大象传媒

'tired of people from backward nations scamming us out of our tax dollars by claiming 'refugee' status..'

Patrick, I scarcely need to point out that the reason Iraq is in the mess it's in is due to Britain and, er..America.

Blaming them for the mess is a little like burgling your neighbour, shooting their daughter and then complaining about the cost of the ammunition.

Presumably this mysterious meta mind place thingy Wizegeek Mason so laboriously drooled on (and on) about is just a posh way of describing The Imagination - which I gather (but stop me if I've misunderstood) was invented even before the internet itself.

Dear Sir

In your programme, the Chief Executive of the NHS stated that increasing the number of clinicians in management positions would help to improve management performance in the NHS. Unfortunately, it would seem that many non-clinically trained NHS managers are implicitly opposed to clinicians becoming senior managers. I am aware of a London PCT that is proposing to make redundant a medical consultant who also has excellent qualifications (MSc and PHD) and experience in health planning/administration and health economics. The same PCT is also proposing to promote non-clinical managers who do not have management training or health-specific qualifications. If the Chief Executive of the NHS is committed to increasing clinicians in management posts then clear guidance to NHS organizations is urgently required

Normally love Paul Mason. Tonight's "Geek Week" report insulted intelligence. Has Newsnight fallen into trap of assuming viewers have IQ of 70?

Where was your mind Paul?

Excellent programme, though it is annoying when the 大象传媒 start Newsnight a few minutes late which has become a habit.

The item on cyberspace was tiresome, in a way, in that little imagination went into exploring realistic uses of the technology. The rise in identity theft is a symptom of the growth in the culture of people locking themselves away from reality to impersonate the person they would like to be, whether in chat rooms, shooting games, or other imaginary worlds. Apart from the growth in individualism and isolation that this technology promotes, and associated abuse of same, there are potentially more useful applications, such as in education and science.

War games and simulations were developed by the military for scenario planning. In a more civilised society, can we imagine future wars being fought in the same way as the spectacle we saw on Newsnight, with people creating personalities, arming them, and fighting imaginary street battles? In such a scenario, a New Order (say UN) would take a deposit from a nation in money, like an online casino operator. The nations would then engage in a cyberspace war, with volunteer soldiers engaged from the population. The losing nation would have to pay real money for damage, compensation and reparations to the winning nation. This would be a war without blood or loss of life, but with economic consequences for participants, especially the losers.

As bizarre as this seems, it is is probably as likely and feasable as the suggested deveolpment of a new religion being a byproduct of online interactive shooting games.

Was the Ryanair segment dropped, or did I snooze through it?

Accelerated health recovery...

NHS SEDATE CULTURE V COMPANY CULTURE.

"In the NHS there are no customers only timings and procedures".....

Did we see "a sedate culture of suffering and compromise, employees in earning roles, waiting for orders, worrying about behaviours, respects, compliance, and obedience... "

Rather than "a company culture of customisation, optimisation, empowerment, application, ownership, and careful ambitions, that knows what is worth doing, and rationalises, and continuously improves options with better practice "

Would a change make a difference..is staff proactive dynamism appropriate for patients...it seemed like employees did not know what to care about other than themselves... how new labour...

Any business studier might have an opinion...it is common manufacturing systems stuff..but few middle class books address the real options...Is TVs pre-gcse playground chat thinking going to fix? the NHS...

What are the appropriate quality indicators, risk factor controls, allowances and tolerances from each stakeholder tactical and strategic point of view ...

Patients need to assess their own attitude to risk reveiw method statements staff and operational quality options as part of their accelerated health recovery preparations

Benedict TLC From a man part sedated for 5 years for showing business class autonomy and control in a hospital...reawakening his graduate studies...

Since president Bush has revealed his new Iraq policy, can we assume that there was an old one lurking around somewhere? If so I wonder what it was as I can't remember being aware of one. The impression a lot of people have (and I think rightly so) is that the policy makers didn't have a clue what to do once they had 'Won' the war.

If you managed to catch Gerry Robinsons triology on the NHS...& it was very good.(the Irish Blarney et al ) You may have heard him admit in the last Ep' that despite everything & the impression given by the "ever so condescending" Patricia Hewitt insisting that PTs were the absolute authourity... GR'sthrow away line..paraphrased said, there were still strings attached to the Sec' of Healths Dept'!
Take that to mean it was still being governed Top Down, & all the Trusts report to her...ugh!

