On the day that the Francis report refuses to blame anyone for murdering between 400 and 1,000 patients in Mid Staffs, RBS get fined nearly £400 million for fiddling Libor and killing no-one.
Quite right too. A few patients' lives are worth far less than stealing money.
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RBS fine sounds about right to me.
Clearly somebody should be held accountable for what happened at Mid Staffs. Scandalously, 25 yrs after the Herald of Free Enterprise, we still don't seem able to deal with corporate mass manslaughter.
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Rubbish, the management of the hospital got all their bonuses for hitting the targets so they must have been doing a great job.
..... ;-)
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Who gets the £400m, and what do they do with it?
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I did hear a plan to take the fine from the pool to pay the RBS bonus.
Sounds like an excellent idea to me. Do something wrong and it comes out of your wages, whats not to like?
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 6 Feb 13 at 15:12
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>> I did hear a plan to take the fine from the pool to pay the
>> RBS bonus.
>>
>> Sounds like an excellent idea to me. Do something wrong and it comes out of
>> your wages, whats not to like?
>>
Apply it to the Dept of Transport.. find the odd £40 Million repaid for the West Coast line fiasco.
That would concentrate minds for the next bid..
And the MOD for cost overruns.
We would soon have fewer Civil penpushers and moneywasters Servants.
Last edited by: madf on Wed 6 Feb 13 at 15:21
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>> RBS pay regulators.. tinyurl.com/bgabctz
OK.
"Some 87.5 million pounds will be paid to Britain's Financial Services Authority, $150 million to the U.S. Department of Justice and $325 million to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission."
What do these organisations do with this money? I'm presuming here that all authorities concerned obtain the money they need to run themselves from somewhere on a planned basis, so where do these windfall fines go when they receive them?
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(NOW) goes to the Treasury tinyurl.com/ansu4eu
Previously the FSA used the fines to offset its running costs and then reduce the fees it charged to the businesses it regulated .
( !)
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>> (NOW) goes to the Treasury tinyurl.com/ansu4eu
>>
>> Previously the FSA used the fines to offset its running costs and then reduce the
>> fees it charged to the businesses it regulated .
So nowhere is any thought given to compensating the victims of the fraud perpetrated by the bank, and they can carry on as normal after giving the regulator/the government £££££s massive. Seems fair and just.
The bank has made money fraudulently from customers, and those customers are just expected to write this off to experience, meanwhile the guilty party gives money to an unrelated third party. You just gotta love it.
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>> So nowhere is any thought given to compensating the victims of the fraud perpetrated by
>> the bank, and they can carry on as normal after giving the regulator/the government £££££s
>> massive. Seems fair and just.
>>
There are a number of court cases against banks for the frauds perperated by fixing Libor. The Barclays staff in one case tried to get the court to order theyremain anonymous.
The court declined.
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>> murdering between 400 and 1,000 patients
Amazingly I'm not aware of this.
How did they murder them? Machine guns, gas, bombs? That's a lot of people to murder, must have made a hell of a mess.
Now, RBS behaved incorrectly with Libor to make money, and they're a business there to make money, so fining them money would seem to be a perfect approach.
Fining a government funded organisation would not seem to be quite so ideal. Not really sure how a financial penalty would really work anyway since they're not targeted on spending or earning money.
So, I guess I'm not really getting your point. Do you think that the NHS and RBS should receive the same or similar penalties?
Or are you just confused because they're both TLAs ending in "S"?
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"A separate highly critical report by the Healthcare Commission in 2009 revealed a catalogue of failings at the trust and said it had put patients at risk.
Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected in a three-year period from 2005 to 2008, the commission said.
In February 2010, an independent inquiry into events at the trust - also chaired by Mr Francis - found it had "routinely neglected patients
tinyurl.com/ay584sj
Fine them?
