Careful With That Data, Doctor!

Have you had one of these leaflets come through your door?

You should have; in fact you probably have had one but may just not have noticed[1]. A recent poll for the BBC suggests that only 29% of adults recall receiving it. In early January one came through my letterbox. It was inserted carefully inside a leaflet for the Co-op supermarket, together with an invitation from Talk Talk to sign up to their broadband package, and with some other assorted pieces of paper that were of even less interest.  If you are anything like me that sort of collection of junk mail normally gets no more than a cursory glance before being consigned to the recycling bin. So much for the fact that NHS England's statement that its deal with the Royal Mail specified that the leaflets would not be wrapped up in other mail! If the NHS were going to go to the expense of using the Royal Mail, they might at least have put their leaflet in an envelope addressed to their patients; we might have noticed it then.  It was only the letters NHS in the top right hand corner of the leaflet that made me give the thing a second look.

The proposals contained in the leaflet are that the NHS will share data that they hold on you and me with "those who plan health and social care services, as well as with approved researchers and organisations outside the NHS, if this will benefit patient care." Now on the face of it that is not too controversial. The idea behind the scheme is that the data will be shared in order to find more effective ways of preventing and treating illnesses, that the NHS will be able to manage their resources better and that people at risk of a condition can be identified and offered treatment. All very laudable and at first sight nothing to be too alarmed about. After all it makes perfect sense for the NHS to use data it collects to manage patient care and provide a better service...except. Except that not only is the intention that this data be used within the NHS, but that it will be shared with  "approved researchers and organisations" outside the NHS, although quite who these organisations are is anyone's guess. That is a little disquietening because although the NHS says that data will be anonymous they also say that postcodes, National Insurance numbers and dates of birth will be used, although that will be redacted before data is released to outside organisations. The question that should concern us is who are these other organisations and what would they do with the data?

It is difficult to have a great deal of confidence in exactly how confidential the NHS will keep our data when you consider how many data breaches the NHS has been responsible for. The Daily Mail recently reported more than two million breaches since the start of 2011, an extraordinary figure that fortunately looks to have been grossly overstated as figures published by health website pulsetoday.co.uk suggest that breaches during this period number less than ten thousand, although that is quite enough thank you. Breaches include paper records being left in shops and car parks or thrown in litter bins in public places, of confidential patient data being sent to the wrong addresses and of computers being sold without confidential data being removed.

The media has been full of stories on the Care.data subject.

For instance, NHS Surrey failed to completely wipe and destroy 1,570 hard drives containing highly sensitive data on over 3,000 patient records before disposing of the computers containing those hard drives. This came to light when a member of the public, who bought a computer online (it is believed it was sold on eBay), found those records on the hard drive. The NHS trust were fined £200,000 in July 2013 for that offense, which given the parlous state of NHS finances, is a criminal waste of money for failing to comply with basic data protection principles. Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust were fined £325,000 in 2012 for similar breaches.

Apart from the alarm that the data sharing proposals have raised with the general public, GPs have also raised concerns and some have already opted their patients out of the scheme. Oh yes, the NHS mention in passing that you have the option to opt out of the scheme, but to do so you need to inform your GP (cue a large spike in appointments for GPs as patients ask that they be exempted). In practice you do not need to see your GP, you just need to speak to your GP practice, i.e. the receptionist (that helpful, cheerful breed whose raison d'être appears to be to protect doctors from ever coming into contact with patients).There is no form to fill in, nothing to sign...which begs the question, how confident will you be that your wishes have been complied with and how can you ever prove that you made the request if it turns out that your data is used against your wishes? Why could the NHS website not provide an option for patients to opt out online? If nothing else, why could there not be a paper form that would become part of your record at your doctor's surgery?

The NHS and other government departments do not have a great track record with IT projects; not to put too fine a point on it they are rubbish at them. Government departments have thrown good money after bad trying to develop ill advised systems that have been scrapped or not been fit for purpose. In some ways this current project, known as Care.data, is as likely to founder as any other, like the NHS patient record project which was dropped last year but only after £10bn had been spent on it. Other debacles include the project that was meant to save the Department for Transport about £57m but which actually  cost £81m, the Ministry of Defence project that even in 2010 was £180m over budget and eighteen months behind schedule, not to mention the £5bn spent on the ludicrous National Identity Card Scheme that was scrapped for a multitude of reasons. And they are just the tip of a very big iceberg.

My reservations about the Care.data scheme are many fold. Firstly the cost and the time involved that could probably be better spent by the NHS on actually treating patients. I also fear that the perceived benefits will be far less than has been stated.

Secondly, given their track record, I have absolutely no confidence that the NHS will protect patient data. It is a near certainty that there will be data breaches; patient data will not be anonymised properly. Data containing full patient details will be lost or simply sold to organisations who will use it for commercial purposes. Imagine the potential for insurance companies to use this sort of data to either target potential customers for health insurance, or conversely reject applications from certain people.

