Saturday, 18 June 2011
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Hope for the Best, by All Means, but Prepare for the Worst, too.
A couple of years ago, I tried to start a discussion on cuts on another, more popular blog, to a disappointing lack of response. Here I get a good quality of comment, though, despite my small readership, so I shall revisit the topic, with a bit of copy and paste from last time, but some updates, too, and hope that we can create a really good thread between us.
Anyone with intentions to stand for Election this year should have been looking through their 2008 policies, if they had any then, and scrapping the many things that have been overtaken by events, and then shaping a new raft of policies for the 2011 elections, to carry us towards 2014.
The hard thing with looking three years and more ahead though, is that the short-term future is looking exceptionally unpredictable right now. Will our economy return to growth? Will it continue to gently decline? Will something spook the finance industry and leave our economy with bricks where the wheels were? All three possibilities are still two-figure percentage chances from where I am looking.
If it were certain that growth will return, then it would be easy to write a nice manifesto. There is probably still a need for some alternative taxation to fill the “Black Hole” that is Terry le Sueur's legacy, despite the GST hike, but with more money about, it would not need to bite too hard.
The tougher parts will be to prepare for further decline and outright crash. Many left-leaning people will probably be appalled that I even mention cuts, but if the money is not appearing in the income column of the ledger, it should not be in the expenditure column, either.
The only eager votes for a manifesto of cut this, slash that and snatch the other are going to come from the hard-right wingers I, and probably most of my readers, oppose, so we can't be shouting too loudly about intentions to do it. However, if things are still grim by the end of 2011, and the old guard are the scapegoats in the General election, then the erstwhile opposition are going to be faced with a dirty job that someone has got to do, and we really ought to have a clear idea of how we are going to go about it.
The latest figures show that States revenues are still buoyant, so there has maybe been a less pressing need for spending cuts and tax hikes than we have been led to believe. However, there is a lag of a year or two in the full effects of the recession filtering through to taxation, so it may be that something awful is about to emerge from the pipeline. And we need to be prepared to deal with it, if we aspire to replace the current government.
A fall of a few percent in revenue can largely be made up in the traditional manner, by corresponding rises in the rates of existing taxes and duties. However, these have already been jacked up faster than many people can easily adjust to in recent years, and any government doing much more of that will rapidly lose public confidence. The lost opportunity to lose the Social Security cap will have to keep on being revisited until there is a result. The diminishing progressivity of the Income Tax system is somewhat perverse, and also will have to be tackled by a new regime. I thought the way government budgets work is that they cost the activities and purchases they consider necessary to run the state in their chosen manner and then work out how much tax they need to raise. Jersey, with its love of quaintly different ways of doing things, currently goes for a different strategy of deciding how much tax to ask for, and then seeing what it buys. And, between falling profits in a global downturn and tax breaks for those rich enough not to need them very much, the tax yield is not likely to buy as much in the near future as it did in the near past. So, the C-word does have to be bandied about: CUTS!
In a diverse career, I have been an established officer in the UK Civil Service for a spell, and I get a little irritated at attacks made on a stereotype sixty years or more gone in real life. I think the popular image of the idle and arrogant man in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat leisurely making arbitrary decisions about the affairs only applies to the Bill Ogley/Mike Pollard type of senior manager, not at the levels that commonly interact with the general public. I don't think for a moment that large-scale redundancies in the public sector would do anything other than serious social and economic harm.
However, any organisation will tend to gather dead wood over a few decades, and a thorough audit, once in a generation, on the principles Leslie Chapman laid down in the 1960's, will inevitably show up a few jobs that are there because they have been done, rather than because they still need to be done. I know that the States of Jersey do already have an Audit Department that does these kind of surveys, due to a small quango that I used to be involved with receiving their attention, but they don't get the publicity they deserve.
So, the first level of cutting should be a rolling out of this thinking on a broad front. If a few percent of public sector jobs can be identified as dispensable, then their holders can be transferred to other more essential posts as they fall vacant through natural wastage, and the overall size reduced. A key factor will have to be the independence of the audit, though. If senior management are challenged to produce plans for reducing their own empires, then, humans being human, they tend to select those who would be most sorely missed as the priority for cuts, so making the plans unacceptable.
The big challenge, though, is how we would cope with a big fall in the size of Jersey's economy, say a quarter or a third? When even John Boothman, the avuncular ex-banker the finance industry often trots out to give it a human face, famously admitted that the finance industry could “leave at the click of a mouse”, there is no case for assuming it will continue to dominate our future as it has our present. There would need to be expenditure on helping the unexpectedly destitute, on top of all the usual business, so even more of the latter would have to be stopped. Law and order, and sanitation infrastructure would remain essential, and nobody would want to see medical care or education shaved too closely. But what of the rest? Opinions will be shaped by individual circumstances, but where would the consensus be found? No more roadworks, save essential utility repairs? Close the States Communication Unit, that just produces derided propaganda, and the Statistics Unit that only publishes useless and misleading “information”? Refreeze the Town Park, and halve the gardening in the existing parks? Across-the-board culls of Civil Servants? Whatever you look at, there would be more losers,than winners, but don't forget I am not asking how do we want Jersey 2014 to be, but how would we cope if the bottom had fallen out by 2013?
