Entries from March 2008
Non political, local council, Chief Executives are an invention of New Labour. Do you know what they do? If not, read THIS insight from John Redwood.
But, why is it important that local voters understand what their local council CEO’s does?
Because they now “earn” £100-200k+/year (some earn more than the Prime Minister!), paid for out of your Council Tax.
The rationale is that Councils need to be able to compete with the private sector for the best people. There are two flaws to this proposition. First, very few local council CEO’s come from the private sector. Most are the same public sector managers who have simply been paid more. Second, Council CEO responsibilities are totally different than the private sector. Local Council CEO responsibilities vary from council to council but, there are three, core, statutory duties which are typically assigned to the CEO (summary HERE). Hmmm…these don’t look much like the roles of a private sector CEO to me. If anyone wishes to try and understand what New Labour thought they were trying to achieve in defining the role of the CEO and the governance structure of local councils ……a brief extract from the Local Government Act 2000 can be viewed HERE.
In effect, what New Labour have created is a public sector insider within each democratically elected council. The personal loyalties and career aspirations of the CEO may be aligned more to the hierarchy within the public sector, than to democratically elected councillors. And what a price we are now having to pay for this.
If you don’t know what your local council CEO earns find out by clicking this link to download pdf file (1.5MB) for Local Council Chief Executive Pay
Categories: Local Goverment · Local Information · Local Politics · Local Services · Politics
Tagged: Chief, Council, Duties, Executive, Local, Officer, Payroll, Role, Salary
It was just a headline grabbing announcement, like his “British Jobs for British Workers”. Gordon spends 57 million of tax payers cash on deep cleaning hundreds of hospitals but, it will be another year before infection controls are in place to stop superbugs from re-entering hospital wards. Not surprising then that, one of the worlds leading experts on hospital acquired infections says, now the programme is finished we are back to square one and “it’s been an expensive waste of resources”.
Read more here Patients still at risk from MRSA despite £57m ‘deep clean’ – Home News, UK – The Independent
Categories: Gordon Brown · Health · NHS · Spin
Tagged: Acquired, C, Clean, Deep, Difficile, Hospital, Infection, MRSA, Waste
The New England Historic Genealogical Society has been researching the ancestors of both Obama & Clinton and has discovered some remarkable connections:
- Barack Obama is a distant cousin of actor Brad Pitt & Hillary Clinton is related to Pitt’s partner, Angelina Jolie.
- Clinton is a distant cousin of singers Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette and also Prince Charles wife, Camilla Parker-Bowles
- Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, can call six U.S. presidents his cousins. Obama has a prolific presidential lineage that features Democrats and Republicans. His distant cousins include President Bush and his father and Presidents Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman and James Madison. Other Obama cousins include Vice President Dick Cheney, British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and Civil War General Robert E. Lee.
Looks like Obama trumps Clinton’s showbiz & royalty genealogy with the sheer strength of his political genealogy!
H/T BostonHerald.com
Categories: Election · News · Politics · Research
Tagged: Angeline Jolie, Barrack, Brad Pitt, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Celine Dion, Churchill, Clinton, Connection, Family, Geneology, Genes, Hillary, History, Madonna, Obama
Watch TV chefs at work and they will have you believe it’s all art & presentation. But you had better brush up on those chemistry & physics notes from school because a paradigm shift is taking place. The art of cooking is giving way to cooking science.
Fewer people are cooking at home because pre-prepared meals are getting better & cheaper. But, that’s because the large food companies are increasingly mastering the science of food, its preparation and cooking. NYU professor Kent Kirshenbaum, says a scientific understanding of food is nothing to do with artificial ingredients & processing and everything to do with how to prepare, cook & preserve fresh ingredients.
Apparently we already have most of the gadgetry required for the appliance of science….we just have to learn some of the scientific tricks the food processing companies already know. Like temperature precision when cooking. For example, there is a huge difference in outcome between heating an egg at 60C & 61C. The precise temperature for getting the absolute best result when cooking different foods is already well known to companies like Kraft. And it’s not just the final temperature which is important but the rate of transition to the final cooking temperature. It’s just that this knowledge hasn’t yet filtered through to domestic kitchens.
The TV chefs have diverted us from getting the best results from home cooking by their on-air, flamboyant, bish-bash-bosh approach to cooking. This is the antithesis of the scientific approach which requires precision in quantity, preparation and cooking temperature. Perhaps that’s why so many of us fail in trying to replicate the on screen recipes of TV chefs.
Harold McGee is the author of “On Food & Cooking – The Science & Lore of the Kitchen” and he is one of many seeking to now lay the groundwork for cooking science to enter the kitchen.
Which reminds me that, in the misty past of my childhood, we were taught the aptly named “Domestic Science” at school. Our forebears obviously new that science is key to enjoying good food! It’s all about enjoying the eating rather than the presentation & appearance of food.
Want to see more about the appliance of science to cooking? Watch this video:
Categories: Diet · Food · Research · Science · Video
Tagged: Appearance, Celebrity, Chefs, Cooking, Excellent, Presentation, Taste, vs
The European Commission has proposed a revision of EU regulations governing the issuing of passports. The new rules demand that passports contain certain security features involving biometric identifiers in the form of fingerprints.
The European Council first accepted regulations on biometrics in passports in 2004 and the commission has now proposed amendments to those regulations. Those include exemptions for children under six years old from giving fingerprints, as well as those physically unable to give fingerprints. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said this was not good enough.
“The proposed six-year age limit should be considered as a provisional one, or brought in line with international practice (14 years),” said the EDPS statement.
The opinion also pointed out that the reliability and accuracy of fingerprints decreases as people get older, and that regulations should take account of this. “An age limit for the elderly, based on similar experiences already in place (79 years), should be introduced as an additional exemption.”
