Bye-bye Kier Group, and Serco, G4S etc…

Bye-bye Kier Group, and Serco, G4S etc…

Outsourcing and privatisation died at 15:18 on Wednesday 4 November 2020. Or thereabouts. That was of course a misquotation of the great architectural critic Charles Jencks who passed judgement on the failures of inhuman, modernist buildings. It was also when the...
It is time to save the NHS from tickbox

It is time to save the NHS from tickbox

The tickbox phenomenon, which I have been writing about for most of this year, seems finally to have reached its apotheosis with the appointment of the queen of tickbox, Dido Harding, to run the government’s test and trace service. Now I have never met her, I’m afraid...

How to dodge the next wave of ghost towns

Bernie Ward is a friend mine, but she is also something of a heroine. For six thrilling years, she led the local economic tools team at the New Economics Foundation. During that time she developed, not just money flows analysis but also Bizfizz (enterprise coaching)...
The BBC’s Wartime Hero

The BBC’s Wartime Hero

Noel Newsome took over the BBC European Service on the day that the Nazis invaded Poland, on 1 September 1939. He was a known maverick who often fought his BBC superiors- but may have saved the BBC in the process. His was the voice in the BBC which demanded truth over...