Simon Johnson

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@Simon318ppm

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” (Gramsci) 🇵🇸 🇺🇦

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Last Notes

2025-04-09 08:06:32

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it’s almost always the opposite way round because either politicians are seduced by the shiny new gizmo and love the sense of control it gives them or managers likewise
Or because the ITsales consultants convince them their system will revolutionise the world. The poor buggers on the front line then have to distort what they do and how they do it to fit the constraints of the IT , which has become master instead of servant
END

2025-04-09 08:02:16

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Design has multiple purposes to satisfy multiple stakeholders, invariably prioritising the recording of KPIs which always hinder learning & improvement
The priority for services should always be:
1) Learn what matters to users & how far we do/don’t deliver that
2) Learn how to do exactly & only what matters & make that the normal way of working
3) Learn what measures will support learning & improvement (NEVER targets!)
4) Learn how IT can support the above
2/3

2025-04-09 07:56:41

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in my experience, the problem with IT is invariably more embedded & systemic than a lack of training. Public sector services I’ve seen genuinely commit to learning how to do the right things for people invariably learn that IT is one of the biggest obstacles
Invariably IT projects are led by a Project Manager who doesn’t understand the client base nor what actually happens on the frontline and rely on abstract notions of “typical” clients & interactions 1/n

2025-04-08 05:57:33

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agreed and, of course, health prevention is far wider than health: ensuring people have sufficient income for a healthy diet, housing that doesn’t make them sick, air quality that enables kids’ lungs & brains to grow healthily, access to thriving natural green spaces, etc, etc are all vital.
And all are things about which a growth-obsessed government that refuses to disturb the obscenely wealthy seems to care nothing for - indeed, in most cases, is hell-bent on making worse

2025-03-17 05:54:47

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indeed - absolutely right
Don’t know whether you came across the Vanguard Method in your academic career?
The goal is not to advise managers but to support them on their own journey to learn how truly awful those who use their service experience it, despite all the reassuring nonsense the KPIs tell them. Very few leaders are brave or capable enough to make the mental shift, in my experience, but those that do achieve extraordinary transformation
https://beyondcommandandcontrol.com/

2025-03-16 11:58:10

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2/2
Meanwhile, at the front desk, the public were met with an unthinking customer service interface that could do nothing but pass messages back & forth, invariably creating more errors & waste
The growth of AI-driven public services & performance related pay will put rocket boosters under this systemic idiocy, driven, as you say, by the debasement of valuable individuals to economic units
When, in reality, ‘human’ services deliver far more, far better, at far lower cost

2025-03-16 11:50:55

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I used to hear the systems thinking gurus from John Seddon’s Vanguard, with whom I worked closely, often say, “If you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do.”
Instead, what we found was the economic demand to sweat the labour left skilled staff locked in a back office, never seeing the people about whom they were making life-changing decisions, doing nothing but processing data to scripted requirements, with no opportunity to exercise judgment
1/2

2025-03-12 10:52:53

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I think we also have to include the utter systemic shafting of younger generations and the resulting despair of ever securing a decent job or secure home, still less a liveable pension, while the media incessantly attacks their invented “snowflake” mentality (trans: caring)
Add to that the existential dread for a world hurtling into the abyss of climate & nature collapse and the onrush of WW3, and it’s a miracle there aren’t far more people in even greater mental distress

2025-03-11 11:03:04

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absolutely, though it’s only the extreme extension of the ideology of the last 40-odd years that, by definition, the private sector should run everything because, of course, successfully exploiting your workers and customers to maximise shareholder returns uniquely qualifies you to know how to run a hospital / government department / benefits system / adult & child social care, etc, etc 🤷🏽‍♂️

2025-02-20 07:45:18

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fascinating!
But I have to wonder where he finds evidence of his government remaking an iniquitous economic model, boosting living standards or investing in public services
Because, save for the very minor tinkering at the margins he cites, everything I hear from senior ministers - and see as enacted policy - is putting rocket boosters under the most grotesque iniquities, removing local democracy and protecting the wealthiest while punishing the poor 🤷🏽‍♂️

2025-02-07 17:24:34

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as we’ve suffered decades of “policy-based evidence” (can’t remember who said this) as opposed to the evidence-based policy governments should deploy, how would anyone know?