H/T Register
Technorati Tags:
Categories: Biometrics · Data · Elderly · European Union · ID Cards · OAPs · Security · Senior Citizens · Terrorism · Video · crime
Tagged: Finger, Grandma, Gun, Machine, Prints
Workers used to have to record their arrival & departure, from their place of work, by punching a card into a time clock. Some of the scams involving these “punch card clocks” are legion. The most common scam was to get a pal to clock you in and out. But this old technology is increasingly being replaced by new technology…finger print scanners
Gordon Brown may be having difficulty persuading citizens that, incorporating their finger prints into passports is an effective border control measure. But in the mean time, employers are already adopting finger print recognition into their time recording and payroll systems.
Manufacturers say these biometric devices improve efficiency and streamline payroll operations. Employers big and small buy them with the dual goals of keeping workers honest and automating outdated record-keeping systems that rely on paper based time sheets.
However, being present in the workplace d
oesn’t mean a worker is productive. In the Civil Service a huge amount of time is wasted surfing the net and to my knowledge there is no organisation monitoring of “extreme” personal internet usage” or, visiting inappropriate sites…..I doubt the public sector unions would allow it. However, the use of this technology is a growing practice in large organisations. In a previous life, I worked for a large private sector organisation which used the technology and I was always surprised at what the most unassuming employees got up to on the Internet!
Categories: Biometrics · Civil Service · Data · ID Cards · Security · Surveillance · Technology
Tagged: Cards, Clocking In, Clocks, Employer, Finger, Integration, Internet, Keeping, Payroll, Printing, Punch, Records, Surveillance, Time, Usage
Perhaps this could only happen in San Francisco? I don’t normally post on delicate subjects such as this but, beware if you are passing through an airport wearing …..ahem….Intimate jewellery. It may be detected by airport security and misinterpreted as a ring pull activator for a suicide bomb. This poor lady thought she was the height of cool fashion but, she finished up having to remove her jewellery with a pair of pliers Ugh! How uncool.
Categories: Fashion · Humour · News · Security · Surveillance · Terrorism · Women
Tagged: Airport, Intimate, Jewellery, Nipple, Pliers, Rings, Scanner
Brooks’ Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. (Frederick P Brooks Jr)
Dilbert Principle: The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. (Scott Adams)
Ellison’s Law: The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. (Harlan Ellison)
Hanlon’s Law: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. (Robert Heinlein)
Hoare’s Law: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. (Charles Hoare)
Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you think, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account. (Douglas Hofstadter)
Lister’s Law: People under time pressure don’t think faster. (Timothy Lister)
Murphy’s Law: If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it. (Edward A Murphy)
Nathan’s First Law: Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container. (Nathan Myhrvold)
Occam’s Razor: The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. (William of Occam)
Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. (C Northcote Parkinson)
Sturgeon’s Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap. (Theodore Sturgeon)
Weinberg’s Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. (Gerald M Weinberg)
H/T Sigmund, Carl & Alfred
Categories: Government · Humour · Politics · Science
Tagged: Brooks, Cosmos, Dilbert, Ellison, Hanlon's, Hoare's, Hofstadter's, Law, Laws, Lister's, Murphy's, Nathan's, Occam's, Parkinson's, Sturgeon's, Universe, Weinberger's
The latest data on UK Marriages, published by the Office of National Statistics, show that marriages are at their lowest level since 1862
The media have picked up on the figures but, non appear to offer an explanation for this long established trend away from marriage in favour of cohabitation. Government appears laissez faire about the trend, even though there is a great deal of evidence showing that cohabiting relationships have higher risks of poor outcomes (health, wealth, children’s education outcomes, unfaithfulness in the relationship). However, governmental and other official bodies continue to treat cohabitation and marriage as essentially the same, indeed New Labour has gone out of it’s way to eliminate any economic & societal advantage of marriage over cohabitation and in benefits administration they have tilted the balance, for many, towards cohabitation. The Government has also proposed eliminating the one remaining legal advantage of marriage in that it provides individual, legal protection for married partners not currently available to cohabiting partners.
This 1997 report from Civitas still appears to be a valid description of the individual & social case for marriage vs cohabitation. I couldn’t find a more current analysis…..anyone aware of a good source?
Interesting that the Guardian positions the story as “The number of people prepared to spend £20,000 on getting married is to fall….” as if the choice between cohabitation & marriage is a simple, up front, one time, economic decision and everything after this decision will be the same. Research suggests this is a distorted perspective. Even the assumption that you have to spend £20,000 when getting married is an expectation somehow created over the last decade. It actually only costs £103.50 (£30 each for identity & address confirmation plus £40 for the official Civil Ceremony plus £3.50 for the marriage certificate).
On the other hand, marriage is not always a perfect union, as illustrated by the following:
A trial in France accused a man of being among the country’s worst serial killers in decades.
Michel Fourniret, 65, was charged with murdering seven young women in Belgium and France. He also faced rape charges.
His wife was separately charged with complicity in murder and kidnapping at the trial in the northern French town of Charleville-Mezieres. [...]
Ms Olivier became his wife after getting to know him while working as a volunteer prison visitor.
According to letters seized by investigators, the two agreed a pact while he was in prison. He undertook to kill her first husband if she helped him to kidnap young girls.[...]
Ms Olivier’s presence in the vehicle was designed to help re-assure the future victim, according to the prosecution.
She was handed over to the French authorities in 2005 and charged after confessing to having lured women to her home between 1992 and 1997.
Ms Olivier, 59, is alleged to have done so in the knowledge that her husband would kill them. (BBC)
Categories: Family · Marriage
Tagged: Civitas, Cohabitation, Decline, Impact, ONS, Outcomes, Personal, Social
