X marks the spot

I do like voting, and today I made a point of going into the village hall and putting my X on the spot.  I have a clear memory of accompanying my Ma to another village hall several decades ago and watching her vote in a general election when I was knee-high to an opinion.  And then, four years ago, I was able to take someone to vote for the first time ever and see his excitement in taking part in the democratic process.  He expected queues, in a local election, bless him.  But in fact he had the right of it.

Voting matters.

It is the one thing that really frightens politicians.  For that reason alone, it matters.  But it matters for other reasons too.

People don’t believe there’s any point.  The anarchists used to say that if voting changed anything, it would be abolished.  The truth of that was brought home in London in the mid 1980s when Thatcher abolished the GLC and knocked out the only effective opposition, “Red” Ken in the glory days of County Hall.   The only act in recent western history that was worse than the abolition of the GLC was Bush’s theft of the Florida votes in 2000, and for the same reason.  It was politicians pissing on the electoral process.  It was politicians pissing on us.

Voting matters.

If it didn’t, Thatcher would never have abolished the GLC.  If it didn’t, Bush wouldn’t have needed to frig the results in Florida in 2000.

Voting matters.

This year, of all years, all over the world.  Most of the time, I will freely admit, it makes bugger-all difference to anything, but even so it matters because it’s the only way we have of reminding the bastards that it’s us they work for.

Surely this is the most interesting year for elections in decades, with the Obama / Clinton stand-off in the USA, Mugabe rigging the election in Zimbabwe and still failing to win, and our two most bizzarely characterful politicians arm-wrestling for London.

So today I voted, in an empty village hall with the spring sun shining benignly down on an idyllic view.

I voted because women died so that I can vote.

I voted because so many Kenyans were killed because they voted.

I voted because Mugabe so clearly lost, even though he’s claimed a victory.

I voted because that’s how we got rid of Portillo and Kinnock.

I voted because politicians hate elections.

I voted because I can.

Stats tart

Recently one of my MTAS posts has been topping my stats chart. It turns out that it is being sought out by scat-seekers because I had illustrated it with a stolen picture of a turd. Who’d have thought if you put “poop” into Google Images you’d get a link to a post giving my opinions of Ms Hewitt.

Satisfying though it is, I’ve renamed the picture “MTAS” and hopefully the scat-seekers will eventually go away. It pleases me to think that some may do what I did, nick the picture and use it elsewhere, and that eventually a search for “MTAS” will produce a picture of a heap of shit.

Casinos, clutter and compliments

This pleased me today: Brown scraps super-casinos.

Making gambling easier is such a bad idea I don’t know where to start. Colour me patronising, but there is a huge difference between putting a fiver on the gee-gees once in a while, and losing hours and days of your life and plunging profoundly into debt somewhere which is basically a forest of slot machines.

You see, the “Super-Casino” is not a matter of James Bond, Monte Carlo and sophisticated elegance, it is a matter of how many slot machines can you fit into one place and still have room for a bar. The bar is part of the business model – if people are sober they are more likely to know when to stop. At its simplest, what happens in Supercasinos is that people are drugged and robbed. Consensually, of course, but even so that’s what it boils down to.

The Blair government’s insouciant encouragement of the Supercasinos in the UK was one of the many things they did which disgusted me and made me uncomfortable here. It was a telling symptom of that particular regime’s impoverished imagination, lack of moral compass and cynical opportunism. Remember Cool Britannia? How smug and shallow was that?

Anyway – I’m not going to rant about something which is over and done with. I’m wary of Gordon Brown, but in this case I think he’s done well. It’s a bugger for Manchester and the other bidders, but it was their own greed that done them in, and in the long term the people there will be much better off without it.

At the moment it feels as if the kiddies have been sent home and the grown-ups are at last running the place.

I wonder how long it will last?

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I’m still de-cluttering. Today I got rid of three whole things and formally met some up-hill neigbours at the same time. Freecycle is a wonderful thing. I’ve been waving to these neighbours whenever I’ve seen them for two years but, being English, we haven’t actually – you know – spoken to each other. That would be forward of us. Well they wanted some of my stuff so I took it round, and now we’ve actually met, which is pleasing.

My boss asked me how old I was today and seemed really scunnered when I told him. He said “if you’d told me you were in your late 20s, I’d have thought you looked a bit rough but believed you”. It’s a compliment, I guess, but I had to laugh at the inelegance of it.

An anatomy of anger

Maybe I’ve just been lucky or maybe I’ve been unobservant, but I didn’t know that there were so many ways to feel anger.

I knew that there were many ways to feel happy; there’s the backwash of an endorphin rush generated by laughing for ages with friends about something very silly indeed; there is the animal feeling of well-being which comes from just enough of the right sort of exercise; there is the whooping feeling of joy when something longed-for actually happens, like good exam results. There is the feeling of emotions easing and relaxing when you spend a really enjoyable time doing nothing in the sunshine.