Thirdly, there is the fact that this is an opt out rather than opt in scheme. The very fact that a BBC poll showed that only 29% of adults could recall receiving the leaflet means that potentially a great number of people who might have opted out of the scheme would have been blissfully unaware of it. With a project of this magnitude and sensitivity the NHS should have been asking patients to opt in and even once the NHS get their act together and re-launch the scheme it is probable that a great number of people will remain unaware of it and be opted in by default, whether they like it or not.

The whole thing smacks of the NHS were trying to foist this upon us without our noticing and that they are now somewhat embarrassed to have been found out; the fact that the project is now in temporary abeyance suggests that they realise that they have got this badly wrong. I was going to pop round to my GP's surgery and opt out, but on balance I'm not sure if there is any point; either they will still use my data anyway, regardless of my wishes,  or just as likely the whole thing will be consigned to the same bin as the Identity Card scheme.

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[1] If you have no recollection of receiving this leaflet and want to read it in full, you can find it here: http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/records/healthrecords/Documents/NHS_Door_drop_26-11-13.pdf

The Joy of Exams

My younger daughter, Sarah, is currently in the midst of her GCSE's and I must admit I don't envy her. When I was taking my O levels (and there is a phrase that I've used frequently in conversations with Sarah, much to her aggravation), there did not seem to be the same sort of pressure as there is on teenagers today. These days I believe that expectations are much higher than they were when I was sixteen; back then our teachers wanted us to pass our exams and they wanted us to realise our potential but now it seems that simply passing GCSE's is not enough; these days it seems that everyone is expected to gain A* grades in everything. The publicity that is generated about the number of students achieving A* grades fuels both the belief that the qualification is getting easier and the pressure that students are under to obtain that grade.

The proportion of GCSE entries awarded an A or A* increased every year between 1988 and 2011. Illustration: Paul Scruton for the Guardian

There has been a lot of debate about whether GCSE's (and A levels) are easier than they used to be. From what I have seen of Sarah's school work it is difficult to say if it is easier or not, but it is definitely different. Successive governments have altered the format of GCSE courses and whereas when I took my O levels it was a case of one, two or maybe even three exams per subject at the end of two years of study, these days students are taking formal exams, submitting coursework and undertaking controlled assessments. Changes are afoot to put more emphasis on the end of year exams and while that would be my personal preference, obviously there will be a lot of students who are more comfortable with the current regime of coursework and controlled assessments in addition to some formal exams. Everyone has a different learning style after all, so everyone will have their preferences as to the form their exams take.

When I was taking my O levels (there's that phrase again!) and indeed when I took A levels, the format was simply formal exams and that suited me. For me there was an adrenaline rush about going into an exam hall, sitting down and turning over the paper and being (usually) happy that the questions matched the areas of the syllabus I had specifically revised. For that the teachers at my secondary school have to take a lot of credit; by and large they were pretty successful in predicting what sort of questions we would be facing and therefore directing our revision into those areas.

Most of us tend to look at the past through rose tinted spectacles and skip over the bad bits so you may think that I am recalling the days when I took formal exams purely with the benefit of forty years of selective hindsight, however it was only a few years ago that I put pen to paper in a formal exam when I studied for a Diploma in Business Analysis and Operations.

In 2004 my then employers, HSBC Bank, offered a Diploma in Business Analysis and Operations (DipBAO) course in conjunction with the Institute of Financial Services (ifs) and having received an email inviting me to take the course, I applied. I was encouraged to do so partly because I thought it would be interesting, partly because I wondered if after such a long time I could actually undertake any formal study or not, and in part because other members of my team seemed keen to take the course too. You will notice that I did not consider possible advancement in my career as a potential benefit of taking the course, I was (and still am) too cynical to have believed that to be likely!  As it turned out, having applied and been accepted, I found that none of my colleagues had actually applied; I was on my own!

The Diploma course was made up of four modules; Managing People in Organisations, Managing Information, Business Analysis, and Project Management. The first two modules consisted of distance learning which required two written assignments to be submitted plus a formal three hour written exam. The latter two modules required attendance on bank run courses after which written assignments were required.

In the summer of 2004 I received the course material for the first element, Managing People. It was daunting now to realise that I had to start studying for the first time in three decades, and studying via distance learning too, something I had never previously tried. Even more daunting was the realisation of how big a commitment I had made as I tried to fit studying around a full time job and my home life. Frequently this meant starting my studies at ten o'clock in the evening and working through until about two in the morning. Having obtained passing grades in the assignments, the really hard work started as I began revising for the exam. There are lots of different ways to revise, most are a matter of personal preference. For me it largely consisted of re-writing my notes in a particular format as my memory is quite visual; if I can call to mind the format of the page it helps me recall the content. One thing I found out while revising was that sleeping on it was important. I would sit revising into the small hours and find that little was sinking in. I would go to bed and wake up to find that, like an overnight database job, my mind had ordered my thoughts and I could remember a lot more than I had been able to before I went to bed.

One thing that took a bit of practice was writing for three solid hours. Most of us now probably write very little with pen and paper and here I was embarking on a marathon session with a biro. Anyone thinking of taking a written exam in the near future would do well to spend a good deal of time just practicing writing for long periods; there is no point in going into an exam with all the answers in your head and not be able to get them down on paper because you go down with writer's cramp after thirty minutes.

