The Percy Principle.
The Percy Principle.
“In the NHS, every failing CEO tends to move sideways to a non-existent role of no consequence but with a similar pay grade.”
Katrina Percy is a huge fan of fresh faced young men with spiky haircuts who speak to her in dulcet tones of how to ‘maximise performance, potential and self-awareness’ – if they want to throw in a bit of transactional analysis, a variety of cognitive behavioural techniques and Neuro-linguistic programming, then she’s all ears. And cheque books – preferably, exclusively it would appear, someone else’s.
The twosome who particularly tickled her fancy were Chris Martin and Paul Gray. They must have tickled it pretty well for she has handed over millions of pounds of NHS funding in order to have them whisper in her ear on a regular basis. Perhaps she has become addicted to their Svengali words?
Paul Gray she has known since she was but a humble director of strategy at Hampshire Community Health Care. Paul specialises in teaching NHS employees ‘longer-term strategic and annual plans’. How could she doubt that his methods worked? Or that they were worth the £602,000 Hampshire Community Health Care paid him. Did Katrina not go on to become Chief Executive of Southern Health? A bargain – for her, if not for Hampshire Community Health Care.
Then along came Chris Martin. Fresh faced and full of vigour. Chris is master of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Dr Richard Bandler, who invented NLP, says it is “a model of interpersonal communication chiefly concerned with the relationship between successful patterns of behaviour and the subjective experiences (esp. patterns of thought) underlying them”. He also claimed that NLP could cure problems such as phobias, depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness, allergy, common cold, and learning disorders. I’m only surprised he didn’t include AIDS.
Unfortunately, a number of peer reviewed studies have shown that ‘to date there is no convincing empirical evidence on the efficacy of NLP’.
Not to worry. Katrina was convinced. She handed Chris Martin a £288,000 contract for three years, with an option for a one year extension. Three years later, Chris Martin had received £5.365m, an ‘overspend’ of near 2,000% which must have been the envy of British Aerospace….
The management of Southern Health were apparently so thoroughly in the thrall of their NLP Svengali, that apart from one Governor, John Green, it didn’t seem odd that so much money was going out the door to this hypnotist/ shaman/psycho-religious company.
“I was fobbed off,” Mr Green said.
“I didn’t get any information for well over a year. I believe the spending of public money in the NHS is nothing as accountable to the public as it should be.”
We had nearly forgotten, had we not – Southern Health was supposed to be looking after the mental health of its patients – not the staff.
There is no evidence that any staff were suffering from near sightedness, common colds, or learning disorders – but some of the patients were incontrovertibly suffering.
1,259 of them had died. That of Connor Sparrowhawk, who died of an epileptic seizure whilst in a bath, sparked an inquiry.
An inquiry which the CQC reported was ‘a failure of leadership and governance at the trust’. Katrina Percy, the only chief executive the trust has ever had, has faced widespread calls to resign but has refused to do so.
Instead, the Trust have created a new job for her. They have appointed her as a consultant to 20 – twenty! – GPs in the area. A job which neither existed two minutes ago, nor has been advertised. She will take her £500,000 pension pot with her, and keep her £240,000 salary.
Sir Nicholas Soames has said:
‘It seems extraordinary that this astonishing person believes that she can stay on and laugh in the face of the public by being paid this sum.’
What seems extraordinary to me is that you have in place a whole raft of management that has been programmed to within an inch of their lives – ‘to believe, to really believe’….incredibly they have hired Alastair Campbell’s firm, Portland Communications, to help them with their current public relations disasters…
This is one outcome. The other outcome will be that every other CEO of a Health Trust will be double checking their rates of pay – if advising 20 GPs is worth that much, then how much is being CEO of a health service worth? As will every other lower management figure charged with advising a small group of GPs…if she is worth that, then ‘so am I’.
The advisory role was created at the request of Ms Percy and was approved by the trust’s interim chairman, Tim Smart, and the executive board. An individual involved in her appointment claimed that Ms Percy had “refused to step down without a fight” and demanded the position be created in exchange for giving up her role as chief executive.
NHS Improvement, which is the only body with any authority to speak out about this has said that it supports the creation of Ms Percy’s new role as the “best value for money” solution.
No word as to whether the Mssrs Martin and Gray are still being paid to ‘psyche’ the staff out of thinking they might have a common cold…
Never mind a badger cull – we could do with a cull in the NHS.
- Michael J. McFadden
September 8, 2016 at 9:33 am -
“Neuro Linguistic Programming”? Sounds like NewSpeak for “brainwashing.” And actually, it sounds like what Antismokers try to do when they seek to imprint linguistic markers in the public mind: “The stench of smoke,” “Like licking an ashtray,” “Walls coated with tar and nicotine,” “Just trying to breathe,” etc., etc.
That might not be what NLP is all about, but that’s what the name suggests to me.
– MJM
- leady
September 8, 2016 at 9:55 am -
Ah the public sector…
and people still fail to understand why privatised services can be better and cheaper
- Peter Raite
September 8, 2016 at 1:52 pm -
“Better and cheaper” privatised services like the railways, utilities, and teelcoms, you mean?
- JuliaM
September 8, 2016 at 2:26 pm -
My train to work is new, air-conditioned (replacing the old ‘slam door’ type) and the staff are clean and polite, I can avail myself on unlimited cheap deals for all utilities, and swap them around as often as I wish, and I’ve only stayed with my broadband suppliers because they do a good job and have upgraded me several times.
So yes. They are undoubtedly better and cheaper.
