Happiness at work

BBC Breakfast are talking about a survey on what makes people happy at work. Usual stuff, apparently none of us are bothered about money but we all want regular feedback (not sure if the survey was deliberately biased, accidentally badly written or just totally fictional). I emailed int he below comment:

I think it varies from person to person, and from time to time for the same person, what makes them happy at work. It also probably depends a lot on the other pressures in their life.

For some people it's more money, for others it's a short commute. For some it's regular praise, for others it's varied and interesting work. For some it's the opportunity to meet people and work with them, for others it's the opportunity to shut themselves away in a room full of computers and only interact with people outside their immediate team by email.

Whilst much derided, more money may bring happiness as it allows you to support your family, finance activities that make you happy or support a charity or cause that is important to you. Money itself may not make you happy but what you can do with it does.

Probably too long (and too true) for them to read.

Very annoyed with Virgin Media

Each week end for the last few weeks my dial up internet has been failing. Either no dial tone or get engaged tone when I dial up. My phone and Internet are both through Virgin Media so I've been calling their customer service line. Calling at the weekend, when the problem happens, is a disaster as only their Indian call centre is on duty so it's 40 minutes navigating their IVR and on hold to finally get through to someone who can't understand my accent or deal with anything that isn't in their script, who eventually says they're passing me to someone who can resolve the problem then another 30 minutes on hold when their system finally drops the call. I finally got through this morning and spoke to someone with a faint Scottish accent who could understand my Brummie accent. She called up their internet support section who said I'd have to call them direct on the premium rate number. This was 08:14 (according to the clock on BBC Breakfast). I called the nujmber they gave me only to get a recorded message to say that their office doesn't open until 08:00 (i.e. about quarter of an hour ago). I waited about 5 minutes and called back but just got the same message.

I do think that there's something seriously wrong with making a technical support line premium rate. This is something that is clearly a problem at their end, I'm calling their internet dial-up number and getting an engaged tone. This should not happen, yet they want to charge me to resolve it!

Not happy, very annoyed.

Public sector workers and skills

On BBC breakfast this morning they had someone in who was talking about how public sector workers tend not to know how to sell their skills on the job market as well as private sector workers do. I emailed this in but as it's probably too long to get read on air I figured I'd post it here:

I have worked in both public and private sector over the past 15 years, everything from SME employing 50 people to big multi-national company or local council employing tens of thousands. The biggest difference I've found, in relation to skills, in comparing working in the public and private sectors is one of variety and career path.

I've found that in the private sector, in all but the smallest of companies, you are usually quite restricted in the work that you do and the skills you are expected to apply. You are also likely to have a fairly clear career path in terms of knowing where you are and what skills you need to develop to move to the next level up.

In the public sector career paths are less clear and you are typically expected to pick up a broad range of tasks and skills quite quickly and to a fairly high level. many of the consultants I've worked with have been surprised at how myself and my colleagues have switched around roles with a project and between different projects.

I think the driver here is around the restrictions on hiring. In the private sector if you know you need someone with a particular skill set for 6 months then you'll probably negotiate funding from your manager for a temporary contract, hire someone through an agency and that's it. In the public sector it can take 3-4 months to get approval for a temporary contract, another 3-4 to have the job description agreed and checked by HR and legal then 2-3 months to do the actual hiring as even if you go through an agency you usually have to advertise publicly as well for equalities reasons. Usually much quicker and easier to just grab an existing member of staff and tell them that it's now their responsibility, if they don't know how they should just look it up on the web (in their own time) or buy a book (at their own expense).

If public sector workers have difficulty explaining their skills it's probably because they have had to develop, use and discard such a variety that it's more of a question of which skills they should be talking about.

Really the biggest skill a public sector worker has is adaptability!

Why I think you should vote Yes to AV

I have seen a lot of misinformation and disinformation in the media of late from those who oppose the proposed Alternative Voting (AV) system. I figured I'd post why I think the UK should switch to AV and people should vote yes in the coming referendum. First a little disclaimer...

A Little Disclaimer
Whilst I am a grassroots member of a UK political party this is by me as an individual, it has not been requested or endorsed by that or any other political party. I have been a member of various organisations that have used electoral systems similar to the proposed AV system and seen it in action, I have helped to run elections using the Single Transferable Vote system. I have read the leaflet from The Electoral Commission that has been sent to each household explaining how AV works. My view that the UK should adopt AV and the below is based on my own experiences and the information contained in that leaflet. I recommend that you read the leaflet.

I really do recommend that you read the leaflet
Seriously, it's a quick read and gives a very good explanation of the differences between the current system and the proposed AV system. If you haven't received yours yet, or maybe the hamster ate it, you can get a copy and even more information from here.

