29.01.11
Tony Blair's been in the news a lot recently thanks to his second appearance at the Chilcot Inquiry into the handling of the Iraq War.
There's been various news stories suggesting (again) that Blair had made up his mind to go to war long before the government 'officially' decided to go to war. He also stands accused (again) of running an almost presidential style of government, and not properly consulting his cabinet.
I've recently been reading
The Blair Years - Extracts from The Alastair Campbell Diaries, published in 2007.
What does Mr Blair's long-time spin doctor and loyal supporter have to say about it all?
Strangely, his book pretty much confirms it all, though admittedly it's somewhat open to interpretation - he certainly never explicitly says Blair made up his mind about Iraq beforehand (it would be strange if he did, all things considered), though he's fairly clear that Blair called the shots and cabinet consultation was very limited.
On the latter point, Campbell tends to look at everything through a prism of what is "professional", and presents a very black-and-white view of either working for the good of the party, staying "on-message" and toeing the line, or working against it. Cabinet members who spoke out, or spoke their mind, are regularly described in very derogatory terms, and Blair is said to have spoken in much the same way. Many of the female cabinet members in particular are derided for their lack of what Blair and Campbell see as 'professionalism', and even the popular Redcar MP Mo Mowlam is blasted, and her importance in the Northern Ireland negotiations is talked down compared to her own, more detailed description of events in her book,
Momentum.
Campbell's description of the final cabinet meeting to discuss Iraq essentially describes the cabinet being railroaded into agreeing what had already been decided.
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19.01.11
The coalition government published its Localism Bill on 13th December 2010. This legislation weighs in at 184 pages for the Bill and 247 pages for its schedules and is designed to implement many of the government's policies that have already been set out, including laying the legal foundations of the Government's "Big Society" vision. It's wide-ranging, covering all sorts of issues of interest to local government.
The Bill received its second reading on 17 January 2011, and will go on through three more stages in the House of Commons and five stages in the House of Lords (possibly being changed as it goes) before becoming law. An explanation of the process can be found
here. The full text of the Bill can be found
here.
The BBC news website has a shorter summary of the Bill
here. This summary doesn't include all the measures covered by the BBC, but it concentrates in greater depth on measures of particular interest to local government and public power and democracy.
Community Right to Challenge - Public Sector Competition
[Part 4, Chapter 3 of the Bill]. Any voluntary or community group, charity, parish council or two or more council employees are entitled to put forward an "expression of interest" to a council, indicating that they would like to run one of the council's services, or help to run a service.
The council must consider the expression of interest, with particular consideration of the possible social, economic or environmental benefits of accepting the proposal.
If the proposal is accepted, the council must then begin a procurement exercise for that service.
Additional Freedoms for Councils
Councils are to be given a "general power of competence". [Part1, Chapter 1 of the Bill]. They are to be allowed to anything they are not expressly forbidden from doing. This enables a council to do pretty much anything a person can do. In particular, councils can run a business or provide a chargeable service of any kind anywhere in the UK or abroad, for any reason. The income from a service is not allowed to exceed the costs of running the service. This does not alter the rules under part 6 of the Local Government Act 1972, part 1A of the Local Government Act 2000 or any arrangements that "authorise a person to exercise a function of a local authority."
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11.01.11
Nottinghamshire-based activist group 'Notts SOS' are holding a public meeting on Saturday 15th January 2011 to share ideas and discuss strategies for resisting local cutbacks.
Formed in September 2010, the group aims to "oppose cuts to services, job losses and cuts in benefits" and "support workers' organisations, service users [and] community groups in fighting cuts in Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire."
The group has so far managed to organise protests and attract
national media coverage.
Further details of the meeting can be found at the
Notts SOS website.
Comments / Share / Permalink15.11.10
The coalition government seems to be very fond of the phrase,
"we're all in it together", often pairing it with the Conservatives' Big Society policies. David Cameron has been using it as far back as 2005, in a
speech to the Policy Exchange think-tank.