- Peter Raite
September 8, 2016 at 2:37 pm -
Railway rolling stock is only “better” because it has benefitted from the passage of time that would undoubtedly still have happened under British Rail. Some franchise holders manage better – or rather less-worse – than others. Southern is not winning many fans at the moment. Even so, until recent East Coast as a government-owned subsidiary was running better and with a lower subsidy than any of the previous private franchise-holders, and indeed with a lower subsidy proportionately than ANY private franchise holder in the country. For the traveller the ticketing system is far more impetetrable and far less flexible than it was under BR. On an open return from Hull to Bedford in 1984 I was able – quite properly – to break both legs with an overnight stay in Leeds. Try doing that these days.
Utilities are similar, but from my personal experience nPower and Scottish Power are beyond incompetent.
- Peter Raite
- Wigner’s Friend
September 8, 2016 at 2:31 pm -
You obviously don’t remember the railways of the 70s or BT of the 80s. Waiting 6 months to get a phone line. Having a party line connected to your line without being asked or informed and the first you knew was when you picked up the phone and heard your next door neighbour talking to his Mum. I had been on a party line for 3 months without knowing and had to fight tooth and nail to get the line rental reduction I was due.. So yes, better and cheaper privatised services.
- Peter Raite
September 8, 2016 at 2:40 pm -
On the contrary, I very much remember the British Rail of the 1970s and 80s, as per my response above. As to telephones, I lived in Hull, with its excellently-run municipally-controlled telephone system.
- Wigner’s Friend
September 8, 2016 at 8:27 pm -
And throughout the 70s and 80s I moved around the uk every couple of years and never have I suffered anything since to compare with BT of that era. Booking a train journey was easy but whether the trains ran was a lottery.
- stephen lewis
September 9, 2016 at 9:08 am -
Peter’s comments merely suggest that much of any improvements visible today would have occurred anyway as a result of technological innovation … irrespective of the utility referenced. When nuclear was first developed a computer took up the size of several large warehouses and had to be air conditioned. Engineers were a combination of HVAC, electrical and electronic and mechanical engineers. Those same computers power is now generated by a couple of home personal computers (possibly even a few tablets).
Comparing technological developments like air conned carriages and electric doors from one era to another is pointless. Comparing the fact that a phone took several weeks to arrive compared to today is also pointless. Telephones themselves took considerably longer to manufacture in the 60’s and 70’s whilst not forgetting the fact that miles of separate cables had to be laid … compared to 1 fibre cable.There are times when a co-ordinated programme is better … for example charge cables for mobile phones …. a standardisation across 100’s of manufacturers. It is a little ludicrous that I could buy my electric from a southern England producer whilst living in the far north of Scotland. There are also times when competition is best … my latest gripe is school uniforms where a school insists on the name of the school on the shirt and trousers .. leaving one supplier.
Back on topic … one of the reasons for privatisation was corruption, as much of the NHS is now effectively privatised … corruption seems possible in all aspects of management
- binao
September 9, 2016 at 10:35 am -
The then vs now arguments are a little pointless, I suspect.
What is more important is contemporary comparison. Working on a project in the US in the late 70’s, I was impressed with the speed with which services and plant could be obtained. A phone system including conference calling up & running in days on an industrial site for example. When I explained to a US colleague what would have happened in Britain, his comment was: ‘If people can’t supply what we want in a day or two, we assume they don’t want the business.’ My 5litre Chevrolet with all the extras might not have been everyone’s dream car, but it cost no more than the lacklustre Austin Princess of the time, but was supplied promptly and didn’t go wrong.
Hardly applicable to the NHS, though, which by it’s nature cannot really behave as a business. That doesn’t mean it can’t be managed effectively. My care at a local hospital over the past three years or so now compares very favourably as a patient with my experience of private care; this most certainly wasn’t the case previously, either for me or my late wife. So it can be done, though obviously I don’t know if neuro linguistic training was involved.
My guess is the main problem of the NHS is it’s sheer size; my personal experience of running an industrial site as part of a large organisation was the temptation for the top people to impose savings of scale regardless of the consequences; also ‘this works well at site X, it needs to be done everywhere’; and this is our latest thinking, policy…. Perhaps that doesn’t happen in the NHS?
Finally, when the organisation’s in trouble there’s always a snake oil salesman with a cure, and gullible desperate people willing to give it a go. It’s always going to be easier when someone else pays the bill.
- binao
- Mr Ecks
September 9, 2016 at 9:27 am -
“Privatisation” is simply replacing worthless state socialism with corporate socialist antics. These may be slightly better than the failures of the states bunglers but still far from what a free market produces,
The scum of the state steal peoples money under threat of violence. They then can either hire their own clowns in their own organisation to provide “services” or offer contracts to supposed private businesses to provide said “services”.
The state run shower are just that with results ranging from mass starvation to wasteful and useless services. See any socialist shithole on the planet for further details. Venezuela being the choice de jour.
Offering contract to private business also has many drawbacks. The business serves the purchaser which is still the useless state not the customers (ie tax victims) the privatised services are supposed to be being provided for. Thus many perverse goals are included in the aims of the contract.
And of course the worst aspects of human nature are also brought into play. The bureaucrats awarding these contracts are often stupid and have no idea about business and reality in general. This leads to massive overcharging or stunts like cheapjack companies putting in such low bids that they cannot perform the duties of the contract. Once contracts have been awarded it can also be the case that the company can underperform and any complaints from the “customers” will be ignored by bureaucrats who don’t want their own failings exposed.