 Interestingly, as I was at that time not a line manager and had no experience of actually managing people, I was able to treat this subject as a purely academic exercise; I had no preconceptions to get in the way of learning the subject and producing the sort of work that met the examiner's expectations. Whereas I gained a Distinction in the Managing People in Organisations element, I just scraped a pass in Business Analysis, ironic as I was (in part) employed as a Business Analyst, which sort of proves my point about approaching formal study without preconceptions.

As you will have gathered (it's in my profile on this blog after all), I managed to pass the whole shooting match and am now entitled to the letters DipBAO after my name; well I would be had my membership of the ifs not lapsed and I'm blowed if I'm prepared to pay over a hundred quid a year solely for that privilege (and a regular magazine).  In March 2007 I received my Diploma in an awards ceremony at Southwark Cathedral, which is up there with the proudest days of my life. It wasn't exactly a cheap day; hiring gown and mortar board and having an official photograph taken cost a tidy sum, but it added to the sense of occasion.

Southwark Cathedral

With some of my fellow students at our graduation.

Taking the Diploma was one of the hardest things I've had to do (in terms of fitting it into the rest of my life, if for no other reason), but also one of the most rewarding and it certainly makes me sympathetic to the testing times that Sarah is going through at the moment. To all of you who are in the throes of taking some form of formal qualification I say the very best of luck and to all of you who aren't but have a family member who is... good luck too!

Sunday In The Park

Every Sunday morning thousands of men up and down the country drag themselves out of their beds and head for the park or recreation ground to play Sunday League football. Some of these men are young and fit; many have left their youth behind many years ago and many have only a passing acquaintance with fitness. Some of these men can play a bit; many...well, you get the idea.

With the previous night's Match Of The Day still fresh in their minds, these men dream of emulating Luis Suarez in the penalty area, bossing the midfield like Yaya Toure, of making heroic tackles like John Terry, or pulling off dramatic penalty saves like Joe Hart. The reality is somewhat different.

Dream...

...reality.

The thing about Sunday league football is that it is, in theory at least, exactly the same game as that played in the Premier League: in exactly the same way as literature is exactly the same whether it is a classic novel by Charles Dickens or a self published work by a semi-literate madman from a sink estate.

Premier League matches are played on immaculately manicured pitches tended by an army of groundstaff; Sunday football is played on patches of scruffy grass better suited for growing vegetables. With all of the wet weather we have been experiencing in recent weeks, most parks and recs have been out of action, but I recall the frustration many years ago when I played Sunday football, of having games postponed on Friday evening because of a little overnight rain only for Sunday to dawn dry and bright with the pitches in perfect condition but deemed unplayable due to rain 48 hours earlier. Contrarily one would sometimes arrive on a Sunday morning to find that overnight rain had turned the pitch into a paddy field, that ducks were swimming in a puddle in one goalmouth but despite which the game was on.

Premier League...

 

...Sunday League

Premier League footballers change in luxuriously appointed rooms with state of the art facilities; Sunday league footballers are grateful to have anywhere to change. Again, when I played Sunday football the facilities were variable. At places like Hainault Forest they were quite good; at our home venue at Wanstead Flats they could best be described as adequate; at some venues they were little better than barns. In fact at one ground we called home, Sutton's Manor near Stapleford Tawney, the dressing rooms were a barn.

Premier League...

...Sunday League.

Sutton's Manor is now a private psychiatric hospital, but back in the 1980's it was a rambling manor house with lots of open space, some of which was marked out as football pitches. As our football club had been unable to find a pitch with our local council (well I assume we did not get one, I am still waiting for Havering Council to tell me if my application was successful), we were grateful to find a pitch at Sutton's. Unlike a pitch with the local council, teams had to mark out their own pitches and supply their own goalposts, so one Saturday morning, armed with pegs, twine and a line marking machine, we marked out a pitch. One of our team, one Jerry Moffat, a carpenter by trade, arrived with some lengths of wood and a couple of hours later we had a pitch complete with bespoke goalposts.

The pitches at Sutton's each had distinguishing features. One had overhanging trees so that a long, high ball down one flank might have its progress retarded by low hanging branches. Another had goalposts that bore only a passing acquaintance to normal dimensions. I well recall playing in goal on that pitch; despite my lack of inches I can jump and put my hand over a regulation crossbar, but try as I might with this one I could only just reach the underside of the bar, it must have been a good six inches too high! One Sunday we arrived to find that a tractor had been driven across our pitch leaving two long, shallow trenches. Common sense prevailed and a non-aggression pact was introduced when the ball went in a trench so that one player could extract it before play recommenced.

It seems that council run pitches are deteriorating these days, though. Used by thousands of amateur teams each week, these pitches are in an "abhorrent state" say the Football Association. Pitches are not only currently waterlogged after heavy rain but are also suffering from overuse and a lack of maintenance, in part caused by local government cutbacks. According to Sport England about  1.8 million people play football each week and about 80% do so on council owned pitches that were once heavily subsidised, however budget cuts mean that the cost of hiring a pitch has gone up by as much as 300%.

 

Sunday in the park; typical Sunday League action.

