If there’s one thing guaranteed to wind me up and raise my blood pressure it’s hearing ridiculous stories of police targets, or school teachers having to tick boxes to show they’ve taught the importance of a comma being in a certain place (and don’t get me started on the stress EVERY teacher feels when the invidious Ofsted inspector makes their grim-reaper-like presence felt in schools).
The sole reason for this clipboard-wielding poker-faced public sector scourge is to help pen pushers take fat-cat salaries out of the coffers of those already financially over-stretched services.
I’m a big believer in letting people get on with the job they were hired to do. Teachers in two separate schools have a completely different role to fulfil. Having an Ofsted inspection is simply an unwelcome, wholly unnecessary time-wasting exercise for those sitting aloft in their ivory towers who wouldn’t have a clue how to teach kids anything, to justify their gold-plated pensions. Just let the school Head deal with any teachers who aren’t cutting the mustard.
And national police targets. Well! Whichever idiot decided on those, should be the subject of a Crown Prosecution Service multi-million-pound money-wasting month in court. Police targets falsely assume that every force has exactly the same number of anti-social behaviour incidents, robberies, burglaries, rapes, and murders to deal with. Piffle! Let each police force deal with what’s relevant to their local area. And leave it to the Chief Constable to deal with any officers not pouring the vinegar.
Then there’s NHS targets. Oh, don’t! Patients are people, not numbers to be pushed through so spreadsheets add up.
Nothing can be solved by a one-solution-fits-all approach. So I say to our new Government: Make cuts where they’re really needed, namely amongst those parasites watching Big-Brother-like over those who are actually doing the work. Austerity in red tape, please, not front line services.