The ‘Bishop’ of Selbie and the PHE.
A brave new world commences today. Just as well April Fool’s Day was yesterday, for otherwise you might not have believed it.
From today, in England, your Local Authority will be responsible for ‘supporting your self esteem’ and your ‘behavioral choices’.
Naturally your self esteem and your behavioral choices will only be supported if they accord with national guidelines, which will be supervised (for £185,000 a year) by a Scot. One Duncan Selbie. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke. He does have three children, so there is hope that at least one vice may remain on the national curriculum.
Little Duncan Selbie has been given a brand spanking new Quango to play with; the ‘PHE’. That’s not an aspirate Paedophile Information Exchange; its our new Nanny, ‘Public Heath England’, which is designed to utilise ‘social marketing and behavioral insight activities’ to help Local Authorities to ensure that we make the right choices at the right time so that we don’t become a burden on the NHS….(why do I get visions of text messages being sent out at bed time to remind us to wear a condom?)
‘Bishop’ Selbie, latterly of the parish of Dundee, has been shipped south to show the English yeoman how to live his life in a blameless manner that hopefully won’t cost the NHS too much lolly. Don’t expect explosive changes, most of the staff he has hired appear to have been shipped over from identical positions in the old NHS, but they will have shinny new desks, in a bright new office that none of them know their way round yet, so we may be left in peace for a few weeks whilst they figure out how to download the app for Solitaire on their new computers.
We want to try and ensure that there are opportunities for everyone in the transfer and recruitment processes for Public Health England. However, it is not possible to guarantee everyone a job at this stage. We anticipate around 90% of staff from sender organisations will be “lifted and shifted” into Public Health England. A “lift and shift” transfer is one where the existing function or function within the relevant sender organisation will remain exactly as they are now when they transfer.
Yes, they have all been reassured that their pension entitlement remains exactly the same as before…
He is a fan of plain packaging for cigarettes though, keeping a pack of the multi-coloured, gold tipped, Sobranie cigarettes in his desk to remind him of the lengths manufactures will go to entice children to smoke possibly the most expensive cigarettes on the market…
He’s been given a budget of £5.45 billion, with instructions to target the areas with the worst health, so expect lots of money to be spent in Newcastle, and Tower Hamlets; it’s supposed to be ring-fenced, but the definition of ‘supporting public health’ is fairly fluid, and will no doubt be found to include building more council houses in some hard pressed areas. Or maybe repairing the pot-holes to ‘prevent serious accidents’. You might even hit the jackpot and find it includes ‘restoring weekly rubbish collections’ where an enterprising council has decided that perhaps rats might be a problem. Mind you, PHE have already been tasked with providing the national immunisation programme, and that alone will account for £1.8 billion; then they have to sort out the National Drug Addiction problem, which currently costs around £3 billion a year doling out free methadone to addicts. That ring-fenced budget’s not looking so healthy any longer is it? Perhaps text messages to remind us of the correct rubber apparel at the close of day will be all they can afford? Here’s hoping.
There’s a worryingly evangelical touch to Duncan’s approach to this job, with his new blog sending out a (suitably secular) (or maybe not, if you are Muslim) ‘Friday message’ to his eager readers, from his minaret in Central London.
In my first Friday message in July last year I set out the behaviours that characterise high performing organisations.
We work together, not undermine each other.
We speak well of each other, in public and in private.
We consistently spend our time on what we say we care about.
We behave well, especially when things go wrong.
We keep our promises, small and large.
We speak with candour and courage.
Equally worrying is that as recently as April 1st, one of the questions most frequently asked on the DHE web site is:
Q: When will teams know where their office will be located?
(And that from someone based on the ‘Intelligence Team’!!!) A: By this morning hopefully!
Like a Salamander in a rotten log, PHE is slithering out of the flames of the coalition’s ’Bonfire of the Quangos’. Same people, new desks, new headed paper.
April 3, 2013 at 11:17
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I do hope Ho Hum does NOT retire from the fray. I admire a few things: Ho
Hum’s persistence, grammatical pedantry, consistency of pov (at least on this
thread) and the joy of a poster taking an unpopular position and bloomin well
arguing the point, dammit.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is a great blog.