2025-02-07 14:00:10

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I see your US study and raise you Finland & Canada in recent years and numerous previous studies across the world
But, for UBI to really achieve its potential, it has to be universal & matched by genuinely progressive taxation. Entrepreneurship covers all sorts of social & economic goods, including caring responsibilities, community volunteering, growing-your-own, getting a job - or starting a business
Yet benefits conditionality make them all difficult

2025-02-07 12:16:24

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it is truly breathtaking. They had 4 years since Starmer won the leadership, considerably longer that Miliband has held an energy brief, yet they’ve come into govt, seemingly without a clue how, or indeed whether, to deliver their stated green ambitions, instead being swayed this way & that by whichever industry lobbyist they spoke to - or had money from - last
New oil licences, biofuel subsidies, CCS…Zero understanding, zero vision, zero clue - the #labour party all over

2025-02-07 11:23:36

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this is the justification for the inbuilt cruelty of the system, but it’s complete nonsense
Whenever “universal” basic income has been trialled - unconditional payments for specific groups, so not actually universal as it would be in a sane world - research shows zero negative impact on recipients’ willingness to work. In fact, indications suggest the reverse is true. When people know they have a risk-free safety net, they are better able to take risks

2025-01-31 11:17:40

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no, on the contrary…
Did you see Clive Lewis’ excellent demolition of government economic policy in this morning’s Guardian? Absolutely on the money, to my mind

2025-01-31 07:32:18

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it is truly terrifying
All the experience from mainland Europe seems to suggest that pandering to these far right tropes, eg, “Smash the gangs” clampdowns on immigration and scapegoating merely rolls out the red carpet for far right parties
It is desperate IMO that Labour adopts this tactic while also doing nothing to address inequality or living standards
To quote the Northern heckler in Aditya Chakrabortty’s excellent recent Grauniad article, “Who’s bloody growth?”

2025-01-29 11:47:45

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Economics are, like all other social sciences, important but classical economics which, as I understand it, makes no account for the input of energy nor the output of waste, is sheer lunacy that will, quite rapidly, in all likelihood, be the death of us all as we drive our societies through climate and nature tipping points to a biosphere we can no longer inhabit

2025-01-27 14:53:08

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couldn’t agree more. I’m guessing you’ll be familiar with Pickett & Wilkinson’s work showing conclusively that, internationally, the greater level of inequality an economy generates, the worse the outcomes across every imaginable metric, and worse for everyone, not just the poor
That so-called progressive politicians refuse to accept such powerful evidence and persist in the fallacy of the virtues of inequality is as despair-inducing as almost anything this govt has done

2025-01-27 10:14:13

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strikes me that, like all the “wicked” problems we face - employment, housing, public services, climate & nature collapse, etc, the problem is not what it seems so trying to “fix” it is what Argyris calls single-loop thinking and doomed to fail
At root, all of the above are about inequality of resources and power: the one problem that our politicians refuse to acknowledge, still less tackle
We can’t upset those mythical “wealth creators”!

2025-01-21 21:38:57

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that they promised “the highest economic growth in the G7” alongside the “green transition” merely served to prove they didn’t have the slightest idea what transitioning to a sustainable economy actually means
I’m not remotely surprised by this news as it’s just more evidence they are a disaster. While I held little hope, I desperately wanted them to succeed as the alternative is horrific. But they are far, far worse than I ever imagined possible

2025-01-06 10:20:40

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couldn’t agree more
The timidity they display in the face of a corrupted mass media, overseas meddling in an unprotected electoral process and the rapidly growing withdrawal from what passes in #uk for democracy, as the billionaire press and far right eltitists of Reform et al claim to be the true voice of the people is as dispiriting and baffling as any #uklabour failures
It’s like they think governance and all that underpins it is unimportant

2024-12-28 10:32:09

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but it’s like so many things in the #uk…
EG National Rail’s inability to tell passengers the platform number for a train that arrives and departs at exactly the same time every single day
Or every institution you ever phone’s complete inability to plan for the “exceptional call volumes we’re currently experiencing” that they’ve been experiencing every hour of every day for the last 10 years

2024-12-19 08:05:57

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is there a formal definition of what constitutes a political party? If not, it surely isn’t that difficult to come up with one 🤔
For me, this all speaks to the danger of tinkering with electoral rules, rather than the wholesale constitutional review and governance rewiring needed (but for which a landslide-winning party never has appetite) which should have taken place years ago

2024-12-16 07:25:35

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or decades of underinvestment meaning so many UK businesses and institutions are regarded as a poor investment when rapid return seems to be the priority for UK financial institutions?
I’m no economist but today’s Positive Money open letter to Rachel Reeves outlining why further deregulation of the financial sector will be economically damaging seems very apposite (ref today’s Grauniad)

2024-12-11 12:34:11

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as a member of the GP of England & Wales, this article screams to me what I’ve been thinking for a while: that whilst the Target to Win strategy to get closer to political power is important, our focus must be on community engagement and organising
If the last 10 years has proven anything, it’s that capitalism renders democratic institutions relatively powerless as it corrupts and subverts the entire process to maintain the status quo

