Spat between Chief Minister and Dr Glover

[hampsterkahn]

1 hour ago, Andy Onchan said:

The £3.5 million is just the starters. For every director, senior manager there'll be an assistant or deputy, or deputy assistant even. The expenditure will just rumble on in time honoured CS fashion with very little regard to the coal face workers and with no real benefit to or for the patient. Waiting lists will still exist, shortage of GPs, mental health provision will continue to fail and the addiction services will still have to rely on handouts from the Lottery Trust. 

Deckchair moving on a grand scale.

Tony Benn  illustrated the problem of growing NHS  bureaucracy with a joke about  an  “NHS rowing team” (commons speech in  1995)

 

Edited December 10, 2020 by hampsterkahn

[quilp]

Brilliant. 

[Non-Believer]

Just now, TerryFuchwit said:

What's the answer then?  It's a democracy.  Anyone can stand.  Regardless of background.  

What sort of people do you want in? Business leaders? Lawyers? Who ticks your boxes? Apart from no one really because crtisicising is easier.

Campaigns for election is about your beliefs and what you want to do.  I guess a number get elected believing they'll walk in on the Monday morning and click their fingers and sort everything.  But it isnt like that.

To ensure election for another term the key is how you interact with your voters on a personal level.  Im no fan of Mr. Callister but he will sail back in for Onchan.  Because he does the small time touchy feely stuff well.  Not because he's any good at managing anything or putting civil servants where they need to be.

I'm simply stating what I believe to be facts. The vast majority are voted in on parochial, parish pump, community issues and agendas. As you've highlighted with Rob Callister.

Whether this is enough of a grounding to be dealing with national and any international-related issues is the question. We have runaway public sector staffing and costs (the PO now too post a £500k loss despite 8 months of delivering lockdown online shopping) that at least two administrations have now failed to address despite identifying and confirming. Personally I don't think it matters who gets voted in now, because they're not in control, neither through natural ability nor through being allowed to be. The Island's governance needs some impartial external oversight.

[TerryFuchwit]

1 minute ago, Non-Believer said:

I'm simply stating what I believe to be facts. The vast majority are voted in on parochial, parish pump, community issues and agendas. As you've highlighted with Rob Callister.

Whether this is enough of a grounding to be dealing with national and any international-related issues is the question. We have runaway public sector staffing and costs (the PO now too post a £500k loss despite 8 months of delivering lockdown online shopping) that at least two administrations have now failed to address despite identifying and confirming. Personally I don't think it matters who gets voted in now, because they're not in control, neither through natural ability nor through being allowed to be. The Island's governance needs some impartial external oversight.

That's ridiculous.   When we get external oversight (the Michaels report for example) what we end up with is another layer of expensive none income producing compliance to deal with.

You are going to struggle to attract top class talent into politics with the salaries on offer.  So in the meantime you'll have to settle for your Callisters etc.

If you subscribe to the theory that the civil servants run the island then the real issue if getting the right talent into the upper echelons.  That's the real challenge.

[Non-Believer]

29 minutes ago, TerryFuchwit said:

That's ridiculous.   When we get external oversight (the Michaels report for example) what we end up with is another layer of expensive none income producing compliance to deal with.

You are going to struggle to attract top class talent into politics with the salaries on offer.  So in the meantime you'll have to settle for your Callisters etc.

If you subscribe to the theory that the civil servants run the island then the real issue if getting the right talent into the upper echelons.  That's the real challenge.

The problem is that the recommendations of what external oversight we do get (eg Michaels) are then implemented by an internal structure whose first priority is looking after its own interests. Any intent of those recommendations gets altered or diluted accordingly.

We don't have the depth of talent here, regardless of remuneration, to change anything, the problem lies in the structure and constitution and what has been allowed to grow in respect of the public sector. It's become too powerful to be addressed by the constitutional levers.

[Lxxx]

There are a lot of very able and interested people on the island who would love to have a go at making the island fit for purpose for their children and grandchildren, but who wouldn't swap a well paid private sector lifestyle for dealing with idiots every day for 60 grand a year. There's your issue.

[joebean]

The issues between Dr Glover and Government serve to illustrate something that has always puzzled me about the Island. On one hand, you have a jurisdiction that only manages to pay its way; provide essential services; sustain and grow its population and provide a decent standard of living for its residents by being able to act relatively swiftly to seize commercial opportunities and, by doing so, attract private wealth and income generation into the economy. On the other hand, the Island is the closest thing to a socialist state within the British Isles in terms of Government ownership and control of services, infrastructure, transport and amenities. There is also a relatively high expectation that this should be the case by the population.

