in any way hard to imagine paying for your rubbish to be collected by a company you pay directly – as you would do with electricity, gas or your phone. Indeed it may be little accident that ‘utility’ companies already run such services on behalf of Councils and many of us will quickly wonder what we are paying Council Tax for if we don’t see any Police on the streets and have our rubbish collected by someone else.

Without immediate and meaningful reform, it is a good guess that social enterprise will be the only way that we will be able to have local public services delivered, which are seen to be free at point of delivery or kept at a cost which is both affordable for users and sustainable for the organisations delivering them.

This is unlikely to be restricted to just local service delivery, and whilst utilities, transport and communications are currently little more than the cash cows of the City and its Pension Funds, keeping it real dictates that sooner or later the political classes will have to accept that allowing our society to function at its most basic level requires nothing less than that all services provided for the benefit of the wider community and the individuals within it must be provided on a not-for-profit basis and with best value to the end user firmly in mind.

Regrettably, with much of the infrastructure already disposed of which will facilitate this at National Level, and the same process now progressively happening through the back door at local level, it is communities themselves that may well have to raise the funds to create the new trading companies that will do this.

With crowd funding a good example of the options now available, it is certainly possible to do so.

But as we also wonder why we are paying more tax on everything but receive even less for what we give…won’t we all be asking the question why?

image: dailymail.co.uk

Council Spending Cuts: Savings must be the objective, not simply the means to reducing Local Authority expenditure and without providing the tools to affect real reforming change, it’s beginning to look like Eric Pickles is wielding a lot of stick without even a hint of any carrot…

Local government conference

I don’t envy the position that any Government Minister has in respect of either the Deficit – which the Government are all too happy to talk about; or the escalating mountain of Debt – which they are apparently not.

Cuts in public spending are and have been inevitable since way before the last General Election. But it always seems to be the same ‘soft’ targets that get picked, rather than the controversial policy areas that make most MP’s go green, even if they are just asked to talk about them. Therefore, the announcement of a 2.9% cut in the Local Government settlement in 2014-15 is surely one of the most obvious cases of ‘passing the buck’ that there ever could be.

As both a sitting Councillor and past Local Authority Officer, I have no doubt that considerable opportunities to make savings continue to exist within most Council administrative, executive and operational functions. However, I also realise that making such savings is far from a straightforward exercise and particularly so when some areas of service provision simply cannot be cut, or in some cases will even require greater funding in the future.

Whilst cutting spending to reduce the National Deficit and hopefully at some point, start tackling the National Debt is a sensible aim, it should arguably be used as the objective rather than the means itself, and the failure of Central Government to support Local Authorities by providing the machinery of reform – whilst restricting the tax-raising ability that Councils have, is doing little more than necessitating the removal of structural security from within.

Councils are after all left with little choice but to consider and engage in the sharing of services not only between departments, but also within other Authorities as well. Whilst local politicians can already speculate about a hidden agenda moving us all towards Unitary status, there is no question that any service shared, or even Officers being given cross-disciplinary responsibility is just another step away from the end user, in the level of quality of the service being delivered if nothing else.

That’s hardly Localism now is it Mr Cameron?

The reality of the situation is that the savings that will be required to sort out the mess that the UK actually is in may well necessitate a restructure of the way that all Local Government operates.

But we are not at that point yet and it would be far better that we be able to instigate the real processes of change right now in the hope of retaining as much in terms of local services delivered locally for local people, rather than waiting for a point where financial collapse makes even these possibilities we have right now unviable, simply because a Westminster Government decided that it would be easiest inflicting budget cuts on others in the wild hope that somebody else would be responsible enough to bring about change.

Image thanks to http://www.guardian.com

Spending Review & Local Authorities: We need change and a resurgence of ethics, not coercive micromanagement by stealth and an even greater distance between people and Government

With £11.5 Billion in further cuts set to be outlined in the Coalition’s Spending Review later today, I will probably not be alone in asking myself if this is really going to make the difference that the UK really needs.

Of course, many of us have got far too used to asking such questions only of ourselves as we wonder if there is simply any point in asking the same of anyone else and particularly those Politicians who would actually be in the position to give an honest answer if they so desired.

Many of the Politicians we see on TV are spending increasing amounts of airtime telling us that they are listening. But are they really hearing?