What is the current system and what is wrong with it?
The current system is called "First Past the Post". It's pretty simple really. Everyone has one vote and casts it by marking a piece of paper (usually with a cross) against the name of the person they want to vote for. After the polls have closed the papers are separated according to whose name has been marked and counted. Who ever gets the most votes wins. Simple and all well and fine and good where there's only two candidates or choices. You vote for one or the other (or you could spoil your ballot or just not bother to vote). There are a couple of really major problems with this system where there are three or more candidates (from memory there's usually around 7 or 8 in the constituency I live in) in that it often returns a candidate most people don't like (or at least would prefer someone else) and penalises minor parties.

Suppose there are 6 Candidates on the ballot. Candidate A receives 20% of the vote, candidate B gets 19.9%, candidate C 19.1%, candidate D gets 15.1% of the vote, candidate E gets 14.9% of the vote and candidate F gets 10%. Under first past the post candidate A is declared the winner. But just a sec, 80% of those who voted said they wanted someone other than candidate A. 80%! That's a lot, well over half. Also candidate B was only 0.1% of the vote behind candidate A, nearly as many people wanted them although slightly more wanted someone else (but not necessarily candidate A). OK so figures like that are uncommon and probably unlikely. What is quite common is the winning candidate polling only 30-40% of the vote and their nearest competitor being only slightly behind (i.e. marginal seats).

The current system penalises minor parties by dissuading their supporters from voting for them. When there are 6 or 7 or 8 or 10 or 15 (the maximum I've seen on one ballot) candidates then unless you think that your preferred candidate has a good chance of being in the top 3 you might think that you are throwing your vote away. You'd be right. Under the current system voting for a minor party candidate is the equivalent of writing "I am a fish" across your ballot paper. This means that a lot of people vote for a party they maybe don't like but dislike less than the other two parties in the top 3. Some candidates plays this up and and include in their election material "These parties have no chance here, don't vote for them. Vote for us else the [some party they think the voters will see as a threat] will get in." In my example above the party that candidate F belongs to might actually have quite a bit of support, maybe enough to turn that 10% into 20.1%. They don't get the votes because a lot of their supporters think they don't have a chance so vote for a different party, no-one ever knows how much support they really have because their supporters are afraid of wasting their vote and think that if they vote for the party they like that will allow the party they hate to get in.

So what's the alternative and why is it better?
The leaflet gives a much better explanation than I can but here's a summary. Same names on the ballot paper, same ballot box. This time rather than just putting an X (although you can still do that if you really want) you can now rank the candidates in order of preference. You don't have to rank them all, but you can if you want, you can just rank your top few and leave the rest unmarked. When the polls close the ballots are collected as before and sorted but this time according to who has the first preference marked on each (an X or a 1) and these are counted. If a candidate gets 50%+1 or more of the votes then they are the winner and the process stops, we have a candidate that more then half of the people who voted wanted. Quite likely there may be a candidate who has more votes than any one other candidate but less than 50% of the total vote. In that situation the candidate who got the least votes is disqualified an their votes checked for second choices. If there's no second choice then the ballots are discarded (i.e. put away, they're not thrown away) but those where there is a second choice expressed are added to the appropriate pile and to the total for those candidates. If one candidate now has 50%+1 or more of the vote then they are the winner and the process stops, if not then the candidate who now has the least votes is disqualified and their votes checked for second, third, fourth &c preferences. They will then be added to the pile (and count) for the candidate who got second preference unless that candidate has been disqualified in which case they will be added to the pile and count for the third preference and so on, papers with no valid preferences are discarded. This continues until either one candidate has 50%+1 or more of the votes or, rarely, there are no further preferences so no more transfers can be made.

The advantages of this system are that the winning candidate is almost always going to have been a high preference for over half of the voters (in my experience the winning candidate is usually one who was first or second in the first count) and it gives supporters of minority parties to express their first preference but still vote for a majority party (who they like but not as much as the minority party) as second choice so reducing the risk of the opposing majority party (who they hate) getting in.

But doesn't this mean some people get more than one vote?
No! I've heard this claim being made on TV by the 'No' campaigners. It's disinformation to scare people into thinking that AV is an attack on democracy. It isn't, if anything it promotes true democracy. Everyone still only has one vote and only one vote. It's that that one vote can be transferred to a second preference if the first preference comes last.

