Affordable, sustainable, measureable ?

At the CTCC there are now serious efforts to try to re-brand the service provision under the cloak of something a lot less straight-forward than boiling an egg.

The new efforts to be seen to be licking the arses of the political masters seemingly knows no bounds. The new and wonderful strategy of making the Police Service fit for purpose in the 21st century has moved away from simply trying to hit whatever is the target of the latest trendy measuring quango.

We now have to make sure that everything is affordable to justify the money spent. Value for money, another justification phrase, will be measured to see if it hits all the right marks and benefits go to the most deserving cases who jump through all the right hoops..

We are having best practice, business strategy and economic sense added to the list of things to consider. Also add financially sustainable and one would accept some grey confused and muddled mind-set. It could be time to quit now.

Policing is not affordable because so much cannot be measured. It does not fit into the latest business plans and does not fit into any quarterly corporate profit projection that I have seen. It is service provision. Local services, armed forces, schools and hospitals all operate in the same way. Yet their budgets are constantly being reviewed and reduced to redistribute the efficiency savings  for things that are, politically, better points scorers and offer better short term headlines.

Lets see…………………..

This credit crunch thing ?

For as long as I can remember, the banks and financial institutions have been making millions of profits every year, without fail.  Like the phone company, the gas, water and electricity suppliers, they all make millions of profit when their annual results hit the media. How come that some of them can turn around such big losses in so short a time ?

This money invested in Icelandic Banks ?

This reduction needed in public services ?

The tax payer will bail out the Government’s allegedly prudent taxation and spending policies. The tax payer will have to bear the brunt of someone else’s failed policies and decision making processes because essential public services will have their budgets reduced at the same time that someone, somewhere, will appear on the TV or in the media trying to make everyone believe that it is all someone else’s fault or that everything is looking rosy. Exactly how much money, allegedly invested, was lost ?

At a time when the continuing efforts to spend less but convince all that more is being done and more is being spent simply confirms the efforts to promote the brand at all costs is the most  important thing to do.

The only ones who do not seem to worry about the problems are the politicians. They seem to be doing alright and are either exempt from the problems or exempt themselves from the problems because they deem themselves a special case.

Smug, arrogant and couldn’t give a toss.

Trouble is, there is always a healthy queue forming up to be the next decision maker. Where talk and meetings are  second only in importance to what expenses one is able to claim.

After all that, I am still at a total loss as to how so many local authorities, health authorities and Police authorities found so much spare cash to ‘invest’ in a foreign country’s financial institutions. At the same time we have listened to how much they are cutting back on because they are so hard up.

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