furtherandfaster

extreme deterr(g)ent

 I Iearned today that one of our local pubs with a longstanding reputation for drug use is closing to be replaced by a block of flats. Which reminded me of a recent conversation with a couple of bar staff about how to discourage drug use in pub toilets. Apparently Insecticide fly spray (or BBQ sauce) sprayed with an aerosol on the toilet seat or toiletpaper holder is a great way to enhance the usage experience. It goes right up the sinuses of anyone rash enough to try doing a line of coke.  The best part of this story was the barstaff geting a complaint from a customer. Clearly hygiene standards in pubs must be falling if you can't do cocaine in the loos without risking excruciating pain. No wonder pubs are closing.. 

If the government wants my advice..

Tricky business policy making. Clearly its not acceptable for politicians to  make uninformed decisions. So they ask the advice of experts. If they follow the experts to the letter then they're not making policy. The experts are. If the politicians make their own decisions - and took take a lot of trouble to explain to the experts why they aren't following their advice to the letter - then the experts will wonder (out loud and within the hearing of newspapers) why they bothered and why politicians are ignoring expert advice.  So Nutt is waving his Johnson. And Johnson is doing his Nutt.

The politicians genuinely have my sympathy. I have spent much of today talking through yet another public private partnership. Public money used to prime a pump which private enterprise then delivers. These parternships sustain our health service, our educational system, our system of public works. Perhaps I have worked in business for too long but I find these fragile ecosystems miraculous. The voluntary and public service ethos is entwined around the profit motive and depending on which tendril you talk to you will get a totally different answer from a very different values system. But this is a world away from corruption, nepotism and backhanders. It is one of the principal achievements of modern government and we don't celebrate it enough. Public servants make terrible entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs turn public services into something loathsome and uncaring. Together something magical emerges.  It is one of the latest flowers of civilisation. And one of the greatest