Might this let an extremist candidate win an election?
Possibly. Yes it is possible that a candidate from an extremist party could get in if they poll at least 50%+1 of the vote in their constituency. That is how democracy is supposed to work, the candidate who most people want to win should win. If you don't think a candidate should win then vote against them and get out and campaign against them. Get a blog, get a soap box, get active. That is how democracy should work. Also, bear in mind that an extremist can win with just 20, 30 or 40% of the vote under the current system so long as the rest of the vote is sufficiently fragmented.

Splitting PDFs

Had a bit of a change today. There's a report that produced weekly at work, as a PDF file, for all our projects. Basically a highlight/checkpoint report. Problem is that there's hundreds of projects and we don't want project managers to have to go through the whole list to find the one or two pages that impact them (they just won't). We were looking to split the file by project so each project manager would only have to look at the reports for their own project. Fortunately each project is bookmarked in the PDF so we had something we could split on.

I was tasked with finding a suitable product. After looking at a few dozen I finally settled on A-PDF Split. I particularly liked the way you can control the output filenames with macros.

NitroPDF was a close second but cost a lot more, fine if you want the extra functionality (it does more than split) but we didn't need that, and didn't have such good control on the output filenames. The majority of the other products were total 'dog with three legs', many just didn't work at all or threw up loads of errors. A-PDF Split does what we need and doesn't cost much. There's also a command line version for if you need to do offline batch processing, but there's no trial version of that so I couldn't try it.

Emailing councillors about missing drain grids

Emailed my local councilors (via WriteTothem):

Dear Daphne Gaved, David Osborne and David Willis,

I am writing to you about a failure of the council to deal with a dangerous situation in a timely manner.

On Wednesday 2nd February 2011 I noticed that the grids had been removed from a number of drains near my home,. specifically 2 on Medley Road near the corner with Gough Road and one on Tomey Road near the corner with Holte Road. Whilst two of these (the one on Tomey road and one of those on medley Road) had barriers around them (marked as belonging to, and presumably being put there by, Amey, the council's contractor for road maintenance and repair), one was just left open. This was logged and I was given a job reference number of 80035851110.

When there was no change by Friday (as a minimum I was hoping that someone would come and put barriers around open drain) I submitted a report to the council through the website FixMyStreet (http://www.fixmystreet.com/report/161865) on 4th February. We are now nearly 4 weeks from the initial report and the only change I have seen is that it appears that a bin sack has fallen or been put into the open drain and that the barriers around the open drain on Tomey Road keep falling over.

Could you please follow this up and at least have the issue with missing and insubstantial barriers be resolved.

Thank you


Stephen

If that doesn't work my only option will be Ed Doolan.

Economic Loss

Just sent this in to BBC Breakfast regarding an item they had on this morning.

If you look at the economies, such as India, that are now growing and taking work that used to be done here, the common factor seems to be training. For getting on for 40 years the Indian government has been pouring money into education and training. Indian universities now graduate more Computer Science Honours graduates each year than there are people working in the UK. Meanwhile our government is slashing education funding, raising the cost of education and cutting down or off financial support for students. Is it any wonder we're slipping behind?

Apparently a number of companies are looking for massive government investment.

Relativity and all that

Just watched a documentary about galaxies. They mentioned something called Dark Energy that acts opposite to Dark Matter. Apparently Dark Energy repulsive powers will eventually overcome the attractive powers of Dark Matter and cause galaxies to move apart faster than the speed of light. This reminded me of something I've never really been able to fully get my head around.

Suppose you are standing on planet A, you can see two other planets, X and Y in opposite directions (so if you drew a straight line from X to Y it would pass through a):

X----------A---------Y

X and Y start traveling away from you in opposite directions at 100kph. In the frame of reference of planet A each are traveling at 100kph in opposite directions, you might represent this as a vector of 100kph and -100kph in the X-Axis or X(100,0,0) and Y(-100,0,0). If one goes to the X frame of reference then we see A moving away at 100kph and Y at 200kph. Easy enough to model with a long straight road, two cars and a few of those speed guns the police use, maybe Top Gear will give it a go some day.

Speed (or velocity) is just distance traveled over time or increase in distance between two points (one designated as fixed in the frame of reference). So when we say that X and Y are traveling away from A at 100kph were actually saying that in the A frame of references the distance between X and A and between Y and A is increasing by 100km for every hour that elapses. In the X frame of reference The distance between X and A is increasing at 100km each hour and the distance between X and Y is increasing by 200km each hour.

Now suppose we increase the speed, in the A frame of reference, to 5.395x10^8kph. Back in the X frame of reference A is now whizzing away at 5.395X10^8kph and Y at 1.079x10^9kph. Thing is that if we increase the speed, in the A frame of reference, whilst in the X frame of reference the speed of A will increase the speed of Y will remain at 1.079x10^9kph because that is the speed of light in free space (c) and is the top speed matter can attain.

