Taunton Terror Trials - End Game?

The "incompetence or malice?" issue should finally be resolved in Taunton next week.

Let us be confident that the judges will do their jobs properly and establish who's who in the world of Somerset Terror, with no more evasion, distraction, distortion or spin.

Incredible as it may sound (especially to the regulars down at the Dog & Duck who have had experience), the story this time is that the Forces of Excellence were in fact the victims of bullying. Yep, that's right, same as perpetrators, but in reverse!

Now this may sound like a sick joke, but let us remember that an acknowledged "culture of bullying" was one of the building blocks of Excellence as Somerset knows it. Also, a lot of people now have experience of living under Excellence. They will know that it is has been standard management practice for anyone who asks unhelpful questions to be branded a "bully".

However, up until now, that has been a purely internal procedure. To the outside world, dissenters have always been presented as "Organizational Terrorists", at least since Venice. This implies some sort of subversive underground movement, rather than a display of jackbooted authority. And it's pretty obvious why - imagine headlines in the Sun:

Mouse Terrorises Cat!; or

Somerset Worm Scares Birds!

Anyone who wants the full background to the sordid little saga could do worse than check out Hansard. (P.S. - nice to see someone standing up for a political opponent for a change!)

As for next week, everyone at the D&D says:

Good Luck Paul!

Allez Jim! Go Doug!

In the week that Somerset achieved its latest accolade: a well-deserved mention in the “Rotten Boroughs” section of Private Eye (“vindictive campaign backfires”); and Dog & Duck regulars achieved previously unimagined depths of despair; a bit of good news came in from – of all places – You Tube!

The latest “SCC – politico-administrative disaster area” video was, potentially, yet another wrench to the already pummelled gut of Joe Public. We saw it just before closing time on Friday evening. It had been up less than twelve hours, but had already been viewed more than 100 times!

At first even the battle-hardened regulars were shocked at just how rude and disrespectful Simon (£4 million) Clifford was to Mr. Buchanan.

‘Well, b*gger it Duck,’ said Pat, ‘just exactly who is supposed to be smearing who?’

‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Daff, ‘wind back a minute … that looked like our Jim!’

‘You’re dead right, Daff!’ said I, ‘and the other one’s Doug!’

Well, how about that for a turn up? At least one, maybe two representatives from Dog & Duck country apparently showing public support for Paul van Buitenen! (sorry, meant to say “Buchanan” – Freudian slip).

So it’s not just Sir Chris Clarke making a stand then. And the landlord was totally made up (Jim’s a mate of his) - so much so that he allowed us to write this post, which almost strays into the forbidden realms of “Politics”.

See the complete video here.

Maybe they’re not all a bunch of lily-livered lemmings! Maybe we will bother to vote after all!

And anyway - we're a County, not a "Borough".

The Peat Moors Centre (£25,000)

You have to understand the Dog & Duck to realise why it has taken a while to get around to this one.

You see, we are just a bunch of ordinary Somerset folk, all ages, sizes and trades: teachers, grandparents, parents, former schoolkids etc.

Which is why hearing that the County Council was going to close the Peat Moors Centre (PMC) in order to save £25,000 (6th item on the list in the linked document) came like a kick in the stomach / bollocks / kidneys / all of the above.

Even now – months later, talk of the PMC causes choking throats and swollen eyes.

Many of the regulars have kids who used to love going to the place on school trips. Some of them are young enough to have actually done it themselves – they still talk about getting airsick as the bus bounced along the road from the A39 to the PMC (a definite candidate for the worst maintained public road in the South West).

Even outsiders like Carla Young were appalled, saying “but you’re lucky to have the moors, you should be celebrating them, not closing the place down!”

Is there ANY good news at all in this sorry, sorry tale? Well, the only thing we can think of is that it provides an alternative currency, or yardstick against which to judge the sordid mess they’ve got us into.

A few examples ... If 1 PMC = £25,000, then that makes:

The cost of Jonesy’s mistress? 6 PMCs

The cost of Jonesy’s post? 7 PMCs

The cost of marketing Excellence? 160 PMCs

The cost of ICElandish Excellence? 1,000 PMCs

It’s enough to make grown men vomit.

