Keir Starmer tells regulators to chill as Microsoft exec takes wheel of advisory council UK prime minister Keir Starmer promised to make the nation's competition regulator more inclined toward economic growth the day after a Microsoft executive was appointed chair of the government's Industrial Strategy Advisory Council. At the UK's International Investment Summit, attended by Google owner Alphabet, insurance …
Meanwhile, Diabetics cannot get it for love or money
Yup.
I'd be on it now (25+ years of being T2 diabetic and the regular stuff is losing effectiveness) but my GP can't be assured of continuity of supply.
In his words: "it's all going to the people that don't medically need it but can afford it rather than to the people that *actually* need it"
Then they will mandate that every one HAS to use Windows 11 if they want to do any business online with the Government. The systems will detect refuzniks and make sure that all requests are refused or simply ignored as not conforming to government standards which naturally will require 'Top Secret' security clearance to read in its entirety. Said standards will be stored at GCHQ in a sharepoint system.
This will not end well.
Isn't that the brief of the Department of Administrative Affairs?
We'll get rid of all this excessive bureaucracy, by forming a new government department, tasked with finding all the cruft in all the other departments and er, weeding it out, with a broken toothpick
>I think the government need to take a lesson from P&O as far as the NHS is concerned. Fire everyone and then re-hire the medical staff and useful admin staff leaving the bureaucrats standing in the rain getting cold.
Which would then leave the medical staff doing the bureaucratery and spending less time doing medical stuff. The bureaucrats are usually there for a reason....
A large number of the current bureaucrats are there as a result of the previous government's way of "improving" the NHS, which means more admin overhead for everyone, as we all know what happens when there's too many managers, and not enough workers or resources.
"re-hire the medical staff and useful admin staff"
You did see this in the OP right? Everyone knows you need admin staff or no has any equipment and patients don't get where they're supposed to be to meet with medical staff at the right time, we don't need a load of overpaid admin consultants wasting tax payers money implementing schemes and projects simply to justify their £125k pay packets!
It'll be National Service next.
Giving a whole lot, indeed a whole generation, of seriously pissed off young people guns, military drones, artillery etc etc and training them to use the stuff might not turn out quite as envisaged. But please don't let me dissuade anyone.
On the upside if they get the proper training then when they get back to civvy street at least they'll only shoot each other, most likley hit each other and not innocent bystanders!
Seriously, given how weak and feckless the current woke generations are, I think a mandatory year in the army or two years in the civil service would give a lot of young people a good kick up the arse. My nephew is a waste of space, studied a CS degree at uni which finished in 2015 and he hasn't done a day's work since, sits around at home all day while his mum fusses over him!
In order to prevent abuse by all those naughty rats, weasels, stoats and escaped mink, a law will be passed to mandate an approved-standard sack diverter mechanism installed over the portal. The standard will incorporate Mr Fox's patent mechanism for preventing any sacks other than his own from being taken in there. The sack diverter will remain Mr. Fox's own property, with the annual rental, license and support fees being, in his words, "Very reasonable and sustainable."
The joke is that there is more truth in the on-going jokes in YM & YPM than anyone would like to admit.
The civil service prime directive is to perpetuate the *need* for the civil service.
Each new govt gives the opportunity to *prove* this to a set of new MP's.
Govts change *but* the civil service goes on for ever !!!
:)
Don't want to bring up the "B" word, but I tried explaining the notion that "unelected officials" is exactly how government works in the UK. It seems a large portion of the country is under the assumption that governments make laws and decisions. The Civil Service is very good at perpetuating that myth, to be fair...
"... someone who knows what they're doing ..."
There are 'galactic scale' assumptions being made *IF* that is refering to the Civil Service !!!
Recent example to ponder ... HS2 ... say no more !!!
A text book example of how *NOT* to perform a major infastructure project and that is ignoring the whole concept as an idea to begin with !!!
The gain/cost ratio (real not imagined) is so skewed towards Zero to be almost indistinguishable.
The country will be paying for this for decades to come. !!!
Yet despite the huge cost, it would appear that the govt will spend a *little* [Ha!!!] bit more to give Euston Station a quick refurb to allow HS2 to end there which the rest of the country, of course, thinks is MUCH more important that modernising the Trains north of Watford/Manchester/Preston/etc/etc. !!!
:)
The high level decisions are made by the politicians and we've had a long run of advanced Dunning-Kruger syndrome there. HS2 was, I realised when it was proposed, a solution to today's problem in a few decades time. Detailed regulation, OTOH, quite often comes from someone in the Civil Service or an agency who actually does know about the domain. There are obviously exceptions: I formed the view in about 1967 that the Ministry of Labour as I think it then was ran the forerunners of Job Centres staffed all too often by people who were on the wrong side of the counter and subsequent contact with their DWP successors at a higher level did not inspired a revision.
It seems a large portion of the country is under the assumption that governments make laws and decisions. The Civil Service is very good at perpetuating that myth, to be fair.
