Apologies for organisations caught up in this generalisation but my experience sadly over the past 10 years or so is that by and large organisations have almost no quality control. Ironically at the same time, many organisations have achieved quality certification by standards bodies to 'prove' their quality but it truly isn't worth the paper it is written on.
Virtually everybody I deal with other than paper shops and possibly supermarkets seem to lack the very basics of quality control. Let me sum up quality in a simple sentence, "Quality control doesn't imply that you do not make mistakes but it does imply that they are only made once".
A few examples. Chasing a bank for 3 weeks for a bank card. After the first failed order, a process should have been kicked off and should have taken a very short period of time: was the card ordered incorrectly? Did the system lose the request? Was it sent and didn't arrive? This is major for a bank and should have been resolved, never to surface in the same way again. Quite obviously, nothing whatsoever was chased up, it was put down to a glitch and then it happened again and again. Halifax - hang your heads in shame.
Utility warehouse, I emailed in to change my direct debits and got a reply. Next month, the wrong amounts are taken so I call again and the old, "apologies Mr Briner.." of course, the same thing happens and I have to call again. Similar issues to the above.
It seems that every time I call a bank (I deal with 3), a utility company and just about anyone else larger than 5 people I assume that it will not work as expected, I assume a lack of quality. I am not interested in apologies that mean nothing and quality insurance that does not result in quality proves that as a company you do NOT understand what quality management is. Do these CEOs not understand? Are they inept? Do they employ incompetent quality management and then not have quality management of their own to notice this? Do they accept mistake after mistake and not have a problem with it? Do they not ask why 50% of calls to call centres are about mistakes?
For goodness sake people, can somebody not sort this out. Can we not insist on managers that can manage and quality managers who understand quality? This sort of stuff affects people's lives directly and to be honest will cause people to emmigrate to countries where people take their jobs seriously!
Friday, 23 October 2009
Thursday, 22 October 2009
The knowledge of good and evil
Have you ever wondered what that whole Genesis thing is about? You know the bit where because of their disobedience, Adam and Eve receive the knowledge of good and evil. Why is this bad and what did this cause?
Well Adam and Eve's problem was that they either a) Didn't really trust God when he told them to leave the tree alone or b) They thought they could handle being disobedient (sound familiar).
Anyway, they disobeyed and what they received was autonomy, rather than have to rely on God for direction and discernment, God gave them the ability to discern and direct themselves. Not much changed there over the years. What we now have is the ability to decide what is right and what is wrong. That doesn't sound too bad except of course, that mechanism, as correct as it is, relies on an amount of knowledge about the situation - knowledge we rarely have.
For example, suppose you are a judge in court and somebody comes in for a serious burglary and you have to sentence them. You might well decide that the person seems sorry for what they did and give them a light sentence. With the best of your knowledge, this seems fair and square. A different judge however might decide that it is 'right' to make an example of them because the crime was serious. Note here that neither person is necessarily wrong. We would call this a grey area.
In life, we see this all the time. Debates, arguments and politics are all confused and corrupted by the simple fact that one person's right is another person's wrong (as well as deliberate and malicious intent). So we end up with what looks like an unwinnable situation. It is not a matter of simply saying, "It is up to person X to decide" because if we feel strongly enough that they are wrong, we feel the need to object as the numbers of Court appeals show. The best we can hope for is a strong consensus among people.
Well for believers, we have another recourse. God is still alive and kicking and He actually knows all of the factors. If He were judge, we would decide the correct sentence knowing exactly whether the person is sorry and whether the example would work on other people. What do we need to do then? Very simply, we need to defer most of our judgements and decisions to God and let the Spirit and the Bible direct what we decide. This is the nearest we will ever get to impartial judgement.
Well Adam and Eve's problem was that they either a) Didn't really trust God when he told them to leave the tree alone or b) They thought they could handle being disobedient (sound familiar).
