I think the following is a thought-provoking piece from the Guardian's website by John Tizard . Local authorities—and other public sector bodies—do need to think about what it is they want in terms of service and then work out how to get it. Times change and a key aspect...

Many of us would intuitively agree with the truism that two heads are better than one but that doesn't mean that we work that way. In the public sector there are often tens or even hundreds of organisations that carry out similar functions to each other but in different...

I've just read a pamphlet called The Future of Public Audit (published by Solace Foundation Imprint). There are about a dozen articles/short essays in the pamphlet and, rather like the stereotypes of auditors, they are worthy but rather dull. Or, perhaps, a better adjective...

In my previous post I mentioned the conference I attended last week on strategic partnering in the police service. One of the afternoon's speakers was Malcolm Burch, the chief executive of Lincolnshire Police Authority. His talk was about the specifics of the governance...

Yesterday I attended a national conference entitled Strategic Partnering in Policing. It was an interesting day where 35 of England's 43 police forces were represented and there were  presentations from four different police forces. The bulk of the presentations, though...

via usdebtclock.org I haven't really got a comment on this. I know many people have said to me over the years that because I am an accountant I must avoid debt. Actually, I think that because I am an accountant I am in favour of debt, inasmuch as it matches the use...

I live in the north west corner of Derbyshire where there aren't major roads or motorways. Over the last few weeks I have come across roadworks on lots of the local roads. Not major roadworks, just one of those machines that scrapes off the top few centimetres of the...

I recently saw the film Moneyball and I enjoyed it. Brad certainly deserved the award nominations. I also like baseball (at least, I like it as much as a non-American might like it) but the film's not really about baseball. It's about how Billy Bean, the general manager...

I've fallen out of the habit of writing for this blog and have been telling myself for weeks to write a new post. The furore about senior public sector managers being hired through service companies rather than as employees is something I really ought to write about...