Listening to the news in recent days, you may have heard the suggestion that cutting budgets has not been a failure of the Coalition and that it is in fact the continuing problems with the economy and its inability to deliver the income expected at the time of the 2010 Spending Review that is the real issue. An issue which now of course sees George Osborne scratching away at what he appears to see as the tried and tested…

Of course, those like me who currently inhabit the local government political pool will be looking on in horror at the prospect of a further 10% Central Government funding cut from 2015/16.

Cuts in just in this area alone since 2010 have placed a massive strain on service delivery and are quietly playing out in the loss of arguably vital community resources which were once taken for granted and even affecting the speed and quality of pothole repairs on roads which most of us probably feel should be resurfaced when a hole appears rather than undergo repetitive re-patching for the umpteenth time, bearing in mind the amount we seem to keep paying for them.

Played out across all tiers of Government, the Quangos and Non-Government Organisations, the open secret in all this is that efficiencies have to be found. But the elephant in the room sadly remains missed and the rise of shared services, business services outsourcing and privatisation of services forced on us by budget cuts and imposed ceilings on Council Tax rises will never resolve the biggest issue of all which is the need for comprehensive reform across Government at a fundamental and cultural level.

Change is essential to move inefficient and unproductive ways of working which have developed over many decades of protectionist management; Change which will lead into the delivery of services which once again have their focus upon the benefit to the end user and when selflessly applied, targeted and managed as they should be, are likely to deliver savings all the same.

Ethical working based on doing what is right for all, rather than what works best for those making the decision, has to once again become the norm rather than the exception. For it is this institutionalised and subsequently conditioned practice which has created many of the problems not only in finance, but also in the quality and efficiency within all parts of Government which the Coalition now faces, manifested in services ranging from traffic management to the NHS.

Making savings of the level that have faced George Osborne was never going to be an easy task. But simply addressing the problem by imposing cuts that are ultimately doing nothing less than changing the systems which support everyday people to live real lives and takes Government further away from the public who pay for it is never going to be right. Worse still; it won’t solve the problem.

image thanks to http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Government is not the same thing as a business, and should never be run like it is one

The word ‘business’ conjures up different meanings for different people, depending on their background and of course what exposure they may have had to its use or application.

Most will agree that its use as a term suggests enterprise and methods of working which would sit snugly within a commercial environment. But should this word actually be applied to the modus operandi of any form of Government when the two terms are completely incongruous?

Much is made of the idea that the best people to run Government at any level are those who have a business background. One of the current arguments against the demographic makeup of our MP’s today is the substantial lack of solid business experience possessed by those who lead the Country from Westminster, with the accompanying notion that MP’s who have run or owned businesses of their own would somehow automatically have an almost esoteric level of understanding and midas touch which would solve just about any problem. They wouldn’t; they don’t and they never have.

With years of Local Government experience as both an Elected Member, an Officer and from working within 3^rd Sector Organisations alongside, I have also often heard the term ‘business case’, ‘business plan’ and the idea often suggested that Councils are now run ‘like a business’ in meetings.

The problem with this is of course that the political leadership and members of Councils rarely have ‘hands on’ experience of running any kind of business you could draw reasonable parallels with themselves, and when they do, it is often the case that it has been so long since they did so, that any lack of an appreciation that time moves on or that things continually change will soon erode any tangible benefit.

Perhaps worse is the ability that Officers and Civil Servants have been gifted by political demographics and the opportunity to use such terms in plans, which are then taken as read by those who simply don’t know any better as being a true ‘business case’, when such ‘business’ cases could never be any such thing.

Recognising the differences between running a business in its purest sense, and running Government under the delusion that it can be run as business has never been more essential for today’s politicians, because neither Central or Local Government are businesses, and the people running them have to stop believing and behaving like they are.

A business is of course run for the profit of an individual or shareholders. All decisions will normally be made with the form of pay-off that they will receive firmly in mind. It can be expanded or changed to meet the demands of customers as it sees fit, and a business can choose which customers it may wish to target and how much profit it will seek from delivering any particular product or service. Its revenues are never guaranteed.

On the other hand, Government does not run to make profit, but to provide services and support for all those which it has been elected to serve.