No We send people who murder others to jail. It's called "corporate manslaughter"
"Corporate manslaughter is a crime in several jurisdictions, including England and Wales and Hong Kong.[1] It enables a corporation to be punished and censured for culpable conduct that leads to a person's death"
tinyurl.com/a2hnwwn
Last edited by: madf on Wed 6 Feb 13 at 15:59
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>>It's called "corporate manslaughter"
But you said it was called murder? You know they're different, right?
And you seemed to be upset that they weren't fined and RBS was. Do you think the NHS should be fined then?
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>> >>It's called "corporate manslaughter"
>>
>> But you said it was called murder? You know they're different, right?
>>
>> And you seemed to be upset that they weren't fined and RBS was. Do you
>> think the NHS should be fined then?
>>
>>
Bit more personal I am afraid. I attended the funeral of a colleague who went into Stafford hospital for a small op and came out in a coffin courtesy of MRSA etc. The death certificate was misleading and it took over a year for his widow to find the real cause of death.
The following lies etc about the cause of death excited my interest. The following attempt to prevent the full extent of the issues being made public says it all..
tinyurl.com/ybgv9rz
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>>
>> No We send people who murder others to jail. It's called "corporate manslaughter"
No we dont, we rarely send people to jail for corporate manslaughter.
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"No we dont, we rarely send people to jail for corporate manslaughter."
In fact we never send people to jail for corporate manslaughter. There have only ever been three convictions for the offence all resulting in fines.
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The Government and previous government didn't have their priorities right did they.
What a nightmare situation go to some hospitals and come out in a coffin due to neglect.
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>> The Government and previous government didn't have their priorities right did they.
>>
They have their own priorities in the correct order never fear, doubt the likes of our leaders and betters would be found (almost typed dead) in an NHS hospital of questionable competence.
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On the subject of the RBS, do even the BBC know what their favourite phrase "RBS owned by the taxpayer" actually means?
Does that mean that if you don't pay tax then its noting to do with you? What about if you paid tax when it was invested in but not now? Or how about you didn't pay tax then but you do now?
Because by the same logic surely that means that non-taxpayers in the UK are driving on roads that don't belong to them?
However, what they really mean is that the Government invested sufficient money to buy 80% of the shares, totally about £40bn. They own a combination of preferential and ordinary shares.
Now they're fining RBS and saying that this is ok because it comes from the money allocated to bonuses not any money that should be going to the government.
Now is it the Government who don't understand the economics of shareholder value or the BBC?
If you're interested, have a read of this..
www.goldmadesimplenews.com/gold/uk-loses-37-2bn-on-rbs-and-lloyds-would-be-up-52-2bn-if-it-bought-gold-4967/
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I really didn't have you down for dredging up Daily Mail type financial papers. As you well know, UK gov did not "invest" in the banking sector or be in any way concerned with shareholder value or returns. They were, more or less, compulsory purchased to provide confidence and liquidity. Had they not done so the major UK clearing banks (probably all of them) would have collapsed, with unthinkable consequences.
You really must not let your, at times irrational, hatred of the BBC lead you to peddle stuff like this, almost as tho you believe it.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 6 Feb 13 at 21:47
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Let me get this right.
RBS are fined by the regulators, in reality, part of government?
Who owns RBS? The government, mostly. Or put it another way, the taxpayers.
So one branch of government is effectively fining another branch of government.
Who gains?
Does the money actually shuffle around?
How much does this paper exercise cost the taxpayers who, after all are the government's employers?
Or is that too simplistic?
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Why this irrational hatred of The Daily Mail and its millions of readers?
Their opinions are just as valid as any of the left leaning amongst you, or is no other opinion of value, or to be allowed?
Last edited by: Roger on Wed 6 Feb 13 at 22:32
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Well put it like this Roger, if you cant see past the coloured reporting and bias of the mail, I can see how you were suckered in by UKIP
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Correction, Zero - the bias is in your own eyes if you see bias in everything with which YOU do not agree!
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No roger, the blinkers are over your eyes.
