As the Guardian reports this morning:
The chair of the Post Office has been dismissed by the government as the state-owned company reels from the Horizon IT scandal.
Henry Staunton was this weekend told by the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, that he will be replaced.
Badenoch said in a statement: “The Post Office is rightfully under a heightened level of scrutiny at this time. With that in mind, I felt there was a need for new leadership, and we have parted ways with mutual consent.”
Staunton did not help his own cause by defending the indefensible before parliament, but Badenoch and her Tory predecessors are as much to blame.
The fault in this appointment is implicit in this comment, which followed those noted above:
Staunton, 75, only became chair in December 2022, after a long career in FTSE boardrooms.
The Post Office is not a public company.
It is a public service.
It should not be run for profit, although a bizarre profit proxy was created within it to permit the payment of bonuses to directors on this basis, with dire consequences.
And, to make it quite clear what that means, the replacement for Henry Staunton, whoever they might be, should not be someone whose skills are in:
- Profit maximising
- Shareholder serving
- Cost slashing
- Union bashing
- Service destroying
- Utility undermining
- Failure creation
They should instead be skilled in:
- Public service delivery
- Partnership building
- System integrity
- Honesty
- Transparency
- Subsidy negotiation with the government, since that will be required.
They should also be happy with a salary not that much greater than the prime minister's, and any bonus should be restricted to no more than ten per cent of pay and be based on a vector of achievements, all related to public and organisational success, but not profit.
What chance is there of the government deciding to go in this direction? Near enough zero, I suspect, in which case another round of failure will be guaranteed.
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Excellent – this post illustrates the only reason privatisation was ever created and who drives it. Basically by those who stand to profit because the profit motive is still King.
Best Value did indeed look at efficiency (but this has become more about ‘financial efficiency) but also effectiveness and economy and some other ‘e’ words also had to be in the mix.
Throughout my career in the public sector however, effectiveness (the bit that looks or should look at the impact from the customer side) has always come last, and that is because Best Value is actually a private sector management/investor model totally unsuited to the service sector.
It’s interesting to contrast how La Poste here in France has chosen to deal with similar problems of falling revenues from the mail service. Instead of reducing its services it has decided to expand and diversify, with a focus on rural communities and older people. Post workers can call in on isolated elderly people, check they have food and heating, and report any problems they are having. Other services include meals on wheels and delivery of medicines.
Brilliant
And exactly my point
A service I forgot to include in my short comment above further demonstrates the re think of La post services. When you collect a clothing package you can now try on the items in a room provided and should you not want to keep them the post office will return the item without ever having to leave the office.
Geoff,
We have Kemi Badenoch. We can see how this is likely to go, and the kind of priorities we may expect. Badenoch, and ardent Brexiter* who believes it was the UK’s greatest project, once said the politicians were “hooked on the idea of the state fixing the majority of problems”. Ambitious Conservative politicians as the answer? I don’t think so. A Post Office and Mail service as community hubs was one way to go (able to offer a wide range of services, and an information or even a Government provision service). DVLA going, Girobank (Thatcherised) both long lost to the Post Office. There is no end in sight to the dismantling of the Post Office; the freem market brigade will see this as a new opportunity. I rest my case.
In her maiden speech in Parliament; a politely hard-nosed, head-girl excess of Burke and myopic British, Nationalism, Badenoch described Brexit as, “the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom”. I can only believe she is so naive it is the greatest ever confidence trick perpetuated on the British people; opportunistically sponsored by Johnson, a PM whom Badenoch so deplored, she resigned.
In monetary economics Badenoch declared in her speech that she also believes that leaving “our children” with Debt is “morally wrong”; and thus on national debt reduction commands Conservatives to “hold their nerve”. How she intends to unburden the future of everyone’s children, with £2.5Trn of National Debt remains a mystery of execution. Either she doesn’t understand the difference between reducing a ratio (debt-to-GDP) and reducing the debt quantum, or the difference between deficit and debt (surely not); or she is drawing a line between what wins votes and makes her look good to her chosen constituency, and what actually happens in government, and has done for three hundred years; over the long term the Thatchers and their tinkering come and go like chaff in the wind, but the National Debt inexorably and relentlessly goes up; Burke or no Burke. And that is politics, as it actually and inevitably transpires.
“I can scarcely believe she is so naive she does not realise Brexit is the greatest ever confidence trick perpetuated on the British people”.
Too much haste, as with the redundant asterisk. Bloopers all.
This is so good.
All the useless public Inquiries over child protection and many other public service disasters always recomend more ‘joined up thinking’ ‘information sharing’ – often at the same time as recommending yet more institutional fragmentation and top down structures.