I鈥檓 writing to respond to the many posts panning Paul Mason鈥檚 report. The contempt and disdain shown by Jeremy and here on the posts made me wonder whether people just hadn鈥檛 understood the piece or just condemned it out of hand because it dared to ask questions that they were afraid to consider. I am presuming the latter.
Firstly I鈥檝e got to say that Collected Eric鈥檚 comments about the people in the report a little rude. On what grounds can he make such cutting observations with such little knowledge about the people involved? I would hate to call such name-calling infantile. I know enough people who think that writing into Newsnight as often as Eric does would make him socially and emotionally challenged, and not a little pathetic. The difference being that those people would have the good grace to keep their opinions about his character to themselves.
But I digress鈥�. I am an atheist but that does not stop me recognising mankind鈥檚 need for a spiritual connection somewhere or at least the distinct lack of it in today鈥檚 society. It is well documented throughout history that prayer, meditation, chanting, dancing, music and drugs can all help humans achieve a different state of consciousness. Recently scientists claimed to have discovered 鈥渢he god channel鈥� in the brain- a part that only seems active during spiritual experience. Who is to say that cyberspace may not be another path to this part of the brain. If this was so what implications might that hold for mankind, to have access to a part of the brain that allows a different level of awareness? Questions of the self or the soul or whatever you want to call it, have been around as long as mankind. It is only the dead and those on very high horses that do not ponder these things.
On the subject of online gaming, there is so much more to the area than just shooting folk and flying around. There is a massive variety of gaming experience out there; most of them require social interaction and teamwork to achieve the goals. Surely helping to rescue a group of cyber-hostages with my online team-mates from an online enemy in a game is only slightly different to engaging my imagination in say a Robert Ludlum novel. The main difference being that online I would have to socially interact with real people! This interaction happens in a place where the usual social rules have been thrown out of the window. Your social background, appearance, accent cease to matter. All that matters is how you interact with other REAL people in your online world. To condemn this huge chunk of folk as tech-fetishists, devoid of responsibility and social interaction seems a little prejudicial and blinkered.
On a last point I鈥檇 just like to ask ,if a colleague of yours showed such disdain for your work in front of such a large audience, as Jeremy did for Paul鈥檚 piece, would you applaud them for their spirit or question their professionalism and manners?

NHS here we go again. You had two heavyweights on your programme who had something to say to us which we might or might not have agreed with but certainly would have found interesting. And we get the old blowhard JP with his usual policy of Interruption Interruption Interruption coupled with a completely asinine comment about doctors playing golf. Stereotyping stereotyping stereotyping? Why do you let him do it?

JP's disdain of everything connected with the Net is probably less tiresome to those who don't use the Net to view the programme. But for those who do he is severely damaging his "brand" value.

The Geek report might have been better with less value placed upon the views of those with books to promote. Anyone who thinks their brain is anywhere but in their skull whilst they use the Net needs it examining. But the Net, as long as one can keep up to date with the machinery and one's ability to access it lasts - and losing one's home, or one's health would bring one back to the real world very sharply - can vastly expand abilities and horizons. The rapid access to knowledge, and to language translation is totally beyond value (the founders of Google and the inventors of online translation should get Nobel prizes). But I don't see any evidence that it expands the human capacity to imagine or empathise, as was suggested. Maybe it provides more opportunities to use those faculties, or maybe it induces people to use them who previously did not. But people often used to say that, with radio, the pictures were better than with film or television, because the only limit was one's own imagination, and now the pictures are often provided by game and web designers. I don't understand why Paul needed a flying avatar to have an online discussion with some people from IBM, unless it was to provide some visual content. There wasn't all that much inagination stretching involved was there, given that Paul flys all sorts of places, and visited the IBM research building in real-life too?

The NHS section was interesting but limited. I had missed the three programme series upon which it was based and guess I'll have to go looking for it now, but, just from what was on Newsnight, I'd be concerned if changes to the NHS were to be made for the reasons stated.