That 1.8 million figure is well down on the 2.14 million that Sport England reported were playing the game as recently as 2007. This decline in playing numbers has no single cause; busier lifestyles, weekend working and other distractions are just some of the factors. The increased cost of running a team (in 2001 a survey by the Grassroots Football Show estimated that the annual cost was around £2,000 and that is likely to be considerably more now), the loss of referees (many of whom have given up the game because of poor player discipline) and a shortfall in facilities are other key reasons. Just as budget constraints mean that local councils have had to cut down on pitch maintenance, many are also selling off playing fields. In my local area for instance, Oldchurch Park, which once boasted numerous football and cricket pitches is now the site of Queens Hospital, while the plot where its predecessor, Oldchurch Hospital, stood is now a housing estate.

Hackney Marshes, perhaps the most iconic Sunday League venue of them all.

Despite the costs, running a Sunday team these days must be easier than it was when I did, if only for the fact that everyone has a mobile phone! One of the biggest obstacles I faced in running a Sunday team  was making sure everyone knew where and when we were playing and actually getting them there. On one occasion we all met up alright but our convoy of cars became separated en route to the ground. Critically the one vehicle that never made it contained our goalkeeper and our main goalscorer; it will probably come as little surprise then that we lost (10-1).

In fact the stress and strain of getting the game on in the first place seriously distracted from my enjoyment of playing on a Sunday. I'll admit to having been no more than an ordinary player; if I had one strength though it was my versatility (I was able to perform equally well - or poorly, in a variety of positions); I played in goal, at left and right back, in midfield and as a forward. On one memorable occasion I managed to notch two goals by half-time but when we were awarded a penalty in the second half my dreams of a hat-trick were shattered when I sent the goalkeeper the wrong way from the spot only to put the ball wide of the post. On another occasion, playing in goal against a team from three divisions above us, I was having a storming game despite the driving rain and had kept the score to 3-0 at the break. One of my team-mates confided in an opponent who had said how well I was playing that I didn't normally play in goal. This appeared to galvanise the opposition who scored a further seven in the second 45 minutes.

After a number of years of struggle in the Barking & District Sunday League Division Three (the bottom division of five), Parkstone FC, for that was us, actually managed to attract some better players, including one Jon Bates who had played Isthmian League football with Barking. He scored 24 goals in 16 games for us that season. It was to prove our final season however as a number of players announced that they would leave in the summer. Faced with trying to recruit new players together with the cost and the time involved I decided to jack it in. Our last hurrah was a double header, played after the season had officially ended and only then because our opponents were in the running for promotion. It was played on a Sunday afternoon and we were forced to field a number of "ringers" one of who had already played on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning! We lost the first game by a single goal and the second 5-3, a game in which I made one goal and scored two. Being Sunday football of course, neither of my goals were particularly orthodox. One was direct from a corner that went through at waist height and eluded everyone before creeping in at the far post, and the second was a penalty. My spot-kick was pushed out by the 'keeper; the ball landed about half way between us. Both me and the 'keeper, and the ball ended up in the net.

It may be understandable that the number of people playing Sunday football is falling, but the game is such a part of the fabric of English life I truly hope that the decline can be arrested or reversed.

Smoking In Cars

Last week a Labour amendment to the Children and Families Bill aimed at reducing the exposure of children to second-hand smoke was put to the House of Lords. The intention of the amendment is to make smoking in cars when children are present a criminal offence and The House of Lords have decreed that Members of Parliament will have a free vote on the matter when the amendments to the bill are debated in the near future. 

The Lords have offered MPs a free vote.

Predictably the discussion about smoking in cars when children are present has polarised opinions; although the majority agree that it is not to be recommended, there are opposing views on whether it should be the subject of legislation or left to the individual's common sense. The health lobby are in favour of a ban; opposition comes in the form of those whose view is that government should not be able to dictate what people do in private spaces. For instance, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said it (smoking) was "a stupid thing to do when a child is in the back of a car" but that he did not want to "sub-contract" parenthood. While smoking is already banned in vehicles used for work under a law introduced in England in 2007 following similar legislation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Simon Clark, director of pro-smoking group Forest, has said of a potential ban on smoking in private cars that " Legislation is completely unnecessary. Most adult smokers accept that smoking in a car with children present is inconsiderate and the overwhelming majority choose not to. Education, not legislation, is the way forward." Forest also make the point that such a ban would be difficult to enforce.

Some US states have a ban on smoking in cars when children are being carried, although I understand that drivers cannot normally be stopped for this reason alone and are only ticketed after being stopped for some other driving violation. The introduction of such a law in this country may come with similar restrictions and yes, it may be difficult to enforce but just because something is difficult is no reason not to attempt it. I do not see why a ban on smoking in cars should be any more unenforceable than the ban on the use of handheld mobile phones, or the requirement to wear seatbelts, and there have been prosecutions for both of these offenses.

Now I recognise all of the arguments about civil liberties, about the intrusion of the state into people's lives and the government's case that this is a matter best dealt with through education rather than legislation, however I would entirely agree with the principle that smoking should be banned in cars, but not necessarily for the purpose of protecting children (although I agree with that too). My view is that smoking should be banned in cars whether children are present or not, indeed that it should be banned regardless of whether there are passengers of any age or if the driver is alone.

