Capitalism

Posted by: cunningplan on 12 March 2005

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell the herd and retire on the income.


ENRON CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly
owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows,with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy a new President of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public buys your bull.


AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when the cow drops dead.


A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows


A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create irritating cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them world-wide at a fantastic profit.


A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.


AN ENGLISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.


AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You break for lunch.



A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you.
You charge others for storing them.


A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.


A WELSH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The younger one is rather attractive


A MICK PARRY CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 12 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of whisky.
Winker

Regards
Clive
Posted on: 20 March 2005 by Berlin Fritz
Thanks for seeing it as I meant it to be interpreted, obviously private e-mails etc, between folk is another matter, innit.


Fritz Von Make low grade prisoners earn their keep by cleaning NHS hospitals (Army Style - SPOTLESS² & MORE IMPOTENTLY STERILE³) Big Grin
Posted on: 20 March 2005 by JonR
Mick,

Nevertheless I too wish you all the best with your mother-in-law and I do also applaud your honesty about posting what you say she thinks of you!

Regards,

Jon
Posted on: 20 March 2005 by 7V
There's a report in the Sunday Times on the latest analysis of the NHS by the King’s Fund, an independent health research group.

The Sunday Times

Worth a read.

Regards
Steve M
Posted on: 20 March 2005 by Berlin Fritz
Hi 7UP,
Having just read that article that preci's the NHS & it's wayward path, I find a rather large chunk of the present facts missing, namely PFI. This is a major part of Browns funding strategy which is now already costing the NHS £Millions, and not blaming staff wages. Comparing the British Health Budget (which may be large ) but is funded partially by tax payers directly in comparison to €uropean states, as has been previously mentioned is a non starter for 1st graders in accountancy in my view.
Finally if the Tories are allowed to regain power through apathy, they will naturally inherit all of this, and what with the Mega "NHS FLAGSHIP" Hospital soon to be built in London comprisi8ng of comboining three famous institutions, one can only but wonder how minimalising utility problems, and the spread of "Germs" for want of a better word, can be managed in the real world?


Fritz Von Let's hope they pay the lectrick bill on time, innit Big Grin
Posted on: 21 March 2005 by Jez Quigley
quote:
Possibly I am being too cynical but it did cross my mind, that having a patient in overnight is one way of reducing waiting times on paper at least.

Take an extreme case to illustrate the point, if they call her back in once a month, the longest waiting time is one month.

Some one somewhere gets a pat on the head and possibly avoids penalties which I believe hospitals have to pay if certain performance criteria is not met.


You have hit the nail on the head there Mick. I'm not sure of the specifics about what counts as a wait and what does not, but this kind of gaming (with people's lives) does go on and proves my point about managers being diverted from the real job of meeting patients needs in order to meet targets. It can be summed up as "hitting the target but missing the point".
Posted on: 22 March 2005 by Mick P
Jez

You cannot really blame the local Managers but this is one case where New Labour spin is almost killing people.

Labour is good at spin and to be fair, it wins elections, so you cannot blame them for doing it.

Labour needed to dispell the old myth of the union controlled workforce providing a lousy service (which it did) in the public services.

The old image of a brain dead shop steward calling his members out on strike every five minutes helped to keep the Tories in power for 13 years.

To overcome this, New Labour had to project an image of being efficient, radical and customer focussed. To do this, it imposed worthwhile targets on all of the services, often monitored by an independant regulator.

Therefore hospitals have to be seen to be performing and if they fail, they risk fines, being sued or even taken over by another management team.

By bringing patients in for a night, the performance targets are met but the patients needs are not met.

Therefore New Labour can say every thing is better now than under the Tories and they have the "evidence" to back it up.

The problem being that this is one instance where the Management and Unions are totally in agreement because both of their fortunes depend on good figures.

The end result is a management team manipulating data to keep the Government happy and the Unions keeping quiet about patients interests not being met, in order to keep their members jobs from being privatised.

Blair has been very clever man getting this up and running.

Regards

Mick
Posted on: 22 March 2005 by Bruce Woodhouse
Mick.

We agree on this one. (That's a novelty!)

Targets have created all sorts of wierd and wonderful scams. Even one of the most ostensibly admirable ideas, 'two week waiting for cancer' is fraught with problems and may have perversely worsened care.

It is not unreasonable for govt and the population to expect quality and vfm, but we need sensibly applied peformance measures.

Targets are now legion in primary care too.
Posted on: 22 March 2005 by living in lancs yearning for yorks
I seem to remember from my university days (the context was monetary policy, in particular the noey supply) that it was recognised that as soon as something became a target, it ceased to be useful as a measure.
Posted on: 22 March 2005 by Berlin Fritz
Mick's like that with his Malt bottles !


Fritz Von As you like it Big Grin
Posted on: 22 March 2005 by Jez Quigley
I wasn't blaming local managers, exactly the opposite. It's the target culture I was having a go at, introduced by Ministers from private industry "thinkers". Once a target is set and 'performance managed'(i.e. meet the target or lose your job) its achievement replaces the organisation's real purpose (of meeting patient's needs). There is evidence to support Bruce's comment on the cancer 2 week wait target. In services where patients were previously seen with little or no wait the waits have now risen to 12-13 days, and in other services patient's appointments/ops are cancelled to meet the 2 week wait for cancer patients, increasing waits overall, increasing costs and the burden on staff, to say nothing of the effect on patients. However Mick I can't share your conspiracy theory involving Blair and the Unions. Rather it is an almost complete misunderstanding of how to apply improvement science to public services.

If there is anyone interested in what exactly I'm blathering about, some stimulating stuff can be found here:
http://www.lean-service.com/home.asp
Posted on: 22 March 2005 by Mick P
Jez

Blair won a convincing election in 1997 thanks to Tory sleaze and the New Labour image of throwing away the link with the union image.

Pater Mandelson recognised that Labours links with the unions were an electorial liability.

Also Labour had a reputation of pouring good money after bad into services such as the NHS that were seen as providing a poor service.

Targets and PFI's were part of the spin that helped New Labour win the election.

Therefore what Blair was saying was " I will not waste money because every department will be targetted across the board.

Performance targets were set up, monitored independently and hence we are now in the situation of being where we are.

Regards

Mick
Posted on: 24 March 2005 by Jez Quigley
Mick/Clive,

I've just read Sir Nigel Crisp's (NHS Chief Exec)new document entitled 'Creating a patient led NHS'. In amongst all the huff and puff what he seems to be saying is that in the future there will be NHS emergency services but elective care will be hived off and handled under 'badged' NHS suppliers which will be increasingly be private contrators.

The document can be found on the D.O.H website.