Now say we increase the speed in the the A frame of reference to c and measure the distance between our 3 planets (we'll call that T0) then measure the distance again an hour later (T1). Say at T0 the distance between A and both X and Y is 1.079x10^9km so the distance between X and Y will be 2.158x10^km:

X--------A---------Y

After one hour the distance, still in the A frame of reference, from A to X would now be 2.158x10^9, same as from A to Y, whilst the distance from X to Y would be 4.316x10^9km as both gave been traveling away from A at 1.079x10^9kph:

X--------------------A--------------------Y

In the X frame of reference, however, whilst A has been traveling away at 1.079x10^9 Y has also been traveling away at only 1.079x10^9kph, not at 2.158x0^9kph, as that is the maximum speed of matter. Therefore whilst the distance from X to A has increased to 2.158x10^9km to distance fro X to Y in the X frame of reference will be 3.237x10^9km:

X-------------------A----------Y

That's what confuses me.

Living longer and funding education

BBC Breakfast are running two stories this morning, as separate and distinct stories, which appear to be linked. I emailed in a comment. Unfortunately as my comment ran rather long I doubt they will read it out, I'm reproducing it here.

You appear not to have noticed but two of the stories you're running this morning seem to be linked. The stories are that more people are going to live to 100 and the comparison between students of the baby boomer generation who had free university education and the current (and last) generation who have had to pay.

SAGA say that older people need to work to supplement their income, this of course removes jobs that younger people could have taken up. Your interviewee on free education enjoyed by baby boomers says that had 40% of her generation gone to university they may have had to pay for their education. If older people are to work longer then something must be done with the younger people who cannot then find work. Investing in education (vocational as well as academic) is an excellent way to keep them off the job market longer, maybe change from a working life of 15 to 65 to one of 25 to 75. This would also address the skills shortage we have had in this country since the 1980s and reduce our reliance on skilled migrant workers, or maybe balance the migrants coming in with our own citizens migrating overseas where their particular skills are needed.

We seem to have a choice. Either subsidise young people to stay in education longer and off the job market or subsidise older people to leave the job market and enjoy 30+ years of retirement. I suspect the former would be better for the long term economy. Alternatively we all move to part-time/job-share working and all take a hit over our entire careers.

Just had a thought about dealing with road tax evasion and uninsured/unMOTed drivers/cars

My manager was just talking about how in sonme continental countries the tax, MOT and insurance certificates are a single document and you can't MOT your car until it's taxed and insured. She suggested that we should implement that here.

It gave me an idea!

Currently in the UK you cannot tax your car until you have an MOT and insurance. If, therefore, you don't tax your car you can get away with no MOT or insurance. My idea is to turn the tax disc into a 2 part document. Retain the current paper disc but add a smart card. Compel all petrol retailers to attach a reader for the card to their pumps (maybe offer grants and/or loans to smaller retailers, in particular in areas where there is restricted availability of petrol retailers). If the card is not inserted the pump will not dispense fuel. The card would store the date the next MOT is due, which garage did the last MOT, the date the insurance is due for renewal, who the insurance is with and type of fuel the car takes (so if you pick up the wrong nozzle the pump can warn you and not dispense fuel until you pick up the correct nozzle or acknowledge the message), maybe reg number, make and model of the car. It could also store when you filled up, how much fuel you had and how much it cost, some retailers may want to offer a service to print off your fuel use for you. If the tax, MOT or Insurance is more than a month overdue the pump either won't dispense fuel or will only dispense a small quantity. I am not suggesting that any central database be kept linking cards to petrol purchases so 'Database State' whiners don't need to get all het up.

The result of this would be that if you don't have a current MOT and insurance you can't buy fuel, or can only buy a small amount. Essentially it's enforcing the rule that if you want to drive you have to do so legally.

The main hole I can see is that people may use the card for one car with another so they might have one car which is taxed, insured and MOTed and use the card to fill up one that isn't and whilst the card may show that the car is insured it doesn't guarantee that the person currently driving it is insured. A smaller hole is that some retailers may use the card as a way to gather marketing information and to make offers, "Hey, you're insurance is up for renewal. Would you like us to get you a quote?" Even that could be an advantage as insurers (and quote websites such as confused.com &c)could put vending machines in petrol stations and other locations to allow people to buy or upgrade their insurance by inserting their card and just tapping in relevant details such as the type of insurance needed and who will need to be insured.

Directly elected mayor for Birmingham?