You may consider that to be a draconian point of view, but consider this. Drivers are banned from using mobile phones;  drivers have been stopped for eating or drinking while driving (I am referring to non-alcoholic drinks, alcohol is a completely separate matter), and while in some of these instances the offence has been rather petty, the grounds for doing so are sound. Eating, drinking and smoking while driving are not illegal in the UK but drivers can be charged with careless driving if police believe they are not in control of their vehicle as a result.

Consider the mechanics of driving and smoking. The driver has first to locate their packet of cigarettes and extract one. Then they have to find their lighter. Having done so they light their cigarette. All of these are distractions causing the driver to take their eyes off the road. If, as studies by the University of Leeds have shown, a driver's reaction times may be up to 44% slower if they are eating, I would argue that a similar reduction in their reaction time could be caused by them smoking. Similarly, research by RoSPA (Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents) found that drivers’ reaction times were 50% slower when using a hand-held mobile phone than under normal driving conditions; the similar degradation in reaction time when eating (and smoking is likely to have a similar effect), make a good case for a ban on smoking.

Apart from the fact that lighting up is a distraction, the act of smoking  can be itself be hazardous. Anecdotally, and this is a true story, I have heard of a driver who attempted to flick their cigarette end out of the car window only to find that it deposited itself on the back seat where it ignited some papers. Equally dangerous is the possibility of a driver dropping their cigarette in their lap or in the foot well (and I have been in cars when the driver has done both), resulting in undignified scrambling with no attention paid to the road as the driver attempts to prevent his crotch catching fire.

To return to the matter that prompted the debate, the risks to the health of second hand smoke being inhaled by children if someone is smoking in the car. Research by the British Lung Foundation has shown that a single cigarette smoked in a moving car with a window half open "exposes a child in the centre of a backseat to around two-thirds as much second-hand smoke as in an average smoke-filled pub of days gone by." Now I am somewhat mistrustful of such statistics or factoids and I am by no means a proponent of the philosophy that people's freedom of choice or their civil liberties be abrogated  on the basis "if it saves just one life," but I think that the case for banning smoking in cars is unassailable.

There will be some who see this proposal as another step on the road to outlawing smoking altogether. "What next?" people will ask, "A ban on smoking at home?" Well, one exists already of sorts, because many local authorities will not place children, certainly not children of pre-school age,  with prospective adopters or foster carers who smoke. It would be unrealistic to suggest that a smoking ban be extended to private properties (although you could argue that it should banned if the home is used as a workplace, and many more people work from home these days), and the pro-smoking lobby would be apoplectic, but it is possible to believe that that day could come eventually.

That's my colours nailed to the mast and I await with interest the result of the vote in the Commons. Even though a vote in favour of a ban would not go as far as I would like, it would be a step in the right direction.

Caught In the Skills Gap

You know how sometimes you hear a word or an expression for the first time and then suddenly it is everywhere you look? Well that is how it seems to be with the phrases skill shortage and skills gap lately. They aren't new expressions, we've been hearing them for some time, but just this last week they seem to be coming to greater prominence through a variety of different media and from a variety of different sources.

A Skill Gap is the difference between the skills required to perform a job and the actual skills possessed by the employees; a Skill Shortage refers to a situation where there are not enough people with a particular skill to meet demand. At present it appears that employers in the UK (and in the rest of the world for that matter) are complaining about both. Although a Skill Gap and a Skill Shortage are quite different things, the distinction does seem to be blurring somewhat.

It has been said frequently in recent years that there has been a Skill Shortage in the UK, particularly in what one might term the practical trades, like plumbing; the expression "Polish plumber" has been something of a cliché going back to the middle of the last decade, and it tends to refer not just to plumbing but the movement throughout the EU of cheap, manual labour. In some respects it has been about the cost of labour as much as skills; the free movement of labour has enabled UK employers to recruit workers from other parts of the EU as cheaply, or cheaper, than they could in Britain.

McKinsey management consultants report that European employers are finding it difficult to fill vacancies but at the same time over 5.6 million people under the age of twenty-five are unemployed in the EU. The Federation of Small Businesses says that many school leavers lack literacy and numeracy skills and do not even know how to dress properly for work. Something isn't adding up here. I know that there have been grumblings about falling education standards, but school leavers who are illiterate and innumerate? With "A" level grades improving year on year it is difficult to believe that anything other than a tiny minority of school leavers fall into that category. With the level of youth unemployment being what it is surely employers can find sufficient numbers of school leavers who can read, write and add two and two? Employers often say that new entrants are unprepared for work but since when did schools prepare students for the world of work? They didn't when I was at school and they don't now.

If A level grades are improving, why do employers report that new entrants are so poorly prepared for work?