What I hadn’t known is that there are many ways to feel anger.

• There was the feeling of incoherent shock and stomach-sinking horror when Channel 4 revealed the MTAS security breaches which left me breathless and speechless
• There was the sharp feeling of brittle rage at the thought that those responsible for MTAS might destroy the project documentation to hide their accountability and incompetence.
• There has been the ongoing dull ache of anger that Blair and Hewitt were immovably in power, which has been superseded by a persistent feeling of uneasiness about who and what will replace them.
• There has been the sense of joint-aching frustration at the arrogance, disrespect and inhumanity of forcing doctors and their families to up-sticks and move to places they have no desire to be; separating partners, families and generations.
• There have been the sick waves of helpless horror at the administrative cruelties of people who made offers to the most vulnerable individuals – those who will never be permitted to apply for specialist training again – and then withdrawn them with no more than a curt explanation which has been no explanation at all.
• There has been the crawling distaste and visceral withdrawal from the bland complacency shown by the seniors who were happy to hang the whole world out to dry, juniors, patients, health service and all so long as they didn’t lose their chance of rimming Hewitt and Blair in exchanges for political favour.
• There was the pure blast of ice-burning rage at when Hewitt demanded – and got – costs

I had no idea there were so many ways to feel anger, but I guess the thesaurus should have warned me:

In the last six months? All of the above.

You can take the Health Secretary out of Andersens…

You can take the Health Secretary out of Andersens, but you can’t take Andersens out of the Health Secretary.

From the Guardian:

Mr Straw denied reports that officials shredded documents on the troubled NHS IT programme to stop them becoming public.

Mr Heath protested at “the decision of the Office of Government Commerce to destroy the gateway review documents on the cost of ID cards and other misdirected and mismanaged IT schemes”.

Mr Straw said: “My understanding is that these gateway reviews have not been destroyed.”

He said the Freedom of Information Act provided for a “whole series of exemptions” allowing the release of documents to be refused to “ensure the proper functioning of government”.

(If my sarcasm assumes too much prior knowledge, forgive me. Ms Hewitt used to be Research Director for Accenture, the consulting firm spawned by Arther Andersens. Andersens is most famous for shredding tonnes of evidence when one of their largest clients, Enron, collapsed taking Andersens down with them.)

MMC and MTAS – a direct appeal to Junior Doctors

This is a direct plea to junior doctors to hang on to their stethoscopes for at least another 6 months. These are the reasons why I really think it is worth it to hang on in there while the dust settles.

1. MTAS won’t be used next year – recruitment will be done locally
   • It cannot be fixed in time. I it would have to be up and working by October and 5 months simply isn’t long enough.
   • The next Secretary of State is NOT going to put their reputation on the line to try to save Patsy’s. They’ll ditch MTAS as fast as they can say “oh god, not health”.
2. MMC will be changed
   • I believe that those who don’t get a number this time, even at S3 level, will be given a second chance. How gutted would you be to leave now and then find you could have got a number if you’d stayed?
   • I cannot second-guess the outcome of the Tooke Review in the way I can second guess the canning of MTAS, but it is clear that MMC won’t remain the same.
3. You can leave but you can’t come back
   • If you wanted to become a Lawyer or work in the City you wouldn’t have spent the last 7, 10, 12, 15 years of your life working at becoming and being the best doctor you can be. Do you really want to give it up? Hang on in there for 6 or 12 months and stay current.
4. The grass isn’t necessarily greener
   • Face it, there aren’t 8,000 vacancies in the City or the Legal profession. I’ll admit that’s an argument for leaving sooner. But how shitty would it be to abandon a profession you love and are good at and end up being a grockle in another profession because the market just got flooded with doctors?
5. We still need doctors, and the locum rates will be pretty good while the dust settles
   • Face it, in the short term you will be able to get work. Intermittent, unreliable, below your level, in unfamiliar hospitals maybe. But you’ll be able to pay your mortgage and keep current while the dust settles.
6. You don’t know what the future will be like till you get there
   • Many years ago I was facing a future of divorce, personal bankruptcy, loss of my house and the loss of my business. Just contemplating it made me hyperventilate, set off a bout of hysterical screaming tears and gave me panic attacks. I – quite literally – could not think about that future. When I got there I didn’t go bankrupt but everything else I described did happen. None of it was as bad as I expected, and some of it was actually rather fun. I enjoy my life now, and am hugely happier and more settled than I was in the years leading up to that time. The point that I am making is that just now this seems like the end of the world. But in fact it is just a spectacularly unpleasant and traumatic episode in what will be a long and healthy life. When you are looking back on this, you will always think of it as a horrible time of enormous stress and uncertainty. But you will also realise that it was just a turning point, and that the rest of your life is the rest of your life.
7. If you can get a job in Australia, New Zealand or Canada go for it.
   • To be honest I’d give my eye teeth to be under 30 and going to live in any of those countries. They are great places to live and raise kids, and you would keep your options open.
     