- April 3, 2013 at 09:53
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Ah yes Anna.. Cocktail Sobranie. My late Mum ‘s Christmas treat to herself.
Still got the remains of her last pack.
She died at 96 after a lifetime of
self indulgence. Cream, butter, wine, G&T’s, etc. & would never
tolerate anything plastic or artificial . Remarkable lady, elegant to the
end.
I am trying to emulate her in the hope of longevity, made it to 77 so
far.
- April 2, 2013 at 23:27
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- April 2, 2013 at 23:55
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Psy Ops on Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=9bZkp7q19f0
1,489,840,043 views since last July
Want to be on whether he or the Bish is more likely to have made some
difference as to what care is available for you, or yours, next time you’re
ill?
- April 3, 2013 at 07:17
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I expect gangnam has made many people happy, and I’ve no doubt the Bish
would happily subscribe to the notion that a happy patient is the ultimate
gaol of the NHS…..
I cannot find a youtube paen to the “Selbie 6″ however hard I look, but
it seems to be the stuff of NHS legend nonetheless..
They can take the
man out of the department, but then they can put him back…..
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April 2, 2013 at 22:13
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The best thing HMG could do for me, as a cyclist, is to mend the holes in
the roads which are becoming craters.
I will limit my own bacon intake, let
them give us road surfaces fit for the UK rather than Botswana.
- April 2, 2013 at 21:59
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Whilst you’re on the subject of new people in new jobs I see a new bod’s in
place at the Beeb. He’s a Lord and worked for many years at auntie without
hearing a single solitary thing about – you know who ! Maybe he’s a throwback
to your man here – speaking ‘well’ of each other and so on ….
- April 2, 2013 at 19:30
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Just a question here. If the PHE is a function of the NHS, how will it help
make hospitals cleaner and prevent people dying of malnutrition in a puddle of
their own bodily fluids? Surely that’s the priority.
- April 2, 2013 at 19:50
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As we seem to be majoring on plurals here, you should note that you will
probably confuse the SoS by having included within one priority, two
different actions, the second of which might result in everyone running
around a lot, but ultimately doing nothing much for anybody at all, as they
cannot find anyone that meets the criteria, ie malnourished and lying in a
puddle
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April 2, 2013 at 20:18
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I think what Mr Sticker is trying to point out is that we’ve had a
number of well-publicised instances when NHS care clearly did fail to do
the basics properly – in some extremely distressing cases in
Staffordshire, Maidstone and Redditch, failed to do the basics at all,
including allowing patients to starve to death and lie in their own bodily
waste for extended periods of time. I’m quite sure there are many other
instances; in my area, one hospital is notorious for poor standards. I
think he’s trying to say that when all hospitals at least do the basics
well, the NHS might be justified in spending part of it’s budget on what
many would regard as unnecessary extras. It’s a question of priorities,
both financial and in management time. The stated budget of £5.45 billion
would pay for a lot of basic nursing care, both in hospitals and in the
community.
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April 2, 2013 at 21:19
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I was just being slightly obtuse, well, a lot really, insofar as I
was trying to point out to Mr Sticker that as he was already cheerfully
listing multiple priorities within his own suggestion, it might not be
unreasonable for him, or anyone else, to think an organisation that is
as diverse in its operations as the NHS might reasonably have more than
one priority too, particularly some that include all the health services
that are not delivered in hospitals in the first place
I don’t like some of the more intrusive aspects of Government policy
in this particular area either, but I don’t really think Mr Sticker
seems to have much of a clue as to the breath of what the NHS actually
does, and how some of that needs managing as it, and the world around
it, is being changed. But if he, or you, maybe think ‘Public Health’ may
be some sort of frippery which we can maybe do without, based on the
above dissection of its role and the humorous sideswipe at one blog
entry by its CEO, fine, you’re entitled to your opinion.