The phrase jumped out at me when I first heard them using it, not because it's the title of a recent High School Musical song, but because it appears so often in the Terry Gilliam film,
Brazil. I was pretty sure it had an older, more directly political origin, though, so I did a little research - more on that later.
If you haven't seen
Brazil (and it's a great film in my opinion), here's a brief description. The film is set in a nightmarish future (or alternative reality - the technology is futuristic, yet retro - a sort of steam-punk meets 1940's film noir) in which life is controlled by an over-bearingly bureaucratic government, though it also seems to be a police state (suspected terrorists are tortured) with shades of rampant capitalism (torture victims must finance their own interrogation and extended interrogation risks the prisoner's credit rating).
The protagonist, Sam Lowry, has a lowly office job working for the Ministry of Information. He finds himself increasingly on the wrong end of the government's bureaucracy after he tries to correct the outcome of a computer glitch that causes an innocent man, Buttle, to be arrested on charges of terrorism. The actual 'terrorist', Tuttle, (played by Robert de Niro) is classed as a 'terrorist' thanks to being a maverick plumber, who circumvents Central Services' paperwork and drops out of the night sky to fix broken boilers and ducts without proper authorisation.
Propaganda posters are frequently seen in the background of the film, and on at least two occasions the slogan "we're all it together" can be seen (see still from the movie, above). The phrase is given a different slant later, when Tuttle refuses payment for his repair work - "we're all in it together, kid". It's given yet another angle later when he deals with two Central Services plumbers who are wrecking Sam's apartment, but I won't say more than that in case I spoil the pun for those who haven't seen the film.
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15.11.10
The website is now three years old. To mark the occasion, I have finished working the
Intense Debate software into my Content Management System and public comments are now enabled across the site.
Fair Pay launched in November 2007 as the official website of the Fair Pay Action Group. It was a response to the pay cuts brought in by a Labour Council in the name of the Single Status Agreement. The Single Status Agreement was finalised by the unions in 1997 and was designed to implement the 1970 Equal Pay Act in 2007, and also work as a defensive measure against expensive tribunals brought against councils in the name of the Act. This site, and the group's members, worked to oppose the cuts, publicise the workers' plight and lobby councillors and politicians.
Today Fair Pay is fully independent and no longer associated to a particular council, nor is it part of the Fair Pay Action Group.
You can read more about Fair Pay's history
here.
Comments / Share / Permalink11.10.10
Opened on the 1st October, the "Review of Remuneration and Conditions for Officers and Staff" closes on 29th October, so if you if you want to make any comments on the matter, head on over to the
consultation website.
The site invites comments on 7 questions centred around Police pay and performance.
The review is headed by Tom Winsor, a lawyer and former rail regulator employed during the period of dismantling Railtrack and the creation of Network Rail. He is advised by Sir Edward Crew and Richard Disney.
Sir Edward Crew worked as Chief Constable of West Midlands Police between 1993 and 1996 and Chief Constable of Northamtonshire Police between 1993 and 1996. Richard Disney is the Professor of Labour Economics at Nottingham University and a research fellow for the Institute of Fiscal Studies.
The review covers both Police and civilian staff and will report on short term "improvements to the service" in February 2011 and again in June 2011 "on matters of longer-term reform". The review also must take into account the government's policy on pay and pensions, which will be informed by the findings of the two Hutton reports mentioned in earlier postings.
18.02.11 Edit: Tom Winsor's name was originally misspelled as "Tom Windsor", now corrected.
Comments / Share / Permalink11.10.10
Mr Marr's quote, above, is referring to bloggers. Presumably he's not counting his esteemed colleagues
Robert Peston,
Stephanie Flanders,
Gavin Hewitt,
Rory Cellan-Jones,
etc. amongst their numbers.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, he went on to say, "a lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people."
I suspect this may often be true. I myself am single, balding, live with my parents and at times I'm somewhat annoyed about the chain of events that led to this situation, (
partially described here and
here).
