On interpreters in the NHS. Paul made a valid point about critical care, although I was admitted to a French hospital following a serious accident. No translater was provided. And signs in the hospital were all in French. Compare that with my local hospital which has signs in at least 20 different languages! It is ridiculous that the NHS is wasting money on this nonsense.
Good work Paul. Please get elected in a good seat somewhere, we need some commonsense MPs. A friend of mine asked a council a few years ago how much they spent on 'translation services', it was around £200,000pa - whatabloodyjoke. How will we ever move towards a nicer society and integration if people don't speak OUR language?
Difficult one here because I don’t want to seem to be supportive, but I also don’t want to denigrate my former colleagues.
Firstly I am not commenting on the Alison Pearson matter. It’s worth noting that police have a very limited right of reply, and Essex Police have said they believe the matter to have been totally different to the way it is reported and they have Body Worn Video to back that up. So, from me, no comment, no pack drills. I shall confine myself to merely looking at the ‘strategic’ side.
In my view it isn’t ’The Police’ who are dictating this. The police are an agency of the state - one hesitates to say of government - and it is HMG that dictates policy, via the Home Office and the College of Policing. They set guidelines and standards, and importantly, it is they who monitor ‘achievement’ against targets set. The demented setting of targets has its origin in the government of John Major and the infamous ‘cones hotline’. The idea grew legs and ran off with us. It drives perverse behaviour and performance.
Every public agency was assigned targets and whilst the intention was good, in operation very often the devil was and is in the detail.
Ambitious public servants recognise that they are judged against achievement and thus ‘drive performance’. Unfortunately what gets measured gets done, other areas of business fall by the wayside. In the context of policing, ‘detection’ is easily recorded and measured even though ‘prevention’ (almost impossible to assess) is the ‘Primary Duty of Policing’. Thus Detectives got the upper hand in evidencing performance, and therefore promotion. It encourages short-termism and gaming the system.
Throw into the mix next that the police are, whatever their critics claim, uniquely accountable. They are accountable to their own rank structure and line management; they are accountable to multiple statutory agencies that ‘police’ them - IOPC of course but also National Police Chief’s Council, Police Community Consultative Groups (or whatever they are now renamed) involving local authorities and other stakeholders, College of Policing, then there is the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Courts. Police serve many masters, not all of whom sing from the same hymn sheet, either! And of course in a free country, there is also the fourth estate who usually are very willing to let police how they OUGHT to have done their job using 20/20 hindsight, naturally! It is VERY easy to make a complaint against police. If you don’t believe me, try to make a complaint against any part of the NHS, as I did…
If the police are perceived not to have done their job, they can and usually ARE held to account, which is right and proper. I am certainly not a cheer leader for a lot of what passes for policing today. After Stephen Lawrence’s murder and the McPherson Enquiry, they were forced to look at themselves in the mirror of that report and NOTHING was left unchanged afterwards. I mean NOTHING. Suddenly it became imperative that the already bureaucratic police service become better at recording what it did.
The police DO NOT and never have simply dealt with crime. They deal with all sorts of stuff. I remember a ‘999’ caller wanting directions once, and I remember being sent as a young Pc to an address where really what the callers wanted was an emergency plumber. (It’s easy to criticise; these people were desperate, had few social skills and therefore did the only thing they could think to do, dial ‘999’ and ask for an agency they KNEW was 24/7. It was a strange vote of confidence in us, really.)
National Crime Reporting Standards -introduced by the Home Office - dictate that for any ALLEGATION that is made of crime a report MUST be put in. The old days where we would have resolved a matter with words of advice are long gone. So officers now have to record full details and then say why something ISN’T a crime. The Non-Crime Incident Report was introduced to allow these reports to be counted and recorded. They are a huge exercise in backside covering. “Look” says PC A to Sergeant B, “I did do something, I investigated and decided there was no offence and put a report on. It’s number is ABC123456.” His arse successfully covered. Sergeant B said to Inspector C:”I checked and this was done correctly, and the original message from complainant Z updated with the result”. That report and the tie up satisfies the Information Commissioners, the statisticians who can analyse this rubbish until the cows come home and the Home Office. The Home Office can use those statistics. So can the senior leadership in the police to justify their existence and show how they are ‘driving performance in this key area’. Inspector C can say at meetings with their Senior Leadership Team: “Look how active my guys and girls are! We have the best compliance statistics on the Borough!” And so it goes on.