Depending on whether I get worthwhile feedback, I may make this the first of a little series, also taking a look at the options in less disastrous situations, and maybe following up any interesting tangents from the reader comments.
I am writing this to open a debate, not have a rant, so I beg you to consider what your idea of the “least-worst” cuts in a collapsing economy would be, and submit them by clicking the Comments option. (Tip: If you have never commented on a website before; if your answer is more than a few words, then draft in a word processor, copy and paste, because blogs don't reliably save at the first try.)
Anyone with intentions to stand for Election this year should have been looking through their 2008 policies, if they had any then, and scrapping the many things that have been overtaken by events, and then shaping a new raft of policies for the 2011 elections, to carry us towards 2014.
The hard thing with looking three years and more ahead though, is that the short-term future is looking exceptionally unpredictable right now. Will our economy return to growth? Will it continue to gently decline? Will something spook the finance industry and leave our economy with bricks where the wheels were? All three possibilities are still two-figure percentage chances from where I am looking.
If it were certain that growth will return, then it would be easy to write a nice manifesto. There is probably still a need for some alternative taxation to fill the “Black Hole” that is Terry le Sueur's legacy, despite the GST hike, but with more money about, it would not need to bite too hard.
The tougher parts will be to prepare for further decline and outright crash. Many left-leaning people will probably be appalled that I even mention cuts, but if the money is not appearing in the income column of the ledger, it should not be in the expenditure column, either.
The only eager votes for a manifesto of cut this, slash that and snatch the other are going to come from the hard-right wingers I, and probably most of my readers, oppose, so we can't be shouting too loudly about intentions to do it. However, if things are still grim by the end of 2011, and the old guard are the scapegoats in the General election, then the erstwhile opposition are going to be faced with a dirty job that someone has got to do, and we really ought to have a clear idea of how we are going to go about it.
The latest figures show that States revenues are still buoyant, so there has maybe been a less pressing need for spending cuts and tax hikes than we have been led to believe. However, there is a lag of a year or two in the full effects of the recession filtering through to taxation, so it may be that something awful is about to emerge from the pipeline. And we need to be prepared to deal with it, if we aspire to replace the current government.
A fall of a few percent in revenue can largely be made up in the traditional manner, by corresponding rises in the rates of existing taxes and duties. However, these have already been jacked up faster than many people can easily adjust to in recent years, and any government doing much more of that will rapidly lose public confidence. The lost opportunity to lose the Social Security cap will have to keep on being revisited until there is a result. The diminishing progressivity of the Income Tax system is somewhat perverse, and also will have to be tackled by a new regime. I thought the way government budgets work is that they cost the activities and purchases they consider necessary to run the state in their chosen manner and then work out how much tax they need to raise. Jersey, with its love of quaintly different ways of doing things, currently goes for a different strategy of deciding how much tax to ask for, and then seeing what it buys. And, between falling profits in a global downturn and tax breaks for those rich enough not to need them very much, the tax yield is not likely to buy as much in the near future as it did in the near past. So, the C-word does have to be bandied about: CUTS!
In a diverse career, I have been an established officer in the UK Civil Service for a spell, and I get a little irritated at attacks made on a stereotype sixty years or more gone in real life. I think the popular image of the idle and arrogant man in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat leisurely making arbitrary decisions about the affairs only applies to the Bill Ogley/Mike Pollard type of senior manager, not at the levels that commonly interact with the general public. I don't think for a moment that large-scale redundancies in the public sector would do anything other than serious social and economic harm.
However, any organisation will tend to gather dead wood over a few decades, and a thorough audit, once in a generation, on the principles Leslie Chapman laid down in the 1960's, will inevitably show up a few jobs that are there because they have been done, rather than because they still need to be done. I know that the States of Jersey do already have an Audit Department that does these kind of surveys, due to a small quango that I used to be involved with receiving their attention, but they don't get the publicity they deserve.
So, the first level of cutting should be a rolling out of this thinking on a broad front. If a few percent of public sector jobs can be identified as dispensable, then their holders can be transferred to other more essential posts as they fall vacant through natural wastage, and the overall size reduced. A key factor will have to be the independence of the audit, though. If senior management are challenged to produce plans for reducing their own empires, then, humans being human, they tend to select those who would be most sorely missed as the priority for cuts, so making the plans unacceptable.
