[Sussex] Microsoft fails to comply

[Mark Harrison (Groups)]

Geoff,

The NHS is the world's third largest employer. (Chinese Army and Indian 
Railways). There has been a lot of REAL academic research done on 
organisational inertia, and whether management can actually make a 
difference. It would appear that the larger an organisation, the harder 
it is to get things done, irrespective of whether the organisation 
aspires to "strong central management" and "single ways of working" or 
"divisional autonomy" or "customer choice" or whatever.

It is hard to believe that a small island of the top of Europe, 
containing less than 1% of the world's population should magically be in 
the position where it, and only it among all countries worldwide, should 
find that a single mega-organisation is the right solution.

On that basis, it's hard to believe that a simplistic "what the NHS 
needs is XXX" analysis of how to improve healthcare, particularly when 
every health management professional in the world apart from the UK 
seems to have the same opinion - what's wrong in the UK health sector is 
that the NHS tries to do too much.


On political correctness, you have confused a "you should be nice" with 
a "you MUST behave in this way or there will be sanctions against you". 
It is the latter that defines "political correctness" as opposed to 
"courtesy".

I once had the misfortune to work in a politically correct organisation. 
I once, in this organisation said "after you" and held open the door for 
a middle-aged woman. I did not consider this unreasonable, nor did the 
woman in question. However, the "incident" was witnessed by another 
manager, who reported me for "sexist behaviour" and I was threatened 
with disciplinary action unless I apologised to the woman in question 
for holding open the door.

It is _this_ kind of thing that we object to, and what we mean by 
"political correctness gone mad."


Finally, your comments about "the rich". How do you define "rich", out 
of interest. Because all the things you've suggested seem to me as if 
they'd hit the middle classes quite hard, but not really affect the 
people I consider "rich".

Are you really under the impression that raising taxes to, say, "60%" on 
earnings over 100k would have any impact other than the impact it had in 
the 70s? Namely that those who were in the highest bands left the UK, 
and the overall tax take went DOWN.

Mark