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Anecdotes from an Anorak

Who are They?

 

Kate Fox discussed the English 'dis-ease' of not being earnest in her book entitled "Watching the English".  It seems that also part of this perceived culture is not to identify individually responsible persons when discussing events or sensitive subjects.

 

Simple examples of positives and negatives would be the statements, "They say it's going to be sunny tomorrow",  or “They are closing us down”.

 

"THEY"?

 

Just who are "THEY"?

 

It is frustrating when these people can't be identified and named.

 

We have a right to chant, "Who are ya ?!" until THEY come forward to received their praiseworthy commendation or, indeed, otherwise.

 

Fish’s Hurricane

 

In the case of weather forecasting, most of us take it for granted that the weather presenter is responsible.  Hurricanes and Michael Fish are a case-in-point.  I believe some European meteorologists may have not been working that day, but do we know that he was guilty of giving mis-information or was it a case of a team advising him?  THEY might have been responsible for misinterpreting what meteorological information THEY did have, but it was Mr Fish's announcement that we remember.

 

THEY also come in the form of committees.  This is a fine body of men and women doing their best for the community or individual organisations.

 

Governmental bodies are well known for their committees, the members of which are unknown to the general public.

 

Dacorum and our New Town Heritage

 

Living in the Dacorum area, our local borough council provides first class refuse and recycling service called 'rECOllect'.  THEY have devised highly efficient cyclical kerb-side collections for waste and recyclables which must be commended.  OK, occasionally bins may be left across driveways and recyclables may blow of the back of their refuse trucks when rushing from one neighbourhood to another, but generally THEY deserve our praise. 

 

Similarly, our council provide beautiful floral displays for the town’s streets, parks and gardens.  THEY plan the displays, cultivate the plants and maintain the gardens.

 

In these two examples it is easy to show one's appreciation to individual front line staff who are in contact with the public.  How do we show appreciation of THEY who plan and coordinate in order to target praise at those committed individuals who equally deserve it.

 

Conversely, we must have the opportunity to be critical of people’s actions, both positive and negative.  A town's Pavilion Theatre was pulled down to save money on running costs and maintenance during the many intervening years leading up to eventual redevelopment with a replacement entertainment complex.  Who decided this?  THEY did.  The area where the Pavilion once stood as an asset to the community was reduced to a patch of grass.  I am sure many of the districts residents would be interested in the wisdom of this decision and retrospectively question the true wider social implication versus monetary saving.  Praise or blame could be apportioned accordingly.

 

The individuals responsible seldom come to the fore to discuss their successes or failures retrospectively.  THEY instead often opt for upfront consultation meetings, sound bite announcements, exhibitions and road-shows.

 

Consultation meetings are usually to present the statistics surrounding the proposed project.  The other events are often simply to market and promote projects already agreed upon.  There is seldom an opportunity for the general public to act officially as critic after the project.

 

Moving On

 

On a National scale and amid intelligence claim and counter claim, a previous Prime Minister famously took us to war based on misinformation and in despite a march by protestors unofficially numbering in excess of 1 million. One can imagine that THEY advised him and that he and the back-room team all got the initial assessment very wrong.

 

The various enquiries, past and future, are unlikely to reveal comprehensive and factual circumstances leading up to the event unless the public are allowed to actually identify who THEY were and evaluate their individual roles and actions.

 

THEY now say we all should move on and concentrate on the future and not dwell on the past.  'Moving on' generally means denying the opportunities to assess or question previous successes and failures.  If this be the case, how can individual roles be evaluated to ensure that only the best people are in the jobs of the future and everyone learns from past experience?

 

Whether it be Prime Minister or Managing Director, figureheads thrive on popularity by readily accepting praise.  The opposite is regularly the case when being criticised.

 

Referring to a committee, working-party and or support team they will usually say there is an on-going investigation into how THEY got it wrong and he/she is unable to pre-empt the findings of the official enquiry and comment until team's report is published.  Subsequent announcements or publications are followed up by a statement similar to:

 

 "Sincere apologies to those involved, but procedural changes had already been put in place.  We have noted the findings of the enquiry, learnt from any mistakes made, and we will improve going forward."

 

Reorganisation

 

Another ploy is the ‘reorganisation’ statement, usually made by someone in P.R. or another senior person, and often broadcast on programmes like ‘Watchdog’.  A typical example could be: 

 

”Absolutely.  I am sure our customers will sympathise when I say that we have undergone a major reorganisation.  Our dedicated team have invested valuable time and effort to make this transition as smooth as possible and minimise any disruption. THEY have been through a learning curve and apologise to those few who have experienced isolated problems. Our new structure is a positive step and we have already made significant improvements to our service delivery." 

 

Let’s have the opportunity to praise those who made the ‘significant improvements’. However, if organisations are within the goods and services sectors, we will probably vote with our feet appropriately anyhow!

 

When the Going Gets Tough ...

 

Voting with our feet is not so practical with multinationals, conglomerates and governmental institutions.  THEY say we have ‘choice’, but the market is managed so effectively only token protests are usually possible. In the unlikely event that the going gets tough for them, big multinationals just move their capital  elsewhere.

 

Shopping in a supermarket or a corner shop, for example, may demonstrate an allegiance and the price differential of the shopping basket may be small, but the supermarket is able to offer a greater range of goods and services and, inevitably, most of us start popping again in to buy that occasional item or two.

 

Similarly with, say, petrol companies where it makes little sense driving miles to the next service station for standard grade fuel just because of concurrence with a particular company’s policy.

 

Choice and Cottage Hospitals

 

The NHS has a policy of choice of hospital for all.  Treatment in the local area is becoming so limited as seeming to be no choice at all.

 

The population in the Dacorum area is increasing so THEY are in the process of downgrading our local state-of-the-art hospital!  This reorganisation favours other hospitals in neighbouring boroughs.  In consequence THEY have transferred staff and doctors to these other hospitals to create ‘Specialist Units’. Among these transfers are Maternity, Acute A&E and Orthopaedic services. 

 

In this scenario what are the practical choices for, say, expectant parents?  Their answer seems to be either travel to the Specialist Unit, go private, or have the baby at home.

 

Everyone, presumably including NHS strategists, are supposed to be Creating Sustainable Communities.  Not being aware of the Defra definition of a Community, we can only assume that THEY have taken health equality, wellbeing, environmental CO2 and noise pollution by road transport into consideration when THEY transferred these medical units to specialist centres.    

 

A family relation or ours recently experienced this new service after fracturing a hip. The patient was taken by ambulance some extra distance in some discomfort to the new Acute A&E Department. We were retrospectively informed that THEY had stipulated the destination and there was no other, more local option.

 

When it came to hospital admission, again there were no practical choices; the on-site unit, go private, or suffer!  In retrospect the patient received good nursing care although, being a ‘Specialist Unit’, THEY initially failed to look at the ‘whole person’ and diagnose an additional bladder problem.

 

NHS care seems to have come full circle starting originally with local Cottage Hospitals, then these gave way to larger General Hospitals, moving on to Regional Hospitals with local GP Surgeries, State-of the-art Local Hospitals with Health Centres, and now the introduction Regional Specialist Hospitals.  THEY say the future is with local Polyclinics, no doubt another fancy name for the modern day equivalent of those original Cottage Hospitals?

 

It remains to be seen how successful these NHS reorganisations prove to be.

 

I wonder if the named individual members of the various trust committees and sub-committee members will be stand up and be counted to receive either commendation or condemnation …

They ...

Who are ya - Who are ya - Who are ya?!