     
8. If you hang on in there, you can still be a medic. If you leave now, you never will be again.

MMC – made simple

Here’s a simple, straight-forward and dignified explanation of MMC which I only just came across today:

It isn’t the StarWars tribute; it covers a much wider spread than that and it deserves a wider audience.

Vindictive Fucking Bitch

The Vindictive Fucking Bitch has demanded costs.

From the email update on the Judicial Review from Mums4Medics:

What leaves a particularly nasty taste in the mouth is that the lawyers for the Secretary of State have applied for costs against Remedy, and have made it clear that Ms Hewitt was directly involved in that decision. The judge was very unhappy about this, and suggested in the strongest possible terms that Counsel for the Secretary of State might like to ask his client to reconsider. Counsel indicated that reconsideration was not an option. Reluctantly, the judge awarded costs. To quote the immortal words of Francis Urquart, ‘You might call such an act vindictive, but I couldn’t possibly comment.’

I am so shocked by the bitch’s vindictiveness that I am sending Remedy another donation today – money well spent if you ask me. Click here if you wish to do the same.

PS – the expletives here are all my own unaided work. Mums4Medics are much wiser and politer than I am; only the words in the blue are theirs.

PPS – at least Remedy got under her skin; a thought which gives me a warm glow of satisfaction every time I think it.

Ain’t got no algorithm, baby

Just when I think I’ve got my head around the MTAS debacle, yet another thing happens which takes my breath away.

This, from Remedy’s website, reporting on the Judicial Review of MTAS:

Mr Greenfield states “The decision not to proceed with MTAS for matching candidates to training posts was taken as a result of recent security difficulties and the fact that the Defendant could not be certain that the algorithm necessary to operate the ‘single offer system’ would be effective.“

That statement, right there, is worth the cash I put in their fighting fund.

That’s me, breathless again.

What can you say?

What can you fucking say?

MTAS – The silent “SH” in Department of Health IT

Five out of eight reasons why IT projects fail come down to the the project team failing to understand how the system will be used or what it it should do – MTAS ran depressingly true to form.

I found an MTAS Milestones document on the web some time ago and didn’t know what to make of it. I still don’t. However, MTAS is now officially dead, so I’m going to critique it here before it disappears forever.

The document is a one-page timescale for the MTAS IT Project including the engagement of sub-contractors. There is much here that I am not qualified to comment on, but even so there are a few points that I find interesting.

One month (Oct 05) to scope and set up the project

Fairy nuff. There’s not enough information here to assess whether this is enough time or not.

One month (Nov 05) to initiate the project, set up project board and agree project brief

As above.

One month (Dec 05) to “agree requirements” and that month is December, so in effect you have only two weeks.

This is what has set my alarm bells ringing like klaxons. The Standish Group did a survey, admittedly in 1995, which discovered that five of the eight major reasons for IT project failure are requirements based. In other words if you don’t know what your users need, you won’t be able to build it. I could get rather tedious on this subject.

Let’s just say that I would allocate between 6 and 12 weeks for requirements gathering assuming that I had full access to representatives of those who might use the system. The first thing would be the conceptual stuff including the security of the system, (hah!), the amount and nature of the data, how would it be searched and sorted, how many users in total, how many users at once, and stuff like that. The next thing would be the step-by-step process, and the final stage would be a screen-by-screen storyboard.

You can see that this is not something that can be done in 2 weeks, and that you would need to speak to a very wide range of people including security specialists and sample end users, (sample Junior Doctors, sample Consultants, sample final year students).

This sounds to me like a system designed entirely in theory, with no reality checks or sanity checks from real people.

Four months (Jan-Apr 06) for the procurement cycle.

Four months to choose a supplier, and two weeks to say what they will be delivering? Yes, that is as insane as it sounds.

Five months to deliver (April-Sept 06).

This is the infamous “Miracle occurs here” step. There is nothing about taking the list of requirements and turning them into a design, nothing about building the system, nothing about testing it.

The DoH has kept for itself the luxury of time – a whole third of the time available has been allocated to picking a supplier. The poor supplier has had nothing like that wriggle room: they have had to design, build and test the system in less than half of the total time available.

Now, picking the right supplier is crucial, no doubt about it. But no matter how beautifully built a car is, no matter how gleaming the paintwork, how smooth the leather, how fast it goes from 0-60, it’s no bloody use if what you want is a tractor.

As I said, I am hesitant to rip this document to shreds; I have no idea whether it is a final copy or a draft, I have no idea what other documents supported or contradicted it, I’m not even an IT Project Manager. But I am both competent and qualified to comment on the idea of allocating only two weeks for requirements gathering.

If the rest of the project was as mad as that is, then it is a wonder the bloody thing lasted as long as it did.