David Boyle's Blog, page 108

What is Mandelson thinking?

I've been wondering what Peter Mandelson has been doing with all this extending the hand of friendship to the Lib Dems, who they plainly despise.

I think it is this: they are gambling that hyping the Clegg effect even further will pop the bubble sooner.

Mandelson thinks that, if he is clever, he can make the word Clegg synonymous with media hype, with public emotionalism like there was at Princess Diana's funeral. He thinks he can make sophisticated people sneer at the whole thing and distanc...

Shields and swords

I've been a member of the Lib Dems since 1979, a terrifying thought. I hadn't realised I was so old (though I was terribly young when I joined). For the past 31 years, I have been waiting for the moment when the Liberal case could be put with the combination of sanity and passion that Nick Clegg generated last night.

I went to sleep afterwards with an amazing sense of peace. It was everything I hoped (though kind of typical of ITV that there was no green question) since I first imagined Nic...

Osborne and the banks

If you believe, as I do, that the banks are now the key issue in politics - not just sitting on wads of money but actively hoovering up the money in the world out of productive enterprise - then Obama's plan to break them up has to be an exciting move. It isn't very clear what he means by 'break them up', but since he says he wants to limit their size, I hope this will go beyond splitting domestic banking rom investment banking. We'll have to see.

The disappointment in all this is George Osb...

Why schools were closed

My son's primary school is a wonderful institution, but I must admit I am beside myself with rage that it was closed again yesterday, after a few flurries of snow. And I am much calmer about it than some other parents, whose jobs and lives are less flexible than mine.

What is galling about this is the way the public sector under New Labour has come to treat us. A £50 fine per day if our child doesn't attend school for what they consider an adequate reason. A £100 fine if we don't get our ta...

The meaning of health and safety

I looked at the front pages of all the Sunday papers this morning in the newsagent, as I tend to, and it struck me how many of the stories were about health and safety regulations.

There was the story about parents having to accompany their teenage children to the loo in Glasgow cafes (unlikely, that one). There was the lead story in the Sunday Telegraph warning us that clearing the ice outside your house can open you up to legal action. Not to mention all the stuff about gritting being bann...

Bank charges: we need more competition

So the Office of Fair Trading is withdrawing its attempt to force the banks to reduce their charges for going overdrawn to reasonable levels. This is a pity: we all have stories about the way banks behave to their customers. For a week or so, I was charged every time my account fluctuated above the critical level. If I hadn't bothered to put money in, I would only have been charged once.

But regulating the banks into reasonable charges was always going to be a difficult call when the underl...

Boyle's Law for public services

The writing is now on the wall for the combination of centralisation, process bureaucracy and inappropriate IT systems which have been such a disempowering feature of our public services for the past decade. Research published in the American Journal of Medicine shows that IT investment in health services doesn't cut costs:
http...

The disaster of Gershon

The news that Sir Peter Gershon has been swallowed by the Conservative Party is bad news for public services. It implies that Cameron will follow the Gershon prescription for efficiency – and that means more of the same.

In fact, the 2004 Gershon Review – which included coachloads of representatives from the IT consultants PA Consulting – has been disastrous for public services. It decided (surprise, surprise!) that huge investment in IT was required.

The result has been huge factory back off...

How to save RBS from its directors

Vince Cable was quite right on the Today programme this morning. The response to the RBS director's threat to resign if they are not allowed to pay the bonuses they want to their failed, cash-strapped, state-owned bank should be to say: go ahead.

But we need to look a little more closely at the business of banking bonuses. They are paid out of a percentage of the profits of the investment divisions, sometimes up to fifty per cent. The money would otherwise go to the shareholders – the same ...

£40bn, for what?

It's about 24 hours or so since the announcement that the government is, after all, going to break up the banks they own. The re-discovery of old banking creatures inside the belly of Lloyds and RBS – Williams & Glyn's, TSB and so on – is proof of what some of us have been saying all year.

But having thought about it for a day or so, it seems to me that – heavens – it is so incredibly timid. Ten per cent of bank branches will change hands. There are only 170 branches per million people in t...