Public Sector Transformation Confusion

As we’ve already discussed, this week our Chief Executive Alan Jones will be showing off to the “2nd annual Public Sector Transformation Summit 2009”.

Down at the Dog and Duck, “Public Sector Transformation”, like “Beyond Excellence” itself, has become synonymous with Somerset’s very own home-grown Philosophical System: Confusionism.

We would welcome questions about Confusionism from anyone attending Jonesy’s Stream 5 tomorrow.

One recurring stream is Mathematical Confusionism. Albert Einstein, until he had a nervous breakdown trying to understand Jonesian Mathematics, was finally beginning to make some headway on this difficult topic.

Sadly, as of last week, he is no longer with us. This is because he failed to understand how it is that the answer to every question in Somerset could be “£200 million”.

Before his departure, Albert’s last words (if that is the right way to describe the constant stream of gibberish that was coming out of him as the ambulance took him away) indicated that we should not look to Science to explain Public Sector Transformation in Somerset.

Well, bless him; we’ve known for ages that it is more an Art than a Science. Or maybe it’s a Religion – given that Faith seems to be central to understanding it.

Anyway Alan will be revealing all tomorrow, and certain privileged people (Londoners, sadly, no room for us locals up there) will have an opportunity to ask some public questions about things like:

- Organisational Terrorists
- Institutional Chauvinists
- Chief Executives (Mistresses’) Pay (-Offs) (£140,000)
- Jonesian Mathematics (£200million)
- The Axis of Bull (£4million)

and so on. Alan will then be able to explain how these phenomena relate to the way in which he has sought to inflict Confusionism on us here in Somerset.

Finally, remember Carla? She went back to London after the weekend (she works there, as a Public Sector Transformer). I forgot to ask if she is going to the Lancaster Gate Summit, but if she does, you can be sure that she will have a thing or two to say to our Jonesy.

Watch out for the Ladies Alan!

Roger’s Risk Assessment

Apparently not all Local Authorities are stupid. Like Somerset, East Northamptonshire Council had a load of cash stashed away in Iceland. Then they did this thing called “a risk management assessment of what was going on.” As a result their Leader was able to say "That means we didn't lose any money.”

What was Roger doing at the time? Oh yes, I remember. He was acting the part of Corporate Director of Resources, which involved

1) faffing about with groundbreaking initiatives;
1a) an enormous paycheck;
2) babbling on about Excellence;
2a) an even bigger paycheck;
3) authorising payments of £140,000;
3a) an absolutely gi-normous paycheck; and
4) Heaven only knows what else
(possibly involving brown envelopes full of £50 notes).

Then of course there was this §151 business. A little bird (naughty little bird!) told me that Roger’s Risk Assessment went something like this:

Christ! There’s all this shit going down in Taunton, and here’s poor little me acting as a §151 officer! And then there are all those things I am supposed to be §151ing. But Alan glares at me just for thinking it. And I can see him thinking and wondering if I’m an Organisational Terrorist and snarling something in my direction about how its time we had a permanent Corporate Director and did I really want to risk seeing the job “advertised externally”? And that is a risk I am not prepared to take so I better just shut up and who needs a business case anyway? So as Alan says I better focus on the big picture and important things like how to write big words in small spaces, like the words “Twenty-Five Million, One Hundred and Forty Thousand Pounds only” in that tiny little space on a Somerset County Council cheque. And if I use a biro there’s less risk to the Council that someone will alter the cheque when it gets lost. And that’s about all of §151 that any actor can take.

Anyway the Guardians and Verifiers of Excellence have also thrown millions away. So Somerset County Council were not the only ones who were too busy with Excellence to bother with “a risk management assessment of what was going on.”

And if that is Excellence, then God help Somerset when Jonesy & Co. drag us beyond it!

Somerset's War on Terror

Jonesy has repeatedly congratulated himself, at home and abroad, for his success in the War on Organisational Terror.

So who is this “enemy within”? What organisations have they terrorised? What did they do, or say, or write, that terrified their victims?

Even the most incompetent Googler will quickly work out that Organisational Terrorists did not come into being purely to interfere with Jonesy’s delusions of Excellence.