It seems that Birmingham is to get a referendum on whether to have an elected mayor. A number of people have expressed interest in the role, including Yardley MP John Hemming.

I like the idea of a directly elected mayor. A major weakness of the current structure (leader of the council being the leader of the ruling party) is that whilst I might like a party or the local candidate and vote on that basis I might not like the leader of the party. The impact of my vote is dictated by an unelected party machine. A directly elected mayor gives me the opportunity to vote for the person I want to lead the council, including an independent if that's what I want.

Whilst many of those who expressed and interest in the role are existing party politicians, John Hemming stated that he would only run as a nominee of his party and not as an independent, a directly elected mayor gives us the opportunity to vote for an independent. We can vote for the person who we believe will deliver what we want, not someone beholden to a party machine and vested corporate interests.

Student Protests - Again

Just emailed this to BBC Breakfast:

Much as it was suggested that motorists remember which petrol stations inflated their prices now and not shop there in the future, hopefully students (and those who now will not have the opportunity to become students) will remember the actions of the Tory and Lib Dem parties now in their future voting behaviour. Politicians are there to serve us, the voters, unfortunately they will only do that if they know they will be held to account for their actions.

I do think that a lot of the problems with the political system in recent years are that voters have tended to take a very short term view and failed to hold politicians to account for their actions and/or have gotten wrapped up in some short term single issue and allowed unsound ideologies to dominate the political debate leading to a party who are destructive to the opportunities and rights of the majority of people to become dominant.

Is your journey necessary?

Each time there's a heavy snowfall we're told to only travel if it's really necessary to do so. Thing is, for most of us the journey we're most likely to make is too work. How many of us have a manager who will accept "There was lots of snow and ice, the roads were blocked so I can't make it in." as a reason to not attend work?

There was a letter in yesterday's Metro newspaper from someone who lived in the French Pyrenees, where heavy snowfall is common. Apparently there if people think there's to much snow to make it to work they just go back to bed and wait till the next day when the snow ploughs will have been round and cleared all the roads.

Student protests

John Hemming MP (LibDem, Yardley) was on BBC Radio WM this lunch time as his office had been invaded by by a group of students. He wasn't there but did sound very unhappy at them being there, complaining they were disrupting the work of his office. He made reference to someone having been arrested in Saudi(was this the Imaam who had been arrest by the Saudi religious police then released when Radio WM publicised the situation or someone else?) and to a couple who were destitute as they had received no benefits.

Empty grit bin

The grit bin round the corner from my house is empty, again. I jusrt reported this via Fix My Street:

The grit bin on Tomey road (near corner with Albion road) is empty again. It was about half full on Sunday evening so has emptied in the past 4 days.

Earlier this year Cllr Daphne Gaved told me that as the council don't grit side roads and pavements but do provide grit it is the duty of residents to grit their road. Obviously if there's not grit we can't do this.

Please refill the grit bin. Also please advise the process of requesting a grit bin be placed on Gough Road(preferably on the corner with Medley road).

Thanks

Probably won't do any good but at least when the local Lib Dem councilors (Daphne, mentioned above, is one of three Lib Dem councilors in this ward, the local MP (John Hemming) is also a Lib Dem and the council is a Con-Dem coalition) come campaigning and I point out the lack of grit preventing us from gritting our road and pavements I can also point out that when the bin was emptied I requested it be refilled.

I have been treating the pavement outside my house with salt, hence my house (and my neighbours' due to my salt being carried on people's shoes) are the only ones clear of snow in front.

Just emailed this to Sunday Morning live relating to their item claiming prisons don't work.

Based on people I know who have been in prison I think that they don't work but that it's a problem of implementation rather than something inherent. I do also think that too many criminals who don't get sent to prison for minor offenses which set a pattern that later escalates to more serious crime by which time it's too late.

I believe that prison should be a place of both punishment and rehabilitation. First punishment then rehabilitation, to try to do both at the same time is insanity. The first time some one is sent to prison a little punishment followed by a lot of rehabilitation, subsequently more punishment and less (proportionately) rehabilitation. The punishment should be such that it provokes a real fear of returning to prison and the rehabilitation should look to find and address the factors that lead the person to crime.

Where possible first time offenders should be housed separately from repeat or long term offenders. This would reduce the opportunities for someone who maybe just 'fall in with a bad crowd' to fall in with a worse one by meeting people with established connections to the criminal infrastructure.

