trousers

And I thought my analogies were bad... ;-) I'm off to compare apples with oranges...I maybe some time... ;-)

^This

For what it's worth, I believe the Tories would have fallen into a similar complacency trap to Brown, but he was in power so he attracts the criticism.

The child got hurt because the parent left him alone to cross the road / play with matches / slip on the bath (etc). It's the neglectful parent that didn't prevent the injury happening.

Where did I say he "caused" a world recession? He simply had the power and ability, if he saw fit, to intervene before the tower of cards collapsed. He chose not to. That is all.

Nutshell. He did the same sort of thing before the Bournemouth game. He knows that winding up the other side is more likely to work in our favour as we tend to play better against teams who are fired up and come at us. That said, I think it would have been an open game without this cage rattling but, as you say, nudging the Brighton team to that tipping point where they take the bait will, IMHO, work in our favour.

I agree about the implementation. As ever, politicians have executed a perfectly good plan badly. I lump politicians into the same bracket as the inept middle managers that I highlight. Just because the politicians (on all sides) that implement policies are crap doesn't render the underlying policy as crap (per se) It's a catch-22. The NHS needs to adapt and streamline but the people we (the electorate) get limped with to deliver the end result are actually part of the problem. So, once again, you are wide of the mark with regards my supposed love for Tory politicians. I admire the policies rather than the muppets we're saddled with to implement them (muppets = the middle-management + politicians). Now, if the whole thing was to be handed over to the private sector we might see some decent implementation... (much winking)

FFS. I wish people would stop this flagrant under-mining of the lazy myths being bandied around by the pro-AV brigade...

Not forgetting the typical rising to the bait... ;-)

I was at a conference in Berlin the week before last and was hearing similar things from the delegates there. (delegates from across the EMEA region)

*s w a n k y (FFS)

Or maybe the reason that the Lib Dems never muster much more than 15% is that their policies aren't very popular? Are the general public really that gullible to be swayed by s****y marketing over policies...? (that's a rhetorical question btw) ;-)

I know I'm side-stepping your question but the simple way to get 'your' party a greater share of power is to help make them more popular in the first place so that more people vote for them. That's the 'beauty' of the FPTP system, in that it doesn't give the less popular parties a sniff of power (most of the time). To answer your question though, I don't think there is a reason for you, personally, to vote 'no' as it isn't 'small party' friendly. Instead, I think you should follow Nick Clegg's lead and vote for a "miserable little compromise".... ;-)

Perhaps someone should get onto the FA/football league sharpish then and get them to review the Daggers game (for one). I don't suppose there's a 10 point penalty on offer for this kind of 'cheating' is there...? ;-)

I know we'll be pumped up for the brighton game regardless of tonight's results but, in a somewhat perverse train of thought (to which I'm prone), losing 2nd spot tonight could actually serve to crank us up that extra notch. Knowing we could stay in 2nd spot with a loss or a draw could result in lifting the foot off the pedal ever so slightly. Or the opposite could be true of course! Human nature: a fickle mistress

Not 'cheating' per se? (i.e. Not against league rules...?)

Is this build-up thread as long as the Bournemouth one yet?

Fixing a problem that he over saw happening in the first place is hardly cause for a Mexican wave. Now, had he taken the 'prevention rather than cure' approach, that would be a reason to revere him. If I neglect my child and he ends up injuring himself as a result, am I then a hero for getting him to hospital in time...?

I'm talking more about the bloated middle-management tier. Most boardrooms will seem 'impressive' to someone sitting in every now and then in a governor capacity. How many middle managers have you observed in action day-in-day-out for best part of 20 years...? The hospital I'm talking about is also seen as being a 'good' hospital in the rankings but, from my near-first hand experience, it could be improved significantly by having a better and leaner middle management tier.

My Daggers supporting friend said that all the ball boys were stood down the moment Brighton went 4-3 up in their game against them. Gamesmanship? Yes. Legal? I guess so. In the spirit of the game? Hmmm.... Still, if you can get away with it fair play to Brighton for maximising their opportunities.

What percentage would you gauge as "good"? I too come from a position of first hand observation - over 20 years - (ok, via my wife and sister-in-law, but near as damn it) and I would venture that c.20% are "good" and the rest are "completely out of their depth". My wife was also a school governor for 4 years so I could shed some light on how schools are 'managed' too if that helps....

Indeed. So, how do we replace the current crop of NHS 'managers' (sic) with good ones...?

I did wonder how it managed to survive for so long

Sssshhhhh....that's hardly going to fit the left wing's "The nasty Tories are decimating the NHS" agenda, is it? FFS