Samizdata blog this morning carries the story of the Queensland govt in Australia who signed a contract for IT to cost six million, one hundred and ninety thousand Aussie Dollars. Which ended up costing 1100 million AusD. The bureaucrats are still not to be fired it seems.
The solution is for people to buy the services they want themselves on the free market directly from competing suppliers–as people do successfully for most things already. If there was a national food service you would starve to death if the state ran it and would eat very badly if corporate socialism did. The worst aspects of human nature are always with us. But the market compensates by providing a choice of vendors all of whom must compete for your voluntary business, Crooks and conmen will always exist–but the free market gives such creatures far less opportunity to prosper long term.
As for Hull and its telephone system. The fact that the phones mostly worked under the various state systems in the past was the least of it and nothing to be described as “excellent”. Waiting four months for the GPO to deign to install a phone–no choice of type but (towards the end of their era) a big big choice of 3 colours) tells you everything about who was important back then. The System was and the “customers” could go whistle if they didn’t like it.
- stephen lewis
- Wigner’s Friend
- Peter Raite
- JuliaM
- Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 6:31 pm -
But it’s always easier to do what you decide to do, as you choose to do it, rather than what you’re mandated to do, in the manner others determine, at a standard they set.
Just look at the Southern Health Mazars report, and look at all the complexity of mandatory incident reporting, with its management and staffing implications. Those are just a fraction of the management standards that an NHS Trust has to understand, implement, perform to and report on.
And don’t think that those standards etc are the product of someone making up jobs for the boys and girls. Those are driven from the top, by the politicians who are ultimately responsible, on your behalf, for the services provided to you, setting out what they believe will deliver the services you need at the standard you would want and deserve. Your taxes go towards paying for the best possible services that they determine you should get.
Although, if I could work out how do strike through text, I’d cross out some parts of that and replace/add to them as follows:
‘who are ultimately responsible’ = ‘who will try to use every artifice that they can find to avoid any responsibility at all’
‘on your behalf’ = ‘without any reference to you at all if they can get away with it’
‘setting out what they believe will deliver the services you need at the standard you would want and deserve’ = ‘doing whatever they believe will provide them with copper bottomed underwear’
‘Your taxes go towards paying for the best possible services that they determine you should get’ = ‘Your taxes go towards paying for the cheapest possible services that they determine will be delivered in accordance with whatever political dogma they lean towards, in a manner and form often determined by whatever snakeoil salesman has lobbied them best’But I forget, you’re all clever, and know that already….. Don’t you?
- Peter Raite
- Ed P
September 8, 2016 at 10:28 am -
Poor old NHS – whilst these pointless and irrelevant positions are created at such vast expense to hide The Peter Principle’s rejects, the front line services are starved of funding.
A contract for £288,000 for 3 years and he trousered £5,365,000? That sounds like a criminal arrangement.
The EU’s accounts have not been audited for 20 years, how about the NHS’s?
- leady
September 8, 2016 at 10:31 am -
Money doesn’t really vanish in the UK, so it will pass a financial audit unfortunately
- leady
- GC
September 8, 2016 at 10:49 am -
Envy Of The World
- rufus
September 8, 2016 at 10:53 am -
As an NHS employee i can assure you all this type of individual is lurking in many trusts.As to the private sector,get real. They are as bad if not worse! As i have seen all to often. The problem is in the quality of the candidates for these jobs. Many are in way above their heads. Perhaps we could look to the French system for some answers.
- Andrew Duffin
September 8, 2016 at 12:49 pm -
Surely the important difference about the private sector is that it’s their own money they are wasting, and if they really behaved in the way our landlady describes, they would pretty soon be out of business. And good riddance.
By contrast, what happens when an NHS Trust runs out of money? Why, it’s all the fault of the evil Tory cuts, won’t someone think of the children, and more money is found. Ad infinitum.
- Peter Raite
September 8, 2016 at 1:54 pm -
No, it’s not their own money, but rather their customers money. You just don’t notice because it’s rolled into the prices instead of the taxes that you pay.
- Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 2:14 pm -
I wonder who he thinks pays for the fountain in the atrium?
FWIW, long ago, the lead partner for insolvency in one of the then big 4 firms was interviewed in one of the institute’s journals and said, tongue firmly in cheek, I guess, but with a modicum of truth from his own experience that, as every major insolvent he had managed had a fountain in the reception, we should all take care when dealing with such
- Andrew Duffin
September 13, 2016 at 10:48 am -
This (the fountain in the atrium – indeed the mere existence of an atrium) is actually one of Parkinson’s Laws; yes, it’s been well known and documented since the sixties!
- Andrew Duffin
- JuliaM
September 8, 2016 at 2:34 pm -
Yes, Peter, it’s their customer’s money, And if I think that’s not a good way of spending their profits, I’m free to take my custom elsewhere.
The public sector, however, gets my taxes regardless. See the difference now?
- Peter Raite
September 8, 2016 at 2:41 pm -
No, the difference is that you largely don’t get to hear about the stuff the private sector gets up to that might lead you to take your custom elsewhere.
- Hadleigh Fan
September 8, 2016 at 3:43 pm -
Every shenanigan in the private sector is rolled up in the price you pay, and despite everything, there is price competition. There’s even price competition in motor fuel, which is mainly tax, so the variability is small. When the shenanigans are not small, the business vanishes, as it does generally when it isn’t competitive, or when the service is lousy. (BHS, Woolworths, C&A?)
