Croydon Health Services NHS is about to advertise for a new Chief Executive. This isn’t unusual. It’s been a troubled Trust on and off for a while, formed from the merger of Mayday Healthcare NHS Trust with Croydon Community Health Services. It operates University Hospital Croydon along with lots of Community Services, and a Community Hospital. The … Read more
The public sector outsourcing market died another death this week with the news that the UK’s Probation Services (or Offender Management as they are now called by wacky bureaucrats) will all come back in house: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/16/part-privatisation-probation-sevices-to-be-reversed-offender-management-nationalised-chris-grayling This isn’t entirely news as the problems with Criminal Justice outsourcing have been know about for several years: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/15/probation-reforms-put-public-at-higher-risk … Read more
One of the greatest ever papers published in a history journal was written by Jan Vansina for the Journal of African History Vansina makes the very simple argument that the abolition of slavery increased labour costs. These increased labour costs in turn made it more attractive to invest in mechanisation and industrialisation. And the increased … Read more
First of all an apology. There is a lot on at work, and a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes, and this has got in the way of blogging. The data from the last set Social Attitudes Survey is out, and people aren’t happy with the NHS. This might not come as a surprise … Read more
People in the NHS continually complain about re-organisations. The endless churn and change of job titles, letterheads and lanyards. The reason for this continual mess can be traced back to the original sin of NHS management – the introduction of the internal market – the purchaser/provider split in the 80s. Pretty much ever re-organisation since … Read more
Yet another outsourcing company gets into trouble. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/16/unions-condemn-chris-grayling-disastrous-part-privatisation-of-probation-working-links I don’t think that many people will be sad to see the back of Working Links as they lose their probation services contract. It looks like they might not be the only ones to lose their contract in the weeks to come – of the 21 Community … Read more
Big Pharmaceutical companies aren’t very popular. You may have spotted this. Right now the firm in the spotlight is Vertex, who are announcing a tidy increase in profits, while the NHS squabbles to afford their new Cystic Fibrosis drug Orkambi. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/10/vertex-revenue-hike-orkambi-drug-nhs Before I start giving the pharmaceutical industry a kicking lets start with a few … Read more
A month ago I wrote about the weird world of Student Loans and how they are accounted for by the Government. /https://jon-chadwick.com/2018/11/17/the-great-student-loans-swindle-its-a-swindle-a-swindle/ Today the Office of National Statistics published their review of Student Loans accounting, which makes some big changes to how the Government calculates the deficit (but not national debt) https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2018/12/17/accounting-for-student-loans-how-we-are-improving-the-recording-of-student-loans-in-government-accounts/ In short an … Read more
My last full length blog was a deep dive into the weird world of student loans financing, a mess so big that it will take years to unwind. Two people separately approached me and raised the issue of the Apprenticeship levy. You know who you are. For those who don’t follow education policy the levy … Read more
A few months ago I wrote about the collapse of Carillion, and drew comparisons between their collapse and the Government outsourcing industry in general. https://jon-chadwick.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=946&action=edit This week Interserve have announced they are negotiating a financial recovery package. This news led their shares to slump to 24p each, down from 660p 3 years ago. Interserve turn … Read more