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1379091/Thousands-NHS-jobs-advertised-exposing-great-cuts-myth.html The thousands of NHS jobs still being advertised which expose the great cuts myth On an almost daily basis, we are told by the BBC and the vociferous health unions that the NHS is in ‘financial crisis’. The Royal College of Nursing is predicting 40,000 job ‘cuts’, while it is claimed that patients are being denied hip replacements and even cancer treatments in order to save money. Ward closures are being predicted by the King’s Fund think-tank, and there are dire warnings that patient waiting times are expected to get much longer. How strange, then, that the official NHS Jobs website should be doing such brisk business at the start of the new financial year — the very year the ‘cuts’ are supposed to bite. The site, where all vacant health service posts are officially advertised, is predicting 20,000 jobs will continue to be available each month. And, on a single day this week, there were 6,175 posts available — with salaries totalling hundreds of millions of pounds. They range from nurses and doctors to well-paid administrative jobs with such dubious titles as ‘5 for Life officer’, ‘psychosexual counsellor’, ‘BME (black minority ethnic) inequalities outreach worker’ and, bafflingly, ‘anthropologist-in-residence’. Indeed, some 265 of the jobs being advertised pay more than £90,000-a-year — hardly evidence of an NHS in the grip of an austerity drive, facing what has widely been described as the ‘biggest challenge in its history’. The fact is that for all the disingenuous bluster of the Left-wing media and shroud-waving unions, there has not been a ‘cut’ in the NHS budget. In fact, an extra £3 billion is being ‘invested’ (the euphemistic word that Labour, and now the Tories, use when they mean ‘spent’) on the health service this year, taking the total to £105.9 billion. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed that next year David Cameron will meet the Tories’ specific election pledge to increase the NHS budget. Indeed, over the course of the Comprehensive Spending Review, the overall NHS budget will increase by 0.4 per cent in real terms. The reason the vested interest groups are so furious is a requirement that — in return for this increased funding — the NHS must make ‘efficiency savings’ worth £15 billion to £20 billion over the next four years. Again, these are not ‘cuts’. Any money saved is ring-fenced and must be pumped back into patient care. The sensible intention is to reduce the amount of money being squandered by health service managers whose budgets, and own remuneration, ballooned under Labour. For the truth is that figures from the Office for National Statistics estimate that since 2000, total NHS productivity fell by an average of 0.2 per cent a year, and by an average of 1.4 per cent a year in hospitals. Overall, the decline in productivity — the value provided to the taxpayer, for each pound spent — was a dreadful 15 per cent, a collapse that would lead to bankruptcy in any private sector concern. Clearly, there is more than a little fat to be cut from the NHS budget. However, the question is whether the savings are being made in the right places. This is where the RCN may have a point. For healthcare experts fear that efficiencies will come from frontline services, rather than by reducing the number of penpushers. The real scandal is that bureaucrats — many of them performing non-jobs — were the main beneficiaries of Labour’s spending boom. In 1999, there were 23,378 managers and senior managers in the NHS. By 2009, the number had almost doubled to 42,509, with manager numbers increasing six times as fast as that of nurses. Instead of reducing this army of bureaucrats, the NHS managers claim that they must remain because they are the only ones with the necessary skills to make ‘efficiency’ savings. As a result, it will be nursing posts which won’t be replaced. Meanwhile, administrators will continue to pick up fat cheques. Certainly, a glance at the NHS Jobs website suggests that, like town halls — which are closing libraries and axing lollipop ladies while paying their chief executives more than the Prime Minister — the priorities of the NHS are utterly wrong. For example, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust recently said it would be losing 300 nursing posts by 2014, as part of a £60 million cost-cutting exercise. But, at the same time, the trust is advertising 13 vacancies, including one for an ‘academic clinical fellow’ on up to £46,708 a year. Elsewhere, Kent and Medway plans to slash its nursing, midwifery and health visitor workforce by 264, yet has money to advertise 27 jobs this week, including a ‘psychological well‑being officer’ on a salary of up to £27,534. Kingston Hospital NHS Trust plans to get rid of 214 nursing posts — but, according to NHS Jobs, is ready to pay a new chief operating officer a staggering £120,000. And the list goes on and on. Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust said that, to save money, it is shutting down a programme which helps people with mental health problems. Yet it has managed to find up to £55,945 a year for a ‘head of employee and staff relations’. There are also vacancies for three human resources managers, on £34,189 each. None of these will be doing much to help the mentally ill — or probably anybody else for that matter. To leave nursing posts unfilled while hiring yet more human resources staff will rightly enrage nurses and the public. In other areas, on the NHS payroll are many people who seem to have little to do with healthcare — such as those helping to run a children’s summer playgroup in Peterborough for youngsters with English as a second language. While the Government’s communities department has taken up the fight and is challenging council chief executives to explain why they are cutting frontline public services when their chief executives pocket bloated salaries (and bonuses), the embattled Health Secretary Andrew Lansley (who is fighting to rescue his NHS reforms in the face of a revolt by the Lib Dems) has yet to show the same mettle. Admittedly, he probably fears being considered an ‘enemy’ of the health service. Instead, it was left to the NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson to say: ‘There is no excuse to reduce services for patients when the NHS will receive an extra £11.5 billion of funding. Every penny saved from measures taken to reduce costs will be reinvested in patient care.’ Mr Lansley should point out that, as yet, there is no evidence that anybody is suffering. Meanwhile, far from preparing to shed 40,000 jobs, including 20,000 nursing posts, the latest published figures show the number of nurses has gone up by 1,272 from September 2010 to December 2010, and by 2,677 since September 2009. To be fair, the Federation of Surgical Speciality Associations (which represents the country’s surgeons) says growing numbers of patients are wrongly being denied a new hip or even cancer treatment because of NHS cost-cutting. But the truth is that while operations are being refused or delayed so that primary care trusts can balance their books, the NHS can find £40,157 a year for an ‘anthropologist-in-chief’ to work at Devon Partnership Trust; £101,829 a year for a ‘director of performance and innovation’ at NHS South West London; £31,664 a year for a European projects administrator, based in Brussels; and £67,134 a year for an associate director of HR (organisational development) in Rotherham. This is nothing short of scandalous.The truth is that the NHS swallowed huge sums of money under Labour and, unlike the rest of the state sector, continues to be offered special treatment by the Coalition government. But where savings of wasted public money need to be made, they should come from the back office — not from doctors and nurses trained in saving lives.