Category: Organization

Mind-expanding educational encounters

I have always avoided blogging about current issues in higher education. There are various reasons for that, including that it would make blogging a bit of a busman’s holiday. But current developments at Leicester University caught my eye. The business school is making redundant academic staff whose work […]

On sex pests and cover ups

It seems we can hardly move for news of sex scandals and allegations of sexually inappropriate behaviour at the moment. The cases may be in different sectors – the media, politics, the church – but they share two common characteristics. The first is that at the centre is […]

Magical markets and medical muppets

You don’t come across that slightly touching, naive market fundamentalism quite as often now as you did a few years ago. The financial crisis and its aftermath has increased the circumspection of some market advocates, at least for the moment. One place you do sometimes come across the […]

Is a two-tier service a good thing?

I must have been looking the other way. An article in today’s Observer (which appears online under a different title here) mentions that back in December the Government withdrew the so-called Two-tier code for public service employment (as notified here).  The code is designed to stop the emergence […]

Should we be concerned about the Government’s attempted quangocide?

[Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice, 13/01/11] Quangos – Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations – occupy a strange place in the British political landscape. They tend to proliferate because governments can’t resist seeing new commissions for this or advisory panels for that as essential, while rarely deciding that existing bodies […]

Frickin’ Bureaucrats

The current government is engaged in substantial reorganisations in many parts of the public sector. Frequently these changes are not following up on commitments made at the General Election. Some embody changes that were, indeed, explicitly ruled out. But I think we’ve now learnt the value of such […]

easyCouncil? Not so easy cuts

Barnet council is in the vanguard in the pursuit of significant changes and savings in service delivery, under the headline grabbing tagline ‘easyCouncil’. Reports today that its programme of change will cost more this year than it will save should fill no one with great surprise. For several […]