In the state sector, the taxpayer is fleeced to pay for it, and there’s no chance to opt out.
On a smaller scale you also find this sort of behaviour in the upper echelons of Universities.
- Hadleigh Fan
- Peter Raite
- Andrew Duffin
September 13, 2016 at 10:52 am -
If you voluntarily buy something from a private business – something you want, at the price they are selling it for – and voluntarily hand over your money in exchange for the goods, then it’s no longer your money, it’s theirs. In the same way that the goods are then no longer theirs, but yours.
- Ho Hum
- Peter Raite
- Andrew Duffin
- Herby
September 8, 2016 at 10:58 am -
I once attended a conference run by Paul McKenna, on how to communicate more effectively with people. Bandler was one of the speakers and most of the 1,000 strong audience were hailing him as a new Messiah as he walked in the room. We then sat for about an hour listening to this foul mouthed individual who thinks that using the phrase Mother F**ker twice in every sentence is communicating effectively. He humiliated people in the audience during his speech and was so rude. A horrible man
- Demetrius
September 8, 2016 at 11:16 am -
Decades ago when I found myself having to deal with NHS managers I found banging heads together always worked. Pity it went out of fashion.
- liz@jesslinworld
September 8, 2016 at 11:33 am -
Hello Anna
I have been told that the photo on your blog shows the wrong Paul Gray (also the wrong spelling of the name).
Best wishes
Liz
#JusticeforLB - Robert Edwards
September 8, 2016 at 11:41 am -
I wonder – are these people connected in any way with ‘Common Purpose’? If so, they should be ‘dealt with’.
A young Ensign, upon graduating from his military academy (this circa 1933) received a letter from his uncle, also in the Wehrmacht:
“You will encounter four types of Officer in your service for the Reich:
1. The clever and lazy. I am of this category and, as you know, I am a General.
2. The clever and industrious. These are indispensable, but many will be killed in time of war.
3. The stupid and lazy. They carry out the orders of the above. Also vital, but more numerous.
4. The stupid and industrious. These Officers must be culled at every opportunity…”Do I detect some inversion of the above in the NHS?
- Whyaxye
September 8, 2016 at 11:57 am -
“NHS Improvement, which is the only body with any authority to speak out about this has said that it supports the creation of Ms Percy’s new role as the “best value for money” solution.”
As far as it goes, that’s probably true. But did anyone consider the “best value for no money” solution, which is to sack the incompetent cow?
- windsock
September 8, 2016 at 12:04 pm -
Because giving her a salary and a pension will be cheaper than fighting a case in an industrial tribunal with all the publicity it will attract and the practices it might expose? Just a thought, to quote Ho Hum.
- Herby
September 8, 2016 at 12:10 pm -
That was mentioned on BBC South News yesterday
- Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 1:50 pm -
Shades of Sharon Shoesmith LOL
There are a lot of NHS senior managers who get moved on for no other reason than that some politician somewhere finds themselves in a cooking pot, with the media, as well as his ‘colleagues’, from all sides, his or her own included, stoking up the fire
I was going to ignore this one but, OK, diverging slightly from the 2 gurus Anna is having a pop at, of whom I know zilch, and because of some of the rest of the general aggro coming out, here goes.
I took the trouble to have a look through the external reports. The main external report covered the deaths of ‘everybody’ who was a health care Mental Health and Learning Disability service user at death, over the 5 year period, who ‘at some point’ had had a contact with the trust’s services over the prior 12 months, with 65% of the service users were on an active caseload (seen in last 3 months). Of these deaths, >90% were over 65, and for all the deaths involved, yhe average age was 81 years with a median of 85 years.
In brief, the report broadly says that the Trust failed to learn from following up on deaths of its service users, because its incident management systems weren’t working all that well
Some of that doesn’t make for the best of reading, such as the poor quality of written reports, but you might ask what else you expect from some of the staff involved at the lower end of the care delivery system, who aren’t all going to be exactly the most academically gifted, and often getting paid peanuts.
But when you dig into the detail, who, where should really be taking the blame for a framework like this, also mentioned, albeit possibly less directly? The Trust’s Annual Report gives a clue:
‘One of the challenges that has been highlighted by the report is the reporting and investigation of deaths that occur in the community when multiple providers have been commissioned. The report considered deaths of all patients who had one or more contacts with the Trust in the 12 months prior to their death. This means for example, that if the Trust saw an elderly patient in a memory outpatient clinic to support them with their dementia and they subsequently died of physical health causes several months later whilst under the care
of their GP or the acute hospital, they were still included in the report.There is currently no guidance available as to who should take a lead role to investigate deaths of this nature. Our commissioners are working with regulators to review the situation and produce guidelines that can be implemented nationally. We welcome the greater clarity this will bring.’
Now, I’d probably be pretty pissed off I thought I was going to be taking the blame for not having attributed to my organisation deaths such as, using examples in the main report
– Incident: A decision was made that service user would not survive surgery. Report Question: Person died next day.
– Incident: What is the Trust role once an incident is reported by staff to them? Report Question: What is the process for referring to an acute trust or social care for a review of decision making and care in this case?
– Incident: Service user received general anaesthetic. Service user was discharged home but became unwell. Person died. Cause of death not yet known or formally identified. Report Question: What review is needed regarding the care in the lead up to the need for the anaesthetic in the first place?As for the merits of the Private Sector involvement, Rufus above has made a fair point. Does no-one read the news any more, or do people have some sort of filters on their spectacles when it comes to the all conquering, all mightily successful, private sector?