There is over crowding in prisons, fortunately there is a fairly simple solution to this. Build more prisons, but be smart about where they are built. There are many small islands in the North Sea and North Atlantic that used to be occupied crofter subsistence farmers but were abandoned in the 19th and 20th centuries when crofting became uneconomic and people left for the mainland. These would be ideal sites for prisons for the punishment phase of a sentence. Due to the remoteness and hostile climate a prison, in particular one built to a Panopticon design, would need less staff than a traditional design built in a city. The hostile but livable climate (remember, people lived there for centuries quite well) provides both an extra element to the punishment directly and would allow opportunities for the prisoners to be put to work growing some of the food required so reducing costs further (less food to ship in) and improving security (someone tired from working in the fields is unlikely to have the energy to cause trouble). It may also inculcate the idea of working for reward and lay the ground work for the rehabilitation phase that follows. The location may cause problems for visiting, but then this is the punishment phase and isolation from past associations may both enhance the punishment and disrupt links to factors that put the prisoner in the position of committing crimes.

Moving prisoners to remote island prisons for the punishment phase would free up spaces in more traditional prisons in towns and cities for the rehabilitation phase.

Not PC, but true.

Consuming news content in a paywalled world

In today's Observer David Mitchell published an Op-Ed piece about Murdoch's decision to charge for access to the Time website. A number of the comments discussed the idea of paying for professional content on the web. I was moved to post the below:

I think the 'paywall' on a single provider is a wrong turn. About 20 years ago sci-fi author Harry Harrison and robotics/AI researcher Marvin Minsky suggested something I think is much more likely in their book "The Turing Option". The book is an Industrial Espionage/action/thriller story but quite early in the book they talk about a way we can consume news.

What they describe is that rather than buying a newspaper or magazine you subscribe to a service that scours the various media out there on the net (bear in mind that this was written well before the web really came about, the 'Internet' was basically USENET, email and FTP). You would tell the service the sort of things you are interested, this would be geographical areas, your work, films you like, books you like, sports you're interested, teams you follow &c. It would then identify the sorts of articles you'd be interested in and present them to you. It would also track which articles you actually read, which you re-read, which you saved for future reference &c then use this information to fine tune it's selections in future. It may also factor in things like reputation of the uthor and who else reads them. Over time, probably quite quickly, the articles presented to you would get closer and closer to what you want to read. You would pay the service a regular fixed subscription and they in turn would pay the content providers based on items used.

Given developments of the web such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Digg &c, I suspect that the service would also offer you the option to blog/tweet/post/comment about the article you just read then use that to refine future choices. It may even analyse your comments to judge how strong your interest is, did you just post the link with maybe a short "interesting article." comment or did you write an essay analysing the article, referencing other articles and including quotes? Some analysis of who you read may also be done, if you always read David Mitchell's articles on some subjects you're interested in then maybe you might be interested in his articles on a subject you're not usually that interested in.

We're already seeing some of this in Google Alerts and Amazon Recommendations. Google Alerts falls short due to the fact that it relies on you to create the search string, there's no analysis going on, it's just giving you the top few results if you ran this search now that are new since since the last time it sent the results to you. The results improve over time but due to the general improvement of the Google search algorithm rather than your individual choices. Amazon falls down on two things, one minor and one major. The minor one is that simply their analysis isn't up to it yet because their data volume is too small. They're just looking at what books/DVDs/CDs you've bought, which may include ones you bought as presents so they're what your great aunt Gladys is interested in not you, and most people don't buy enough to generate a meaningful data set, although you can improve the recommendations immensely by when you look at the recommendations page actually clicking the "I've already got this" or "Not interested" buttons. The major cause of failure is more fundamental and cannot be solved with technology, it's run by the marketing department and they want to sell you stuff. Because they want to sell you stuff and the cost of a bad recommendation is the same as no recommendation (you don't buy the product), they will use the most tenuous of links to make a recommendation. With a subscription service you are making multiple choices each day as to what to read and what not, and then add in things like twitter and digg to re-enforce the choices (maybe even have a "Not Interested" button), so a sizable data set will quickly build up. As it is a subscription model there is no incentive to make bad recommendations, if you read an article you're not interested in they don't make any extra money and it may cost them more as they now have to pay the content provider. If they make a lot of bad recommendations then you may leave them and go to a different service. Their business model, their profits, rely on you choosing to read a small number of articles you are very interested in every day so you'll keep paying your subscription but they won't have to pay the content providers too much.

This would also help the small content providers, who cannot afford to set up a micropayments system, as they can just license their content to the subscription services and get the aggregated payments.

I do think that something like that, where you don't pay the content provider directly but pay the aggregator who the licenses the material from the content provider, is a distinct possibility. Something like the iPad/Tablet-PC is probably the ideal platform and set top devices coupled to a 'reusable ePaper' printer would be good, but smart phones and more traditional PC/Laptop platforms would also work well.

