The inestimable Atul Gawande (author of The Checklist Manifesto) has done it again with a brilliant little column in the New Yorker.
Archives for September 2012
Spending Review 2013 – politics trumps planning, again.
So, it appears fairly certain now that the Coalition Government is going to announce – sometime next year – Spending Review 2013.
Civil Service – getting on or getting out? (Guardian discussion)
Here’s the summary of my contributions to yesterday’s discussion on the Guardian Public Leaders Network.
Hillsborough and Transparency: why I know something of how the relatives feel about not getting the truth (until now)
I understand something of the frustration and anger of the relatives of the Hillsborough victims because I had a similar experience – albeit on a much smaller scale. British officialdom has a cult of secrecy and cover-up that is still with us, even if is has gotten slightly better. In 1982 my younger brother Gary, […]
Nudge – Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
The influential book “Nudge” (Thaler and Sunstein 2008) comes from the emerging field of behavioral economics, which investigates the non-rational ways in which people make decisions. Its policy implications are radical – it advocates what the authors call “libertarian paternalism”. This paradoxical prescription is based on the idea of ‘choice architecture’ – the notion that the way […]
Playing the Game Like Adults: Coalition does not mean Coalescence.
It is quite likely we are moving, hesitatingly and perhaps not in a straight line, towards an era of coalition governments in the UK.