And Andrew Duffin, get an education, please. To quote from the Trust’s Annual Report
‘Income & Expenditure
Income reduced by 4.0% compared to the previous year. This reduction is largely driven by two factors. The first related to the fact the Trust received lower income for TQtwentyone services in the year (£7.0 million) following the loss of some services in
Hampshire. Secondly there is the application of a 1.6% income deflator by our commissioners, which was in line with national guidance. For some services, particularly Mental Health, the deflator value was re-invested by our commissioners in our services, which offset the income deflation to an extent. It should also be noted that income deflators applied over the past four years are equal to 2.4% in 2014/15, 1.3% in 2013/14, 1.8% in 2012/13, and 1.5% in 2011/12.Combined with the impact of cost inflation, this income reduction has meant we have been required to generate significant financial efficiencies in order for us to remain solvent. During the year we generated £11.2 million of savings, which was in line with our target. Of these savings £10.5 million were delivered recurrently and the balance through non recurrent measures. In order to ensure there is not an adverse impact on service quality all cost savings schemes are required to be approved by both the Medical Director and Director of Nursing.’
No pressure there, huh?
And it might interest you all to look at the board’s wealth of experience in, er, the private sector, before talking tripe
I’ve probably outstayed my welcome, so I’ll get my coat….
- Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 1:57 pm -
Oops. Editing failure!!
Should be obvious what this should replace
– Incident: A decision was made that service user would not survive surgery. Person died next day. Report Question: What is the Trust role once an incident is reported by staff to them? What is the process for referring to an acute trust or social care for a review of decision making and care in this case?
– Incident: Service user received general anaesthetic. Service user was discharged home but became unwell. Person died. Cause of death not yet known or formally identified. Report Question: What review is needed regarding the care in the lead up to the need for the anaesthetic in the first place?
– Incident: Service user was found dead by the support team. Service user was found lying on the floor dead with a head wound.
Report Question: What input did the Trust have to help manage epilepsy? If none was there anything the Trust could have done? Is there a need to ask any further questions? - Peter Raite
September 8, 2016 at 2:04 pm -
Ironically there are parallels with Savile in that a top-line total is quoted – whether “deaths linked to the Trust” or “investigatiosn into Savile” – the detail of which shows were vastly over-stated. This is akin to the clowns as Black Lives Matter UK circulating a list of black people supposedly gunned down without mercy by the police, which included some who were neither shot nor even killed, or in one case, one half of a two-man crew of armed robbers shot down with firearms in hand, during an armed robbery (the list doesn’t mention the white one of the pair).
- Mike Hunt
September 8, 2016 at 4:36 pm -
“Some of that doesn’t make for the best of reading, such as the poor quality of written reports, but you might ask what else you expect from some of the staff involved at the lower end of the care delivery system, who aren’t all going to be exactly the most academically gifted, and often getting paid peanuts”
This is part of the problem people expect a service that they aren’t prepared to pay for. Many care workers are on minimum wage. It would be interesting to see how the parents of Connor Sparrowhawk would have done if they had elected to try and look after him, but no they had lots of money so get some other poor mug to look after him and when a problem occurs create like hell
- Mrs Grimble
September 8, 2016 at 8:20 pm -
Sounds like you know the family personally – their financial situation, their personal circumstances and so on. Do tell! Or maybe you’ve had extensive experience with 18-year old males who have autism, epilepsy, learning diffculties and a tendency to become physically violent, so you know how easy they are to care for?
Actually, I suspect you know nothing at all about them. Otherwise you’d at least know his family sent him to Slade House not to be rid of him, but for assessment by professionals, so that plans could be made for his longterm future care.- Peter Raite
September 9, 2016 at 10:36 am -
The Guardian describes the mother Dr Sara Ryan as, “a senior researcher and autism specialist at Oxford University’s Nuffield department of primary care health sciences.” Presumably not on minimum wage.
- Peter Raite
- Mrs Grimble
- Ho Hum
- Herby
- windsock
- windsock
September 8, 2016 at 12:07 pm -
Think of all the money that could go to Junior doctors for a 7 day NHS, or the cancer treatment and HIV phrophylaxis drugs that could be funded on the salaries of maybe a handful of these incompetent slimeballs.
- BritInMontreal
September 8, 2016 at 12:58 pm -
Exactly; Anna Darling, we’re in Flann O’Brien territory again. How the hell does this organisation survive? The health service in Ontario is no great shakes, but it dealt with my wife’s burst appendix promptly & without fuss, April this year. The NHS nearly killed my sister a few years ago during what would have been a routine op. She’s OK now, after a year of suffering.
- Peter Raite
September 8, 2016 at 2:05 pm -
Not really a representative sample. I know lots of people who owe there lives or even just their now more comfortable lives to the NHS.
- Peter Raite
- Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 2:37 pm -
Sorry, but compared to the things you are talking about, it’s like pouring into the ocean the contents of a urine bottle that’s been used by someone who desperately needs catheterisation
- windsock
September 8, 2016 at 3:47 pm -
Yes, but no. PrEP, as we were discussing the other day, would cost between £10million and £20million per year.
If just one consultancy bags over £5million in three years, how many others are doing the same?
As one company I loathe says “Every Little Helps”.
- windsock
- BritInMontreal
- Guy Atkinson
September 8, 2016 at 12:30 pm -
What is also astounding is the hundreds of gullible board members who appoint these airheads. There is a politically correct NHS language that is compulsory for anyone who wants to progress. It requires frequent insertion of buzz words and an optimistic uncritical outlook. If you are more considered, and recognise some complexities to improving a service, you will be unsuccessful. This high earning cohort of upward and sideways moving directors, assistant directors want facile solutions presented nebulously by non confrontational people expert in psychobabble.
