Meaningless Policy Brown

According to the BBC, Gordon Brown, the man who has rejected spin, will give a speech today and remarkably it's been trailed with quotes already. The speech will announce a "new screening programme in England for early signs of heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and diabetes".

Errr....reality check. There's already a screening service, it's called getting off your arse and going to the doctors and saying "it hurts when I pee", "I get tightness in my chest" or "I feel dizzy sometimes when I stand up".

What is actually being offered here really is a letter writing service. The NHS will send everyone letters saying "you're due a screening to make sure you're not dying, make an appointment", at which point most average people will either say "I feel fine" or "Can they do Saturday mornings? No? Oh well, in the bin it goes".

Seek Assistance

This may be a little ranty and off track, but right now I'm wondering what it is about the London traveller that makes them ignore words on a screen? Picture the scene, you walk up to an automatic ticket barrier on the Tube or a station platform. You pop your ticket in and the little machine bleeps and the words "Seek Assistance" pop up. What do you do?

Well, most people would try it again - just in case - but something strange occurs it seems in the London traveller, for they don't try it tice, they don't even try it three times. Often they will shove that ticket through four or maybe five times, see the words "Seek Assistance" flash up and then stand there like a lost child whilst the queue behind them gets ever larger.

They may then scrabble around in their bag, presumably because they think that the ticket they bought earlier is actually another older ticket. All the while that queue grows. Then they try it again, and again it tells them to "Seek Assistance" but do they? Rarely. It usually requires the 'assistanc'e to seek them or they call over to the dumbstruck commuter.

Why is this? What is it about the words "Seek Assistance" in a train station that don't make sense? I can understand retrying the ticket once, if it's a paper one it might just be that the little magnetic strip is a bit knackered, but multiple times is just silly, and annoying for those behind you too.

In fact it is almost as annoying as those people that go to the cash machine and then act like they've never used one before and ponder deeply upon the question "Enter Your Pin" and then stare blankly at the figures. Why do they not know how much money they need before they get there? They must have known they needed money after all. Couldn't they have worked it out before hand and not waste time that I cannot get back?

The Nuclear Power Joke rumbles on

The Independent on Sunday has a rather interesting story about the development of nuclear energy policy from the Government. They say that the Government is about to publish their White Paper recommending we build more nuclear power plants (now there's a surprise!) and part of it will include what it is calling bribes for local community to accept greater dumping of nuclear waste in their areas.

What is interesting in this whole sage is that there is also an article in the Sunday Times which accuses Brown of running an 18th Century-style family clique at the top of Government. As I read it, before the Sindy's article, I thought to myself how they had missed the Nuclear Family Affair at the top as well.

Most people know that consultation on nuclear was a sham designed to make money for yet more of Gordon's friends and produce an already known outcome. Now, it seems that, just in case anyone gets a little upset, they're going to throw cash at people to keep them sweet instead.

Ladyman prepares his post-Common career path?

What is it about the former Transport Minister, Stephen Ladyman getting himself into dodgy situations? He was accused of irregularities with lobbyists whilst he was Transport Minister and now he's gone and done a Blunkett since losing his job in the Brown purge.

What do I mean by "done a Blunkett"? Well, as we know David Blunkett was Home Secretary and wanted to introduce ID cards. Since leaving that post he become more vocal about how important they are. His vocalness is of course nothing whatsoever to do with his financial interests in a company that is bidding for the ID contract of course.

So what has Stephen Ladyman done? Well he's now a remunerated adviser to Itis Holdings Plc, which is a company interested in such things as road pricing. Am rather annoyed with myself for not spotting that one in the Register the other day like I am guessing Holly Watt at the Sunday Times did.

I reckon it's pretty evident that Stephen Ladyman is preparing his post-Commons career. After all, he holds South Thanet with a majority of just 664. I certainly wouldn't be betting against him losing it, and I reckon he isn't either.

