The NHS is running a leadership course for gay, lesbian and bisexual managers. The two-day course manages to cost £1,000 a head, which means it can be run at Ashridge Management College. Jolly nice.
Where to start? First, the NHS shouldn't be running courses where selection depends on sexuality. At work, a manager is a manager, not a gay. Leave your sexuality at home.
Second, if you must run the course, the prestige Ashridge Management College can't be the cheapest venue.
Third, NHS trusts are queueing up to tell us they are going to have to cut front-line jobs.
So even if this course was a good idea - which it is NOT - the available budget should be NIL, not £36,000. You and I - taxpayers - are footing the bill.
Step forward Paul Burstow, who clearly handed in any brains he has when he collected his ministerial red box. Mr Burstow seems to think it's fine, commenting that the programme would give “targeted leadership support” to lesbian, gay and bisexual staff.
A DoH spokesman dug the hole deeper:
We are funding this programme to create a network of skilled and senior people to promote lesbian, gay and bisexual equality at local and regional levels.Hello ... it is not the job of the NHS to promote sexual equality, it's their job to cure people of illnesses. Sexual discrimination at work is an offence. Full stop.
Responding to criticism about the luxury nature of the accommodation, the spokesman said it was the responsibility of (the homosexual campaign group) Stonewall to identify an appropriate venue within the budget allocated.
Why did someone allocate a budget which made Ashridge affordable?
Paul Burstow has evidently become a prisoner of his department, which makes him pointless. Here's what he should have said:
This is an unacceptable use of taxpayers' money, especially when all areas of government have to be careful over every pound they spend. I will be making it clear to managers that this spending is completely unacceptable, and it is not to happen again.But Paul Burstow is a creature of the system.
I will publish the names of the officials who authorised this waste.
2 comments:
Couldn't agree more. People are being denied life-prolonging drugs while the NHS wastes millions on pointless training schemes.
It's the same with local government. Councils are cutting front line services, but you never hear a word about cutting pointless "twinning" where junkets abroad for councillors are costing the ratepayers unnecessary £,000s.
Totally correct, and it couldn't have been said more concisely, PS.
It seems to me that quite decent people become unwittingly submersed into the existing ethos, and once an error is made it becomes the "initiation ritual" of that tribe, that being especially so with the civil service.
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