I feel Mr Marr's comment underlines the problems with mainstream journalism on the internet today. It more-or-less accurately describes the immediate truth of the matter*, but it fails to address or explain the underlying causes or events that led to the situation. There's no attempt at analysis, or to inform and explain to the reader the more important underlying truth behind the present situation. Instead, Mr Marr's comments are reminiscent of the style of certain "Comment Is Free" journalists, in that he has chosen to say something that, while arguably true, is a generalisation specifically designed to grab attention and encourage comment and controversy, rather than to deliver something that truly educates and informs the readership with informed analysis, commentary and debate - the latter being the hallmarks and noble goals of true journalists, in my humble opinion.
It is no exaggeration to say that if it wasn't for the woefully poor national coverage of the effects of the Single Status Agreement on local government throughout 2007 to the present day, then this blog would not exist. The inadequate online coverage the issue has received from mainstream journalism makes me almost angry, though of course I'm not going to rant about it.
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07.10.10
The Hutton report on public sector pensions
published its first report today [PDF, 176 pages]. The final report is due in time for Budget 2011. The BBC has produced some comprehensive coverage
here.
The report recommends that workers' level of contributions to their pensions is increased (except for the armed forces). It also suggests that schemes move away from a final salary (defined benefit) scheme. In their
press release reaction to the report, Unison opposed this recommendation. Hutton's report stops short of recommending a clear replacement to final salary and talks of various options to be looked at and possible hybrid schemes, though the career average scheme seems to be favourite.
It's interesting that the report devotes quite a few pages (see section 6.20) to discussing the difficulties associated with transferring pensions from the public sector to the private sector, as would happen in an outsourcing scenario, for example. The report notes that evidence from the private and even voluntary sector suggests that current TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings/Protection of Employment) and 'Fair Deal' regulations hamper the flow of workers from the public to private sector because of the extra risks and costs involved to the private sector.
Lord Hutton seems at pains to dispel the idea that public sector workers receive a 'gold-plated pension', an image emphasised in the media in recent months. He quotes the average public sector pension as being 'modest' at around £7,800, though I suspect this is the average pension across all workers, rather than, say, the average pension of a life-long, full-time worker, which is perhaps the more illuminating measure.
Lord Hutton does not recommend moving public sector schemes in line with the local government pension and turning them into self-funding models, nor does he advocate the reverse.
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01.10.10
One of the most popular suggestions made to the Government's
Spending Challenge website is for the public sector to start using more
Open Source software.
This would mean replacing things like Microsoft Word with something like
OpenOffice Writer.
For almost every piece of software in common use in the public sector, there is a free alternative. Imagine how much money could be saved by replacing paid-for software with free Open Source alternatives. For every PC in the public sector, about £200 could be saved by replacing Windows with Linux and Office with OpenOffice. Considering how many public sector workers have a PC, and that there are 6 million workers in the public sector, there's some serious savings to be made.
Free, Open Source software is widely used - last time I checked the figures, it was estimated that around half the world's websites run on OSS - including this one. If I used paid-for commercial alternatives, I would be bankrupt by now.
So I guess you'd expect me to be an enthusiastic supporter of Open Source software in the public sector, right? Yes - but with a few small reservations.
First, the 'yes' part of the equation.
I have little doubt that widespread use of Open Source software would bring some massive savings. Additionally, Open Source software often performs better than commercial offerings, and as a result it will usually run much faster on the same, or older hardware. This means that IT departments could keep the same old computers for much longer, reducing upgrade costs for years to come. Local authorities regularly throw away machines far more powerful than the Linux machine I use as a development PC, file server, database server, and all-round workhorse. (It's an 800Mhz Pentium / 384Mb RAM, for the interested).
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28.09.10
University fees and loans have been in the news recently. For what it's worth, I've decided to make my own small contribution to the debate, from a personal angle. Maybe it will help someone.
It's over ten years since I went to university, so some things have probably changed since then. I'm pretty sure it's not getting any cheaper, though.