Anyway, they disobeyed and what they received was autonomy, rather than have to rely on God for direction and discernment, God gave them the ability to discern and direct themselves. Not much changed there over the years. What we now have is the ability to decide what is right and what is wrong. That doesn't sound too bad except of course, that mechanism, as correct as it is, relies on an amount of knowledge about the situation - knowledge we rarely have.
For example, suppose you are a judge in court and somebody comes in for a serious burglary and you have to sentence them. You might well decide that the person seems sorry for what they did and give them a light sentence. With the best of your knowledge, this seems fair and square. A different judge however might decide that it is 'right' to make an example of them because the crime was serious. Note here that neither person is necessarily wrong. We would call this a grey area.
In life, we see this all the time. Debates, arguments and politics are all confused and corrupted by the simple fact that one person's right is another person's wrong (as well as deliberate and malicious intent). So we end up with what looks like an unwinnable situation. It is not a matter of simply saying, "It is up to person X to decide" because if we feel strongly enough that they are wrong, we feel the need to object as the numbers of Court appeals show. The best we can hope for is a strong consensus among people.
Well for believers, we have another recourse. God is still alive and kicking and He actually knows all of the factors. If He were judge, we would decide the correct sentence knowing exactly whether the person is sorry and whether the example would work on other people. What do we need to do then? Very simply, we need to defer most of our judgements and decisions to God and let the Spirit and the Bible direct what we decide. This is the nearest we will ever get to impartial judgement.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
Creating God in our image
I realised the other day that many of our problems, both for Christians and people who don't follow Jesus, are caused by not knowing who God is. We effectively model Him in our image. We take our far from perfect humanity and make it a few thousand percent bigger. What we end up with is a large version of ourselves with all the insecurities, the boredom, the impatience etc and this makes it hard to understand what He is like. Since everyone in the world would do this in a different way, we end up with 6 billion versions of God even though He is one.
To understand God, we need to understand His character from first principles, from the Bible. As we read about Him and learn what He is like, we then see ourselves as broken vessels modelled in the image of God but with defects.
Imagine you owned a car worth £50. Busted seats, an engine that burned more oil than petrol and loads of rust. If someone told you that there was a Rolls Royce worth £200,000, you wouldn't imagine an expensive version of the same thing. You wouldn't think that for your money, you get more oil burning, more busted seats and more rust patches. In short you would not create the Rolls Royce in the same image as your cheap car. This would be obviously incorrect and illogical, it would lead to all kinds of strange conclusions about cars. Imagine however if you saw the Rolls Royce or at least had it described to you and then realised that your car was a broken cheap version of the Rolls. This would make much more sense, it would logically make sense and most importantly, it would give the Rolls Royce all the honour and credit for what it actually is.
To understand God, we need to understand His character from first principles, from the Bible. As we read about Him and learn what He is like, we then see ourselves as broken vessels modelled in the image of God but with defects.
Imagine you owned a car worth £50. Busted seats, an engine that burned more oil than petrol and loads of rust. If someone told you that there was a Rolls Royce worth £200,000, you wouldn't imagine an expensive version of the same thing. You wouldn't think that for your money, you get more oil burning, more busted seats and more rust patches. In short you would not create the Rolls Royce in the same image as your cheap car. This would be obviously incorrect and illogical, it would lead to all kinds of strange conclusions about cars. Imagine however if you saw the Rolls Royce or at least had it described to you and then realised that your car was a broken cheap version of the Rolls. This would make much more sense, it would logically make sense and most importantly, it would give the Rolls Royce all the honour and credit for what it actually is.
Monday, 12 October 2009
The wonderful Sell-Off government
The government have announced they are selling off assets to gain £16 billion pounds "in an effort to reduce the growing budget deficit". Wonderful, wonderful idea. Oh, did I forget to say the man is a total idiot (Gordon Brown). Now I do not have a degree in economics or a related subject and only know a 'pub quiz' amount about governments and how they work but I again feel I have to spell out to these people the folly of this idea. It is this government who has been overspending for the past 15 years. Why make some terrible gesture like it is the "economy's fault" that this has happened. Anyway, down to details.