- Peter Raite
September 8, 2016 at 2:07 pm -
I think you’ll find that the vast majority of NHS workers can spend their entire careers without encountering such nonsense. It’s “management language” and it appears to infect the private sector just as much.
- Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 2:39 pm -
Yep. One of my relatives was sent to the US last month for a week for a somewhat similar indoctrination
- Ho Hum
- Peter Raite
- C from Germany
September 8, 2016 at 1:52 pm -
No, that’s indeed not what NLP is about. It’s actually a communication technique that’s very helpful in psychotherapy – as one of many techniques. Of course, it can be – and has been / is – misused.
- Bandini
September 8, 2016 at 2:32 pm -
Powered by holographs…
https://web.archive.org/web/20130622080317/http://www.purenlp.com/nlpfaqr.html
(Be sure to click on the Richard Bandler link for some more trademarked & copyrighted pathways to charisma enhancement & “trance-formation”!) - The Blocked Dwarf
September 8, 2016 at 6:56 pm -
NLP is to psychotherapy what homoeopathy is to medicine- and I speak as someone who has used a couple of ‘classic’ NLP techniques to good effect on myself. But then again going to early morning Mass daily and Confession once a week seemed to help too…for a time.
Du bist gebenedeit unter den Weibern, und gebenedeit ist die Frucht deines Leibes…
- Fat Steve
September 9, 2016 at 12:58 pm -
@Dwarf NLP is to psychotherapy what homoeopathy is to medicine
Great analogy ….I have come across it in passing in the study of rhetoric ….I personally don’t buy into it and struggle to see importance within the context of the NHS
- Fat Steve
- Bandini
- The Blocked Dwarf
September 8, 2016 at 2:02 pm -
we’re in Flann O’Brien territory again
Actually it’s more like ‘this is Bat Country!’…except the drug of choice is tax payer’s £££ not ether..To continue the mis-quote: “The only thing that really worried me was the £. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than an NHS Exec in the depths of an £ binge” - Adezeroonie
September 8, 2016 at 5:47 pm -
Is Ms Percy a Common Purpose “graduate”?
- Mudplugger
September 8, 2016 at 6:11 pm -
One of the bizarre facets of the NHS is that, if ever a Trust is considered abysmally bad, the government ‘fines’ it, thus removing vital funds from an organisation which is patently already struggling.
It would be far smarter to ‘fine’ all that Trust’s board members and its senior managers: that way they would feel some personal pain for their incompetences and failings, rather than it merely being further inflicted on the lower orders and the customers (patients).That’s a key difference with the private sector – if you are in charge of a unit which performs badly, you take the hit, most likely losing your job, which concentrates the mind wonderfully. In the public sector, there’s never any personal pain, in fact you’re more likely to be promoted elsewhere, so why bother being any good at the job ?
(And before you ask, I’ve worked as a manager in both – I write from real experience. The public sector may have much to commend it, but smart and accountable management ain’t one of them.)- Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 6:37 pm -
‘that way they would feel some personal pain’
That’s crap
I’ve sacked incompotent people
I’ve helped others get rid of people who, as Tarantino might have scripted it, needed to ‘be gone’
I’ve lost personal opportunities/been moved sideways for having done so
I know others who have done the sameYou don’t have a clue
- Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 6:38 pm - Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 7:03 pm -
Hmmm. I guess my irritation was showing?
I don’t normally get angry too quickly, but that one did get me. Having cooled down a bit, let me add a couple of things
1 – I grant that some parts of the public sector are different from others, so depending on where and what your experience was, what you say you saw might well be true. In that regard, in my own experience, local government was probably less challenging than the NHS. But it’s also localised. For instance, I have seen how staff handling in central England was much less a kids gove affair than in Inner London, just because staff shortages in London were so great that you would end up with nobody at all if you read the riot act all day every day. Getting rid of staff on performance was much more of a threat in some parts of the Midlands if there’s nowhere else to go
2 – Whether you saw this directly or not, believe me, the nearer you get to the top of the tree, the more brutal things become. And you personally, as an individual or as a manager, don’t necessarily have to be doing anything ‘wrong’ either.
Hope that puts a little more flesh on the reason for my initial reaction
- Ho Hum
- tdf
September 8, 2016 at 6:53 pm -
“That’s a key difference with the private sector – if you are in charge of a unit which performs badly, you take the hit, most likely losing your job, which concentrates the mind wonderfully.”
Ok, but in the case of certain large banks that the tax payer has had to bail out, it seems that the loss of job involves a massive pay-off, and then resurfacing in a slightly less visible role in a rival bank a few months later after a nice long holiday.
Interestingly on your first proposal to ‘fine’ NHS Trust’s board members, IIRC I think there is a proposal to claw-back bonuses of senior managers and directors of banks that f*** up. The latter strikes me as a typical case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
- Ho Hum
September 8, 2016 at 7:05 pm -
Yes, and politicians still get redundancy payments when they are ‘sacked’, regardless of how much they might have screwed up, or cost us.
- Ho Hum
- Ho Hum
- Oi you
September 8, 2016 at 8:15 pm -
A relative of mine used to go out with an NHS manager and whenever they spent a weekend away, he used to take the hotel towels and bathrobes. Religiously, ever time.