In fact this evil breed has been active since the beginning of time. The second person in history, and the very first woman ever invented, was also the first Organisational Terrorist. She upset the applecart in Eden (NB: the Garden of Eden was officially recognised as the world’s first “Excellent” organisation in the year 6000 B.C.).

Eve threatened to tell God about what she and the Man got up to behind the bike shed, so the Man got rid of her by feeding her to a serpent. It didn’t cost the Garden of Eden £140,000. In fact, it didn’t cost anything – there’s a thought!

More recently another lady, Karen Silkwood, asked all sorts of unhelpful questions. The victim was a Nuclear Technology Organisation. In accordance with the principles of sincerity that underpin Excellence, the Organisation earnestly welcomed these questions. Then she was killed.

As Jonesy said in Venice "It is important to get rid of these people.”

And it’s not just women, or foreigners. In fact the OTs have their own Hall of Shame!

Don't rely on Cornwall!

Sorry to put a dampener on all the excitement generated by Jonesy’s bid for the Cornwall job … but we have to be realistic.

By the Law of Unintended Consequences, all these blogs and YouTube videos, born as they were of frustration, and sharing a desperation to get Jonesy out of Somerset, may have the opposite effect.

If the Cornwall selectors do their job properly they will certainly happen upon the West Eye View programme, not to mention these blogs. They be asking questions such as the three I put to the Local Government Chronicle as being worthy of answers …

(1) Is it the case that during 2005/2006 the Manager of the ISiS Project made complaints of harassment or similar against the Chief Executive of Somerset County Council?

(2) Is it the case that, after several months' absence on sick leave, the Manager of the ISiS Project subsequently received a severance payment of an amount in the region of £140,000 from Somerset County Council?

(3) Is it the case that during 2007, and again during 2008, the Chief Executive of Somerset County Council made a number of complaints to the Standards Board about Councillor Paul Buchanan (who had been deputy leader of the ruling group prior to the first complaints), and that the Standards Board has either declined to investigate, or has investigated but failed to uphold, all of these complaints?

Neither Somerset County Council nor Jonesy himself seem to have done anything to deny or clarify any of the above, but sadly I don’t think that will be good enough for the Cornwall selectors.

And these three questions are only the beginning. They lead unhappily into the whole sorry story about misuse of public funds, dodgy management, abuse of position and what have you. In Somerset, like Liverpool before us, we have come to take these things for granted. We have also come to accept that straight questions will not get straight answers from Jonesy and his crew.

However the Cornwall selectors do not have to accept this. In fact they would run a grave risk in appointing Jonesy while there are so many unanswered questions about his conduct and competence circulating in public. Somerset’s selectors, back in 2003, could at least plead that they had no knowledge of such issues.

Another thing to remember is that Cornwall did not get to where it is today by alienating over 80% of the population.

But all is not lost! This may be the perfect opportunity to finally get some answers. And who knows, if Jonesy really wants the Cornwall job then they may turn out to good and honest answers.

Grumbling Ducks (2)

Just checked my email and guess what, a County Council service I have been using (the only one, I think) is going to be curtailed, because "the powers that be" are getting tight with funding.

In the pre-Excellence days, of course, this would have just run off with a shrug.

However, nowadays County is spending £4million a year on presentation (roughly £20 per household), and who knows how much on staff brainwashing, statisticians, Excellence consultants, additional legal fees, IBM etc. There is even a rumour that every household in Somerset had to chip in nearly £1 each just to pay off one of the Chief Executive's lady friends in time for the Excellence inspection.

So in that context, this Duck feels ever so slightly aggrieved. In the old days he may even have been naïve enough to consider complaining! (A sure fire way to get the offending service cut completely.)

But now all we have is the blog, and it is time to re-focus on our core business, which is to examine and to try to unravel the thing called "Excellence".

This has been a miserable little post, so here's a film to cheer you up. An excellent (small "e"), short, management training video all about something SCC seems to have signed up to in order to deal with complaints. It is called the "it could be worse" programme : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl_WPggs1cw

Don't you just love that phrase "delegitimise complaints"? I'm sure we'll hear more of it! What a useful management tool. Money well spent Jonesy!