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April 2, 2013 at 21:33
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My opinion is that they could do rather more to get the basics of
public health in demonstrably good order before spending money on what
seem to me to be fripperies. If you think fripperies more important
than getting the basics right, I suppose you’re entitled to your
opinion too; however, I suspect you may be in a minority.
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April 2, 2013 at 21:55
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The jargon is one thing I would gladly see binned, but when you cut
through these, I hadn’t actually seen see too many fripperies, or
things that didn’t seem important.
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Structure%20of%20Public%20Health%20England.pdf
Hope that second link works OK
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April 2, 2013 at 21:57
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Sent you a response, Mr Engineer, but it’s in Limbo until Anna
approves it…if she does.
I forgot that one URL link too many gets sin binned
- April 2, 2013 at
23:06
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Public health a frippery? That’s a bit a a reach, isn’t it?
Priorities are key here. Incidentally, I’ve actually worked in the
NHS, and have a very strong understanding of what constitutes a basic
standard of care. Possibly more so than you, sir. Having spent time up
to my elbows both figuratively and literally in said bodily wastes. It
gives me a very real idea of what caring for injured and sick people
entails, and what constitutes a waste of time and energy.
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April 2, 2013 at 23:47
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Strange, as I didn’t think that I was actually the first to talk
about ‘unnecessary extras’, and it’s probably a shame that one of my
posts is still held in some purgatorial darkness, but, ah well, if you
have actually worked in the NHS, I shall seek to appease you by bowing
to your superior knowledge and wisdom, narrowing my expansive
visioning, quickly polishing your halo and retiring from the fray.
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April 2, 2013 at 19:05
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He uses ‘behaviours’ – in the plural . A sire sign of a pillock.
- April 2, 2013 at 19:42
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Sire, as is surely well known to most of those who are not pillocks, the
plural form ‘behaviours’ is a specialized term used in fields such as
psychology, social science, and education, at least two of which categories
the activities of PHE would seem to reasonably fall within
- April 3, 2013 at 18:18
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Proves my point – he’s a pillock.
- April 2, 2013 at 17:20
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180,000 a year, he must be seven times the man i am, but i seriously doubt
it!
- April 2, 2013 at 20:12
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But he’ll probably last at least 7 days doing the job, so maybe he could
be?
- April 2, 2013 at 17:16
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So my happiness and wellbeing is now a government responsibility, is it?
That’s worrying, given that the primary responsibilities of government are
things like the defence of the Realm, the impartial administration of justice
and balancing the nation’s books. When they do stuff like that really well,
they can take time out to worry about my wellbeing. In the meantime, I’d
rather they concentrated on getting the basic governmental stuff right, and
leave the ‘wellbeing’ stuff to me.
- April 2, 2013 at 17:25
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Amen to that.
- April 2, 2013 at 16:08
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People who come around prodding and probing, telling me how to feel, trying
to‘support my self esteem’ and ‘help my behavioral choices’ without being
specifically requested to do so simply make me irritable and depressed. They
always waste your time with their enthused babblings and ruin perfectly
wonderful days.
Like doorstep evangelists and others who come without an appointment, I
hope they will be ignored or briefly told “Go away, I’m busy.” With the door
closed sharply in their faces. Anyone else feel the same?
- April 2, 2013 at 16:25
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Ahh, you’re so touchingly old fashioned Bill! This lot aren’t like
Jehovah’s Witnesses, politely knocking on the door – they will speak to you
from the integral speaker on your new fridge, bellow in your ear from your
Twitter account, insert themselves into the small print on your football
pools coupon – you’ll be glad to get back to the old days of ‘send £2 or the
Siberian Tiger gets it’. Trust me.
- April 2, 2013 at 16:52
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But isn’t the outcome much the same as the intent of the little ladies
who yelled at you if you dared to as much as move on the escalators on the
Moscow underground, and maybe still do? It’s for your own good, and that
of others, that you don’t kill yourself
A bit like the ‘Shop a terrorist today’ and the ‘Don’t kick the bags
with the bombs’ announcements you hear on the London Underground?