Where I see the issue, and this is partly responsible for this perceived skills gap, is that both employers and prospective employees (especially the young) have unrealistic expectations. Many companies have off-shored or outsourced their more mundane functions and automation has replaced many of the more routine jobs. Thus a great many of the entry level positions are no longer available to be filled by school leavers. The bottom rung in many organisations who have vacancies in this country is now several levels above what it was ten or twenty years ago, thus many of the positions being advertised may actually be beyond what an employer can realistically expect of a school leaver, unless they tailor the role accordingly, providing guidance and training. Meanwhile many job seekers probably have unrealistic expectations of where within an organisation's hierarchy they can expect to start anyway. Employment minister Esther McVey raised a few hackles recently when she said that young people should be applying for entry level jobs, particularly when she suggested the Costa Coffee chain and especially when Costa recently had 1,700 people apply for eight jobs at their Nottingham store, but she has a point.

Employment Minister Esther McVey suggested that people start with a job with Costa Coffee... 

...over 200 people applied for each of the jobs available.

As "A" level grades constantly improve, it appears that ever increasing numbers of people leave school with the expectation of going straight into their dream job; this strikes me as overly optimistic. Employment is in many ways similar to the property market; the first step is the hardest and just as most people begin with a modest house or flat and then trade up, so even the best qualified school leaver ought to expect to begin employment in a junior capacity and work their way up. Not of course that I am underestimating the task of obtaining any sort of gainful employment; I do not envy today's school leavers the challenge.

 What doesn't help is employers who demand experience, even in their entry level jobs; how can a school leaver gain experience if no one will employ him or her? For many employers, faced with the choice between a fresh faced school leaver with no experience and a middle aged person, newly redundant and with over twenty years experience, the choice is probably easy and these days there are enough people falling in the latter category applying for jobs that traditionally might have been the preserve of the school leaver.

It is all very well for employers to complain that school leavers are ill prepared for work but actually it is pretty much a given that many of them will be; employers have to treat their new recruits as an investment. They should provide them with adequate, relevant training; it is no use expecting someone fresh out of school to walk into a busy office (or factory, or anywhere else for that matter) and hit the ground running, working as well as colleagues who have been there years.

Then there are the job adverts. Even the most mundane of positions now comes complete with a Job Profile and Personal Specification that would put off experienced people, let alone a school leaver. Several years ago I saw an advertisement for a position in the box office at my local cinema; having read it I felt that I would have been insufficiently qualified had I applied. Before I left work I had to write my own Job Profile and having followed the required formula concluded that were my own job to be advertised I would too intimidated to apply for it.

The strange thing is that the Skills Gap and Skills Shortage are not solely UK phenomena; they appear to be worldwide, with reports of Gaps and Shortages in North America, Australasia, India and Europe. Surely not all of these countries have nothing but illiterate and innumerate school leavers without the social skills required to enter the world of work? A pertinent question would be, what are the specific gaps? Googling a variety of phrases around skills gap generates any number of results about the existence of a skills gap but remarkably few about what skills employers have identified as being deficient in job applicants. One I did find referred  to a study by Adecco Staffing US, who said that 45% of senior executives in the United States identified soft skills, such as communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration, as areas where the gap existed. The same report suggested that in the area of technical skills, the gap was much less pronounced.

The Federation of Small Businesses may bemoan the standard of school leavers readin', writin' and 'rithmatic, but rather than simply wring their hands in dismay, perhaps they should be working in partnership with The Department of Education, even possibly with individual schools so that students leave school better equipped. Soft skills such as those identified by the Adecco study tend to be acquired through experience; if employers are not prepared to recruit people with the potential to acquire these skills and allow them the opportunity to acquire them by experience then they will perpetuate the very gap they complain about. 

The Bank of Miliband

Over one hundred banks operate in the UK, however Labour party leader Ed Miliband believes that the ills of the UK economy in general and the banking sector in particular can be cured by the creation of two more. In his speech last Friday, Mr Miliband, when saying that banks had been poor servants to ordinary families and firms, was referring to the so called Big Five banks, in whom he believes too much power is concentrated. His desire is to see two new institutions to challenge the likes of RBS, Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC and Santander. In addition to the Big Five the UK has The Co-operative Bank, TSB (having separated themselves from Lloyds) while Williams & Glyn are to make a comeback on our High Streets, plus any number of building societies, credit unions and the like, such as Metro Bank, Virgin Money, Sainsburys Bank, Tesco Bank et al. It is not as though the public don't already have plenty of choice in financial service providers; the fact that these cannot apparently compete with the Big Five in a free-market economy is something which Mr Miliband believes a future Labour administration should address.

"There are five Big Banks; I know, cos I've counted 'em!"

 Should Labour win the next election, Mr Miliband says that he would instruct the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to report what limit of the market each bank should share and to prepare a time-table for the sale of bank branches, to be completed by 2020. The CMA  is responsible for strengthening business competition and preventing and reducing anti-competitive activities and Mr Miliband will ask them to decide upon "a threshold for the market share any one bank can have of personal accounts and small business lending." Banks exceeding this threshold would be forced to sell off branches.