Tories cut free school lunches for children from low income families

Michael Gove, Education Secretary, as decided to abolish free school meals for children from low income families. This means that those on the lowest incomes could face an annual bill equivalent to at least 2 weeks' income, per child.

I do wonder what schools are supposed to with those children (in particular those too young to understand why they cannot have a school dinner like their classmates) at lunchtime or when those children are too distracted by hunger in the afternoon to study? What about those schools in low income areas where a significant proportion of the pupils receive free school meals? Perhaps the school will have to close up their kitchen because it's not economical to run for such a small number of diners?

Free school meals for children of low income or destitute families started in the 1880s and became universal in 1944. I had them in the 1980s, without them lunch would have been nothing or just a packet of supermarket own brand crisps because we couldn't afford anything more.

I think we've got a strong chance, based on the Tory-LibDem alliance's actions so far, of a double dip recession and wouldn't completely rule out a bloody revolution.

I am reminded of something Andrew Marr said in his series "History of Modern Britain". He was talking about the impact of the Thatcher government of the early 1980s and raised the point that "Britain used to be a country proud that you didn't see beggars in the street, now you saw them everywhere."

Performance Development Reviews

It's Performance Development Review (PDR) season at work. A lot of people have been complaining about our PDR system, largely because it is so time consuming and complex. The form itself is 20-30 A4 pages (depending how verbose you are in completing the sections) and takes several hours to complete. There's also a quite complex link to pay. Much of the complexity links to the fact that pay is centrally controlled. This got me to thinking about PDR systems, how they relate to pay and how the whole thing could be simplified. I'm assuming a total green field and the only restrictions are what is legal and achievable.

I should possibly say at this point that my job is busines analysis which is largely about redesigning and implementing business processes, and IT systems to support them.

First off the PDR form and how it is used. The form itself I see as being 2 pages, or rather two sides, of A4. It could even be set up as two tabs in a spreadsheet. If individuals want to attach extra sheets of narrative or detail that's up to them. Typically the only people who will see a form will be the person it refers to, their manager and their manager's manager. HR may, in response to a complaint or query or as part of a random or scheduled spot check/oversight, also see them but would not usually get involved.

Side one of the form has at the top the basic identity information of whose PDR it is (the direct), who their manager is and the relevant dates. Immediately below that are three boxes for objectives for the coming year, each person having one to three objectives for the year. I realize that that might seem like an incredibly small number but objectives should be broad and quite high level and, as Drucker said, a person can only concentrate on one thing at a time, may be two. If you come up with more than three goals then you're probably trying to stretch your direct report too thin, some of the goals are 'nice to haves' rather than 'important/essential' or some of the goals can be combined because you've gone too detailed and/or prescriptive. Next section is a box for detailing what development the direct should have over the coming year with an indication of how it will be delivered. Finally, three signature boxes. One each for the direct, the manager and the manager's manager agreeing the goals and development. The reason for bringing in the manager's manager is both as a check (is the manager setting the bar too low or too high, are they agreeing unreasonable development, do they seem to be favouring some directs over others or are they setting objectives that don't serve the organisation's goals) and because they should have a broader view, as they probably manage more teams, so can spot common trends and synergies.

Side 2 is virtually identical to side 1, although you'd probably lose the top section of who it's for and their manager's details. Now, instead of talking about what the direct will achieve and do you're talking about what the direct has achieved and done then giving a score. The sign off box is agreeing the score. Exactly what scoring system to use depends on local preferences but I'd suggest either a 1 to 5 (1= objective not achieved or achieved well below expected standard, 5 = objective achieved well above expected standard and 3 = objective achieved to expected standard or not achieved for reasons outside the directs control) or Red/Amber/Green (mapping to 1, 3 and 5 in the 1 to 5 scoring system, maybe add other colour for the "not achieved for reasons outside the directs control" situation). I do think the "not achieved for reasons outside the directs control" situation should be addressed. Reviews tend to be an annual thing and a year is a long time, things change. It could be that an objective that was very important last year became unimportant. Maybe a goal depended on something else, or someone else, which fell through. A couple of classic examples are: The direct had an objective of achieving a certification that required them to attend a course but cuts to the training budget meant they were unable to attend that course; In a consultancy organisation the direct had a goal of being fee earning for a certain proportion of the year but changes in the market meant that their particular skill set was needed less so they had to spend time retraining and fell short of their goal.

