The government is to launch a new scheme for Ministers and Big Business leaders to “buddy up”, says an article in today’s Times. These arrangements giving business leaders direct and privileged access to Ministers is fraught with dangers, not least the taint of corrupt practices such as ex-Ministers being parachuted into jobs with their former ‘buddies’.

  My trade union, UCU, is campaigning against the establishment of “private” universities in the UK. They have a point about the way in which this is being done, which is in my view with reckless disregard for quality and probity issues which could damage the whole UK higher education sector.

The shine has just come my Apple experience. I still think they produce the best computers, but my experience over the past week points to some potential problems for them, and some lessons for public management.

Last week I did a session at the Audit Commission (yes, despite Mr Pickles best efforts they are still there, just). The subject was “Fuzzy Performance” and I outlined to about 40 expert staff why I and some colleagues are exploring using “fuzzy-set comparative case” analysis to explore issues of performance in public organisations. I […]

The imposition of soviet-style ‘one size fits all’ Parliamentary constituencies on the complex organic realities of England is an extraordinarily clumsy and contentious move. It smacks of moving towards Amercan-style boundary ‘Gerry mandering’, as well as distancing Parliamentary representation from real local communities. From a government supposedly committed to ‘localism’ this is a strange move, […]

The appointment of Bernard Hogan-Howe as the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is a political appointment, and all the poorer for it. I don’t mean Mr Hogan-Howe is a Tory, although he has been publicly cosying up to their law and order agenda. I mean that the decision to appointment him, as opposed to […]

This doesn’t really have anything to do with Whitehall or Public Management, but I got this extraordinary Press Release this morning and was so taken aback I just thought I needed to share it. Maybe it should be relevant to public management – should government provide an e-death service along with all the other e-gov […]

see my post on the Guardian Public leaders Network

The ‘Arab Spring’ has raised, yet again, the issue of how modern publication administrations can be created in emerging and transitional states – especially ones that have long lived with some sort of autocratic regime. At next years IRSPM Conference in Rome (11-13 April 2012) Beryl Radin (American University) and I are organising a panel […]

PA Times (USA) 21 September 2001 The column below was written immediately after 9/11 and published by the US magazine PA Times. You can find the archived online version here. I was going to write a fresh piece for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, but I think this stands the test of time rather better […]