To get into a particular university course, you need good grades in relevant A-level subjects. In other words I needed to know what my future career was going to be before the age of 14, when I choose what A-levels I took. While I'd learned many interesting things by the age of 14, I don't think I'd learned what I needed to know in order to make that decision. I knew almost nothing about politics and economics. But fear not, because at the time, teachers, careers advisers and parents all seemed to agree that while it was certainly preferable to strike out in a definite career direction, it didn't matter too much - a degree would open doors to a bright future, regardless of the subject.
By the end of my 3 years at university (and it was a generally useful experience and a lot of fun, I should point out), I had over £3,000 of student loan debt. But it wasn't really those loans that did the damage. The real damage was the culture of borrowing it created - of making it normal to accept loans to survive through a 'temporary' period of time, at the end of which it was expected that my shiny new degree would buy me a well-paying job and I would have no problems paying back the debt. Actually, 16 years later, I have never once earned a high enough wage to trigger the 'average wage' test that requires me to start paying back the loan.
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21.09.10
According to a detailed article on the BBC News site, more than 9,000 public sector workers earn more than the Prime Minister (£142,500). Monday's BBC Panorama programme focused entirely on this report.
Perhaps less well-noticed is a similar but smaller report
recently published by the GMB union (thanks to one of the Fair Pay mailing list members for drawing my attention to it). The union report is focused only on council chief executives, rather than the public sector as a whole. Both lists agree that the Chief Exec of Wandsworth London Borough Council is the highest paid local authority worker, but they disagree on how much he's paid. The BBC say it's £299,925, while the GMB claim a figure of £356,891. Other salaries have similar discrepancies.
The BBC has been fairly clear with its methodology while the GMB's is slightly less clear, but it
appears that the BBC is quoting the salary that the individual
receives, while the GMB is quoting the figure that the taxpayer
pays. In other words, the GMB figures include the 'on-costs' - the money paid by the employer for National Insurance etc. If this is the case, then the BBC's figures more accurately describe what these people are being paid, whilst the GMB's figures more accurately describe how much these workers are costing the country.
Nottingham City Council stands alone in the GMB data in that it couldn't supply its chief exec's salary figures in time for the GMB report, but the BBC's figures appear to include Nottingham's Jane Todd - among various other anonymous highly-paid NCC staff. Assuming Ms Todd is the highest-paid member of the council, then her salary is £214,999. If her salary is scaled down like all the others in the BBC data compared to the GMB data, then the 'real cost' is probably much higher. If it were adjusted to be comparable to the increases shown in the GMB data then she would probably be one of the top-ten highest paid Chief Execs in the country.
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29.06.10
The Government has announced that Will Hutton has been appointed head of a
review of pay in the public sector.
Will Hutton is an Observer columnist and former editor. He is also an executive vice chair of the
The Work Foundation.
The review will look into public sector pay, and will "make recommendations on how to ensure that no public sector manager can earn more than twenty times the lowest paid person in the organisation" - a Conservative manifesto pledge. Despite this, Government appears to have hinted recently that there may be some flexibility in this rule.
The review will produce a report in September, and a final report before the 2011 budget. Its scope includes all aspects of public sector pay, providing it does not encroach on the John Hutton Commission on public sector pensions.
Comments / Share / Permalink29.06.10
The new Office for Budget Responsibility has
released its pre-budget forcast.
Considering the stern warnings and stoic wartime attitude of David Cameron in the lead-up to the budget, the OBR's report is surprising upbeat, though it's peppered with caveats with regards to unknowns.
The current financial state and immediate projections in the report describe an economy that has already hit the bottom, and now the only way is up.
Interest rates and inflation are predicted to remain similar to now. House prices are expected to rise slightly. Exports are expected to pick up, and overtake imports in the near future. Businesses are thought to have to stopped running down their inventories and will now be re-stocking in anticipation of better times ahead, adding to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The fall in the value of the pound versus an improving world economy is predicted to help our country's exports and economic growth.
