Human Interfaces

The Brexit thing between May and juncker takes me back to my I.T. days. Back when I worked in Interactive Voice Systems, I did a lot of research into human-machine interaction. I could write reams on how or why unsuccessful IVR systems are unsuccessful.

But the Brexit issues boil down to the same problems. Lack of undertstanding or empathy.

When writing the software for IVR systems, you need to understand the needs of the other party, the customer dialling into the system.

You also need to communicate your needs clearly, so they understand what is required of them to make the negotiation between them and the machine work properly.

You need to also undertsand the nuances of language both whilst communicating your needs and also during their interaction with you. It's so frustrating to talk to someone and for them to not acknowledge with some sort of response. We instantly become unsure as to whether our message has been heard.

In an IVR system, the simple addition of a "Thank you" prompt after each input signals that the machine has heard something. If that input doesn't match the system's requirements then should prompt there has been an error and ask for input again. In essence, the negotiation between the two becomes as natural as normal conversation, because the machine is programmed to respond with an approximation of human interaction.

The Brexit debacle between the UK and the EU is similar. Two poeple talking at each other without an particular empathy towards to other's position.

Theresa may is a leader, she doesn't need to enter into details, she will talk of the big picture, making big descisions and it's for junior ministers in government to action those ideas and take care of the details.

Junker despite his position, is no leader. He appropriates the concensus of others and aproximates leadership, but he doesn't have the ability to make big unilateral decisions. He's a beareaucrat, he loves the detail.

So, the two of them are talking at odds because they are talking about different aspects of the same issue, not because they disagree. Either they have failed to understand each other's different perspective, or the language and interpretation was a bit dodgy, or they just want to set out each other's position. They are talking at each other and not talking to each other. It is not a conversation, it is rhetoric, and for the medai to protray it as anything else is wrong. May is not in a different galaxy, nor is Juncker bombastic.

Either way, the media have now jumped on the bandwagon and portrayed it as a massive rift between the two sides, when actually there isn''t one.

It's going to be like this for the most part through the Brexit negotiations. Until two underlings of equal status and at the same level sit on each side of the negotiating table and start to work on the minutiae of the deals, only then will we get any sense of what actually the Brexit deal entails.

So, ignore anything coming out of the media for the next 18 months. They will play up the minutest difference in position, make mountains out of minute molehills, just to make headlines.

It ain't over until it's over.

Public Service.

I've touched on this before, the waste and the sense of entitlement in public services. One of the best examples of this was the case of  Katrina Percy. She was the boss of Southern Health, under fire for various reasons, but mainly a number of deaths during her tenure.

Under fire from the media and others she resigned from her £250,000 a year job and moved to a new consultancy job.....paying £250,000 a year. The consultancy job apparently didn't exist before she moved into it, the assumption being she was moved to get away from the media spotlight, but got to keep her salary. So it appears the Southern Health Trust decided to magic £250,000 a year from the wages pot to stop bad publicity. But not employ extra front-line staff. Quite a skewed sense of priorities there.

In the end after media scrutiny of her second job, she left Southern Health, but not without getting a £190,000 payoff.

I've previously mentioned my dislike of public servants being paid such high wages. But it also shows that the public service managers see the money not as taxpayer's money to be spent wisely and with care, but an entitlement than can be spent and used as they see fit, whether that gives the best benefit for the public or as with six figure salaries, not.

I dislike public bodies being run wholly on the private business model. Sure, running a public service in the most efficient way, making the money go further like you would in a company is a good model to follow. Even making a profit is a good thing as long as it is ploughed back into service itself.

However, management structure and six figure salaries, these are not in the public interest.

The board structure in most public services doesn't have the checks and balances a private company does. A private company has shareholders, who can overrule pay awards if they see fit. They can veto the appointment of board members too. Where is the same brake on excess in public services? Who has the power to sack board members if they underperform or curb pay excesses?

The case of  Sharon Shoosmith (salary a slightly less obscene £130,000 a year) who successfully sued Haringay council after they sacked her when Ed Balls, the then Children's secretary got involved, shows that even when these high paid higher-ups in public service lose the confidence of their board and/or the government, they can't be removed painlessly.

But these are not isolated examples. If you can get the information, look at the salaries at the top of council departments, Police, charities, health trusts and the like. There will be a lot of six figure salaries.

Unlike the private sector they get all the reward for nothing like the risk in the same position in the private sector.

In some cases such as the Rotherham sexual abuse case exposes the lack of real leadership and the ability to actually earn the salaries they get at the top of all of the different agencies all at once.. And at the top of all of these public bodies are people claiming six figure salaries. With very little by way of consequence when they bugger things up.

The abject waste of public funds supplying senior managers in public service with these massive salaries is wrong. All future governments should be working to reduce this excess and introduce checks and balances to ensure those at the top are actually earning the money the public pay them.  And have mechanisms to remove them if they are grossly negligent, incompetent or inefficient.

Brexit: delusion on both sides.

As more comes out regarding the meeting between Theresa May and Jean Claude Junker last week, the more it seems that both sides are poles apart regarding Brexit.

May being dismissive of detail and wanting a more pragmatic approach to the negotiations, with Juncker taking the typical bureaucrat line and emphasising the detail and procedure. Exactly what you'd expect him to.

After all his type love to bind up negotiations in the minutiae of transactions. It's what they do, what keeps them in a lifetime of employment. Why would you complete negotiations in two years when you can continue to haggle and work on the finest of fine details for a decade instead? After all, it reduces the chances of you losing your employment if you drag things out like that. You only need to complete less than half a dozen negotiations at most to cover your working life.

It's not like they do a good job either. The migrant crisis showed that. They get bound up in the minutiae that much that they miss some really important things. Like what the procedure is when a million refugees turn up on your border. Do you (a) reinforce the border and supply funds to enable the countries on the border to hold and process the refugees (and immediately deport the non-genuine cases) or do you (b) refuse to plan for such an emergency, go wibble and ignore the fact that the border countries, unable to cope don't hold the refugees at the border and allow them unfettered access through Europe's open borders to travel across Europe without any checks. Yep, it's b.

It's also interesting that the talk from the EU side even before negotiations begin is of money. We are a huge contributor to the EU's coffers and without us the gap in EU finances would be huge. Not only that, Germany are staring at supplying the lion's share of money to fill the gap. No wonder Mrs Merkel took on board Junker's briefing and decided to chip in.

It looks like the EU are setting out their stall. They are happy for the UK to leave, but they are not happy for the UK's money to leave as well. It's all about the money. They are also ready to bind the negotiations up for years discussing minute details.

Of course they threw in the rights of EU citizens resident in the UK in an effort to look PC and protecting human rights, just like Merkel's statement on refugees. Then chucked in the spanner of the status of Northern Ireland to the debate.

So the EU want us to carry on paying for projects we have no control over, they want us to give full rights to EU citizens including benefits, with no way of claiming the money back off their respective home countries and they also want to muddy the water on the Irish situation. Do they want yet another land grab and subsume Northern Ireland into the EU, almost like Russia's annexation of Crimea? Do they want to grab Gibraltar as a payment for keeping the Irish border open?

The UK might find it's not as simple as they think to make agreements with the EU. It's looking more likely we'll leave the EU without a deal, which is what I already knew and voted for in the referendum.

What's sure is that we ain't seen nothing yet and for sure we don't need weak government on our side of the table.

The thing that gets me is if the EU is such a wonderful club to be in, why punish someone for leaving? Wouldn't leaving itself be punishment enough if it's so bad outside?