Nobody actually asks what this is really ACHIEVING in the larger scheme of things. Everybody is only seeking to deflect criticism, and sadly that is the world in which we live. The old discretion that police were supposedly allocated is almost gone. And naturally, with political correctness and woke philosophies in the ascendant, it’s important that police leaders - and some individuals down the food chain - can virtue signal. But often it’s more important to deflect future criticism…
It’s time that all performance indicators in the public service - Police, NHS, Railways even, were re-examined. Most are irrelevant and drive perverse behaviour. It would be a mighty brave person who did that, because if nothing else it would put millions of stats recorders out of work across the UK!
"The bureaucracy includes the targets and all the reporting up the line of endless
key performance indicators. The micro-management from the centre. The huge
number of regulators and the amount of information they demand, often the
same information in different forms, and the massive amount of money being
spent to feed that beast."
"I remember sitting on one side of a table with six or seven of my team to talk
about improving A&E [accident and emergency] performance, strengthening
our quality strategy and reducing our avoidable mortality and there were 38
people from other agencies sitting opposite demanding ‘where, why, how’, each
of them marking our homework. Thirty-eight of them! From Monitor, from the
commissioners, from the NHS England region, from CQC, Healthwatch and so
on and I remember thinking: ‘What the “f ” is this all about?’ It made me so angry.
We managed it by being very open, saying: ‘Come and work with us.’ But I was
spitting feathers. The support and the experience was not out there."
Those are two quotes, from chief executives of NHS trusts, in 'The Chief Executive's Tale - views from the front line of the NHS' published in 2016 by The King's Fund.
I think targetomania may require good psychiatric intervention...
Brilliant and informative post Ian. Thank you. Certainly shows a theme in managing our public services and the out of control bureaucracies now driving the actions at the “coal face!”
On interpreters in the NHS. Paul made a valid point about critical care, although I was admitted to a French hospital following a serious accident. No translater was provided. And signs in the hospital were all in French. Compare that with my local hospital which has signs in at least 20 different languages! It is ridiculous that the NHS is wasting money on this nonsense.
A great programme ! If you fall foul of a Non-Crime Hate Incident - then the NCHI can appear on a n enhanced DBS check, apparently.
Good work Paul. Please get elected in a good seat somewhere, we need some commonsense MPs. A friend of mine asked a council a few years ago how much they spent on 'translation services', it was around £200,000pa - whatabloodyjoke. How will we ever move towards a nicer society and integration if people don't speak OUR language?
Non-Crime Hate Incidents….
Difficult one here because I don’t want to seem to be supportive, but I also don’t want to denigrate my former colleagues.
Firstly I am not commenting on the Alison Pearson matter. It’s worth noting that police have a very limited right of reply, and Essex Police have said they believe the matter to have been totally different to the way it is reported and they have Body Worn Video to back that up. So, from me, no comment, no pack drills. I shall confine myself to merely looking at the ‘strategic’ side.
In my view it isn’t ’The Police’ who are dictating this. The police are an agency of the state - one hesitates to say of government - and it is HMG that dictates policy, via the Home Office and the College of Policing. They set guidelines and standards, and importantly, it is they who monitor ‘achievement’ against targets set. The demented setting of targets has its origin in the government of John Major and the infamous ‘cones hotline’. The idea grew legs and ran off with us. It drives perverse behaviour and performance.
Every public agency was assigned targets and whilst the intention was good, in operation very often the devil was and is in the detail.
Ambitious public servants recognise that they are judged against achievement and thus ‘drive performance’. Unfortunately what gets measured gets done, other areas of business fall by the wayside. In the context of policing, ‘detection’ is easily recorded and measured even though ‘prevention’ (almost impossible to assess) is the ‘Primary Duty of Policing’. Thus Detectives got the upper hand in evidencing performance, and therefore promotion. It encourages short-termism and gaming the system.