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Taxpaying status has nothing to do with it - the government does what it does (in theory) for the good of the nation/population.
That some of the population pay various types and amount of tax is just the way of paying for it.
The news is presented in a way that the knuckle-scrapers and mouth-breathers can elicit some type of knee-jerk emotional response while being fed a tiny trickle of truth.
Except of course for the Daily Mail and it's readership...
Last edited by: Lygonos on Wed 6 Feb 13 at 23:07
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The purpose of government, along with a bit of organising, is to redistribute on a continual basis the wealth that is generated by labourers and accumulated by capitalists.
In that sense we are all have a beneficial interest in government spending.
I accept that there are a few nuances to the above but that is basically it.
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>>No roger, the blinkers are over your eyes.
Not really. In fact whilst we don't usually agree on much, Roger and I would seem to have a pretty similar grip on this one;
One part of the Government is issuing a fine, and throwing its hands up in shock at unacceptable behaviour, and targeting both at a company largely owned by another bit of the Government.
Certainly I don;t see where the blinkers come in.
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>> Certainly I don;t see where the blinkers come in.
>
I was talking about his defence of the Mail in general.
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>>They were, more or less, compulsory purchased to provide confidence and liquidity.
Absolutely.
However, the chosen method was to buy share sin those companies. So I object to the stories on two levels; firstly, the term "taxpayer" is emotive and wrong. Secondly, however they ended up there, how little choice they did or did not have, and what options were or were not available to them, the Govt is now the major shareholder in that company and has control to an absolute extent.
Why does the government not then behave as a major shareholder? Its called dictating management, direction, strategy, control and finances.
The shareholders appoint, or at least approve, the management, strategy and direction. The shareholders are concerned with maximising their value from that company.
If the UK Government is not behaving as a shareholder and is not seeking to maximise their value, then what are they doing?
And as Roger says, the Government is essentially fining the company they own for behaviour carried out by management that they approve of.
And that is neither a daily mail style newspaper, nor is it essential for the understanding of the facts.
It does however set it out reasonably factually and mostly objectively.
May I refer you to the words of that world renowned philosopher Mr M Python when he said;
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
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>
>> It does however set it out reasonably factually and mostly objectively.
No it doesn't, It tries to portray the buying of the banks as a singular act of investment.
It makes no mention of the why, and the reason for the rise in gold which are both connected. It also make no reference to subsequent poor management of the same banks. The only fact it investigates is the rise in the price of gold and castigates the government for not investing in it
Its a terribly misleading article and has nothing to do with management, control or regulation of banks. Harking back to MR python, this article was in no way a connected statement, no connection what so ever.
Now lets see
How would you have rescued the banks? Pumping money into them (in the form of guaranteed line of credit) failed to stem the run. Buying them was a logical step, enabling them time and credibility.
Now having become a majority shareholder, what do you do. You are now an unwilling shareholder AND the regulatory body. There is a severe conflict of interest, an illegal one under most business and financial jurisdictions. You have three options
1/ Maintain business as usual and hope to offload and recoup, even maybe profit from the sale of the shares
2/ Run the banks as now nationalised for ever banks
3/ Act as institutional investors.
I wont go into the ins and outs of the benefits of any of those. but 1 means you get your money back, 2 means you never get your money back,
Lets look at 3 in some depth tho as you think we should.
Firstly its not legal under most international treaties and competition law. you cant be regulator and shareholder.
You also have to bear in mind you have borrowed, sums so vast they are beyond ones ability to grasp the amount, the money for your buyout. Annual ROI in banking sectors for well managed banks (even in the boom years) will in no way recoup your investment as a single nearly 100% shareholder, before the earth cools and falls off its axis.
You could of course leverage the debt onto your purchase, but that then means 1 is lost to you
HM gov chose 1. And rightly so. And that means acting as the regulatory body, using the tools and vehicles you have in place. Daily Mail readers thinking along the lines of "we own the banks, we are now fining ourselves", have been mislead into thinking we are in the, in my view and that of world markets, undesirable position of no 2.