The London Bubble

This may be a little bit of a London-centric post for some people, but today I;ve been to watch the London Bubble's Christmas production of The Tinderbox. The London Bubble is a production theatre company that does work with local schools in London, as well as doing a summer production in the London Parks. The outdoor theatre in the parks is great fun, and the first time I went was in 1999. The play was put on around Oxleas Wood (the oldest wood in London) in the evening and it was quite a magical experience really having to walk through the woods to each different scene.

The reason I'm mentioning it though is because I also learned today that the Arts Council has written to the production company and told them that they are going to make a 100% cut in their funding. This is a production company that has been bringing theatre to children and adults for 35 years across London. For philistines like me who don't really do theatre they make it fun as well as working within communities to encourage kids to get involved with music and drama.

Frankly the Arts Council is crazy to cut its funding. People often say that us Londoners are in a bubble, but this is one of the bubbles that doesn't really deserve to be burst because of what it brings to London parks, London schools, and the community as a whole.

Stop Press! Government waste money on IT failure!

I do enjoy it when I see articles in the Guardian that seem surprised about the level of failure and cost of Government IT projects. This morning they have "revealed" that the Government has pissed £2bn up against the wall on IT projects that have been cancelled or failed. I put "revealed" in quote simply because what they mean is that they added up the figures in the public domain already. The way they have suddenly woken up to things that techies like me, Computer Weekly, The Register and others have been banging on about for bloody ages is a tad irritating though.

The thing is the evidence for these complete balls-up have been around for ages. For a start few people will actually know that this financial year alone the Government will spend £12.4bn on IT projects, new, ongoing and cancelled of which a significant percentage will go to consultants. Failure is not really news to many of us though. For example, last September it was revealed that 87% of all the projects in review stage were were in jeopardy of overspend, delays or cancellation.

Then there is DEFRA who spent £13.6m on a pilot project that was not even fit for purpose. It failed in the design phase and yet they pushed ahead with spending on it anyway, built a pilot and then decided it wasn't worth it. Probably now is a good time to remind people about LIBRA, the court system that was in pilot for 16 years, has cost billions, didn't even have a project plan by late 2006 and by February 2007 no one was sure how much it had cost anymore.

Of course there is also the ill-fated NHS Connecting for Health too. In fairness this is one IT project whose failures have been well documented. Yet the lies of the Government have never really been put under the spotlight. Back in 2006 the National Audit Office reported the project cost had doubled by £6bn, meanwhile the Minister responsible said it was on budget and on time and that the "NAO has confirmed the cost has not overrun".

The Department of Work and Pensions, as the Guardian notes, has been one of the biggest wasters of money though. In March 2007, Parliamentary questions revealed that they had wasted almost £300 million on two projects alone that were cancelled. The signals of endemic failure have been flying around for so long it's amazing so few have noticed. Of course the real winners are the consultants. From 2002 to 2007, the DWP managed to spend £2,14bn on all its IT projects (ongoing and cancelled) and 24% of that figure went on consultancy fees, but they are usually off-balance sheet.

Then you have the DVLA, who had a contract with IBM that almost doubled from £287.3m to £437m in an ongoing project called, "Partners Achieving Change Together" that started in 2002 with the intention of lowering costs! Remember that it's not just cancelled projects that waste money though, sometimes the Government proposes IT projects, spends money and then nothing actually happens.

The thing is though, it's not like the Government doesn't know what's going on and hasn't been forced to say or publish indicators that the mainstream media have ignored. There is evidence that the Government has been actively shredding documentary evidence of its own failure for a start. In June last year, just before Gordon Brown left the Treasury, it was revealed by Computer Weekly that an order to shred Gateway Reviews of IT projects was made. These are documents that chart the progress and success of an IT project - a hug story really but one that remained largely in the IT World.

As far back as 2006, the then Environment Secretary David Miliband admitted, live on Radio 4, that the Government did not have "fame for competence with IT projects". Did anyone really pick up on yet another moment of honesty from a Secretary of State? Then there was Jack Straw who admitted that the Government gets ripped off and are rubbish at technology. He told the Commons Constitutional Affairs Select Committee that in everywhere he had worked in Government, IT projects "end up over budget and over time and are not quite up to spec".