The big challenge, though, is how we would cope with a big fall in the size of Jersey's economy, say a quarter or a third? When even John Boothman, the avuncular ex-banker the finance industry often trots out to give it a human face, famously admitted that the finance industry could “leave at the click of a mouse”, there is no case for assuming it will continue to dominate our future as it has our present. There would need to be expenditure on helping the unexpectedly destitute, on top of all the usual business, so even more of the latter would have to be stopped. Law and order, and sanitation infrastructure would remain essential, and nobody would want to see medical care or education shaved too closely. But what of the rest? Opinions will be shaped by individual circumstances, but where would the consensus be found? No more roadworks, save essential utility repairs? Close the States Communication Unit, that just produces derided propaganda, and the Statistics Unit that only publishes useless and misleading “information”? Refreeze the Town Park, and halve the gardening in the existing parks? Across-the-board culls of Civil Servants? Whatever you look at, there would be more losers,than winners, but don't forget I am not asking how do we want Jersey 2014 to be, but how would we cope if the bottom had fallen out by 2013?
Depending on whether I get worthwhile feedback, I may make this the first of a little series, also taking a look at the options in less disastrous situations, and maybe following up any interesting tangents from the reader comments.
I am writing this to open a debate, not have a rant, so I beg you to consider what your idea of the “least-worst” cuts in a collapsing economy would be, and submit them by clicking the Comments option. (Tip: If you have never commented on a website before; if your answer is more than a few words, then draft in a word processor, copy and paste, because blogs don't reliably save at the first try.)
Saturday, 11 June 2011
Puppets or Leaders?
Puppet or leader? Generally, most politicians are one or the other, and it is very much a matter of taste which you prefer to have in office.
By puppet, I mean that many candidates are put up by their backers to be mouthpieces for their backers' views. In the Jersey context I mostly concern myself with, that usually means cronyism amongst lawyers, accountants and those businessmen who move in the same social circles. You may have a superficial democratic choice between, for instance, the Freemason, the yachtsman and the United Club regular, but they all sing off the same sheet when it comes down to it. Once in a while, they may give a personal hobby-horse a little push, but mostly they are there to make up the numbers to vote the way the real leaders order.
A different slant on puppet politicians is that of left-wing parties and factions. In the name of expressing the will of the people, or bottom-up democracy, their politicians are expected to push the policies and cast the votes that their backers have themselves voted to instruct them to.
You may have guessed, from my choice of the pejorative term “puppet”, that, despite being an avowed democrat, and a left-winger by Jersey's skewed standards, I am none too keen on this model of representation, myself. I see two big flaws: Firstly, a matter of principle. The real decisions this type of politician implements are made by others behind them, unchosen by the public vote. This seems profoundly undemocratic to me. Secondly, the practical consequence is that the parliamentary process is completely vitiated if any significant number of members are turning up under previous orders to vote a particular way. Ben Shenton has already claimed that the debates no longer matter, because everything has been sewn up behind closed doors. The more that members are mandated by their backers, the worse this problem becomes.
Reading and listening to the news and the odd opinion piece may give us all a few shallow ideas about what is going on and what should be done. The purpose of a professional political class, though, is to read the reports and listen to the debates on behalf of those of us who haven't the time, and make better informed judgements than we can for ourselves. Asking people to read, listen, think and decide for us is a far bigger task than just asking them to do what we tell them, so we must choose who carefully to make it work. There are Members of the States of Jersey who do work in this way of course, although, unfortunately, too many of them seem to end up as backbenchers rather than ministers.
The other kind of politician is the leader. Instead of being a front for others, they recruit supporters to give backing to their principles and judgement. This can easily end in tears, as history, and even current affairs, are full of examples of unsavoury dictators finding the wrong kind of supporters to impose the wrong kind of ideas on the rest of their nation. However, it is also the only way to have a properly valid public mandate in a functional democracy. If more people have said “I trust you best to make the calls.” than did so for anyone else, then you can get on with the job without serious challenge.
The really perplexing scenario would be for the candidates with the best manifestos to be pledged to dance to party tunes and those with minds of their own all to be hellbent on paddling us further up the creek. Then it would be really hard to choose. I think I would go for the best manifesto, but I would not really have a lot of confidence in their personal ability, if they needed others in the shadows to tell them what to do.
The big problem with pre-mandated politicians is that, instead of them making their decisions on the strength of the facts in the detailed reports, and the arguments made in public parliamentary debate, their decisions are made for them by amateurs who don't have have the time to study all the facts, on the strength of news reports, gossip, prejudice and caprice, without any effective scrutiny or input by the voting public at large. This may well be commonplace reality, but it is also a failure of democratic principle, not an expression of it.