As I said, I fail to see where, in any shape of form, that article goes anywhere near the crux of this argument and is merely writing for the effect of pretend offence and outrage. In that respect I think comparison to the daily mail is accurate.
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Most of the fine on RBS is to be paid from bonuses, via clawback. I don't understand why it is just the US fine that is to be paid from the pockets of the employees, leaving the business to fund the remainder.
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>> Most of the fine on RBS is to be paid from bonuses, via clawback. I
>> don't understand why it is just the US fine that is to be paid from
>> the pockets of the employees, leaving the business to fund the remainder.
Fining the business (and hence the shareholders who in effect employ the board) and the employees, all who have complicity, is a good idea. All are to blame.
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"If the UK Government is not behaving as a shareholder and is not seeking to maximise their value, then what are they doing?
They are preventing the RBS losses currently hidden from appearing all at once and destabilising the banking system
It has been done before: See Lloyds and South American Loans.
The US S&P shambles.
Government in the US took over bad loans from banks and allowed GM and Chrysler bascially to go bust without doing so.
Too big to fail.
And if anyone thinks separating investment banking and lending is going to stop another banking crash.. they know no history...
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Meanwhile it looks likely that Mid Staffs were amateurs at killing patients.
Here's how to do it..
"More than 3,000 people may have died unnecessarily at five NHS trusts in a crisis that could dwarf the horrors at Mid Staffordshire, which were detailed in a devastating report on Wednesday."
tinyurl.com/bb3j27m
(No it's NOT the DM.)
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Petition calling on Nicholson to resign here:
epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/45576
Last edited by: PhilW on Thu 14 Feb 13 at 20:59
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www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21444058
The gagging clauses need to be exposed and much beatings directed towards the trumpets putting politics and targets over lives.
Note the express lack of "retrospective" focus from the current minister suggesting government is gonads deep in this shameful cover-up.
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>> www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21444058
>>
>> The gagging clauses need to be exposed and much beatings directed towards the trumpets putting
>> politics and targets over lives.
>>
>> Note the express lack of "retrospective" focus from the current minister suggesting government is gonads
>> deep in this shameful cover-up.
>>
If those shameful petty bureaucrats sue him for his money...it needs a national newspaper to start a campaign..and set up a donation system for him and others....I'd contribute, no problem.
Everything in that article is true. The reason I know, is my ex-organisation had similar set ups right through the whole system. If you stood up for what was glaringly right , you were a troublemaker. My only saving grace was I was too junior in the big scheme of things, to be much of a PITA, so I was tolerated.
The strange thing was..at social do's and similar, people admired you and your ethics...back at work, in meetings, it was business as usual. Strange what performance related pay and career aspirations does to some/many.
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There is one performance marker that everyone is sweating about - asking patients:
"Would you recommend this hospital to a friend or family member if they needed treatment?"
Bring it on.
And if someone was not in a position to answer due to their health, I'd want their next-of-kin to answer it.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Thu 14 Feb 13 at 23:11
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I don't think that's a good idea. As a generalisation, people love to have a moan, and will always find something to moan about - just look at countless holiday reviews, enough to put you off ever going away. Expectations are often unrealistic, and people seem unable to accept anything less than perfect delivery of exactly what they want, which may not always be what the establishment offers, particularly with consumers always wanting to drive costs down.
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Indeed but by looking at 'outliers' ie. those hospitals well outside the average result, one may have a better early-warning system for crap management than simply looking at raw death rates.
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Customer satisfaction scores can be massaged too. I'd rather the effort went into making me better than making me think they have done a good job.
You can't coerce people into the right attitude by measuring their performance. When will they learn this?
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"You can't coerce people into the right attitude by measuring their performance. When will they learn this?"
At the end of the day you want them to change their performance. It might be nice and a lot easier if they have a good attitude but at the end of the day its how well they do their job that counts.
