One Barnet - Barnet Council believes program is not a concern to the public

Yet another dodgy DPR being snuck through today. This one is dealing with the transformation (ie Outsourcing of the revenues and benefits department of Barnet Council.

Here is the link

http://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s5245/1770%20-%20Transformation%20of%20the%20Revenue%20and%20Benefits%20service%20and%20transfer%20of%20staff%20to%20the%20Customer%20Contact%20Centre.pdf

The most interesting section is the Risk Management Issues in section 3. Here is what it says

3. RISK MANAGEMENT ISSUES

3.1 Failure to implement the proposed transfer of these services will have a significant impact on the successful delivery of the One Barnet programme’s overarching aim, to create a customer-centric council and deliver a fiscal saving.

3.2 To mitigate the risk presented through the outsource of a service that is not appropriately resourced, the proposed change will enable the establishing of a stable service, realising improved performance and financial savings pre transfer and presenting a suitable platform for the strategic partner to make agreed further improvements post transfer.

3.3 Careful consideration has been given to whether this transfer is likely to raise significant levels of public concern or comment or give rise to policy considerations. It is not anticipated that any concern or comment will be raised or that the transfer gives rise to policy consideration.

3.4 The transformation of the Revenue & Benefits operating design, including the realignment of resource and improvement in process, presents significant risk to mid term recovery rates. This risk will be mitigated through the retention of management resource in the form of a Transition Team (as set out below). This team will be made up of the four displaced senior managers who will project manage the transition process over the mid term to ensure sustained improvement can take place.

This is a wonderful piece of Barnet Council Doublespeak. They say in section 3.4 that the transfer is highly risky, with potentially a potentially disasterous impact on "mid term revenues" if it goes wrong. In section 3.3 it says that they don't expect this to raise any concern or comment.  Well here's one little bit of concern and comment. If it poses a risk and the service is working well at the moment, why on earth expose the taxpayers of Barnet to any risk at all. When the council say they don't expect public concern, have they actually bothered to ask? They are clearly being dishonest, because I see a thousand hits a day on my blog (and they can see that from the blog statistics on the right hand side of the page). In short, they are lying.

In short, what the document highlights is the inherent risk to council revenue posed by outsourcing the department. Their solution is to set up a team of "displaced managers". It sounds rather like one of Baldrick's "cunning plans" to me.  "Yes Blackadder, we'll take four displaced managers and set up a team to manage the transition. They will be really motivated, knowing they'll be on the scrapheap when it's all done!"

Are there really no sane and rational people in Nick Walkley's empire any more, who can see the obvious flaw in the plan? Does the Council Leader Richard Cornelius really believe that this is a sensible scheme? Lord help us all if he does.

Brian Coleman standards case - the aftermath and the cunning plan conspiracies

I was intrigued to see the deputy leader of the Zionist Federation, Jonathan Hoffman post an article on the Jewish Chronicle yesterday, following the Brian Coleman standards hearing. You can read this here :

http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/brian-coleman-acquitted-disrepute-charge

I guess the question I have to ask myself is this. How exactly has Brian Coleman helped the causes which Mr Hoffman espouses, by failing to treat Barnet residents with respect? I have read the committee papers in full (I even posted them on this website a couple of months ago). I fully understand that Mr Hoffman does not like the case Dr Jago and Mr Cohen were making. I also understand that if they had made their comments to Mr Hoffman, he would have responded in far harsher tones. The point is that he is a private individual and has not signed up to the standards code of Barnet Council.

When we discussed the matter, Mr Hoffman suggested that the complainants were "baiting Brian Coleman" and seeking exactly the response they received. If this is the case, wasn't it an extraordinarily naive response from an experienced politician? Mr Hoffman suggested that there had been a concerted effort put into provoking Mr Coleman, purely to elicit such a response. Given that Mr Cohen and Dr Jago have won their case and managed to get Brian Colemans face plastered on all the papers for breaking the rules, surely this will only act as encouragement to similar campaigns in future? I daresay that I am the last person that Brian Coleman would ever listen to, but surely a few of his friends should take the time to explain the fact that when he behaves in this manner, he damages all of the causes he claims he supports?

Mr Hoffman asked me whether I thought Brian Coleman should stand idly by and let people send him emails which he found to be repulsive? That is actually a rather simple question to answer. He had a choice. he could have deleted them. This would have been the most effective course of action. If you get no response at all, then you'd soon conclude that it was pointless emailing someone. The point of view of the people winding him up would never have seen the light of day. If he really felt so strongly that he had to respond, he could have sent a perfectly polite response, detailing why he considered the people who were emailing him to be wrong headed. Surely as someone who is well acquainted with the background to the case (otherwise why get so upset) and a seasoned politician, knocking up a few sentences (which could be cut and pasted into numerous replies) would have sufficed. Had he said "Thank you for your email. I am sorry to say that I fundamentally disagree with you and have nothing more to say on the subject" would have sufficed. What would have happened then? Well for one thing, the arguments of those people he disagreed with, would not have received widespread coverage. If, as Coleman alleges, the emails were part of a campaign to elicit a response, the campaign would have failed. Just suppose Mr Cohen and Dr Jago had sat around cooking up a cunning plan to discredit Brian Coleman and his support for Israel, just what would they have done?

Cohen : "I have a cunning plan, lets send an email to Brian Coleman asking him to blacklist a company that does work in Israel, he'll get really cross and send a rude a reply and we can report him to the standards committee"

Jago : "Wow, that's a really cunning plan, he won't see that coming, I'll get all my mates to email him as well, then we can all report him"

Cohen : "Just think, he'll be all over the local papers an look really stupid"

Jago : "Ha Ha Ha, aren't we evil geniuses"

That seems to be the proposition Brian Coleman has come up with. Mr Hoffman explained that Brian Coleman had only sent his angry response after he'd received a hundred or so similar emails.  I've no idea what the truth of all of this is, but it seems that Coleman, Mr Hoffman and friends are all signed up to the cunning plan conspiracy theory. The sad thing is that none of them seem to accept that Brian Coleman was a tad silly falling for it.

Lets just hope that this time, Brian Coleman actually bothers to take up the training to stop him being tripped up by cunning plan conspiritors. I've no idea how much his boorish behaviour has cost the taxpayer, but please Brian, learn to behave.

Of course, maybe Brian Coleman had a cunning plan of his own? How would this go?

Brian Coleman : "I have a cunning plan, I'll send some rude email responses. Last time that got me on telly. They say all publicity is good publicity and God knows I need some at the moment with all of the parking cock ups I've made in Barnet"

Perish the thought. How much has it all cost the taxpayer?