To summarise; although other ways can and do exist, the optimum model for party politics is for the parties to get behind their leaders, not to put them up as front men. Party hacks are even less desirable than chaotic independents.
By puppet, I mean that many candidates are put up by their backers to be mouthpieces for their backers' views. In the Jersey context I mostly concern myself with, that usually means cronyism amongst lawyers, accountants and those businessmen who move in the same social circles. You may have a superficial democratic choice between, for instance, the Freemason, the yachtsman and the United Club regular, but they all sing off the same sheet when it comes down to it. Once in a while, they may give a personal hobby-horse a little push, but mostly they are there to make up the numbers to vote the way the real leaders order.
A different slant on puppet politicians is that of left-wing parties and factions. In the name of expressing the will of the people, or bottom-up democracy, their politicians are expected to push the policies and cast the votes that their backers have themselves voted to instruct them to.
You may have guessed, from my choice of the pejorative term “puppet”, that, despite being an avowed democrat, and a left-winger by Jersey's skewed standards, I am none too keen on this model of representation, myself. I see two big flaws: Firstly, a matter of principle. The real decisions this type of politician implements are made by others behind them, unchosen by the public vote. This seems profoundly undemocratic to me. Secondly, the practical consequence is that the parliamentary process is completely vitiated if any significant number of members are turning up under previous orders to vote a particular way. Ben Shenton has already claimed that the debates no longer matter, because everything has been sewn up behind closed doors. The more that members are mandated by their backers, the worse this problem becomes.
Reading and listening to the news and the odd opinion piece may give us all a few shallow ideas about what is going on and what should be done. The purpose of a professional political class, though, is to read the reports and listen to the debates on behalf of those of us who haven't the time, and make better informed judgements than we can for ourselves. Asking people to read, listen, think and decide for us is a far bigger task than just asking them to do what we tell them, so we must choose who carefully to make it work. There are Members of the States of Jersey who do work in this way of course, although, unfortunately, too many of them seem to end up as backbenchers rather than ministers.
The other kind of politician is the leader. Instead of being a front for others, they recruit supporters to give backing to their principles and judgement. This can easily end in tears, as history, and even current affairs, are full of examples of unsavoury dictators finding the wrong kind of supporters to impose the wrong kind of ideas on the rest of their nation. However, it is also the only way to have a properly valid public mandate in a functional democracy. If more people have said “I trust you best to make the calls.” than did so for anyone else, then you can get on with the job without serious challenge.
The really perplexing scenario would be for the candidates with the best manifestos to be pledged to dance to party tunes and those with minds of their own all to be hellbent on paddling us further up the creek. Then it would be really hard to choose. I think I would go for the best manifesto, but I would not really have a lot of confidence in their personal ability, if they needed others in the shadows to tell them what to do.
The big problem with pre-mandated politicians is that, instead of them making their decisions on the strength of the facts in the detailed reports, and the arguments made in public parliamentary debate, their decisions are made for them by amateurs who don't have have the time to study all the facts, on the strength of news reports, gossip, prejudice and caprice, without any effective scrutiny or input by the voting public at large. This may well be commonplace reality, but it is also a failure of democratic principle, not an expression of it.
To summarise; although other ways can and do exist, the optimum model for party politics is for the parties to get behind their leaders, not to put them up as front men. Party hacks are even less desirable than chaotic independents.
Friday, 3 June 2011
Schoool Milk and Priorities
When I responded to a call to comment on the school milk fiasco last week, I was taken to task by one of Jersey's leading bloggers for not directly linking the matter to the even bigger fiasco of the mandarins' payoffs. However, I think that they are galls growing on different branches, and you have to go back nearer to the trunk to find the connection.
Free school milk was of immense nutritional value in harder and poorer times than we now live. But starving paupers have, for our era at least, been eliminated. Should you ever have cause to drive down La Motte Street on a weekday morning, and see the Income Support queue, it is striking how an overwhelming majority are conspicuously overweight. However, milk's own advantages, and drawbacks, as a food supplement do not disappear just because there is plenty else available as well or instead. Risky though a high dairy consumption may be for the middle-aged, it is the natural staple for all young and growing mammals, humans included. Therefore, it is still a good thing to make it available for children, and a better thing than most alternatives that they may wish to drink in school instead. (Except for the minority who outgrow their ability to digest milk by puberty.)
Farmers do not produce milk just out of an altruistic desire to nourish the public, of course, but to earn their own livings, and the processing and distribution are also business propositions in pursuit of profit. So “free” milk has to be paid for by somebody. Once, there was a clear case for that somebody to be the States. Now, when every family's food budget will buy rather more calories than it takes to lead an active life on, that case is no longer so clear. It would still be reasonable and practical for the state to facilitate the provision, and some level of subsidy may help to encourage takeup and stabilise supply. However, it would not be an outrageous burden on the vast majority of parents to divert a small part of their children's weekly sweet money to a milk subscription, and certainly no burden on those children's health. When we have a need to be very careful how we spend public money, 100% funding of school milk is hard to justify in the context of 2011 Jersey.