1) The amount to be raised is small pickings compared to the actual deficit.
2) The obvious answer when outgoings minus income is positive is to reduce your outgoings or to increase recurring income (or both). Raising cash is VERY short-term and does absolutely nothing to fix the underlying deficit. If you borrowed money because your gran was about to die and leave you something then it might make sense but why raise cash just for the sake of it?
3) Selling assets if they are not required is surely something you should do anyway? If you have a spare town hall somewhere, why not sell it and then you do not need to maintain it.
4) If you sell something like the Dartford crossing, you get cash into government but of course the travelling public will pay for it - the cost to run the bridge will not go down so add in some profit for a private company and q.e.d. the charge will go up. You might as well put tax up on fuel and sting everybody!
5) They sold gold before and it bought them nothing.
They haven't learned anything. They are robbing the country and not improving, I like the way one BBC viewer sais, "he has sold the family gold and is now selling the silver". Why does it take 15 years to realise you can't spend more than you have? Are they really that incompetent? This is really, really, really basic. Are they telling us to save, not borrow and then have a deficit of how ever many billions? That is a deficit, that means borrowing money (which incurs interest) because you are spending more than you earn. Why can't the queen invoke some ancient power to dissolve government and have done with it?
1) The amount to be raised is small pickings compared to the actual deficit.
2) The obvious answer when outgoings minus income is positive is to reduce your outgoings or to increase recurring income (or both). Raising cash is VERY short-term and does absolutely nothing to fix the underlying deficit. If you borrowed money because your gran was about to die and leave you something then it might make sense but why raise cash just for the sake of it?
3) Selling assets if they are not required is surely something you should do anyway? If you have a spare town hall somewhere, why not sell it and then you do not need to maintain it.
4) If you sell something like the Dartford crossing, you get cash into government but of course the travelling public will pay for it - the cost to run the bridge will not go down so add in some profit for a private company and q.e.d. the charge will go up. You might as well put tax up on fuel and sting everybody!
5) They sold gold before and it bought them nothing.
They haven't learned anything. They are robbing the country and not improving, I like the way one BBC viewer sais, "he has sold the family gold and is now selling the silver". Why does it take 15 years to realise you can't spend more than you have? Are they really that incompetent? This is really, really, really basic. Are they telling us to save, not borrow and then have a deficit of how ever many billions? That is a deficit, that means borrowing money (which incurs interest) because you are spending more than you earn. Why can't the queen invoke some ancient power to dissolve government and have done with it?
Friday, 2 October 2009
Average Speed Cameras and Road Safety
I was thinking of writing to my local MP about the standard of driving on the roads. I don't drive a massive amount, mostly just to work and back (20 mile round trip) but I do notice that there is a lot of shoddy driving. There is a basic problem with our system. The Driving Standards Agency run the Driving Test but people can keep taking it until they are lucky enough to scrape past and then that's it. They can drive any car they want (or can insure) pretty much forever. If they are bad drivers, it cannot be picked up until they have a serious accident and even then, not necessarily. In America, the land of the free, you have to take regular tests to renew your licence, something which although might be annoying is the minimum you could do to ensure people are safe drivers. Other things you could do is limit the number of tests somebody could take in one year or perhaps have an extended test for anyone who either fails too many times or fails in a major way.
I then came into work and saw that Wales are planning on using more mobile average speed cameras. Now generally we cannot complain about equipment that enforces the law but I want to compare two scenarios, one based on what I see on the roads and the other based on somebody speeding in Wales.