You give a simple on the ground example of how one point of contact can bring multiple services.
We have too much vested interest in never doing that.
I remembered thinking at he time we first saw big increase in the value of remuneration packages offered to those in the most senior role across them public sector fr!om Local Authority CEOs, to NHS Trusts to Government Agencies, that the Government was recruiting a legion it saw as working first and foremost for them rather than the organisation they headed. Leadership compromised. Loyalties divived. Trust weakened.
This raises many issues, including
‘Top Pay’
The general competence of our management and political class
Why did the terrible ‘Horizon can do no wrong’ Groupthink arise
Then I might add why do we create organisations that only these so called ‘masters of the universe’ can run
Because their bonuses required them to pretend it wasn’t happening.
“Nick Read, who is the Post Office’s current chief executive, was grilled by MPs on the wrongful convictions of hundreds of subpostmasters. Pressed by the Labour MP Ian Lavery on whether money taken from branch managers could have been part of ‘hefty numeration packages for executives’, Mr Read said it was “difficult to say”. But pressed again, he said: ‘It’s possible, absolutely it’s possible.’ He also promised to ‘get to the bottom of exactly what happened'” (Daily Mirror, 17th January, 2024).
This disaster is the responsibility of the Government and Parliament, even more than of the Post Office, its creature; and both have failed, catastrophically and unforgivably. Kemi Badenoch is part of that failure. She has been an MP since 2017.
The evidence suggests that the Post Office has failed, as has the water companies.
Those responsible for appointing their officers are responsible, including the officers themselves.
Neoliberalism, neoclassical economics, monetarist Thatcherism has failed, at least when it comes to public services.
Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary responsible for the changes has been interviewed on Sky news this morning. She has made a sudden change at the top now, with more – it seems, to follow. But, “Ms Badenoch insists, however, that the role of the ITV drama in turning focus to the scandal should not be overemphasised. She says Mr Bates Vs The Post Office was not what led to government action and “it is really important we stress that” (Sky News).
Badenoch, however (and at the very same time) explains the removals from office in the Post Office (there have been two apparently), and the obvious failure to act earlier to fix the problems; by ‘recent events’, and the fact that there was not earlier “the intense scrutiny” there is now. What does she think energised the current intense scrutiny? The leadership of Kemi Badenoch?
Advisedly, she could ask Lord Arbuthnot, a Conservative MP who was fighting for years, and to little avail ‘against the odds’ in his own Government and Party, in support of the Postmasters/Postmistresses. Arbuthnot asked for a government Enquiry in 2015.
Like all quite obviously ambitious politicians, there is the inevitable element of opportunism in Badenoch’s approach to problems.
I abandoned that and went out birdwatching
Productivity should be in the skills list. Provision of more services for less labour and other inputs.
Tell me why we want to minimise human input?
“Tell me why we want to minimise human input?”
With that attitude we would have no computers!!
No, not true
But with your attitude we would have no employment – the neoliberal dream
They are a cost. And we can only afford so many costs. That’s basic economics. Getting the same amount of output with lower input (or more output for the same amount of input) is exactly what we need to be striving for.
But unfortunately, that’s a typical public sector attitude, hence why public spending goes up each and every year in real terms, yet those working in the sector repeatedly claim of ‘cuts’. But the only cuts are to the services people pay for, while the wage bill goes ever upwards.
I seriously wonder if you gave ever come close to running a business
I have, over many years, and really quite successfully
I can promise you, that you really do not understand business
Selective amnesia amongst British politicians when it comes to the issue of duty of care. Politics badly needs a re-think when it comes to just this one item which is so critical to the well-being of the country!
A measure of late deliveries and lost mail over the last 20 years, together with an adjustment for falling demand, would make an enlightening list.
The Post Office horror is a great example of why the Tories are so keen on turning public services into pseudo-businesses.
On the one hand when, as inevitably, things go horribly wrong it makes it much easier for the Tories and the UK media to try and blame everybody else and to pretend it is nothing to do with the Tories mismanagement.
On the other hand, when it is opportune they can use the very real control that they have over these organisations to pretend they are the good guys, as Badenoch has just done, and start sacking scapegoats.
Government now taking charge of banks.
https://skwawkbox.org/2024/01/28/exclusive-bank-locks-customers-account-after-donation-to-unrwa/
Is this actually legal?
Is it happening?
Accounts get blocked for many reasons.
But if it is I suspect it is because UNRWA has been added to money laundering black lists, which looks decidedly premature, at best
What next for blocking bank accounts?
❌Not having completed your digital vaccine passport?
❌Wandering too far from your lock-down zone?
❌Joining the wrong protest march?
❌That Tweet you made someone considers antisemitic?
Welcome to 1984