“When we have a need to be very careful how we spend public money...” I can work back towards that along another branch altogether:-
The previous rant was not enough to satisfy my anger at the ridiculous payoffs made to rid us of a couple of failed mandarins. When a man is hired to provide high level management skills in a politically sensitive environment, blundering through with respect for neither due process nor public opinion can only be viewed as gross incompetence. Gross incompetence has always been a deal-breaker in any job, and urgent departure has always been the remedy. It is ridiculous to suggest that massive inducements should be necessary to persuade the failed incumbent to pre-emptively resign. The ignominy of the alternative is generally enough. If the sky-high payments were a bribe to keep the departing staff from blowing the whistle on orders from above that made their jobs impossible to carry out competently, then they would be at least understandable, although still inexcusable. But, although there are allegations that the beneficiaries of these jackpots were involved in untoward conspiracies with certain politicians, their downfall has been very much due to their own failings in how they played their parts.
Had it been insufficient to just point out that their positions were becoming untenable, to make them step down, it should have been possible to remove them by disciplinary procedures. In fact, there is some circumstantial evidence that Ogley's departure is closely connected with the disciplining of an unidentified civil servant, the details being much too sensitive and confidential for public consumption. Unless they could produce some very embarrassing evidence in their own defence, though, it is hard to see why it would not have been better to simply remove them. It may be a bit of a fuss, and leave a bad taste in a few mouths, but it would take even more mismanagement to run up a six-figure bill on the sackings.
I would contend therefore that buying the delinquents off instead of sacking them was not so much a necessity as a luxury. Only, we have a need to be very careful how we spend public money, and this is not a careful use of it. This is a quite different matter to school milk, but it touches on the same issue: How do we prioritise the claims on the public purse? There are several aspects to consider: How good is something? How desirable? How necessary? How important? How valuable? How expensive? All the same kind of question, but not exactly the same things, and certainly not all the same answer.
Even if there are objective answers to at least some of that list of questions, others have inherently subjective answers, and weighting or ranking those answers is more subjective still, which is where the politics come in. The idea of a representative democracy is that you vote for the candidate whom you expect to make the judgements that seem most right to you. If you squander your vote by choosing on spurious grounds like having a nice glossy poster, then tough luck, if you dislike the consequences. If you are outvoted by those who think priorities should be different to you, that is tough, too. All you can do is try to persuade them that they would like your ideas better, if they tried them next time.
Anyway, to return to the examples in hand: School milk I would categorise as good, myself, but see Tom Gruchy's comment two posts back for another viewpoint. But does it score enough for necessity and importance to balance out the high score for expense? VFC says it does, I say not quite, and Phil Ozouf says not at all. Paying the ministers' right-hand men vast sums just to go away is certainly not good, desirable, important or valuable. However I can imagine circumstances where it is necessary from the viewpoint of those who can authorise such payments, not that such circumstances would be to anybody's credit; like knowing too much about cases of gross maladministration or corruption, for instance. (Imaginary and hypothetical circumstances of course.)
To sum up, both cases are matters of priorities, and priorities of democratic governments are matters of voter preferences. So, if you don't like the current incumbents' priorities, drag yourselves away from the TV for a few minutes, next election day, and vote for someone else.
Free school milk was of immense nutritional value in harder and poorer times than we now live. But starving paupers have, for our era at least, been eliminated. Should you ever have cause to drive down La Motte Street on a weekday morning, and see the Income Support queue, it is striking how an overwhelming majority are conspicuously overweight. However, milk's own advantages, and drawbacks, as a food supplement do not disappear just because there is plenty else available as well or instead. Risky though a high dairy consumption may be for the middle-aged, it is the natural staple for all young and growing mammals, humans included. Therefore, it is still a good thing to make it available for children, and a better thing than most alternatives that they may wish to drink in school instead. (Except for the minority who outgrow their ability to digest milk by puberty.)
Farmers do not produce milk just out of an altruistic desire to nourish the public, of course, but to earn their own livings, and the processing and distribution are also business propositions in pursuit of profit. So “free” milk has to be paid for by somebody. Once, there was a clear case for that somebody to be the States. Now, when every family's food budget will buy rather more calories than it takes to lead an active life on, that case is no longer so clear. It would still be reasonable and practical for the state to facilitate the provision, and some level of subsidy may help to encourage takeup and stabilise supply. However, it would not be an outrageous burden on the vast majority of parents to divert a small part of their children's weekly sweet money to a milk subscription, and certainly no burden on those children's health. When we have a need to be very careful how we spend public money, 100% funding of school milk is hard to justify in the context of 2011 Jersey.