A lot of people talk, and write, about SMART objectives. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebased. Mark and Mike over on Manager Tools recommend just looking at M and T in their podcast on setting annual goals, I won't rehash the rationale here but I do recommend everyone listen to that podcast (and their other podcasts), a lot of my thinking that has lead me to this post has been influenced by their podcasts. Whilst I agree with the arguments for MT goals my experience tells me that the A needs to be added back in (so it's a MAT objective), too often an over confident direct or over ambitious manager will put in a goal that simply isn't achievable. The check is needed. The objectives should, of course, serve the objectives of the team. Usually a good objective will be something that can be stated in one or two short sentences. For example "Be fee earning for at least 75% of year.", "Generate an average of at least 10 sales leads each month. Convert at least one sales lead a month into a sale.", "At least 60% 'Good', 'Very Good' or 'Excellent' rating on customer satisfaction survey by end of year.", "Issue an average of 50 or more parking fixed penalty notices per day, to be measured fortnightly. No more than 5% successfully appealed.", "Gain PRINCE2 Practitioner certification within 3 months" &c. You'll notice that every one of those has something that can be measured (mostly a number but in one case it's a yes/no, you either do or don't get the certification) and a time scale. The direct has something clear to aim for and knows when it's due, they can also measure their progress towards their goal. At the end of the year the manager has something objective to measure the direct against, there is some wriggle room for humanity and taking account of circumstance of course.

But what do you do where there isn't a clear measure? This is addressed in the Manager Tools cast on goals, listen out for the story of "John and the Gate Guards". In summary, if you can't measure the outcome itself find a proxy. Two of the example objectives I mentioned above actually use proxies. The first is fairly obvious, "At least 60% 'Good', 'Very Good' or 'Excellent' rating on customer satisfaction survey by end of year.", what our objective here is is to have satisfied customers but satisfaction can't really be measured directly, there's no meter you attach to your customer that will tell you if they're satisfied or not. What you can do is survey your customers and get them to tell you how satisfied they feel. Whilst for an individual customer this might not be a good objective measure (some people are never satisfied, or maybe have unrealistic expectations, whilst others are too polite to say when they're not) by collating the results of many surveys you can get a meaningful average while the outliers cancel each other out (although you should probably still talk to them to address individual complaints and find out what went particularly well). The second is less obvious, it is "Issue an average of 50 or more parking fixed penalty notices per day, to be measured fortnightly. No more than 5% successfully appealed.", more specifically the second part. It's easy to measure how many fixed penalty notices ware issued in a day, just count the stubs. What you cannot measure is if they were legitimately issued or if the direct just stuck them on 100 random cars then spent the rest of the day in the pub. What you can measure is how many were appealed and how many of those appeals were upheld, this is a proxy for the legitimacy of the issuance.

Once you have the scores obviously you want to do something with them, usually pay progression or regression. Many employers, especially in times of recession, try to centralise control on pay levels. Big mistake. The main things this achieves is putting an administrative overhead on the centre, slows the performance management process and removes a big chunk of the responsibility to manage from managers. Control on an individual's pay should rest with their manager, with oversight by their manager's manager and a right of appeal to the centre.

This can be achieved by assigning each manager a budget for their directs' pay and make them responsible for assigning it appropriately within the law and procedures of the company. They can then incentivise good performance and correct poor performance through pay (although other methods should be exhausted first). If someone leaves their team this also provides them with the choice of refilling the post at the same rate of pay, filling it at a different rate of pay or deleting the post and using the money saved to increase the pay of the remaining staff in recognition of the extra work they're doing. There would have to be a way for managers to bid for a budget increase, more senior managers to claw back excess and directs to appeal any reduction in pay before it happens.

Just emailed BBC Breakfast News this comment on their interview about public sector cuts this year:

One of your interviewees (I didn't catch her name) made a misleading statement. The government are not cutting £6bn this year, that was what they cut just before Whitsun. Total cuts this year are £60bn. The last cuts were just a taster.

Personally I agree with the other interviewee, now is a very very bad time for large cuts. Large cuts now are a recipe for disaster and a double dip recession. Small cuts are possible but we shouldn't be looking at large cuts this side of 2012. I'd look at cutting the JNC grades (very senior managers, mostly £100k+) in local government and equivalent in other bodies.

Interestingly, my suggestion of cutting senior managers is what Stephen Hughes (Chief Exec of Birmingham City Council) is apparently considering.

I also like the 'Total Place' proposal of the last government. Rationalise and link up public sector systems and bring them under a single management structure so the UK can leverage economies of scale to the greatest extent. Even something as simple as a single payroll system for the whole of the UK public sector would save incredible amounts and make enforcing equal pay legislation a breeze.