- April 2, 2013 at 17:17
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Well Anna, I’d hope to avoid those people by not buying the gadget with
the integral speaker, not having a twitter account, and not doing the
pools or lottery (The odds are too long-a horse racing syndicate is more
fun, and with skill, even runs a small profit). A brief but polite “No
thank you” suffices to chuggers and checkout solicitations at the
supermarket. Ad blocker takes care of the annoying advertisements, and in
extremis, a short arm karate punch to the larynx as a last resort should
just about deal with every other unwelcome intrusion.
BTW: did the Siberian Tiger ‘get it’? I understand there are still a
few around, even without my $2 donation.
- April 2, 2013 at 13:36
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@ ‘Bishop’ Selbie, latterly of the parish of Dundee @
Shome mishtake shurely? …. he is latterly of B right on………….
http://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2012/04/05/brighton-hospital-chief-to-leave/14148
Attempted whistleblowing, in the comments section it seems
- April 2, 2013 at 13:47
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April 2, 2013 at 14:16
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Their loss is our loss !
- April 2, 2013 at 15:26
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Maybe you want to read a bit more widely? Google can be your friend
- April 2, 2013 at 15:28
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And remember not to miss out the bits between the lines.
- April 2, 2013 at 16:54
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The Wit & Wisdom of the Bish……..
September 21st, 2011
“The £19 million overspend is a forecast. It
has not yet been spent. And what we have to do is keep it that way.”
October 14th, 2011
Brighton hospital boss to get tough after £19m
overspend
A fuller grasp of ‘rithmetic might have been more use than readin ‘n’
‘ritin’ ….
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April 2, 2013 at 17:27
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Assuming that I have been looking at the same two articles which you
seem to be referring to, if that’s your best understanding of them, I’m
sorry, but you don’t seem to be that great at the reading bit
- April 2, 2013 at 17:54
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It didn’t get any easier. I agree…..
Wednesday 26th September 2012
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/9949739.Sussex_hospitals_needed___15m_Government_loan_to_balance_books/
A
hospital trust had to get a £15 million loan from the Government to
help it pay the bills. Brighton and Sussex University Hospital NHS
Trust made the request to the Department of Health to ensure it had
cash in the bank to pay its creditors on time. The trust was one of
only eight health authorities who requested a working capital loan
last year to help with everyday running costs.
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April 2, 2013 at 18:37
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The operating deficit 2011/2012 was actually £5.4m. After
accounting for Finance Costs of £2.9m, plus dribs and drabs, that rose
to £8.4m and after charging the PDC Div of £7.8m, the total retained
deficit was £16.2m. The bottom line after repayment to HMG of Int
& Divs is supposed to be zero, so they had indeed spent £16m more
out of their income than they should have. I wouldn’t trouble yourself
with the concepts of PDC, and related Interest and Dividend payments,
how income is generated to cover those, and the totality of the NHS
funding circle, unless you are unduly masochistic
As for the 15m loan, you can see the Interest paid, and the £8.4m
PDC Div, chewing up more than half of the incoming loan in the
Cashflow Statement, so in effect half of the borrowing went straight
back to HMG anyway.
Bottom line is that they brought their position back to less than
predicted, and newspapers can make anything sound more juicy than it
really is
- April 2, 2013 at 20:39
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Clearly much progress had been made.
Monday 10th December 2007
Brighton and Sussex University
Hospitals chief executive Duncan Selbie said: “For a number of years
the trust was spending more money than it received, a situation which
we are working hard to rectify by making our own services more
efficient and ensuring we get paid properly for what we do. “There is
still a great deal to do but we are confident that we will break even
by the end of this financial year and not spend beyond our means
again.
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/1894923.sussex_hospital_trusts_get_54m_government_interest_bill/
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April 4, 2013 at 16:37
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‘ I wouldn’t trouble yourself with the concepts of PDC, and related
Interest and Dividend payments, how income is generated to cover
those, and the totality of the NHS funding circle, unless you are
unduly masochistic ‘
It would appear that your masochism is deeply ingrained
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April 2, 2013 at 11:28
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Sanjay Gandhi, the bright one of the family, not the one the Tamils blew
up, came up with the best idea. A free transistor radio with every vasectomy.