It's good that the Guardian has given prominence to the IT failures of Government, it's just a shame that it had to be when the figure of waste had reached an astronomical level first. The endemic failure of IT projects over the past ten years, along with the recent failure in data security, makes the case for an a formal IT Ministry dedicated to dealing with technology across Government has never been stronger.

Another day another IT overrun?

Have just read this report from the Communities and Local Government Select Committee which had this little snippet in it.

FiReControl will create nine amalgamated Regional Control Centres to replace 46 existing control rooms in England, on the model already used to merge three control rooms into one in London in 1990. IT costs were originally budgeted at £120 million, with a planned completion date for the IT part of the project of 2009. The latter has slipped to 2011, with the cost now estimated at £190 million.

So that's £70 million over budget and two year late (so far), but more importantly, who decided to call it "FiReControl"?

I'm guessing the crazy capitalisation is the FRC standing for Fire Regional Control? Either way it looks like something you would see after you've been fragged by someone with a railgun in one hand and a flame thrower in the other.*

* this is gamer speak for being shot by an eleven year old who then screams "Lolllerskat3s! FiReControl!" in text on your screen.

How prejudice can destroy prejudice

There are so many political cliches and truisms it's quite difficult not to use them. Sometimes they help us understand the world, or more importantly offer us a starting point for analysing events and potential outcomes. A common one is that it's not Oppositions that win elections, but Governments that lose them. Take 1979, did Britain actively vote for a woman to be Prime Minister? Was she that far forward on matters of gender equality that she was ready for it and wanted it? Or was it just that Labour had become an absolute shambles and even the most ardent mysoginist ignored the handbag, dress and boobs and just thought 'that's it, I've had enough with these bloody socialists'?

I ask this question because as I look at the papers this morning and see who, at least for now, the momentum is with after the Iowa caucus I find myself asking a question that I've not seen asked readily (that's not to say it hasn't been asked, just that I have not seen it). That question is quite simple, is America ready for a black President? I realise that some people may find such a question insulting in itself. After all, the civil rights movement in the US was a cornerstone moment in that nations' immediate and conscious history.

To even ask the question assumes that the answer is unknown and crucially ponders upon whether that answer might still be in the negative. Personally I hope that it's not, but at the same time I am not foolish enough to think that prejudice does not exist. After all prejudice stems from the sum of human experience and if human experience has negative interaction with absolutely anything then inductive empicism kicks in. That is just human nature. I for example have never driven or owned a Ford that I like, so I'd never buy one. No manner of legislation to criminalise anti-Ford views would change that prejudice. in fact this is the case with all forms of prejudice.

To really tackle prejudices they need to be challenged with their opposites. That is why, when it comes to something as dangerous as racism the solution is not to criminalise the thoughts or words but to challenge the preconceptions of those that think in such a way by providing evidence that runs contrary to their sum of experience. In a sense Obama, whatever happens, is doing that already and that is a positive thing. But I still cannot help wondering if that alone will be enough should he go on to secure the Democrat nomination.

As I said earlier about Thatcher. Was Britain ready for a female Prime Minister or did the male part of the country just balance the options and supress it's prejudices in the face of Labour being a potentially worse route because of their previous failures? Was the prejudice stronger against Labour than it was against a woman? I think it may very well have been. The result being that the idea of a female Prime Minister is not even something anyone would bat an eyelid at today. in a way it is quite ironic that one temporally short prejudice, Labour, helped destroy a greater prejudice that was temporally long.

The question therefore - if we assume that electorally Obama will find it tough to win over certain parts of the electorate whose experience means they still harbour racial prejudice - is have the Republicans reached a point where the prejudice against them outweighs any simmering racial prejudice below the surface of American society? America was at least a nation split down the middle in 2000, is she still at the point after eight years and two (unpopular) foreign wars? Or has she reached an impasse where the desire for change overpowers everything else?