Couple this with a lack of political drive, talent, openness, co-ordination, willingness to reform and a general weakness across national politics and the result will be a powerful and hugely expensive government structure that is subject to very little control or change, except that control and change that it is willing to accept.

The culture within Government, reinforced at the top levels, is to promulgate the view that Government directly delivered services are the only trustworthy source and that private sector delivery would inevitably lead to service delivery that would be unreliable, unsafe and untrustworthy. Contracts have to be full of control mechanisms, regulation and whenever possible, subject to public sector oversight and management. It is not surprising that, in this environment, any attempt to contract-out or provide public recognition of the contribution of private sector delivery is resisted. Dr Glover committed the sin of expecting her contribution to be recognised and, failing to achieve this, to go public and recognise her contribution herself. For Government, this is intolerable.

Unless something, or somebody, comes along to change the prevailing culture, Government will continue to be insular, controlling and delivered at maximum expense. In the long-term this is likely to be unsustainable but I fear that until the point of unsustainability is reached, nothing will change. What is very evident is that the likes of Howard Quayle and David Ashford are not going to change the status-quo. They are servants of it.

Edited December 11, 2020 by joebean

[Uhtred]

15 minutes ago, joebean said:

What is very evident is that the likes of Howard Quayle and David Ashford are not going to change the status-quo. They are servants of it.

No, not so much servants of it; profound beneficiaries of it.

[Banker]

I live in hope that every election will bring some changes for the good but we keep getting the same old dross.

I do think a lot of old guard like Quayle, Skelly, Harmer , Cregeen & Boot will be out next election. I do think Allison is very good and has inherited a load of crap but I think next CM will be either Cannan or Thomas with the latter maybe more acceptable to most and certainly more intelligent!

[Apple]

2 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

Personally I don't think it matters who gets voted in now, because they're not in control, neither through natural ability nor through being allowed to be. The Island's governance needs some impartial external oversight.

I agree. We are firmly travelling in the wake of that boat in the morning. 

I won't be voting again as it doesn't matter who we elect -  our course is not set on the island any more (if it ever was). The island is merely a conduit for financial transactions, some of which are clear and probably some not so clear. It serves the UK purpose to have it like that. 

We may have the oldest parliament in the world, but in truth it has become the least effective, for us especially.

[buncha wankas]

5 hours ago, Andy Onchan said:

The £3.5 million is just the starters. For every director, senior manager there'll be an assistant or deputy, or deputy assistant even. The expenditure will just rumble on in time honoured CS fashion with very little regard to the coal face workers and with no real benefit to or for the patient. Waiting lists will still exist, shortage of GPs, mental health provision will continue to fail and the addiction services will still have to rely on handouts from the Lottery Trust. 

Deckchair moving on a grand scale.

That’s another 3.5 million NOT spent on treatment.   But you never know, they may have realised they have such useless senior management in place,  some of them have been sitting pushing paper for decades moving up the pay scales achieving nothing about to be binned off once new management roll in.  

[manxman34]

21 hours ago, The Voice of Reason said:

What on earth are you talking about?

You said that you were beginning to develop a grudging respect for Dr Glover, which some would take an indication of your puffed up sense of self importance. Clearly you post so many patronising comments you struggle to remember them.

[Uhtred]

13 hours ago, buncha wankas said:

...some of them have been sitting pushing paper for decades moving up the pay scales achieving nothing about to be binned off once new management roll in.  

Some of them perhaps, but not all...they seem to have had about two dozen top management in the last 45 minutes.

[The Voice of Reason]

4 hours ago, manxman34 said:

You said that you were beginning to develop a grudging respect for Dr Glover, which some would take an indication of your puffed up sense of self importance. Clearly you post so many patronising comments you struggle to remember them.

With all due respect I think it is your memory that fails you.

Your response, that I was querying (“what on earth do you mean”) was your response to my post that Dr Glover needs no validation from me -why should she?.

It was not about the compliment I paid her as you are suggesting above

 

[manxman34]

14 hours ago, The Voice of Reason said:

With all due respect I think it is your memory that fails you.

Your response, that I was querying (“what on earth do you mean”) was your response to my post that Dr Glover needs no validation from me -why should she?.

It was not about the compliment I paid her as you are suggesting above

 

Yet you saw fit to give her your patronising and unnecessary endorsement, which was hardly a compliment. After I pointed out she didn't need your validation, you then posted again, saying that she didn't. I observed that that was my original point. You then became further confused, or perhaps you didn't understand the irony in my original comment. No matter.