Cicero's Songs

A report has been published this morning concerning the quality of personal care for the elderly in England and Wales . It sets out findings that suggest that about 50% of those it quizzed are receiving a quality of care that is unacceptable. That, of course, is extremely unfortunate. However there are several features of this report which render its findings questionable at best and useless at worst. The first is the author of the report is the Equality and Human Rights Commission . This is a statutory body that "promote[s] and monitor[s] human rights and.. protect[s] enforce[s] and promote[s] equality across the nine "protected" grounds- age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership, sexual orientation and gender reassignment.". The leader of this body is Trevor Phillips OBE , who has had a controversial record. Indeed six members of the commission have left after a series of disputes with the now par...

C. Northcote Parkinson  died in 1993, but almost every day we see examples of his famous Law in action. Put simply he said "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion". From this fundamental insight, in various semi-humorous books, he laid out different aspects of how human nature conspires to undermine the efficiency of organisations. You may want to read his original and brilliant essay here . Nowhere is Parkinson's Law more clearly obeyed that in government bureaucracy. I recently saw a good example.  A well known international financial agency has approached the governments of the Baltic countries to create a fund of funds that invest in the region. Leaving aside whether or not this project is a good idea in principal, and whether or not it might "crowd out"  the private sector or not, the slightest glance at how bureaucracy and government works should tell you what a wrong headed project it is. Since the agency is asking for governme...