If she is, and if Obama wins the nomination, then it may just be that she will do the most significant positive act for race relations in the history of the Western World. She has never been shy about coming forward and astounding us all, in fact it is what makes what is such a young nation so endearing in a way. The election of Obama would, whatever his politics might be, do more than any hate crime legislation could ever hope to muster because it would challenge the preconception of racists and non-racists alike. The only drawback would be if Obama didn't win, because then the question of racism would rear it's head during the presidency of a Republican winner. Hanging chads would be replaced with allusions of other things hanging in the Deep South, in a way that could represent a bitterly divided step backwards.

Of course, all these questions remain hypothetical for now. But should Obama win the nomination the answers will have a massive impact on not just the next four years of America's political future but the wider Western world too. An Obama nomination win but presidential loss would provide fuel for sneering anti-Americanism abroad after all, and ironically we're back at that little thing called prejudice again aren't we (in two ways, with accusations of racism and sneering anti-americanism)? So is America ready for a Black President? I honestly don't know. I do think though that if anti-GOP prejudice is more resonant it won't matter anyway and the most powerful nation in the history of the world will change the world for the better yet again through the law of unintended consequence.

UPDATE: Having spoken with a long-standing American friend he thinks that there is an undertone to this piece that suggests I am saying that America is inherently racist. That is not my intention. More that should America still have racist undertones by virtue of social history, human nature and natural prejudice then it won't matter anyway if dissatisfaction with the status quo is strong enough, and the resulting unintended consequences of that will be a very positive thing indeed.

Has Nadine really watched much Ricky Gervais?

This morning, Iain took umbrage with Nadine Dorries about her dislike of the Cathrine Tate Christmas Special and all the swearing. Nadine has now responded to Iain and suggests that Iain "can’t really think Catherine Tate is in the same ball park as Ricky Gervais, can he?". What surprised me here is that Nadine says "the funniest comedy is entirely void of bad language and overt sexual innuendo" and then mentions Ricky Gervais as a shining example.

Presumably she has not seen his stand up where he explains to the audience how he mistook Schindler's List for a porno because the review on the case said he needed a box of tissues nearby. He then informs his audience that he still managed to masturbate to it anyway. He pauses for a while and says "Shower scene" whilst doing that Gervais look.

Still think Gervais is the height of comic genius against the crassly offensive Catherine Tate and her use of the word "fuck" Nadine, honestly?

Update: For the record, I laughed my head off when I heard the Schindler's List thing. Although the first half of it was apparently stolen from Roy Chubby Brown so I have been told. I am a sick puppy to be sure.

Briain Paddick makes joke about dead MP's sexual tastes

Interesting video I've just found on YouTube from ITV's The Wright Stuff just before Christmas. Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem Mayoral candidate was reviewing the newspapers on a panel with Tory MP, Ed Vaizey. Paddick says at one point,

"[A story] from the Telegraph, 'Tradition of Christmas in Danger of Dying Out'. Apparently people aren't putting oranges in stockings anymore....er Ed...? I seem to vaguely remember a story about MPs and stocking and oranges but I think that was something else.

Now, I love a good sick joke as much as the next person, and to be honest I thought it amusing that the Lib Dem candidate would make light of the sexual practices of a former Tory MP when they had a leadership candidate with, shall we say, "interesting tastes".

Still, Mark Oaten didn't die of course. It does pose an interesting question though. Imagine, if you will, if Boris Johnson had made a joke about an (almost) dead Liberal involved in a sex scandal and taken the mickey out of his sexual tastes? Oh I don't know, Jeremey Thorpe perhaps?

What do you think the Lib Dem and Labour reaction to it would be? Boris would be hounded as a homophobic hatemonger. Meanwhile, Paddick can happily take the piss out of a guy that died enjoying himself with his stockings and oranges, make a party political jibe, and no one bats an eyelid?

Crazy world huh?