Another retired mate of mine used to be married to one. She tried to get the house from him, using various underhand means, including having him labelled as too senile to cope with his affairs. He only realised how serious she was, when a building surveyor turned up at his door one morning to value the marital home. Fortunately, her plans backfired. He did some digging and came up with a long list of dates and times when she’d fiddled her expenses with costly trips away accompanied by her other lovers and threatened to expose her….
:o)
- James Higham
September 8, 2016 at 9:21 pm -
Word association: NLP, groupthink, Common Purpose, well formed outcomes.
- Sean Coleman
September 8, 2016 at 9:52 pm -
It is possible to cure short-sightedness but it seems that very few have succeeded (so far) out of all that try, and I am convinced that your subjective experience and habits of thought are crucially important (so say some who have succeeded – notice how carefully I worded it?). Otherwise it would be like learning to drive while looking in through the side window with the instructor explaining how it all works. I don’t think I’d have much confidence in the spikey-haired lads though.
- Keith Walters
September 9, 2016 at 1:08 am -
NLP is just another of the many, many, “generic” brands of Scientology.
They all boil down to much the same thing:
“What if I could could show you a way to list down and gradually dissipate all the negative impulses that are continually disrupting your mental processes and preventing you from reaching your full potential? That would be worth spending money on wouldn’t it?”Well, yeah, what if you could. Problem is; you can’t.
I know full well that every now and again, something in my brain seems to switch into overdrive and I’m suddenly capable of producing some seemingly miraculous piece of work in a miraculously short space of time.
But I have no idea why that happens, or when it is likely to happen, or how to make it happen, and neither does anybody else.
But that doesn’t stop endless generations of charlatans from pretending that they do, for sensible (or sometimes not-so-sensible) prices….
It’s rather like the financial “gurus” the newspapers and TV networks hire to basically give their explanation of what has just happened.
What readers/viewers would REALLY like is somebody who can tell them what is GOING to happen, but anybody who can do THAT, isn’t likely to be working for some smelly media organization, are they?
And if you REALLY had any idea which horse was likely to win in the upcoming races, you’d be too busy cleaning out the bookies to write racing tipster rags.
I used to work for a large Australian retail chain, who are currently locked in a titanic struggle with Slater and Gordon to see who can post Australia’s biggest financial loss for 2016.
I have this bizarre warped vision of both companies simultaneously expelling all their Percy-ish upper management, and both packs of imbeciles immediately finding employment in the other companies.
It is one of the questions that has long baffled minds greater than mine: How do these executives manage to not only find re-employment after failing abysmally, but do it over and over again, leaving behind a scorched and smoking furrow through the corporate landscape?- tdf
September 9, 2016 at 1:39 am -
“How do these executives manage to not only find re-employment after failing abysmally, but do it over and over again, leaving behind a scorched and smoking furrow through the corporate landscape?”
There is a Marxist answer to that question. It wouldn’t necessarily be very popular on this website, however!
- tdf
September 9, 2016 at 1:44 am -
This article does a reasonable job explaining the Marxist approach to the current stage of capitalism:
- Keith Walters
September 9, 2016 at 4:51 am -
Bit of a Cherry Picking exercise, and I don’t see how it explains the rise of Percy-ism. Marx was only right in the same way Nostradamus was supposedly right.
For example, not only has Communism been and gone in the USSR, the last supposed bastion of the communist ideal, China, is communist in name only. It’s simply a capitalist dictatorship now.
On the other hand, all of the supposedly capitalist countries have adopted many of the socialist-style welfare measures that Marx would have claimed as communism’s own. People today have no understanding of just how little welfare was available 100 years ago.Many of Marx’s predictions about the price of consumer goods are also hopelessly skewed.
Even the poorest citizens of most countries still have access to at least a basic cellphone, and a smartphone isn’t that far out of reach.
Yet a few decades ago, the richest man in world couldn’t have bought one of those.
In real terms, clothes, cars, and food are all vastly cheaper than they were a century ago; a huge range of consumer items are also available at affordable prices, that like the phones, you simply COULD NOT BUY for any amount of money a century ago.
Again, nowadays a relatively cheap penicillin injection or a course of antibiotics can turn a previously life-threatening infection into a week or so off work. Before 1940, it didn’t matter who you were; if the infection took hold, there was very little hope.
As for the demon of the never-ending search for cheap labour, it doesn’t seem to have done countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China too much harm. In exchange for a source of cheap labour, Western corporations teach them how to industrialize. People rail about supposed sweatshop conditions in China, but I doubt too many of the workers pine for a return to Mao’s agrarian-based “Iron Rice Bowl” days. Having audited more Chinese factories than I care to remember, I can assure you that their working conditions are nowhere near as onerous as many of our illustrious keyboard activists would have you believe; not all that different to how people worked in this and many other Western countries only a few decades ago.
Instead of working in mosquito-ridden paddy field in the hot sun and pouring rain, risking snakebite and leeches and depending on a crop that may or may not come in, you get to work indoors with regular hours, regular wages and usually with a clean dormitory to sleep in.
But ironically, an increasing shortage of skilled labour in China has once again seen corporations looking to shift operations to other countries such as Vietnam, as the Chinese start to concentrate on higher-end products.
Marxism is just a handy and ill-defined buzzword beloved by inconsequential people with an ill-defined outlook on life- tdf
September 9, 2016 at 5:08 am -
“China, is communist in name only. It’s simply a capitalist dictatorship now.”
Certainly don’t disagree on that.
