Three cheers for Baroness Warsi...

I think she might just be bang on the mark...

Respect to her for engaging with someone who'd already lost the argument by throwing eggs. How old are those guys, 12?

The Green Cut

Nick Robinson voices his reservations about how effective a budget cut equivalent to the savings of 10% of Government's carbon emissions would be.

I'm in favour of reducing energy consumption (consumption in general, really), particularly in a business sense because it would usually indicate greater efficiency as well as an attempt to minimise the impact we place on the world around us. The problem with the idea (and Nick's analysis) is that a question needs to be asked: who will calculate the savings of a 10% carbon emissions cut?

If the answer is external consultants, be they auditors, quantity surveyors, or whoever, they will cost money and need information from within the organisation. There are also not many organisations big enough to audit government organisations. Those that are exist primarily (and sometimes solely) to service the needs of large organisations - are the findings of these organisations potentially compromised by their proximity to those they serve?

If the answer is that civil servants themselves will provide information on what they can save, it would naive to think that the Sir Humphries (or Ervin Burrells if that's more your thing) in the corridors of power won't be thinking up ways to massage the figures, sorry, "mitigate the survey impact". The only way round that seems to be suggesting the sorts of savings that can be made, in which case why worry to ask in the first place?

Hofstede's National Culture Research and Handy's Cultures

We covered organisation culture this evening. How cultures are made, the different types, how culture can (or can't) be changed, the kind of cultures people prefer and the ones they don't.

Geert Hofstede (I'm going to resist the urge to stick a "van" in there at exam time, it couldn't be more Dutch) conducted research in 1980 in the form of employee surveys across the international divisions of IBM to find out what cultural differences could be identified across the organisation. The four variables were:

Long Power Distance - Short Power Distance (how different are subordinates from their immediate superiors)
Individualism - Collectivism (how likely are employees likely to put collective interests before their own)
High Uncertainty Avoidance - Low Uncertainty Avoidance (how comfortable is a culture with taking on the unknown)
Masculine - Femine (How agressive, target driven and activist is a culture contrasted with its empathetic, responsible and measured characteristics)

Of course this is a hugely Western liberal capitalist classification of culture, and the quantifiable results are only applicable to IBM, not the rest of the world. Also, the world has changed hugely since 1980 (fax, internet, low cost air travel, satellite communication) so you could question whether discriminating culture as "nations" is a valid excercise when an organisation's workforce could be scattered all over the globe and 6 months later have changed completely again. It also ignores resource and political legacies and the different objectives a global organisation might have in different countries. But apparently it's a test that has endured the test of time.

We covered the Pluralist/Elitist/Unitary/Radical/Marxist descriptions of power - it's Mr Gardner's AS Level politics and Sheffield's POL103 all over again!

The other nugget I prised from the seam of this evening's lecture was Handy's four cultural descriptions of organisations, viz:

Role-based: Forms! Tick boxes! Policies! If the idea of any of those gives you a wet dream, that's you.
Power-based: The Cult of Personality (like the song) Charisma and domination prevail in the hands of a few.
People-based: People get together and act out of mutual self interest
Task-based: You get the job done, all else is peripheral.

Memories of Detroit

If our public finances feel a bit dire over here at the moment, spare a thought for the Motor City. The Times reports that "unburied bodies tell the tale... of a city in despair" - having used up the county budget for state-sponsored burials back in June, Detroit is unable to afford to bury unclaimed corpses. Meanwhile, the city budget faces a $300 million budget shortfall and cannot afford to run services such as schools and refuse collection.

(Above: the Book Cadillac before renovation and the centre of metro Detroit)

Detroit is a city that has fascinated me for a number of years now: the cliche of the dark side of the American Dream, of affluence, confidence and splendour tarnished by decay, social and political crisis and a perennially uncertain future. Buildings like the Book Cadillac hotel before it was refurbished, Michigan Central Station and the theatre they turned into a car park are icons of Detroit's past and present.

Lots has been written on Detroit elsewhere so I won't spend too much time reinventing the wheel, but instead draw on my experiences from when I visited Detroit two years ago. The Michigan State Legislature was experiencing political deadlock over passing its annual budget - all operations of the state were under threat of paralysis with public servants going unpaid and cash to pay for services unavailable. The local press was running a story about two senior police officers on trial for selling cocaine from the evidence room or something similar - it's difficult to be precise, a quick look back over Detroit's corruption cases in the last 2 years shows that these reports are quite common, with allegations of corruption going right through to the top of the City's administrations. (does this sound like another American city we know in fiction?)

The people I spoke to on my way through the rust belt in Pennsylvania and Michigan told me I was mad to want to visit Detroit, that it was polluted and falling apart physically and socially, that I would have my car stolen and would probably be shot. I have to say my experience was somewhat different - the people I spoke to there were friendly Americans in much the same way as they were in the rest of the country. Certainly there were miles of derelict factories, empty plots where houses once stood and what was left standing was in many cases going the same way, but then I saw that in Chicago and Cleveland too. The roads were choked with traffic - lots of old American classics and 18 wheeler semis trashing the heavily potholed asphalt of the freeways. But there were also gleaming factories in the suburbs, and rejuvanated plazas in the centre of the city where the offices like the Renaissance centre dominated the skyline, but nestled in next to some fantastic deco architecture from the 20s and 30s and some striking modern architecture from the 50s and 60s.



