Tag Archives: NHS

Opinion – Two in three middle-aged men will be obese by 2034 – Telegraph – John Gelmini

October 27, 2014 By in Business Administration, Healthcare, NHS, People, Politics, Public Services Reform, Reform, UK Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment
Cigarettelight

Cigarettelight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Healthy Food For Life logo

English: Healthy Food For Life logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dr Alf has some good suggestions for this growing problem which lies behind both our productivity crisis and the crisis with Adult Social Care and the NHS.

What should happen as well is :

6) Variable taxes on food

7) More park and ride facilities for cities, as per Salzburg in Austria and City Centers left for pedestrians

8) Salt, sugar and e-number content reduced in all foods

9) Education on nutrition, vitamin supplementation and cookery

10) Zoning laws applied to reduce the number of fast food outlets and increase the number of healthy food outlets

11) Opt out of Alimentarius Commission directives on food and seeds and set food policy ourselves

12) Give employers tax breaks for creating workplace gyms subject to their employees losing weight and getting fitter

13) Ban cigarette smoking in all places except for a person’s home

14) Encourage the brewers to close down more pubs and create more gyms and hotels

15) Refuse surgery to obese patients and smokers until they have lost weight and stopped smoking as happens already in the North and East Herts NHS Trust in my area.

16) Remove harmful chemicals some of which cause obesity and cancer and dementia from packaging, plastic bottles, fertilizers, plastic  products, tins, tinfoil and cooking utensils

17) Ban fluoride from toothpaste, water and foodstuffs

18) Ban Aspartame

19) Eliminate aluminium saucepans and ban the use of aluminium in deodorants go for Pit Rock instead

20) Eliminate eostrogens from fertilizer and water

21) Promote exercise in counrty parks and Tai Chi in village halls

22)Promote the growing of vegetables and gardening in general

23) Reintroduce 2 years of National Service for all youngsters and Civilian Conservation for the long term unemployed

24) Reinstate school playing fields and domestic science

John Gelmini

Opinion – Reforming the Professional Interim and Independent Consultant Supply Chain Model? – John Gelmini

October 26, 2014 By in Accountability, Baby Boomers, Business Administration, Central Government, Consulting, David Cameron, Defense Policy, Education, Energy Policy, Executive Interim Management, Executive interim management career, Foreign Policy, Growth, Healthcare, Independent Professional Services, Interim Management, Interim Manager, NHS, People, Politics, Public Sector, Public Services Reform, Shared Services Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

 Like Dr Alf, I look back on this period as well.

Since then, interim management rates have for the most part halved, yet the consultancy bill, via the Big 4 to Central Government, has gone up to £15.5 billion gbp and value per taxpayer pound is still at 17th in the world.

The “basket case” services, like the NHS, are not delivering, and we already see in Wales the first case of NHS meltdown. Last week, the head of NHS England, Simon Steven, tried to issue a wake-up call to the public and politicians who face a £30 billion gbp shortfall by 2020. Everybody agrees with his prognosis but the figures to close the gap (he quotes £8 billion gbp) are too big for the politicians to countenance because they would involve either cuts or finding 2 pence on income tax – this is if the £22 billion gbp in efficiencies that Simon Steven thinks can be found, do not materialize.

Local authorities are still in a deep financial mess, which is worsening; the MOD is wasting more money than ever; and the Home Office is still chaotic, not fit for purpose and has no idea how many people are in or set to live in the country.

What has happened is that as fewer interims have been involved in Central and Local Government work the amount of fraud, waste, mismanagement and duplication has increased.This is despite the more robust processes and supposedly superior consulting skills of the Big 4 and specialist consultancies like McKinseys. Specialist consultants are charged out to the Government at GBP5,000+ per day.

I seem to remember certain white-haired, very patrician, interims, acting as “devils advocates” and suggesting that they doubted whether interims would have any better effect on this situation than the Big 4 and the Systems Integration Houses /BPO providers. I also remember being told that I was “ranting” and that things were not as bad as I said they were, that everything would come right on the night, that IR35 would not be dramatically extended. They have, just as I predicted, been proved wrong in virtually every single respect as events have unfolded since 2010. These “devils advocates” have also been proved wrong not once but in every year since 2010 when Dr Alf started to highlight these problems and eventually moved to Cyprus, where he can now drink wine while the sun goes down and comment with the benefit of hindsight over situations which were bound to happen.

All of this is sad and would have been unnecessary but for a willingness to lobby and street-fight. Dr Alf, myself and a handful of hardened professionals formed a political action committee (PAC) but the industry lacked to stomach to fight their corner. The executive interim management industry had it’s golden years but they have long since passed. These days interim CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, CMOs etc., are just commodities in a globalized market-place. They are contingency workers, just like contract nurses, or IT project managers.

John Gelmini