Ed Miliband's inspiration for a cap on market share appears to be the system in place in the USA, but the US banking system is very different from the UK's. There are over 20,000 different banks in America, most are local, few are nationwide. For instance Alabama has over one hundred and eighty banks; New York state has over five hundred. The cap which Mr Miliband refers to relates only to deposits and is relevant only during proposed mergers; comparing the US and UK banking sectors is akin to comparing apples and pears. UK banks have been contracting their branch networks in recent years; the total UK branch network fell to 11,365 by December 2012, from 11,713 a year earlier. The banks have received heavy criticism for their programmes of branch closures, these proposals will enable banks to continue or accelerate doing so, immune from criticism on the grounds that they are merely complying with government policy. Despite what many people may believe, retail banking is expensive to maintain and not as profitable as other parts of the banks' business. Banks may see this as an opportunity to offload low quality or loss making accounts; in a worst case scenario these customers may find themselves unable to open accounts elsewhere.

Mr Miliband's speech was short on the specifics of how the five major banks (who hold 85% of small business lending) would actually reduce their customer base to meet these caps or how they would maintain their customer base having met the cap. Will banks be forced to close accounts? Presumably the idea is that the customers who hold their accounts at the branches that are to be sold will be encouraged to migrate to whoever buys them. Will banks, having had quotas imposed on them, have to turn customers away? If so it is difficult to see how this will improve competitiveness; customers will be faced with less choice and potentially be unable to open accounts at a bank they choose, but merely at one which has not yet reached its cap. The new Current Account Switch service, introduced to make it easier for customers to move from one bank to another, may become redundant if customers cannot move to their bank of choice.

 

Barclays have the most branches (1,593) in the UK

The challenger banks (Virgin Money, Metro Bank and the like), may not be the answer anyway. When Lloyds were trying to sell off TSB they ended up with two bidders. The Co-op won but pulled out after finding a large capital deficit. Who will bid for the branches that the Big Five are forced to sell? Tesco, if they are inclined to offer face to face retail banking, already have a potential network; their supermarkets. They have not built banking halls in their stores so how likely would they be to bid for excess branches that HSBC or Barclays are forced to offload? Virgin Money, although they bought out Northern Rock, are likely to prefer other banking channels (phone and internet banking) although they do have what they like to call Virgin Money Lounges; well, they have three, in Edinburgh, Manchester and Norwich. There has hardly been a stampede of foreign banks eager to enter the UK retail banking market, Citibank (the world's largest bank) and Handelsbanken have a limited presence.It may not be as easy as to find buyers as Mr Miliband believes.

If all else fails, bank branches can always be sold to JD Wetherspoon

Having proposed a cap on energy price rises and now announced his proposals for the banking sector, Mr Miliband has undoubtedly scored some popularity points with many of the electorate frustrated by above inflation price rises for their gas and electricity and, in the case of many small enterprises, similarly frustrated by the banks' reluctance to support their businesses. It remains to be seen whether, should Labour win the next election, they will carry these through. Every party, when in opposition announces grand plans for what it will do once it is elected; frequently these are significantly watered down (or quietly dropped altogether) once an election is won.

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills report that since 2008 SME's have found bank finance more difficult to obtain. Key reasons for applications being rejected include higher credit risk rating, previous financial delinquency and lower sales levels, i.e. the traditional reasons why banks refuse loan or overdraft applications. That said, it is sadly true these days that the traditional image of the bank manager who is able to make autonomous lending decisions is long gone and those decisions, especially for smaller businesses, smaller loans, are made by computer credit scoring models, not human beings.  As laudable as Mr Miliband's intentions to stimulate lending to SME's may be, the challenger banks would probably apply similar criteria to applications they receive. If they were to be encouraged by a Labour government to be less stringent they may find themselves with significant levels of bad debt, a situation I am sure Mr Miliband would wish to avoid, particularly if it resulted in some sort of government support being required to bail out the businesses or the banks; after all haven't we been in that position before?

In targeting the banks and before them the energy providers, Mr Miliband may have struck a chord with many who despise them both, but the City acted with the expected dismay. The major energy companies and the two banks who remain under state support (Lloyds and RBS) saw significant falls in the value of their shares following his announcements. The Institute of Directors, Business Secretary Vince Cable and Bank of England governor Mark Carney have all been critical of Labour's banking proposals and while Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna implied that Mr Carney should not involve himself in political matters, it would be strange given his role as governor of the bankers' bank if he (Mr Carney) did not have an opinion on the matter; stranger still if he did not voice it.

Time will tell whether the banking reforms proceed and if they do, whether they achieve Mr Miliband's aims. First and foremost for Labour however, there is the little matter of winning the next election.  

Elementary, My Dear Batman

Who is fiction’s greatest detective? Miss Marple or Sam Spade? Hercule Poirot or Philip Marlowe? Inspector Morse or Lieutenant Columbo? Batman or Sherlock Holmes? Hang on, Batman a detective? Well, yes actually. Apart from being dubbed The Caped Crusader and The Dark Knight, Batman was also known as “the world’s greatest detective,” [1] a title that has equally been applied to Sherlock Holmes. Whether you consider Batman a detective or not, he and Holmes are the most enduring and most successful crime fighters that fiction has produced.