I believe that Sir Humphrey said something along the lines of government believing that they made decisions, and the civil service's job was to keep up that impression whilst preventing them from actually doing anything.
A lack of regulation was one of the factors behind the Grenfell Tower disaster.
The watering down of financial regulation led to the 2008 bank crash.
So the government is ignoring history to make a quick buck in its term in office but storing up potential liabilities in the longer term future.
Why do we end up with monkeys like this ? Not that the Tories would be any better.
Nope, the manufacturer provided the fire rating of an entirely different product.
The one that got installed failed an internal test in a completely horrific way, but that result was buried and only came out during the inquiry.
They aren't the only organisation that needs to be in the dock though.
A theory I've put forward elsewhere (professionally) is that we are doomed to repeat our mistakes every 10-20 years. We find ways to improve on processes and implement them without finding out why those processes are like that. A basic rule for engineering change is to return to the originator (insofar as is possible) before making changes.
Often, what is now seen as wasteful or inefficient (a safety mechanism, for want of a better term) was implemented to avoid earlier, and costly, mistakes being repeated. However, because it works, those now in power have not had to experience that costly mistake being repeated. So the "inefficient" safety mechanism is removed...
In business, the cycle I've seen is around 10-15 years, and I attribute that to the time somebody remains in a particular post as around 5 years. When they hand over to their successor(s), they will identify their successful interventions and the next generation will know to leave the "safety mechanisms" alone. Unfortunately, when *they* subsequently move on, they won't have sufficient ownership of them to highlight to the next generation. Corporate knowledge management being what it is (almost non-existent in any really useful form) rarely intervenes. It's not an exact science and it might need further generation or two before the situation comes back to bite - but few fixes are left to stay fixed.
When I originally wrote about it, many years ago, I coined the term "hystery" - a bastardisation of hysteresis and history (it seemed logical at the time :)
I've long been of the view that when a process is devised and written down the rationale should be written down with it. It not only keeps that corporate knowledge from being lost, it also underlines the need for revising the process when the circumstances on which the rationale is predicated change.
Dr S, I’ve seen that approach taken (even used it myself) but it rarely works much better. I’ve investigated problems, only to discover something like this had been done, and then be discounted several years later with the rationale that the original problem had gone away. It takes a lot to persuade the gatekeeper (or high heid yins, or powers that be) to block a “well argued” cost saving because of the risk of something that hasn’t yet happened under their watch.
It often comes down to a poor understanding of risk; statistics is a classic example for demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect.
"A theory I've put forward elsewhere (professionally) is that we are doomed to repeat our mistakes every 10-20 years."
Having been with my current employer over 20 years, I've seen and experienced it multiple times, especially when outside consultants are brought in. Despite employees like me pointing out the inevitable and getting to say "I told you so" afterwards :-/
I wonder if the advice is going to say that all of government and business should move all their IT to cloud services such as Azure and Office 365 by some absolutely massive fucking coincidence.
"We will rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment," [Starmer] said. "We will march through the institutions and we will make sure that every regulator in this country – especially our economic and competition regulators – takes growth as seriously as this room does."
What, did tRump write this? All that's missing is a few words in ALL CAPS.
Bureaucracy blocking IT investments? That would be the lack of large power supply connection points, and yet more telecomms fibres?
I would suggest outfits like OpenReach are both part of the problem and the solution; their problems, are the IT sectors problems?
Labour's plans for the power sector are clear as mud, and in our local experience the old guard of Tory appointees at the top of Of* are still there, clueless, and doing more to create problems for utilities than solve them.
Makes Jeremy look much better eh? Imagine if someone with actual socialist principles was in Kier's position. Then you'd get change.
None of you want actual change 'cos you're on the right side of the poverty divide.
You bitch and moan about the government but when you had a chance to actually do something different you bottled.
In a democracy we get the government we deserve.
100% agree. Tory-lite is still tory. There's time yet for Kier to make the tough decisions and, let's be honest, until we see the content of the budget at the end of the month we won't really know how much of a change he is willing to attempt.
Seeing Truss destroyed for messing with things "the finance sector said she shouldn't mess with" is I am sure, as much of a concern to Kier and his job security as it should have been for the lettuce.
Another 4-5 years of failure and the popularity of the "extremes" will only rise even more, and that scares the crap out of me with Reform being what it is. It should be scaring everyone else too.
"You bitch and moan about the government but when you had a chance to actually do something different you bottled."
You think "we" should have voted Tory? Or Lib Dem? Or for Farages outfit? Or are you saying "we" are to blame for Labour ousting Corbyn? I genuinely don't understand what you think "we" should have done. Care to elaborate?
I wonder if part of the "less regulation" approach, rather than being aimed at things like less AI regulation, might include making it easier for private SMR nuclear power for DCs. Currently I'm unclear on what the regs are around this and MS, Google and AWS have all expressed intent to power DCs with SMRs. After a chat with a friend who works on these for a major engineering firm current regs are fairly unclear on how these could be legally deployed by private companies and where.
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