Their are plenty of people with the right attitude who are incompetent and their are plenty of people who are a pain in the rear end who do a good job. Which would you sooner have performing your open heart surgery
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You're missing the point. You can be a PITA and have the right attitude.
If by attitude you mean being matey, then satisfaction scores are fine. What you want is people who give a damn. That is the attitude I'm talking about.
Competence is another dimension. You need that as well.
Last edited by: Manatee on Fri 15 Feb 13 at 09:53
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"What you want is people who give a damn. "
But you can't measure that - it's purely subjective. What does it really mean? Lot of people are passionate about things but aren't up to the job - just look at some politicians.
No you need to measure performance. Why people perform well is another story but at the end of the day whether you are running a hospital, a school or a factory making widgets it the performance of the task in hand that is important and it is on what you you should be judged
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>> No you need to measure performance. Why people perform well is another story but at
>> the end of the day whether you are running a hospital, a school or a
>> factory making widgets it the performance of the task in hand that is important and
>> it is on what you you should be judged
But in many places now, certainly its coming in the civil service, performance management goes beyond getting the task done. New system starting in April will focus on behaviours as well. So it's not just about getting the job done but about HOW you get it done.
If you've not done it but not in the right way then you'll be failed.
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>> "What you want is people who give a damn. "
>>
>> But you can't measure that
So we agree.
I haven't time to dwell on it just now but what we are talking about here is a control system. Just managing what you can measure is OK for a lot of things, but is not good for complex processes like healthcare where the process itself is too variable for input (bureaucratic) control alone and the outcomes have too many dimensions for output control to measure.
I'm not saying you shouldn't measure anything. Adjusted mortality being the most obvious.
If you think attitude, ethics, a shared sense of purpose and a desire to do the right thing aren't important because they can't be measured, then you are still missing the point.
I recommend googling clan control if you are interested in the topic.
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" As a generalisation, people love to have a moan, and will always find something to moan about - just look at countless holiday reviews, "
That is of course true but would you book into a hotel that had 100 reviews on tripadvisor and nearly all of them three stars or less? In my experience people tend to rate high rather than low.
Some sort of consumer input for hospitals would at least give an indication that hospital was not performing as well as other and the reasons for that needed to be established.
I am very wary of the view that the public are not to be trusted and the authorities know best.
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they measure the wrong stuff with respect to health care, none of the human factors are measured.
For example waiting lists feature heavily, but nowhere do they include assessment of your quality of life (merely urgent or non urgent need), quality and timeliness of hospital communication, post operative care, etc etc.
Quality of care is not really dealt with, just production line numbers. Give a manager a production line type target and you get a production line not medical care. Thats the problem with figures, cant deal with human factors, and health care is all about human factors.
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>> they measure the wrong stuff with respect to health care, none of the human factors
>> are measured.
>>
>> For example waiting lists feature heavily, but nowhere do they include assessment of your quality
>> of life (merely urgent or non urgent need), quality and timeliness of hospital communication, post
>> operative care, etc etc.
>>
>> Quality of care is not really dealt with, just production line numbers. Give a manager
>> a production line type target and you get a production line not medical care. Thats
>> the problem with figures, cant deal with human factors, and health care is all about
>> human factors.
>>
>>
Ultimately death and readmission rates measure care quality.
On the basis of existing quantitative measures, much of the NHS is failing.
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Based on the fact we are living longer and can no longer afford the massively increased pension bills, the NHS is working too well.
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>> Ultimately death and readmission rates measure care quality.
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
>> On the basis of existing quantitative measures, much of the NHS is failing.
True. And it's partly because of the same "existing quantitative measures".
You squeeze a balloon in one place and it bulges out somewhere else.
Something goes awry and in comes another target which becomes the focus. You can only have a small number of "top priorities", or you end up with so many boxes to tick that it becomes the job, or the unmeasured stuff goes to pot, or both.