1) Mr A drives at an average of 40 mph in a 30mph limit at night when there is no other traffic or people around: Fined £100 and given 3 points. Insurance is increased because they are 'dangerous'
2) Mr B overtakes on blind corners, drives too close to the person in front, uses their handheld mobile while driving, doesn't indicate, straight-lines the roundabouts, pulls out very close to people causing them to slow down, doesn't really pay attention to what is happening around them and drives in an agressive manner although within the speed limit: Nothing at all. No fine, no points, no conviction, no insurance increase (unless you are the 1 in 50000 people who actually get caught by a police officer).
That is the problem I have with Police Policy that is aimed almost entirely on speed and speed cameras. Unless there are ways that the police catch general bad driving or put in a system that ensures that people at least know how to drive properly, there is a problem!
I then came into work and saw that Wales are planning on using more mobile average speed cameras. Now generally we cannot complain about equipment that enforces the law but I want to compare two scenarios, one based on what I see on the roads and the other based on somebody speeding in Wales.
1) Mr A drives at an average of 40 mph in a 30mph limit at night when there is no other traffic or people around: Fined £100 and given 3 points. Insurance is increased because they are 'dangerous'
2) Mr B overtakes on blind corners, drives too close to the person in front, uses their handheld mobile while driving, doesn't indicate, straight-lines the roundabouts, pulls out very close to people causing them to slow down, doesn't really pay attention to what is happening around them and drives in an agressive manner although within the speed limit: Nothing at all. No fine, no points, no conviction, no insurance increase (unless you are the 1 in 50000 people who actually get caught by a police officer).
That is the problem I have with Police Policy that is aimed almost entirely on speed and speed cameras. Unless there are ways that the police catch general bad driving or put in a system that ensures that people at least know how to drive properly, there is a problem!
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Ending GP Catchment Areas
Health Secretary Andy Burnham has announced his intention to end catchment areas of GP surgeries which restrict which surgeries you can sign up to. Part of the argument is competition which is supposed to drive up standards as people don't register at poor surgeries and part of it is to provide flexibility for people who might want to register, for instance, near their work or their child's school. It sounds OK and it might be the right thing to do but what really troubled me was the man's statement; "In this day and age I can see no reason why patients should not be able to choose the GP practice they want". The man said publically that he can see no reason not to change it. Well, since he is apparently not very clever, I will provide some, partly courtesy of people on the news article:
1) What happens with home visits if you are registered 40 miles away?
2) What happens when loads of people register near work? The local surgery might be left with stay-at-home patients with potentially a high percentage of ongoing and serious conditions to have to deal with.
3) Most council services work by areas, this might make accountability difficult.
4) If lots of healthier people decide to register elsewhere, it can cause a snowball effect because a struggling surgery now ends up with a disproportionate number of sick people who visit often and who are then even less able to deal with the work since they will get less money for their less patients but most of whom are now sickly.
5) There is no objective evidence that this technique, like schools and hospitals, actually drives up standards. The system is far more complex than that and it can be argued that the problem is related to the community being served rather than any serious incompetence on the part of doctors.
6) What happens if a surgery is oversubscribed because it is good and local people cannot register there and are forced to register far from where they live? This has already happened with NHS dentists and it was obvious there that this 'demand' did not suddenly force lots of other dentists to set up shop or to increase their staffing levels since as stated above, this is not a simple thing to do. The wage levels, general availability of qualified people and the simple practicalities of the work are big obstacles.
7) There is actually a danger that spare demand in an area is met with a practice that sets up to meet that demand with no track record in high-quality care and who might unecessarily put another practice out of business as people move to the new surgery.
There you go Andy, hopefully these few reasons why you might not want to end post code catchment areas will help you at your next meeting into the matter. I wouldn't want to think you go in uninformed and make a massive expensive cock-up on behalf of the tax-payers!
1) What happens with home visits if you are registered 40 miles away?
2) What happens when loads of people register near work? The local surgery might be left with stay-at-home patients with potentially a high percentage of ongoing and serious conditions to have to deal with.
3) Most council services work by areas, this might make accountability difficult.