“When we have a need to be very careful how we spend public money...” I can work back towards that along another branch altogether:-
The previous rant was not enough to satisfy my anger at the ridiculous payoffs made to rid us of a couple of failed mandarins. When a man is hired to provide high level management skills in a politically sensitive environment, blundering through with respect for neither due process nor public opinion can only be viewed as gross incompetence. Gross incompetence has always been a deal-breaker in any job, and urgent departure has always been the remedy. It is ridiculous to suggest that massive inducements should be necessary to persuade the failed incumbent to pre-emptively resign. The ignominy of the alternative is generally enough. If the sky-high payments were a bribe to keep the departing staff from blowing the whistle on orders from above that made their jobs impossible to carry out competently, then they would be at least understandable, although still inexcusable. But, although there are allegations that the beneficiaries of these jackpots were involved in untoward conspiracies with certain politicians, their downfall has been very much due to their own failings in how they played their parts.
Had it been insufficient to just point out that their positions were becoming untenable, to make them step down, it should have been possible to remove them by disciplinary procedures. In fact, there is some circumstantial evidence that Ogley's departure is closely connected with the disciplining of an unidentified civil servant, the details being much too sensitive and confidential for public consumption. Unless they could produce some very embarrassing evidence in their own defence, though, it is hard to see why it would not have been better to simply remove them. It may be a bit of a fuss, and leave a bad taste in a few mouths, but it would take even more mismanagement to run up a six-figure bill on the sackings.
I would contend therefore that buying the delinquents off instead of sacking them was not so much a necessity as a luxury. Only, we have a need to be very careful how we spend public money, and this is not a careful use of it. This is a quite different matter to school milk, but it touches on the same issue: How do we prioritise the claims on the public purse? There are several aspects to consider: How good is something? How desirable? How necessary? How important? How valuable? How expensive? All the same kind of question, but not exactly the same things, and certainly not all the same answer.
Even if there are objective answers to at least some of that list of questions, others have inherently subjective answers, and weighting or ranking those answers is more subjective still, which is where the politics come in. The idea of a representative democracy is that you vote for the candidate whom you expect to make the judgements that seem most right to you. If you squander your vote by choosing on spurious grounds like having a nice glossy poster, then tough luck, if you dislike the consequences. If you are outvoted by those who think priorities should be different to you, that is tough, too. All you can do is try to persuade them that they would like your ideas better, if they tried them next time.
Anyway, to return to the examples in hand: School milk I would categorise as good, myself, but see Tom Gruchy's comment two posts back for another viewpoint. But does it score enough for necessity and importance to balance out the high score for expense? VFC says it does, I say not quite, and Phil Ozouf says not at all. Paying the ministers' right-hand men vast sums just to go away is certainly not good, desirable, important or valuable. However I can imagine circumstances where it is necessary from the viewpoint of those who can authorise such payments, not that such circumstances would be to anybody's credit; like knowing too much about cases of gross maladministration or corruption, for instance. (Imaginary and hypothetical circumstances of course.)
To sum up, both cases are matters of priorities, and priorities of democratic governments are matters of voter preferences. So, if you don't like the current incumbents' priorities, drag yourselves away from the TV for a few minutes, next election day, and vote for someone else.
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
I wish I was so bad at my job they paid me that much not to come again!
Just when it seemed that the States of Jersey were exhausting their power to shock the island's citizenry, along comes a new and bigger scandal.
Nobody could take issue with two senior civil servants, who had failed to manage their responsibilities successfully, choosing to resign before they incurred formal dismissal. In fact, it is a shame that they did not depart even sooner. And I suppose that it is a kind of constructive dismissal to warn them that a disciplinary dismissal would be the outcome of any ill-judged attempt to cling to office, so inviting their resignations..
On the other hand, it is hard to see how anybody could not take issue with paying enough to have funded some well-appreciated service such as school milk for a couple of years as an inducement to resign. At that level of management, remuneration already reflects the risk that the boss will be expected to take the responsibility for failure by moving aside. Ogley and Pollard both failed to run their areas of responsibility to the standard the public expected from them for their money, and both should have simply gone. To offer them hundreds of thousands of pounds not to come into work anymore, just to save the bother of firing them is an utter absurdity and obscenity.