Yes, NHS management is sometimes very poor, but tripling salaries (a management tool which has led to huge greed), or, as a surgeon in the clip suggested, insisting they have as many degrees as any of those they manage, are false solutions. They need to really know what they are doing, not be pressed into making decisions without that information, or be too easily influenced by others, and they need the authority to make employees with superiority complexes or collective muscle listen.

Yes, surgeons and consultants do throw their weight around, but sometimes it is right - such as when they are standing up for their patients - and sometimes it is not. In the past the head of nursing, the matron, had the authority to stand up to them if she judged it unfair, and to do much else beside, but matrons got abolished, and the recent replacements seem to have little impact. Nursing, and patient care, has mainly gone severely downhill as a result. Consultants are certainly not to be considered the final arbiters, whose work should simply be facilitiated by everyone else. The patient's interests are supposed to come first, and consultants can sometimes have very unbalanced views, centred entirely on their own beliefs, or their own professional interests (as the Bristol babies inquiry found, so devastatingly), in their own speciality.

The point about unused operating theatres whilst are on waiting lists needs taking further, as it could show a huge weakness in the managment theory of the NHS - operating as a market with retailer-like PCT's buying from medical units, like hospitals, whilst the funding is overall, and the basic goal - maximising customer health - is in common. Or it might have been a demonstration of a hospital unjustly passing the buck, blaming the NHS system rather than telling the truth. In effect undermining the NHS.

The PCT in this case was said to not have the money to pay for enough procedures a week to empty the waiting list, but the NHS was still paying for the operating theatres, and presumably most of the staff. So if the money the hospital was paying out for no work were tranferred to the accounts of the PCT, which then commisioned the work and the procedures were done, and the waiting list emptied, and the money paid to the hospital, wouldn't only the same money be spent? Isn't that an accounting screw-up? I.e. some misconceived procedure at top-level management, not local?

Or maybe there was a different explanation: that the surgeons were seeing patients in wards or consulting rooms, and Friday was the day the theatres were unused because operating then would mean patients might be recovering in the wards on Saturdays, when staff want to be home with their families and are more expensive, but many patients and their employeers might prefer the treatment?

I noticed it wasn't questioned that the theatres were unused at weekends or at night. Now that might be because more money would be needed to emply extra staff to use the facilities during those times. I would like to see a study - done by proper cost accountants - of just how much it would cost to run weekend or night shifts in facilities that are otherwise unused, some of which were very expensive - such as scanners. Not to mention the 6,000 consultants we are told have largely been trained at public expense and have no work to do.

GEEK WEEK:

Really enjoying Geek Week on NN

The representation of the real world in the virtual world & the changing nature of relationships is fascinating.

It's social networking albeit by interactive representations, in these medium, restrictions/barriers such as wealth, age, status, relationship, location & education are largely negated, as people engage in online activities & identities & are primarily judged by the competency of their interactions.

Q. to what purpose you may ask?

BACKGROUND:

People say our parents generation (baby boomers) do not readily relate to the use & reliance of technology (videos, dvds, digital kit) & ICT (computers, mobiles etc) in their lives, beyond the basics (if at all).

Would argue, that equally, too many classed as the children of the baby boomers typically aged 30+ do not get the next logical extension of technology i.e. virtual world & relationships/representations.

The children of baby boomers, may use technology of the 1st Generation & 2nd Generation but like their parents face an impasse, when it comes too finding value & use of 3rd Generational developments, unlike the younger generations.

1st Generation: Hardware

- its become the norm of home & business, main changes in power & size & cost, accompanied by emergent basic software apps.

2nd Generation: Software

- basic to intermediate forms of functionality, that鈥檚 tied too & running parallel to the development of hardware but is somewhat limited by such.

3rd Generation: Beyondware

- developments in Hardware is somewhat taken for granted.
- developments in software similarly becomes an enabler & a norm
- interconnectivity (speed & cost) taken for granted.
- what changes is that a user ROLE based PARTICIPATIVE model becomes prevalent *

* people finding value in not only spending limited time in SOCIAL NETWORKING (in whatever form) but claim & derive value in these virtual representation & relationships.

