The full independent review of Barclays’ business practice by Anthony

Salz can be viewed at this link (Click Link).

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has today delivered his 4th budget.

You can read the full budget document here. (Link)

The final report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

public inquiry was published today, Wednesday 6th February 2013.

You can access the full report here: (Link)

I listened with interest to the slot on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on the new recruitment plans for the police service (Link).

The argument has obviously split around the matter of the need for fresh talent and the risk of having senior people in an operational organisation with no operational experience.

At first glance I tend to fall on the side of the doomsayers and for this I am aware that the charge of hypocrisy can be laid at my door. I am a former graduate of a ‘fast track’ scheme within an operational organisation. However, my path is slightly different to the direct entry being discussed for the police. I was already a serving member of the service with a number of year’s experience of the operational nature of the organisation before I entered the scheme. In this way I used the opportunity to accelerate my promotion and get the benefit of the career development opportunities available. However, during my time going through this process I met many candidates who were direct entry and saw first hand the risks associated with this recruitment strategy.

The other evening when there was nothing much I wanted to watch on TV I ended up trawling YouTube for old favourites. Originally intending to watch episodes of “Yes Minister”, don’t ask me how, I ended up watching an early 2000’s BBC documentary about Bang Kwang prison inThailand, popularly known as “The Bangkok Hilton”.

Here’s the link  if you want to watch, be warned, it’s pretty depressing viewing.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has today delivered the Autumn Statement for 2012.

You can read the full statement here. (Link)

 The Leveson inquiry report into the culture, practices and ethics of the press has been published

today. You can read the report here (Link).

The Government has today published the final report into the LIBOR rate fixing scandal. You can read the report here (Link).

One aspect of particular interest to us in the cabinet reshuffle is the position of Justice Secretary. That title has moved from Ken Clarke to Chris Grayling.

This has been met with equal measure of joy and despair by those who care to comment on these issues. Francis Crook the CEO of the Howard League for penal reform described Mr Clarke as “a breath of fresh air” and praised his work at the Ministry of Justice for saving money and lives and not grabbing for the cheap headline.

The G4S Olympic security story (Link) has made us think about the process of Public Sector outsourcing. For a long time we have been of the opinion that outsourcing, whilst it has many merits, has been done inefficiently within the sector.

In our opinion there is a history of outsourcing the wrong areas and the G4S example is a very visible example of this.

The Public Sector is, in reality, really well practiced and specialist in many areas. However, of late there has been much ridicule of Public Sector services and an increasingly perceived wisdom that the sector is generally sub standard in all that it delivers. Added to this, there is the element that the general public want certain areas to be delivered by their government and the hiving off of these services to private companies actually leaves the public feeling insecure.