4) If lots of healthier people decide to register elsewhere, it can cause a snowball effect because a struggling surgery now ends up with a disproportionate number of sick people who visit often and who are then even less able to deal with the work since they will get less money for their less patients but most of whom are now sickly.
5) There is no objective evidence that this technique, like schools and hospitals, actually drives up standards. The system is far more complex than that and it can be argued that the problem is related to the community being served rather than any serious incompetence on the part of doctors.
6) What happens if a surgery is oversubscribed because it is good and local people cannot register there and are forced to register far from where they live? This has already happened with NHS dentists and it was obvious there that this 'demand' did not suddenly force lots of other dentists to set up shop or to increase their staffing levels since as stated above, this is not a simple thing to do. The wage levels, general availability of qualified people and the simple practicalities of the work are big obstacles.
7) There is actually a danger that spare demand in an area is met with a practice that sets up to meet that demand with no track record in high-quality care and who might unecessarily put another practice out of business as people move to the new surgery.
There you go Andy, hopefully these few reasons why you might not want to end post code catchment areas will help you at your next meeting into the matter. I wouldn't want to think you go in uninformed and make a massive expensive cock-up on behalf of the tax-payers!
Monday, 14 September 2009
What is really valuable?
Who do you respect? If you could swap your life with someone elses, who would you have wanted to be? Edmund Hilary, Neil Armstrong, Mother Theresa, Michael Jordan?
We have a distorted way of judging other people. We think, "If only I was that person or had that person's money, I could...". What would you actually do if you had money on tap? Buy loads of junk like cars, houses, planes and yachts? Sure you would be able to do some cool stuff that you might not otherwise be able to but would that really be a wonderful life? You can't buy love but you attract a load of flies.
From a heavenly perspective, if you have led a single person to Christ, your life would be more fruitful and more valuable than any famous person who hasn't done the same. I won't name anybody because I don't know which famous people are or aren't Christians but how ever famous, rich, popular, talented or anything a person has been, however influential, whatever their famous legacy is, if they have not been instrumental in leading somebody from death to life, their life has had no heavenly value compared to your normal, run of the mill, average, obscure existence where you have actually led people to Christ. Can you imagine somebody like Simon Cowell with all his fame and fortune getting to judgement day and saying, "I wish I could swap my life with Luke Briner's so I had a lasting legacy" That doesn't seem like it would ever happen but in effect it will when we die and realise everything we had counts as nothing, only what we have invested in the Kingdom means anything!.
What does this mean? It means that the most glorious effect your life can have is taking people from an eternity in hell and leading them to Jesus who can take them into heaven. I would suggest you set your target at one person, always one person and then when they become Christians, target another. Don't try and save the world, do it one person at a time.
We have a distorted way of judging other people. We think, "If only I was that person or had that person's money, I could...". What would you actually do if you had money on tap? Buy loads of junk like cars, houses, planes and yachts? Sure you would be able to do some cool stuff that you might not otherwise be able to but would that really be a wonderful life? You can't buy love but you attract a load of flies.
From a heavenly perspective, if you have led a single person to Christ, your life would be more fruitful and more valuable than any famous person who hasn't done the same. I won't name anybody because I don't know which famous people are or aren't Christians but how ever famous, rich, popular, talented or anything a person has been, however influential, whatever their famous legacy is, if they have not been instrumental in leading somebody from death to life, their life has had no heavenly value compared to your normal, run of the mill, average, obscure existence where you have actually led people to Christ. Can you imagine somebody like Simon Cowell with all his fame and fortune getting to judgement day and saying, "I wish I could swap my life with Luke Briner's so I had a lasting legacy" That doesn't seem like it would ever happen but in effect it will when we die and realise everything we had counts as nothing, only what we have invested in the Kingdom means anything!.
What does this mean? It means that the most glorious effect your life can have is taking people from an eternity in hell and leading them to Jesus who can take them into heaven. I would suggest you set your target at one person, always one person and then when they become Christians, target another. Don't try and save the world, do it one person at a time.
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