Passport to where

Tweet The proposal to close the Newport Passport Office is a serious blow to jobs in that part of Wales. It would also, as a number of others have already pointed out, leave Wales without a passport office, and see all Welsh passport applications – including those submitted in Welsh – dealt with outside Wales.

An element of ‘special pleading’ on behalf of Wales is probably inevitable in a situation like this, but it leaves me a little uncomfortable. Not because I don’t think that Wales is, or should be, a special case, nor because I don’t want us to retain the passport office and the jobs going with it.

There is a danger, though, that ‘special pleading’ ends up sounding rather like ‘cut their jobs not ours’. And I’m not sure that an approach which starts to pit office against office is one which is in our own best long term interests.

I’m much more comfortable with an approach which asks why the cut is necessary at all. Are there really 300 people in the Passport service who are simply doing nothing? I find that hard to believe – so what’s the effect of cutting 300 jobs? Does it mean a reduced service - delays, backlogs?

One of the things which most concerns me about the programme of spending cuts is the extent to which it appears that most people are broadly supportive of cuts as long as they affect someone else. It’s a trap into which we should be wary of falling.

Inputs and Outputs

Tweet I worked for a boss once who gave me a very simple definition of productivity. It is, he said, output divided by input. The more output you get from a given input, the more productive you are.

Then there was another boss who told me that I made my job look really easy. I took it as a tremendous compliment and thanked him. He probably thought that I was compounding my sins with sarcasm - because with the benefit of hindsight, I came to realise that it was one of the most stinging criticisms he could make.

The company concerned had a strong culture of 'presenteeism'. Turning up after the boss or going home before him was a big no-no. What I was supposed to do, apparently, was work much longer hours, achieve less, and complain loudly about being overworked. Only then could they be certain that they were getting the most out of me. (And I've subsequently discovered in other contexts that doing less and complaining more generally leads to a higher level of recognition.)

I exaggerate – but only a little. There are far too many organisations which think that sweating their assets means getting the maximum input from them, rather than the maximum output. It's a deeply-ingrained culture, which is leading to higher and higher levels of stress-related absences. (It's also part of the rationale for the opposition of some people to things like the working hours directive.)

When the government talk about saving money in the public sector by not filling jobs (or by getting one person to do the same job in more than one council, as the Local Government Minister suggested this week) it can sound, superficially, like an easy answer. But unless the total workload reduces, it simply means that the individual workload goes up, and those left must do more to fill the gap. At a macro (organisational) level, that may well look like better efficiency or productivity; but at a micro (individual) level it's likely to result in the individuals having to work significantly longer hours for no gain in personal productivity.

Is that really the basis on which we want to run our public services?

Rehashed Thatcherism

Tweet I was a bit surprised by Glyn Davies’ post today on Cameron’s big speech. Surprised for two reasons actually.

Firstly, because I really didn’t think that Glyn did sycophancy. Secondly, and more importantly, because it looks as though Cameron is starting to do what he’s steadfastly refused to do to date – by which I mean define what he stands for. And purely from reading Glyn’s account of the speech, I can certainly see why he’s been avoiding it to date.

Glyn says that the basic premise was that "We need to start living within our means". Now where have I heard that before? Oh yes, I remember. That was the homely way in which Maggie Thatcher introduced us all to the ‘pleasures’ of monetarism. That, of course, was the creed which led to the demise of much of Wales’ heavy industry.

They are also going to attack the ‘bloated’ state, apparently. Reducing the size of the state means one (or both) of two things; cuts in services and cuts in jobs. During the Assembly election, the Tories locally were keen to show their support for the workers at HMRC threatened by job losses as a result of Gordon Brown's Civil Service cuts. A little dishonest from a party which is planning even larger cuts, isn't it? Mind you, in all fairness, I have to say that it sounded less than sincere at the time.

It seems that Mr Cameron also wants more ‘choice’ in public services. Another message with echoes from the past. Wasn’t it ‘choice’ which gave us the internal market in the health service? And the idea of opt-out schools?

As I always suspected would be the case, it’s going to be difficult to tell the new Tories from the old ones. And it underlines the case for an early referendum on a parliament, so that Wales, like Scotland, will be able to opt out of the re-hashed Thatcherism which Cameron is promising us.

I said earlier that I could see why Cameron had avoided defining any sort of position to date; what I can’t understand is why he’s starting to let the cat out of the bag now. Does he really think victory is that certain that even revealing the truth about the Tories can’t stop him?