Both Batman and Holmes have been reimagined frequently and had their stories rebooted over the years and of all of those reboots it is probably the most recent that have been the most successful. Certainly both have received great critical acclaim and commercial success. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy has grossed US$1.1billion; The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises are two of the top three top grossing superhero films of all time.  Meanwhile Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective has been updated for the 21^st century in not one but two series, Sherlock, produced by the BBC and, in the US, Elementary produced by CBS. The BBC version has retained the essence of Conan Doyle's character, cleverly reworked the stories and embraced 21st century technology without resorting to gimmicks. I can't speak for Elementary as I have not seen it.

There are many parallels between Batman and Holmes; not all are coincidental. While Holmes has Dr. Watson, Batman has Robin (in the comic books at least. Perhaps wisely, Christopher Nolan eschewed Robin in his films) and Batman’s creator, Bob Kane acknowledges that Robin was consciously based on Dr. Watson. Batman has Alfred Pennyworth; Holmes has Mrs. Hudson while the relationship between Batman and Commissioner Jim Gordon is similar to Holmes’ relationship with Inspector Lestrade.  While Batman may have his cape and his gizmos, Holmes is associated with the dearstalker hat, although Doyle never described him as wearing such. The writers of Sherlock made merry with this, having Holmes wear such a hat purely by chance. There is however, something of the Batman cape in Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes overcoat; indeed in an episode in Series Three, as Holmes leaves John and Mary Watson’s wedding, he dons his coat with a swirl and a swagger that suggests a cape.

Both Holmes and Batman are outsiders, Holmes because of his intellect; in Sherlock he says to Watson and Lestrade, “Dear God. What is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring,” while Batman is that most dangerous and misunderstood of good men, the vigilante. Equally, among their successes, both have their failings, their character flaws, their moments of doubt. Indeed in the stories as chronicled by Dr Watson, there are cases which Holmes admits not to have cracked.

Both are freaks in their way, Batman is feared by a society that does not fully understand him; Joker says of Batman, “You’re just a freak, like me!”  and Holmes is misunderstood by society and the police, some of whom actively mistrust him. In the first series of Sherlock, Sergeant Donaldson openly refers to Holmes as “freak” to his face.

Finally, and most importantly both Batman and Sherlock Holmes each have their nemesis, Joker in Batman’s case and for Holmes, Professor James Moriarty. The strength of these villains’ characters is key to the success of the Batman and Holmes canons, even though they may not appear in all of the stories. Moriarty in fact only appears directly in two of Doyle’s stories but enjoys much greater prominence in films and in Sherlock.

Like the heroes, the villains have their similarities too and none more so in their relationships with the heroes, which border on the symbiotic. Holmes and Moriarty, and Batman and Joker are incomplete without one another. In The Dark Knight, when Batman asks if Joker wants to kill him, Joker replies “I don’t want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no, NO! No. You… you… complete me.” In The Reichenbach Fall, the Sherlock episode based on Doyle’s The Final Problem, Moriarty says, “You need me, or you're nothing. Because we're just alike, you and I. Except you're boring. You're on the side of the angels.”

"Did you miss me?"

Moriarty’s rooftop monologue in The Reichenbach Fall  echoes Joker’s lines. Moriarty says: “All my life I've been searching for distractions. And you were the best distraction and now I don't even have you. Because I've beaten you. And you know what? In the end it was easy. It was easy. Now I've got to go back to playing with the ordinary people.” Moriarty’s ordinary people are Joker’s mob dealers.

Heroes and villains, having fascinated man since he first began storytelling, come no larger than Holmes/Batman and Moriarty/Joker; how we associate with them depends in no small part to the actors who play them. It is in this respect that both Sherlock and The Dark Knight films have been so successful.

Christian Bale’s Batman has menace but with the comic book characteristics that one expects, but his Bruce Wayne outshines others who have taken the role. Whereas Michael Keaton as Wayne was somewhat comic and otherworldly at times, Bale’s Wayne is a sophisticated, grown up businessman, as hard-nosed as his alter ego. Holmes, as played by Dominic Cumberbatch, is described by The Guardian as “cold, techie, slightly Aspergerish,” and while Holmes has never been a character who suffers fools gladly, Cumberbatch’s Holmes turns that up a notch or two.

The late Heath Ledger’s bravura performance in The Dark Knight was rightly recognised with an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor; Andrew Scott won a similar BAFTA playing Moriarty. Scott, who looks like Declan Donnelly and sounds like Graham Norton, is mesmeric as Moriarty; completely unhinged, like Joker, eminently plausible, reasonable almost, but totally bonkers.

The second series of Sherlock ended with the apparent death of both Moriarty and Holmes. Series three brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead to foil a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The series ends with the suggestion that Moriarty too survived the episode atop the roof of St Bart’s Hospital, despite the fact that it appeared that he blew his own head off; we await the explanation when Series Four hits our screens, although given the fact that the actors and writers now have such busy schedules it remains to be seen when this will happen.

"Why so serious?"

The success of both Holmes and Batman has much to do with the fact that the stories of both feature charismatic criminals, criminals who are worthy adversaries for our heroes and no matter how much we expect Batman and Holmes to triumph, it is not without some respect and admiration for such charismatic bad guys like Joker and Moriarty.

 Without villains there is no point in having heroes; without the threat of defeat then victory is cheap.

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[1] Fleisher, Michael L. The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes Volume 1 Batman Collier Books 1976