An Easter thought

In a break from our usual Mumblings ... here is an Easter message in the form of Carl Sagan's famous, almost poetical, thoughts on the blue dot seen from Voyager 1, reminding us just how important we are:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar', every 'supreme leader', every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1997 reprint, pp. xv–xvi

Teaching us to lie

Can I borrow £2?
Thanks ... come to think of it, I don't need that much. Here is £1 back.
When do I get back my £1 back?
What £1? I have just paid you £1.

In a telephone call to a potential business partner in Germany, this form of economics was described as milkmaid economics after a story by La Fontaine. We are not sure there is a direct parallel but the title has a certain charm, even if if politically milkmaidist.

It is much the same sort of economics as that required by (both British and European) grant-making organisations. These fine, upstanding organisations have a clear view of best practice and priority when dealing with public money, and encourage good behaviour in funded bodies on all occasions. But, with the year-end approaching, what is my moral position on the following?

We bid let us say £10k on the basis that we would contribute match-funding of 4 days of staff time. In totalling the staff time involved I find we did it in 2 days. Do we:

1. 'Find' another 2 days in our diaries so that we can show that we contributed what we said we would?
2. Spin the work out to 4 days - a few bows and ribbons on top perhaps - so that we can honestly say that we provided the full match-funding?
3. Confess all and tell the funder that they should only be paying us half the cash sum as we did not provide the match-funding we promised?

We could of course get a life and do what everyone else does: adopt option 1.

But imagine the implications of the other two approaches. One would encourage inefficiency as we spent our time cutting out paper doilies to adorn our already-completed project. The other would produce a reaction like a Bateman cartoon The organisation that said it did not need the money that had been promised. 

How would they ever cope with an efficient and honest organisation? Are we the milkmaids or are they? 

Financial jargon

The end of the financial year looms and we are delighted to receive an update from one investment company whose promotional message is: Our multi-boutique asset management model encompasses the skills of a number of world-class specialist investment firms.

This is good to hear. We wish we knew what it meant, though. If we cannot understand it then what chance has the general tax-paying populace have? 

Putting a brave face on it

Ed Vaizey is putting a brave face on things. The Museum's Association reports a speech last week to the Local Government Association Conference, in which he described the government’s support for the sector as a self-evident truth and said it was rubbish to suggest the arts are in crisis. It is regrettable to observe some of the scaremongering suggesting our arts and cultural sector is somehow at risk. 

He went on to highlight the cities which had bid to be 'cities of culture', saying they are the ones that get it. It’s only a shame that more don’t. He went on to cite Chester Council's plans to improve the city's cultural offer as yet another example of the arts in the UK waving, not drowning.

The MA reports that 'leading figures from across the arts sector, including the Arts Council's new chairman Peter Bazalgette, have expressed serious concern about the loss of local government investment in culture. Recent figures show that local authority funding for museums dropped by £23m in 2011-12, while a report by the Department for Communities and Local Government, also found that cultural spend by local authorities in England fell 7.8% in that period.'

Mark Taylor, director of the Museums Association, said: I am sure the news that we are not in crisis will come as a surprise to most of the museums in the UK - to the 400 professionals who have been made redundant in the national museums in the last year and to the 30% of museums who responded to our 2012 survey saying they had had their budgets cut by 35% in the last two years.

Well said Mark. Ed Vaizey must have been talking to his London museum friends (generously funded by him) again.

There is a bonus point for guessing where he made this speech. Yes, in Chester. Funny that.

Getting the point

Jeremy Hunt (Health Secretary) has helpfully summed up the problem of remote management by KPIs: You are hitting the targets but missing the point. There was a good discussion to be had there about the way in which one can measure performance and encourage improvement but sadly, he went on to use a current buzz phrase, talking about those that are coasting along and not achieving excellence.

The BBC version of the pre-speech release - why bother to have a speech at all when the main aim is to get media coverage twice: once when you issue the I am going to say and then the speech; perish the thought that something more interesting might happen and push you off the news - goes on to say:

It is commonly said about a 10th of hospital trusts are failing, although double that are actually not meeting all the essential standards set out by the Care Quality Commission. That leaves about 80% of trusts that are doing what they should. Some of these will be excellent - perhaps about 10-15% - and some will be striving to become excellent - perhaps a similar number. That leaves close to half that could be said to be stuck in the middle, coasting along.

Hitting the targets but missing the point is a well-turned phrase which must have cheered the speechwriter. It is only when you ask Who set the targets? that the reality dawns: it was, of course, Ministers. As so often - take Education as a very obvious example - if you give people boiled-down or simplified targets then they start delivering on those targets whether they make sense or not. If you set targets involving going up and down at the same time, we will find a way of doing so if that is what you say you want.

Policymakers want to set standards for Education and seem surprised when teachers teach to the test. This leads to complaints that teachers are in the wrong. Look in the mirror. Teachers may be missing the point but if you tell them that you will judge them by their ability to hit targets do not be surprised if they aim for those targets. The hint is in the word.

The interpretation of Excellence in Health is clearly following that of Mr Gove's Education department: achieving targets or being satisfactory means you are below par, coasting, not striving hard enough. Is there a statistician in the house? When will someone explain the meaning of average: the concept that there are as many in the top half as there are in the bottom; that a normal distribution includes a large bulge in the middle. 

Or is it like some of our politicians and Orwell's animals where we are average, the other 95% are below average?

And just how intellectually insulting is the sentence: that leaves close to half that could be said to be stuck in the middle, coasting along. It is not even justified by the copy which appears to estimate the number that are excellent and the number striving, and then guesses at the proportion in the middle. Might this middle bunch not be actually trying their damnedest against almost impossible odds such as funding cuts and nonsensical government targets? Statistics tell us to expect them to be there. Oh no, they are coasting and missing the point. 

As someone called Jo Webber says people in the Health Service come to do the best they possibly can for patients. I am sure many do. How about celebrating their efforts instead of kicking them for once?

Wielding a vague stick vaguely in the direction of the enemy never improved anything. But it makes a good line for a cocktail party and good copy for the Daily Mail.