Category Archives: Whitehall

William Hague (a well known after dinner raconteur and sometime Foreign Secretary) and other Ministers have launched an assault on business people for not working hard enough. Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Hague said: “There’s only one growth strategy: work … Continue reading →

Apology, this has nothing to do with Whitehall or Public Management, but here goes anyway….. Owen (”Chavs”) Jones started a discussion on Twitter to glorify his and others ancestors who’d been involved in what, to him, we’re worthy pursuits like … Continue reading →

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister, says it should be just as easy to sack badly performing Civil Servant’s as it is to sack private sector workers. Which is to say, in today’s Britain, pretty easy. In truth, it is … Continue reading →

My colleague at MBS, Michael Pryce, sends this: On 10 May 2012 Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond announces that the UK will revert to plans to buy the jump jet version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, to save billions of … Continue reading →

Let’s start by saying I have been through the ‘Developed Vetting’ (DV) process. I can’t tell you why, because then I’d have to kill you (a joke, of course).

The BBC’s Nick Robinson has it almost right when he says there are two ways of judging these elections – through the prism of the last three decades of British politics with its long-lived single party governments (Tories 1979-97; Labour … Continue reading →

I heard yet again today someone using the Queen’s Jubilee Gambit to explain that next quarter (Q2 2012) may see even more sluggish growth in the economy or even that wonder “negative growth”. This is based on comments made by … Continue reading →

Aditya Chakrabortty has suggested (in a Guardian column) that British “publicly funded” social scientists have failed to step into the breach as neo-classical economic orthodoxy so spectacularly failed over the 2007-2009 financial crisis and it’s on-going consequences. Read my analysis … Continue reading →

So, Britain is officially in a ”double-dip” recession, just. In reality this is both more and less serious than it sounds. It is more serious because we are still a good 4% of GDP lower than we were at the … Continue reading →

I have been predicting for ages that some of the current (and previous) Government’s reforms like NHS Foundation Trusts, Academies and ‘Free Schools’, and the soon to be Community Commissioning Groups, will undermine financial control and audit in these publicly … Continue reading →

You can now join the listserv for “Policy@Manchester” that will be used for announcements in the future about our activities.

One of the things that distinguishes top Universities around the world is that, certainly in democracies, they are usually power-houses of public policy ideas. True, in recent years in some countries Universities have been squeezed out by (sometimes very well … Continue reading →

Please share The Equality Trust and the University of York are looking for a Researcher to take a leading role in an exciting new project: Discussing Inequality – materials for the classroom and beyond.

An interesting piece by UNISON local government leader Heather Wakefield raises an obvious contradiction in Coalition Government policy.

“The Centre for Economics and Business Research says that if bank holidays were scrapped, Britain’s GDP would be £19bn higher every year.” (BBC website)

Just 15 months ago I spelt out in an article for Public Finance how much of strain trying to stick to Cabinet ‘collective responsibility’ would put on the Coalition government. I suggested that the Coalition would have to come up … Continue reading →

Whitehall Watch today passed a milestone – over 100,000 hits.