The report notes that consumer spending has dropped and savings have increased, and it predicts that consumers will continue to be cautious for a while, but maybe spending will increase somewhat, adding to the economy. Business profits are increasing while the UK's share of the global market is not. The report suggests that in the near future, businesses may reduce their profit margins in favour of capturing larger markets and increasing volume of trade. The report mentions how in the 1980's recession, as the economy recovered, wages began to rise, helping to fuel inflation. The report doesn't think that will happen this time around. Unemployment is predicted to fall quite sharply over the coming years. Oil prices are predicted to fall. Government income is predicted to fall slightly next year, then recover and grow.
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29.06.10
In an attempt to tackle a reported deficit of £2Bn, the BBC has
announced "the first major changes by a publicly-funded organisation" to their pension scheme.
The BBC say their proposals include closing the final-salary scheme to new members and restricting pension payouts to 1% per year. They also include an option whereby existing members of the scheme can continue with the revised final salary plan, or switch to a defined contribution scheme.
The proposals are subject to a consultation period, concluding in the autumn.
Comments / Share / Permalink29.06.10
John Hutton, former Secretary of State for Defence under Labour, is to head a commission to examine and make recommendations on public sector pensions. The commission will produce an interim report in the autumn, and a final report before the 2011 budget.
In 2008 the council workers' scheme, the Local Government Pension Scheme, underwent an
overhaul. It changed the scheme from being a 1/80th contribution to a 1/60th. Those earning more than £18,000 also had to increase their level of contribution. The LGPS is also distinguished by being one of the few schemes that maintains its own funds and pays its retired workers from that fund - most other public sector schemes do not maintain their own fund, and instead retired workers are paid from government funds. Of course, regardless of who holds the funds, all workers with a pension make a contribution, though the percentage contributed by both the employer and employee varies across schemes.
In the last budget, George Osborne announced that all public sector pension payout were to be indexed to the Consumer Price Index measure of inflation. The CPI is based on a 'basket of goods' measure, and does not include house prices.
Reports in the media suggest that workers may face a choice between increased contributions (effectively a pay cut), or reduced payouts.
The list of pensions schemes to be examined by the commission is as follows:
- Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme
- Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme (Northern Ireland)
- Armed Forces Pension Scheme
- NHS Pension Scheme
- NHS Superannuation Scheme (Scotland)
- Health and Personal Social Services Northern Ireland Superannuation Scheme
- Teachers' Pension Scheme (England and Wales)
- Scottish Teachers' Superannuation Scheme
- Northern Ireland Teachers Superannuation Scheme
- Local Government Pension Scheme (England and Wales)
- Local Government Pension Scheme (Scotland)
- Northern Ireland Local Government Pension Scheme
- Police Pension Scheme
- Firefighters' Pension Scheme
- United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Pension Schemes
- Judicial Pensions Scheme
- Department for International Development - Overseas Superannuation Schemes
- Research Councils' Pension Schemes
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28.06.10
The Coalition is asking for your views on how best to save money in the public sector on their
Spending Challenge consultation website.
Up until July 8th, the consulation is open to public sector workers. After that, it's open season as anyone is allowed to have their say. The website promises that all ideas will be looked at by people "at the heart of government", and the best ideas will go forward for further action. They add that they will also "monitor blogs, social networks, forums and wikileaks."
According to the website 20,000 suggestions have been received in 4 days.
Comments / Share / Permalink08.03.10:
National Public Sector Strike - Day One200,000 civil servants walk out on strike, protesting against proposed changes to pensions and savings in redundancy and early retirement payments
21.01.10:
A Tough Year Ahead for Council Employees?Will 2010 be a harsh year for the public sector? Councils everywhere are slimming their workforce and making cutbacks in the face of a seemingly weak economy
10.01.10:
A Local Shortage of Grit?Is the grit shortage confined to a local area? Here's a look at two regional newspaper reports for comparison
02.01.10:
The State of Pay 2009A quick look at the 2009 Office of National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings
30.12.09:
Tory StoriesJohn Cruddas, MP creates 'Tory Stories' website.
06.11.09:
November protest at County Hall - Fair PayWorkers from Nottinghamshire County Council assembled outside County Hall in protest against the proposed changes to their terms and conditions of employment.