Throw into the mix next that the police are, whatever their critics claim, uniquely accountable. They are accountable to their own rank structure and line management; they are accountable to multiple statutory agencies that ‘police’ them - IOPC of course but also National Police Chief’s Council, Police Community Consultative Groups (or whatever they are now renamed) involving local authorities and other stakeholders, College of Policing, then there is the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Courts. Police serve many masters, not all of whom sing from the same hymn sheet, either! And of course in a free country, there is also the fourth estate who usually are very willing to let police how they OUGHT to have done their job using 20/20 hindsight, naturally! It is VERY easy to make a complaint against police. If you don’t believe me, try to make a complaint against any part of the NHS, as I did…
If the police are perceived not to have done their job, they can and usually ARE held to account, which is right and proper. I am certainly not a cheer leader for a lot of what passes for policing today. After Stephen Lawrence’s murder and the McPherson Enquiry, they were forced to look at themselves in the mirror of that report and NOTHING was left unchanged afterwards. I mean NOTHING. Suddenly it became imperative that the already bureaucratic police service become better at recording what it did.
The police DO NOT and never have simply dealt with crime. They deal with all sorts of stuff. I remember a ‘999’ caller wanting directions once, and I remember being sent as a young Pc to an address where really what the callers wanted was an emergency plumber. (It’s easy to criticise; these people were desperate, had few social skills and therefore did the only thing they could think to do, dial ‘999’ and ask for an agency they KNEW was 24/7. It was a strange vote of confidence in us, really.)
National Crime Reporting Standards -introduced by the Home Office - dictate that for any ALLEGATION that is made of crime a report MUST be put in. The old days where we would have resolved a matter with words of advice are long gone. So officers now have to record full details and then say why something ISN’T a crime. The Non-Crime Incident Report was introduced to allow these reports to be counted and recorded. They are a huge exercise in backside covering. “Look” says PC A to Sergeant B, “I did do something, I investigated and decided there was no offence and put a report on. It’s number is ABC123456.” His arse successfully covered. Sergeant B said to Inspector C:”I checked and this was done correctly, and the original message from complainant Z updated with the result”. That report and the tie up satisfies the Information Commissioners, the statisticians who can analyse this rubbish until the cows come home and the Home Office. The Home Office can use those statistics. So can the senior leadership in the police to justify their existence and show how they are ‘driving performance in this key area’. Inspector C can say at meetings with their Senior Leadership Team: “Look how active my guys and girls are! We have the best compliance statistics on the Borough!” And so it goes on.
Nobody actually asks what this is really ACHIEVING in the larger scheme of things. Everybody is only seeking to deflect criticism, and sadly that is the world in which we live. The old discretion that police were supposedly allocated is almost gone. And naturally, with political correctness and woke philosophies in the ascendant, it’s important that police leaders - and some individuals down the food chain - can virtue signal. But often it’s more important to deflect future criticism…
It’s time that all performance indicators in the public service - Police, NHS, Railways even, were re-examined. Most are irrelevant and drive perverse behaviour. It would be a mighty brave person who did that, because if nothing else it would put millions of stats recorders out of work across the UK!
"The bureaucracy includes the targets and all the reporting up the line of endless
key performance indicators. The micro-management from the centre. The huge
number of regulators and the amount of information they demand, often the
same information in different forms, and the massive amount of money being
spent to feed that beast."
"I remember sitting on one side of a table with six or seven of my team to talk
about improving A&E [accident and emergency] performance, strengthening
our quality strategy and reducing our avoidable mortality and there were 38
people from other agencies sitting opposite demanding ‘where, why, how’, each
of them marking our homework. Thirty-eight of them! From Monitor, from the
commissioners, from the NHS England region, from CQC, Healthwatch and so
on and I remember thinking: ‘What the “f ” is this all about?’ It made me so angry.
We managed it by being very open, saying: ‘Come and work with us.’ But I was
spitting feathers. The support and the experience was not out there."
Those are two quotes, from chief executives of NHS trusts, in 'The Chief Executive's Tale - views from the front line of the NHS' published in 2016 by The King's Fund.
I think targetomania may require good psychiatric intervention...
Brilliant and informative post Ian. Thank you. Certainly shows a theme in managing our public services and the out of control bureaucracies now driving the actions at the “coal face!”
If you are interested, I have written about this topic (under my Buddhist name), with regard to the NHS, here: https://apramada.org/articles/taking-liberties