It is not hard to think of reasons why they should have left under clouds. Whatever one thinks of Stuart Syvret, in days of better mental health he exposed totally unacceptable management failings at the Health Department, that Pollard must be held responsible for continuing, even if they pre-date his watch originally. Ogley is up to his neck in malfeasances involving Syvret and Graham Power, and has been at the heart of every unsatisfactory piece of government policy of the last few years. I seem to remember that his reference was leading the implementation of hardline Tory cuts in Hertfordshire. Through the worst years of of Thatcher and Major, Jersey used to take pride in its wealth enabling it to do things that little bit better on the whole, but now our leaders want to catch up in their race to the bottom, and Ogley was seen as the man to do it.
Although it is rumoured that Jersey appears as a major producer in the accounts of a famous banana trading firm, it is not really a banana republic. Some would have it that The Jersey Way is just like one, but, in fact, very British attitudes predominate. Messrs Pollard and Ogley were sadly misled, if they were given the expectation that they were going to enjoy the levels of licence and impunity needed to get away with their style of doing things. And who so misled them?
Even if they had been induced to take up their posts by false pretences, the compensation given for their departure seems altogether disproportionate. And who saw fit to be so generous with our money, and, moreover, why?
The answers are of course that The Council of Ministers, and maybe a few close advisers, were who, and to induce them to take the rap for those behind them was why. However much initiative these men were supposed to exercise in carrying out their orders, and however much advice they gave as to what those orders should be, there can be no doubt which way the chain of command actually runs.
The whole sorry scandal is a sign that we have elected some unworthy leaders to the highest offices, if they will hire help to do such things, and need to buy their silence so expensively, when they fail to get away with them. We must choose more carefully next time: Although so much damage has already been done now, that nobody could fix it all in a term or two, we must stop adding to it.
Nobody could take issue with two senior civil servants, who had failed to manage their responsibilities successfully, choosing to resign before they incurred formal dismissal. In fact, it is a shame that they did not depart even sooner. And I suppose that it is a kind of constructive dismissal to warn them that a disciplinary dismissal would be the outcome of any ill-judged attempt to cling to office, so inviting their resignations..
On the other hand, it is hard to see how anybody could not take issue with paying enough to have funded some well-appreciated service such as school milk for a couple of years as an inducement to resign. At that level of management, remuneration already reflects the risk that the boss will be expected to take the responsibility for failure by moving aside. Ogley and Pollard both failed to run their areas of responsibility to the standard the public expected from them for their money, and both should have simply gone. To offer them hundreds of thousands of pounds not to come into work anymore, just to save the bother of firing them is an utter absurdity and obscenity.
It is not hard to think of reasons why they should have left under clouds. Whatever one thinks of Stuart Syvret, in days of better mental health he exposed totally unacceptable management failings at the Health Department, that Pollard must be held responsible for continuing, even if they pre-date his watch originally. Ogley is up to his neck in malfeasances involving Syvret and Graham Power, and has been at the heart of every unsatisfactory piece of government policy of the last few years. I seem to remember that his reference was leading the implementation of hardline Tory cuts in Hertfordshire. Through the worst years of of Thatcher and Major, Jersey used to take pride in its wealth enabling it to do things that little bit better on the whole, but now our leaders want to catch up in their race to the bottom, and Ogley was seen as the man to do it.
Although it is rumoured that Jersey appears as a major producer in the accounts of a famous banana trading firm, it is not really a banana republic. Some would have it that The Jersey Way is just like one, but, in fact, very British attitudes predominate. Messrs Pollard and Ogley were sadly misled, if they were given the expectation that they were going to enjoy the levels of licence and impunity needed to get away with their style of doing things. And who so misled them?
Even if they had been induced to take up their posts by false pretences, the compensation given for their departure seems altogether disproportionate. And who saw fit to be so generous with our money, and, moreover, why?
The answers are of course that The Council of Ministers, and maybe a few close advisers, were who, and to induce them to take the rap for those behind them was why. However much initiative these men were supposed to exercise in carrying out their orders, and however much advice they gave as to what those orders should be, there can be no doubt which way the chain of command actually runs.
The whole sorry scandal is a sign that we have elected some unworthy leaders to the highest offices, if they will hire help to do such things, and need to buy their silence so expensively, when they fail to get away with them. We must choose more carefully next time: Although so much damage has already been done now, that nobody could fix it all in a term or two, we must stop adding to it.
I wish I was so bad at my job they paid me that much not to come again!
Just when it seemed that the States of Jersey were exhausting their power to shock the island's citizenry, along comes a new and bigger scandal.
Nobody could take issue with two senior civil servants, who had failed to manage their responsibilities successfully, choosing to resign before they incurred formal dismissal. In fact, it is a shame that they did not depart even sooner. And I suppose that it is a kind of constructive dismissal to warn them that a disciplinary dismissal would be the outcome of any ill-judged attempt to cling to office, so inviting their resignations..