“On the other hand, all of the supposedly capitalist countries have adopted many of the socialist-style welfare measures that Marx would have claimed as communism’s own.”
That simply isn’t correct. Marxists in general, and specifically Marx himself, predicted that capitalism would ‘buy off’ some of its natural enemies and re-invent itself by making such compromises, simply because it is in the nature of the beast. Marxism can fairly and reasonably be critiqued on many grounds, but the ‘socialist-style welfare measures’ in supposedly capitalist countries that you speak of were entirely predicted by the Marxian analysis as an inevitable outcome of late-stage capitalism.
“Marxism is just a handy and ill-defined buzzword beloved by inconsequential people with an ill-defined outlook on life”
You were doing ok until you made it personal. As I said, “There is a Marxist answer to that question. It wouldn’t necessarily be very popular on this website, however!”
It’s quite interesting, though, given the crash of Western capitalism notably during the 2008/2009 financial crisis, that capitalism continues to prosper. It is certainly resilient. Granted, that’s to a large extent a failing of the left – they thoroughly failed to grasp the opportunity that presented itself.
- windsock
September 9, 2016 at 6:59 am -
That’s because none of the governments in affected xountries at the time were really “of the left”… it’s all about being in the “centre”.
Apparently.
- Keith Walters
September 9, 2016 at 7:35 am -
“You were doing ok until you made it personal.”
Not personal at all.
If however YOU consider yourself to be: “an inconsequential person with an ill-defined outlook on life” well OK, if the shoe fits, walk a mile in it.
But if you’re going to suggest that EVERY espouser of the Miracles of Marxism and its decidedly moth-eaten depiction of the fabric of contemporary financial reality is a useful, productive, law-abiding exemplar of sociological and economic pulchritude, I SHALL HAVE TO ASK YOU TO STEP OUTSIDE!
(And close the door after you…..)
Marx and his cohorts were just the 19th century’s version of Anna’s “Keyboard Warriors”. There weren’t so many of them because there weren’t so many keyboards.
WHERE did he get his facts from?! Did he have a lab with cages full of communist rats and capitalist rats?
Did he have villages randomly assigned as “communist” and “capitalist” where neither the villagers nor Marx had any idea which was which?
No! No matter how you try to gentrify it, dignify it, intellectualize it, turn it into a BS university course, or make school students in the former USSR spend so many hours a week studying it, the pulled the WHOLE THING out of his arse while sitting in his over-stuffed armchair.
It’s like Voltaire saying: “I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!”
Except he never said that; it was some hyperventilated gaggle of 19th century cucumber-sandwich-scoffing wannabe-philosopher rod-whallopers who basically said: ‘Well, no he didn’t actually say that, but that’s he WOULD have said…”
Basically, philosophy Fan-fictionMarxism is a bit like a map of a minefield: “Yes, all those black smudges indicate areas where it’s safe to walk, because somebody has already stepped on those particular mines. Yes of course the map’s up to date: It’s updated whenever another one goes off…”
“There is a Marxist answer to that question”
Where? - Mr Ecks
September 10, 2016 at 11:21 am -
tdf: Marx was scum whose bullshit has left 150 million dead and the lives of hundreds of millions more blighted.
- windsock
- tdf
- Keith Walters
- tdf
- liz@jesslinworld
September 9, 2016 at 8:21 am -
Hi Anna. People are loving this blog! I don’t know why/how – not tech enough – but the share on twitter link still comes up with the wrong Paul Gray, although the article and normal copy and paste link are fine. Don’t know if it’s something you can fix, or if we are just stuck with it now.
Best wishes Liz - Don Cox
September 9, 2016 at 8:56 am -
It isn’t the charlatans who are imbeciles, it is the people who give them money. In this case, very large amounts of other peole’s money.
The charlatans are clever and successful.
- Ho Hum
September 9, 2016 at 2:08 pm -
@ binao
September 9, 2016The NHS has its share of ‘it works there, so why not here’. First run GP Fundholding was like that. Some bunch of GPs in a rural setting had got together to do things better. So, everyone could do this!! I remember one wise old GP saying he couldn’t understand why anyone thought that he could team up with others to run massive budgets because, as he put it, he didn’t think he could get even half a dozen of his own colleagues to agree on how to run a bath. Not to mention the GPs that set up their own little lab services, redirected the work from the local hospital labs and charged 4 to 5 times as much. There was no more money, of course. All that happened was a large chunk of the money that the Health Authority had used to pay for the hospital, went into the GPs pockets, and the hospital ended up short of that and had to make cuts to cover the loss. And don’t get me started on the lunacy that was involved in giving them 3 months cash at the start of the quarter, borrowed by HMG, which they then dumped in banks elsewhere and pocketed the interest.
Otherwise, you really can’t compare the past and present. Today, I can order a £500/700 2TB SSD from my favourite computer supplier and get it tomorrow. In the 1980’s a 20mb HD for an Apple Lisa would set you Bach £3.5k. And going further back, you wanted your 5mb HD when?
- TQ
September 9, 2016 at 3:43 pm -
I was a patient
I was also a staff member (low paid)
I had to leave due to illness
I was unable to get the mental health treatment while I was a member of staff
I had to sell my house as under the ‘homes for keyworkers’ scheme, once you no longer work for a key service, you are not entitled to remain
Friends I made while a patient killed themselves when no longer able to access mental health support
Staff numbers reduced, skill mix changed. Staff expected to do more than their training or supervision
Before KP and her entourage Southern Health was not perfect, but there were people high up who listened and understood and changed things.
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