How the 'Vikings' are spending our Danegeld...

Recently our regional daily, the EDP ran an article, rightly perhaps, praising the success of a company called Norse. Now this company was set up a few years ago by Norfolk County Ciouncil effectively outsourcing first its property services arm and then hiring the company to outsource - or privatise - a range of other services.
Since then Norse has grown hugely and in our region alone provides services to several other local councils - all part of the great Blair/Cameron plan to reduce the scale of the public sector and duck responsibility for all those difficult social and welfare services.
They EDP praised the fact that the firm was paying a large sum of money to its employees living and working in Norfolk. But the story was a bit short of detail; so I did some digging and wrote the following to the paper, the MD of Norse and the reporter involved. Not appeared yet....

The success of Norse Group is very good news for more reasons than may be apparent from the EDP report (Nov 9: Norse Group pays £82m in salaries etc) since most of this money is actually Norfolk taxpayers money.
Norse was formed, as you report, by the county council and, with its subsidiaries provides a wide range of services for local authorities. The vast majority of the £82m you report has come from Norfolk County, Norwich City and Great Yarmouth Borough in payments for services provided to the community on behalf of those authorities. This is the benign face of privatisation we are told. Indeed Norse Group has seen its income, mostly from similar contracts, climb to £177 million this year, up by about 13% and its gross profit climb to £40m, up 10%.
Clearly it is very much in the interests of Norfolk taxpayers, not to mention city council house tenants and residential care home tenants, that Norse continues to prosper. And in reading their annual reports it is also very clear that they take their community role seriously, under the guidance of a range of county and no doubt other authority councillors on their board.
But the report to which you refer was it seems ordered not so much by the county as the Norse Group, as managing director Mike Britch makes clear in paragraph nine. He is also more precise on the specific benefits that Norse's growth has brought to the county, noting the creation of 56 jobs within Norfolk supported by contracts outside the county.
What is not referred to is that the county has been more than a little concerned at possible mis-understanding of the group's activities, the county's relationship with it and the precise roles and possible conflict faced by their elected members combining board membership with their civic duties. They had a significant risk report done on this in 2011. It would seem to me that this latest report is a further effort to demonstrate that the decision to privatise all this work was a good one, well taken and well managed.
But I did a little sum and found that if £82 million is being paid to all 5,700 staff in Norfolk that means an average wage of just over £14,000 each - well below both the national minimum for a full-time employee and even further behind the living wage which, among others Boris Johnson is so keen on. And the annual report goes to some trouble to make re-assuring noises about their commitment to funding the workers' pensions, which may be in stark contrast to what they might have expected when employed by the county. All companies are being urged to focus more on their role in supporting the public good - something the new Archbishop has already referred to.
But since we taxpayers 'own' this company can we have a bit more information? How many Full Time Equivalents? How many now delivering Norfolk services? How many at foundation and for each contract since? What's the average wage of employees, manager and executives - now and then? What are their pension terms? Where does the profit go? Who are the beneficial shareholders?
Answers to these will help us taxpayers decide whether this has been a good decision, well managed and of benefit to us all.

Auntie gets her knickers in a twist

The BBC crisis may be exploited by manipulative paedophiles as a smokescreen and Beeb-haters as bandwagon jumpers. But they do have a problem and it is one they share with many other media operations: Badly trained journalists who are managed by people who spend too much time watching the hicksville antics of amateur bloggers (ho ho) and others who they see as a threat to their business. 

The BBC has descended to that level and is discovering that credibility is a hugely valuable and hard-won commodity.

Backing up a bit, the error over Savile was mere timidity. They knew only too well that they would get some of the blame for his antics so were on the back foot anyway. On top of that, the absurd adulation of the man was about to be repeated for Christmas. So they dropped the prog. They must have known it would annoy the hell out of the staff and so leak. Which it did. The rest is painful history.

But the fault was effectively just an old rule that guarded journalists for years - if in doubt, leave it out! No big deal in professional terms then.

Now the error of McAlpine is on a different scale - it is a pure lack of professionalism. Frankly, Entwhistle should have suspended and then sacked the two idiots in charge on that day for a failure so elementary that even a junior would be ashamed. They did not test their evidence. What!? No, really. They did not even show the allegor a picture of his Lordship to make sure it was the right man. Let alone give the man a call.

But it gets worse because once the journalists knew that his name was on the web NOT contacting him or showing his picture to Meeshan for confirmation (he would we now know have said 'wrong man') was appalling. And they MUST have known it was out there; they are wired like the rest of us. Even Patten has admitted he knew although he could hardly intervene since that would have been seen as political (this is a Tory allegation remember - "Tory placeman stops Beeb" etc etc). But if he did then Entwhistle probably did and he could/should have intervened and hence perhaps his resignation.

As Dimbley says, the BBC are making their own crisis. And its not just a BBC issue - just rotten journalism of which I suggest there is just too much everywhere (says a sad old hack!). The ITV list of names, everything to do with phone hacking. The list goes on.

The cause? Maybe too much BA in Media Studies and not enough Proficiency in work experience? Says a tired old and ex hack!