2024-12-11 12:27:23

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indeed. But his statements when Leader of the Opposition made it fairly clear that, other than a bit of potential tinkering at the edges, the human rights lawyer [sic] is entirely comfortable with the removal of the right to peaceful protest
Although I didn’t vote Labour, I desperately hoped they would succeed, given the alternative prospect. But every word, every action shows them to be far worse than I ever imagined possible

2024-12-08 12:38:03

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I think it’s much more than being on the streets expressing our outrage though. We need to be in our neighbourhoods when we can, doing whatever might help build community solidarity and human relationships
God knows it’s hard but even insisting on saying good morning to everyone we bump into is a start
And our fury should not just be directed at the far right but at the so-called mainstream parties who legitimise their policies

2024-11-16 10:58:23

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of course, the benefit of CCS to the fossil fuel industry is not just being paid to pretend to clean up the mess they made, it’s that they anticipate using the CO2 under pressure to force oil and gas reserves to the surface that would otherwise be unreachable or uneconomic to recover, enabling them to pollute even more
And so on and so on and so on…
#stopBurningFossilFuels #JustStopOil #cop29

2024-11-08 10:23:58

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elderly person here - I absolutely do not look forward to this. I’m mad as hell and doing whatever I can to nudge the dial in whatever way I can, not only because I have kids and grandkids whose futures are being fucked but, by virtue of being a human being rather than a consumer, I actually care that my brothers and sisters across the world are dying from our excess now
I’m not special - far from it. Better to nurture the alliances we can build than dismiss groups of folks

2024-11-04 22:52:32

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I’ve said this for some time. As the article says, a Trump packed SCOTUS can be relied upon, as the ultimate arbiter of any legal dispute, to fall into line, not to mention the proven MAGA capacity for armed insurrection - I don’t recall the volume of reports of electoral violence, burning mail-in voting boxes, etc previously
One would hope Biden has the National Guard or even the military primed and ready to take decisive action to defend democracy but I’m not hopeful

2024-10-08 10:11:09

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absolutely both!
In addition to which, Johnson is rumoured to have had a pathological hatred of Starmer because the latter has a knighthood and he doesn’t, despite (in his eyes) him deserving one following his decades of selfless service to his country 🤣🤣🤣

2024-10-07 10:03:18

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true
And yet, in the meantime and without a budget, they’ve managed to vote to continue the destitution of children, remove WFA from most OAPs, scrap infrastructure projects and announce the investment of £22 billion in unicorn technology to keep the fossil fuel industry in business
#uklabour only have themselves to blame that they need a reset after only 100 days
#ukpol #ukpolitics

2024-10-03 16:56:31

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quite agree. And it’s even more pernicious as it aims to stimulate demand by playing on our insecurities and anxieties
As I saw someone say a few years ago, the advertising industry is the only one whose purpose is explicitly to make us feel unhappy
As well as its contribution to environmental collapse through its economic impact, it contributes massively to ongoing alienation and atomisation, undermining our hopes of building a better future

2024-09-28 10:42:22

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couldn’t agree more. We already have the Nolan Principles, which have been in place for years and which public servants follow instinctively
With the apparent exception of politicians and senior civil servants who seem to think nothing of feathering their nest as a perk of their status. Saying we’re not as corrupt as Boris Johnson (a defence I saw yesterday) or “Everything is declared in line with the rules” when we all know the rules are useless just digs them deeper

2024-09-22 13:43:03

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it’s like they don’t see rightists as being in any way controversial, whereas lefties?
My dad was a shipyard shop steward in the 30s and involved in organising a fundraiser for the local branch of the Labour Party. When the management were asked if the works band could play, they refused, “because they don’t do political events.”
The band played at the Conservative Party summer fete every single year

2024-09-11 16:41:56

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and, without appropriate resourcing for enforcement, by local authorities or others, and limited access to advice to enable tenants or prospective tenants to exercise their rights, I fear the power imbalance is likely to render these oh-so-limited changes fairly meaningless in practice

2024-08-27 17:03:13

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it’s a truly depressing article though pleasing she has found better ways to contribute to her community since stepping down
But she also suggests the Labour Party machine carries much responsibility, seemingly placing absurd demands on a prospective candidate and then no doubt sitting member, rather than support to enable its representatives to make a difference
Further underlining the question why party politics should dominate local government? 🤔

2024-08-05 13:13:11

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Choosing orgs that can nominate to give somebody’s idea of a representative chamber is exclusionary
There is a model, which @npub12pw…zvxn sort of alluded to - the Citizens Assembly, whereby individuals are called by lottery which can have an element of non-randomisation to ensure demographic representation
If we persist in retaining a 🇬🇧 the process cd also cover rep of the 4 nations, &c