THE FUTURE:

Fast forwarding ... lets pretend its become desirable & possible that we can all link up (voluntarily) MATRIX-LITE (perhaps the ulitmate 'pay as you go' opportunity)

What we do, what we are willing to pay for & the value we find in & our willingness to committ limited & valuable TIME becomes ALL

Option (1) inhabit the real world in full consciousness & carry out a limited number of activities. Reliance on technology is discretionary & if mandatory typically pretty limited purposes & time spent.

Option (2) inhabit the virtual world, weighted to mental interaction & engagement (perhaps some part physical) carrying out a number of activities (at present mostly recreational)

Option (3) a half & half existence, physically existing but wired up, carrying out former real world activities (creation, composition to teaching & learning to鈥�. admin/bureaucracy duties) in a virtual world settings, the activity & form reminiscent of virtual GAME / RECREATIONAL play

Option (4) ID Evolution i.e. people prefer to stayed wired up & live their life or lives of their virtual representation/s **

** esp the disadvantaged: sick, disabled, elderly, depressed, unemployed, even prisoners 鈥�. etc

SUMMARY:

Very early days & could wax lyrical for ages, but still getting fully immersed in this NEO-VIRTUAL culture & need to replicate some lessons learnt & test some observations made.

But what should be remembered is that as virtual enablers (the joined up means to do it via h/w, s/w connectivity etc) become the norm - here on in ---> CONTENT IS KING

Well done NN ... pretty cutting edge subject to take to any audience.

On par with in-depth discussions on NN into politics & society etc (as opposed to alternative to just skimming the surface as is the norm in most media).

漏 2007 vikingar

David Mercer wrote: "...in the early 1980s, hospitals were run by the consultants ... it worked, and worked well 鈥� to the extent that it was then probably the most efficient in the world and at least twice as efficient as that of the US. ... the situation a quarter of a century on is largely unchanged; though the efficiency has been undermined by the managers ...In reality they can never control those (consultants) who alone know that is needed at the sharp end... The only way to optimize decision-making in such organizations is to let the consultants jointly, peer-to-peer, make the decisions..."

Sorry to disagree but amongst huge, and very beneficial changes that you seem to have missed are that that discrimination has been reduced, there are now ethics committees to prevent such horrors as the Bristol babies cases - which was, in effect surgeons doing their own thing - and waiting times have been slashed - in cases decimated - until now they are within sight of being acceptable, with a few exceptions that devious consultants, who think patients should either wait or see them privately, manage to get through the net. But nursing morale and quality, and hospital cleanliness have plummeted. Also vast sums are being wasted on IT systems and most everyone is worried about their privacy, which are national issues.

One speciality I know has seen surgical waiting times cut from 5 years - which had been the case since the 1960s - to 5 months, in the lifetime of this government.

But I know two regional centres where people have been on waiting lists for waiting lists for over 7 years for a first appointment, even though their published perfomance figures say no one waits more than 3 months. And there are several specialities where much more needs to be done. Ear, Nose and Throat departments, for example, which are almost always headed by surgeons who then place almost no priority on cases not involving surgery - like infections, which are often chronic, or hearing loss, or speech therapy. The staff who specialise in those areas have no clout compared to surgeons, especially if they are young and female, as many are.

It was interesting to hear Robinson's comments on the NHS.I believe he had considerable experience of the private health care sector in the late eighties through his first public company,although strangely this was not mentioned.
One point it may be worth mentioning is the regrettable wastage of NHS money by the public itself.Failure to meet hospital appointments is at a staggering 33 per cent in some parts of London,and I am mystified as to why more is not done to rectify this situation.

Perhaps my memory plays me false but wasn't it Mr.Robinson who once argued that the minimum wage should be applied in a different way in the Leisure Industry,because waitresses might be expected to rely on tips? I am not sure that the culture of big business translates easily into the public sector and I think a lot of nurses might be tempted to leave their jobs in this kind of working environment.

Well said, CollectedEric

This is the pits of infantilism, making people living in dreary housing estates in Tamworth think they've reached heaven. It is a recipe for technology fetish and worship, plus living a life of total fantasy, devoid of responsibility and interaction with real people.

Newsnight has a blind spot when it comes to technology. When it's reporting a war or a new medicine, its reporters usually look at the consequences of developments. This isn't permitted for reporting about the internet, where the desire to get down with the kids overrules