Update it to the latest model X box , or gadget du jour and in a few years
there will be a noticeable improvement in the ststistics in a number of
problem categories.
- April 2, 2013 at 12:22
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A snip at the price too.
Are there any first person singular only deals on a free 72 virgins?
Oh dear. Sometimes what purports to be my SOH gets the better of
me……………..
- April 2, 2013 at 10:42
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” The ‘PHE’ …….. is designed ………… to ensure that we make the right choices
at the right time so that we don’t become a burden on the NHS…”
To do that, it’s budget should be spent doling out free fags &
booze to anyone & everyone who wants them. The paradox is, prolonging life
absolutely increases the burden on the NHS. At least utilising my suggestion
(consultancy fee waived) people die happy.
- April 2, 2013 at 10:59
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Is that why they dole out free methadone?
- April 2, 2013 at 11:44
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Possibly. But the free condoms are better. People are deliriously
happy, while simultaneously avoiding the creation of future burdens…. Win,
win
- April 2, 2013 at 11:48
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“Is that why they dole out free methadone?”
Have you heard of the Seaton House homeless shelter in Toronto? They
give the residents free booze until they are deemed too drunk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaton_House
To be perfectly honest, I think some of these harm reduction measures
are a good idea. The perfect solution is for the addict to realise the
error of his ways and abstain from their chosen poison, but this is just a
distant reality for many hopeless cases. Is it better to dole out free
methadone and booze, than to be robbed by some wastrel or trip over a
pissed-up old tramp?
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April 2, 2013 at 12:12
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My goodness! Legalise iniquitous addictions? I wonder how
Savilification Treatment might be arranged and made to work? The mind
boggles…
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April 2, 2013 at 11:02
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Spot on Joe!
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April 2, 2013 at 10:33
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This is a joke? Yes? Please tell me this is a joke…..!
- April 2, 2013 at 10:27
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This is the NHS right?
“ We work together, not undermine each other.
We speak well of each
other, in public and in private.”
Isn’t that quote capable of being misinterpreted? Along the lines of
“Whistleblowers not welcome?” Kinda sinister.
- April 2, 2013 at 10:47
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Sounds almost Biblical in its approach, actually….
Psalm 1 verse 1 runs:
Blessed is the one who does not ……….sit in the
company of mockers,
That would seem to be a good place from which all of us might reasonably
start.
- April 2,
2013 at 12:24
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Spot on! An organisation that demands its employees speak well of it even
in private is a very bad sign indeed…
- April 2, 2013 at 10:11
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Oh Anna, ‘worryingly evangelical’?
Have you any idea of the forests
felled for the endless consultations and action plans, supporting wellbeing
and inclusiveness, the meetings about things that won’t change or are none of
their business that pass for local govt here now? The acronyms, the
overarching scoping, modal shift of course, and I’ve no idea either. The past
10-15 years has seen an explosion of this guff.
Now it’s the South Downs
National Park authority and how to access some crumbs from a levy they can
make on developers, much reduced if the volunteers don’t have a Neighbourhood
Plan in place. Crumbs to be spent on things other parties are already supposed
to be doing.
Meanwhile the holes in the roads and pavements get worse, no
solution for the air pollution problem; so perhaps we need another
consultation. Then we can analyse the results, prepare an action plan, consult
on it and prioritise our actions. Ensures validity you see.
There are
people that are nerdily obsessed with this stuff; for them it is a
religion.
Me? I’d like a gun.
- April 2, 2013 at 09:38
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FWIW, I have met Duncan Selbie in a number of previous incarnations. He’s a
decent bloke, committed to what he does, and normally very good at it. For the
benefit of everyone that is paying through their common insurance, ie their
taxes, for whatever part of their healthcare he is helping to deliver at the
time
Probably that makes me one of the devil’s spawn too, but see if I
care….
- April 2, 2013 at 10:58
{ 53 comments }