On the other hand, it is hard to see how anybody could not take issue with paying enough to have funded some well-appreciated service such as school milk for a couple of years as an inducement to resign. At that level of management, remuneration already reflects the risk that the boss will be expected to take the responsibility for failure by moving aside. Ogley and Pollard both failed to run their areas of responsibility to the standard the public expected from them for their money, and both should have simply gone. To offer them hundreds of thousands of pounds not to come into work anymore, just to save the bother of firing them is an utter absurdity and obscenity.
It is not hard to think of reasons why they should have left under clouds. Whatever one thinks of Stuart Syvret, in days of better mental health he exposed totally unacceptable management failings at the Health Department, that Pollard must be held responsible for continuing, even if they pre-date his watch originally. Ogley is up to his neck in malfeasances involving Syvret and Graham Power, and has been at the heart of every unsatisfactory piece of government policy of the last few years. I seem to remember that his reference was leading the implementation of hardline Tory cuts in Hertfordshire. Through the worst years of of Thatcher and Major, Jersey used to take pride in its wealth enabling it to do things that little bit better on the whole, but now our leaders want to catch up in their race to the bottom, and Ogley was seen as the man to do it.
Although it is rumoured that Jersey appears as a major producer in the accounts of a famous banana trading firm, it is not really a banana republic. Some would have it that The Jersey Way is just like one, but, in fact, very British attitudes predominate. Messrs Pollard and Ogley were sadly misled, if they were given the expectation that they were going to enjoy the levels of licence and impunity needed to get away with their style of doing things. And who so misled them?
Even if they had been induced to take up their posts by false pretences, the compensation given for their departure seems altogether disproportionate. And who saw fit to be so generous with our money, and, moreover, why?
The answers are of course that The Council of Ministers, and maybe a few close advisers, were who, and to induce them to take the rap for those behind them was why. However much initiative these men were supposed to exercise in carrying out their orders, and however much advice they gave as to what those orders should be, there can be no doubt which way the chain of command actually runs.
The whole sorry scandal is a sign that we have elected some unworthy leaders to the highest offices, if they will hire help to do such things, and need to buy their silence so expensively, when they fail to get away with them. We must choose more carefully next time: Although so much damage has already been done now, that nobody could fix it all in a term or two, we must stop adding to it.
Nobody could take issue with two senior civil servants, who had failed to manage their responsibilities successfully, choosing to resign before they incurred formal dismissal. In fact, it is a shame that they did not depart even sooner. And I suppose that it is a kind of constructive dismissal to warn them that a disciplinary dismissal would be the outcome of any ill-judged attempt to cling to office, so inviting their resignations..
On the other hand, it is hard to see how anybody could not take issue with paying enough to have funded some well-appreciated service such as school milk for a couple of years as an inducement to resign. At that level of management, remuneration already reflects the risk that the boss will be expected to take the responsibility for failure by moving aside. Ogley and Pollard both failed to run their areas of responsibility to the standard the public expected from them for their money, and both should have simply gone. To offer them hundreds of thousands of pounds not to come into work anymore, just to save the bother of firing them is an utter absurdity and obscenity.
It is not hard to think of reasons why they should have left under clouds. Whatever one thinks of Stuart Syvret, in days of better mental health he exposed totally unacceptable management failings at the Health Department, that Pollard must be held responsible for continuing, even if they pre-date his watch originally. Ogley is up to his neck in malfeasances involving Syvret and Graham Power, and has been at the heart of every unsatisfactory piece of government policy of the last few years. I seem to remember that his reference was leading the implementation of hardline Tory cuts in Hertfordshire. Through the worst years of of Thatcher and Major, Jersey used to take pride in its wealth enabling it to do things that little bit better on the whole, but now our leaders want to catch up in their race to the bottom, and Ogley was seen as the man to do it.
Although it is rumoured that Jersey appears as a major producer in the accounts of a famous banana trading firm, it is not really a banana republic. Some would have it that The Jersey Way is just like one, but, in fact, very British attitudes predominate. Messrs Pollard and Ogley were sadly misled, if they were given the expectation that they were going to enjoy the levels of licence and impunity needed to get away with their style of doing things. And who so misled them?
Even if they had been induced to take up their posts by false pretences, the compensation given for their departure seems altogether disproportionate. And who saw fit to be so generous with our money, and, moreover, why?
The answers are of course that The Council of Ministers, and maybe a few close advisers, were who, and to induce them to take the rap for those behind them was why. However much initiative these men were supposed to exercise in carrying out their orders, and however much advice they gave as to what those orders should be, there can be no doubt which way the chain of command actually runs.
The whole sorry scandal is a sign that we have elected some unworthy leaders to the highest offices, if they will hire help to do such things, and need to buy their silence so expensively, when they fail to get away with them. We must choose more carefully next time: Although so much damage has already been done now, that nobody could fix it all in a term or two, we must stop adding to it.
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