Run properly, Government would not actively target any particular group of customers to provide a different quality of service depending on the feedback or profit that it gets from that group, and would work to meet demand for services as best and prudently as it can, well knowing that it has a duty to do so without seeking payment from one customer to pay for the benefits of another, or to irresponsibly borrow money from lenders that it knows it doesn’t have the appropriate levels of revenue to comfortably repay.

However, Government revenues – as long as they remain sensible – will always be guaranteed, and it is with this significant difference that come the even greater levels of responsibility than no one business should ever realistically be able to have.

One of the greatest dangers facing us as a society comes from the fact that politicians at all levels of Government have either failed to recognise these basic differences and therefore maintain them, or have willingly abused their ability to raise revenues to cover badly managed services or implement policies without any due regard to striking the balance for every member of this society or in applying fairness to all, while they have given every thought to political expedience and electability.

The British political system is broken, because it has adopted those very same values of a profit-making business, which are to further the interests of that business. For politicians, this comes in the form of power, whilst they have ignored the basic rule of business as they have done so; the rule which states they must deliver profit to every single one of the shareholders rather than to themselves. Profit in this sense should always be seen as the delivery of the same results for all.

So if our politicians really feel that they have to treat Government like a business, they then must also realise that if they continue to keep raising the fees on the same old products time and again without offering new products and value for money, they will soon price their offerings way beyond the purse of the people who normally pay, and the cash will soon start ceasing to flow.

Government is not run for a financial profit, any more than it should ever be so for the bottom-line benefit of just the ‘staff’.

Whatever their backgrounds, experience and level, politicians must remember that they are the managers; the facilitators; the decision makers; not the beneficiaries themselves – and especially so where the end profit is not even perceptively the same as what it would be for a business.

The time has long since passed when the electorate could continue to live decent lives, whilst those within Government continue to focus on the end result for themselves. Government is not the same thing as a business, and should never be run like it is one.

Labour Council Leaders say Government cuts will lead to public unrest. But the days of passing the buck for a free Pound have long gone and all politicians must now accept that responsibility has consequences

Some Conservative Councillors will quietly sympathise with the difficult decisions being made within almost every local authority in the Country as the result of continuing budget cuts. But that’s precisely where any similarity in view will end with the content tabled in a joint letter to the Observer by the Labour Leaders of Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield Councils, suggesting that cuts in local government grants will break up society.

Look at our Country today and it is easy to see that we are already living within a divided society that is split by divisions which go way beyond simple demographics, political bias or the slashing of public services at just one level of Government.

These are problems that are far more serious than any senior politician on any side seems willing to address in any meaningful way. And the reality is that the demise of local authority structures and the seemingly endless range of services that they were once able to provide are only being accelerated by the ‘age of austerity’, and not caused by it as this document would apparently have us believe.

There is in fact significant irony that local authorities are also the victim of the philosophy and actions of the very movements and people who are so eloquently attempting to place blame on the Coalition Government today, for problems which have actually been a long time in the making within a system which has only been sustainable because of what must have seemed like a guaranteed bottom line to a generation of politicians who believe that idealism can be delivered without any thought for practicalities.

In just one respect alone, I found myself completely horrified when I first learned of the gargantuan percentages of Council Tax which go directly into the gold-plated Local Government Pension Scheme. Similar ideology has been rampant within local government decision making throughout living memory and any commercial business run with such an extraordinary emphasis on funding employees and their benefits would be as viable as its existence within in a competitive market.

I have little doubt that just these funds alone being made available for the purpose which the Taxpayer has the right to expect, coupled with the real reforms that every part of Government now requires, would deliver a significantly positive effect on what is today a very gloomy picture indeed for locally-funded public services.

Government and non-Government organisations of all types have for too long been insulated against the real world realities of profit and loss by protectionist culture; by the political correctness of socialist job creation; and by a guaranteed level of income which has now unceremoniously come to an end.

It’s time that everyone in positions of responsibility within all tiers of Government began being responsible, rather than looking elsewhere and expecting someone else to pick up the pieces or to pay the bills with a non-existent stream of infinite credit.

Political idealism is as ideal as it is practical. Politicians from all sides now have to accept and work with this reality. Otherwise, a new reality will continue to write itself which will go way beyond the fallout from wasting opportunities for change and from a failure to take full responsibility within local government.

The days of passing the buck and expecting a free Pound in return have long gone and all politicians must now accept that responsibility has consequences.

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