Measures are fine (and entirely necessary to understand the performance of the organisation) but when they are translated into objectives for the troops they just don't work unless the processes are capable of being described in compete detail and measured at that level.
We've had the target approach in one form or another for 20+ years. No longer does it take 3 years to get your non-urgent knee op, but while that was fixed patients were starved to death in a major hospital because nobody took it upon themselves to feed them. We shouldn't need to give people targets for that, should we?
You can see what has happened - ask Westpig.
It's a management failure. I haven't given much thought to the root causes, but political interference and knee jerks would be the first place I would look.
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I recommend you read the article in today's DT
"We can make it (the NHS) better" by Nick Seddon.
It quotes two very good hospitals: Salford and University Hospital Birmingham as showing how the NHS can do it...
tinyurl.com/ajhkou3
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Yes, I've read that. Nothing much there to disagree with.
The sub-headline is
"Improving NHS hospitals in the wake of the Mid Staffordshire scandal means enforcing a culture of professionalism and accountability – as the best do already"
Note the reference to culture and professionalism - neither being directly measurable.
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>> Note the reference to culture and professionalism - neither being directly measurable.
>>
That won't please the bean counters, sadly it would appear that we no longer have any middle/junior management that can actually manage either departments or people without recourse to a spreadsheet generating stats to tell them who is 'good' or 'bad'. The art of motivating people to perform well without resorting to Performance Management tables based on stats is largely dead.
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>> sadly it would appear that we no longer have
>> any middle/junior management that can actually manage either departments or people without recourse to a
>> spreadsheet generating stats to tell them who is 'good' or 'bad'.
The outfit I've just left didn't seem to want their junior/middle managers managing...they want to tie everything down tightly with SOP's (Standard Operating Procedures) and 'diktats' from on high. Woe betide anyone who actually made their own decision. It's apparently got noticeably worse since I've left as well. Seems madness to me. Why have managers if they can't manage anything.
Smacks of too many management tiers. If the senior managers have the time to micro manage the more junior ones, they aren't being employed productively.
The art of motivating
>> people to perform well without resorting to Performance Management tables based on stats is largely
>> dead.
Yes. Those performance management tables that can be manipulated anyway you like..and can easily have unintended consequences. When will they learn.
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I'd agree with your conclusion WP but not your intermediate reasoning. The problem is that too many tiers of management have gone leaving those left feeling obliged to resort to SOP and a half cocked attempt at LEAN because they've not the time for anything else.
Bit less than half of me hopes that by some oddity of Parliamentary process my current workplace is preserved. The other, slightly larger, half says get on and abolish. I'll take early retirement and find fill in work locally which need not pay more than 15-20% of my London rate.
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>> I'd agree with your conclusion WP but not your intermediate reasoning. The problem is that
>> too many tiers of management have gone leaving those left feeling obliged to resort to
>> SOP and a half cocked attempt at LEAN because they've not the time for anything
>> else.
If you take my old career....there were Sergeants doing the first line management role, then Inspectors. Most people in the outside world think that those two ranks are important for management....but...
....the reality had Chief Inspector, Superintendent, Chief Superintendent, Commander, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Assistant Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and Commissioner.. on top of that.
Are all those different ranks needed?...and that's just the police managers...you've got all the civilian ones meddling nowadays as well, at least in the old days they left policing decisions to the police.
The NHS has tiers of management now that it never ever used to have. The trouble with too many layers is they lose sight of what they are actually there for.
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The NHS has tiers of management now that it never ever used to have. The trouble with too many layers is they lose sight of what they are actually there for.
Sorry but I believe you are incorrect. You appear to think the NHS is there for the benefit of the patients.
It is clearly and demonstrably not. It is there for the employment of lots of managers without any responsibility for anything when the proverbial hits the fan... Targets are all.
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At a hospital level there's a degree of truth in that.
At GP level it's there to let me play golf every afternoon.
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Public hypocrisy and private accountability. - Bromptonaut