(Above: Thunderbirds architecture meets art deco, and the front entrance of Detroit's police headquarters)

I got the feeling back then even before the banking crisis was fully understood that America was living on borrowed time, and Michigan more than most: the local press was discussing Congress' new "restrictive" low emissions laws that would signal the end to the SUVs coming out of Michigan, Kansas and Kentucky. Michigan's economy was still hugely dependent on buoyant motor sales, and it was being reported that price reduction deals to buy new cars were actually outpricing the second hand market. Since I visited, unemployment has soared to 28%, Chrysler is now a foreign-owned and government subsidised company as is GM (if you count the Canadian government as "foreign", which I would imagine most Americans would).

I hope Detroit can reinvent itself. It was one of the most fascinating places I visited on my trip across the US and deserves to become a great city again.

So now we have a President...

Did today feel any different to you? Me either.

Back to Band of Brothers in HD.

Charlie has a go at TV critiquing (fails?)...

I've had a bit of an iPlayer festival this evening, beginning with Russell Howard's Good News. The content is largely a matter of taste, with mixed reviews on the interweb; personally I like the upbeat and slightly childish angle Howard puts on things. I also like the production team's choice of soundtrack - I discovered this evening after much aggravated searching that the opening credits are scored to Kasabian's "Faste Fuse". Incidentally, the album it's from, West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum is very good and worth a listen if you're so inclined.

Next was a serving of Malcolm Tucker profanity and healthy dollop of cynicism in The Thick of it. The Opposition are sniffing round DoSAC, much to Terri's interest and Tucker's bridled digust. I can't quite get used to Roger Allam as Peter Mannion after his role as SuperMac in Ashes to Ashes ( - but that's probably unique to me since The Thick of it didn't register on my radar until after season 2 of Ashes to Ashes). Anyway it all plays out as expected - the Opposition are hamstrung by SpAd problems of their own in the form of "Blue Stu" (I think that's what they mockingly called him... it's a bit too late in the day to recall accurately) and everybody sort of wins through at the expense of (mostly the Minister's) truth, honesty and dignity.

Finally, the first episode of series 14 of Top Gear. In short, Eric Bana was entertaining, German limo test was dull apart from the usual overworn jokes about the Stig and the Romanian Road Trip was interesting in parts (Ceaucescu's palace, rural Romania and the post Communist legacy) but also came across as overworn, and overstaged - particularly the dacia sandero gags, which after 5 minutes became tedious beyond further remark. Hope next week's a return to usual broadcasting.

The BBC seems to be hitting the mark on several fronts for good entertainment at the moment (including it's drama series Garrow's Law, which besides what I've already mentioned plus Olivia Poulet is another attractor for my beady eye atm)- and even the stuff I would call pointless drivel seems to attract lots of praise from viewers and critics alike. I'm inclined to believe that it does well to please such a wide audience. I'm happy to leave the debates about the remit and size of the BBC (and its paypackets) aside for the time being whilst I have something to cheap to do on the long winter evenings...

When pictures tell so many words...

A little over a year ago, the Greenwich Phantom ran a piece on the uncertain future of East Greenwich library. The Heart of East Greenwich project was struggling ahead, placing the future of the listed building in doubt.

With the Heart of East Greenwich project stalled, I wondered what had become of our library. Last week I met with Terry Wheeler from the Friends of East Greenwich library to find out what had changed in a year. The pictures below describe the library's general condition better than I can:

Terry said that a lot of the leaking was put down to the lead being stolen from the roof - he didn't know if the council had replaced it - and poor drain maintenance under the building that had caused the floors to become saturated and rotted the parquet floors. These have been removed and the library has been recarpeted, but a lot of water still seems to be getting in.

Parts of the building are derelict, including a flat above the front of the library that has been condemned. The physical library itself occupies about 1/4 of the building space, another 1/3 or so appears to be used by Greenwich Community College, while the remainder is derelict. It also has a basement area, though if the ground floor suffers from water seepage, then goodness knows what the areas below ground are like! The boiler has also been broken in the library for more than a week - perhaps by now it's been fixed?

It's a crying shame. I think this is a sad example of a place being neglected in anticipation of a new replacement library, but since that's all stalled now, they're basically stuck with a building that's got into such a poor state of repair that it's going to take a lot of investment to put it right. They've also put it into a spiral whereby the opening hours reduce, the book selection shrinks, so fewer people visit, so they can't justify keeping it open, so they reduce the opening hours... and so on.

Terry said the council had estimated putting the library back into good repair at £2.3 million. It's going to need a lot of work, but I think if you put the flat back into action and thought cleverly about the use of space, it would not just be of service to the community, but begin to start paying for itself - particularly as Terry tells me the new "heart of East Greenwich library" isn't even phase one of the development, it's going to be somewhere along phase two or three. I must confess that I have my doubts as to whether it will ever happen, and even if it does, surely Carnegie's donation to the borough should stay open for the enjoyment of the borough?

More details to follow.