Today, all eyes will be on the chancellor, Alistair Darling, as he announces his pre-budget report and outlines key spending plans for the public sector for the next three years.
Public managers, who for months have been modelling what would happen to the services they run if budgets are cut by 10%, 20% or even 30%, will be keen to get a feel for the real figures. There is apprehension — but there is also a feeling that, once the worst is known, at least managers can work on what they need to do. Senior managers across the public sector have been frustrated for some time by the refusal of politicians in both parties to be more definite about their future spending policies.
The pre-budget report may be the most important event of the week, but it stands amid other announcements that reflect the way public services are changing. Today also sees the first release of results from a new way of monitoring local councils' performance, while Monday saw the Treasury report on public sector reform, Smarter Government, which outlined plans to reduce the cost of the senior civil service, cut the number of Whitehall quangos, and move tens of thousands of civil servants out of expensive London offices into other locations around the UK.
The new framework for inspecting local services, known as Oneplace and accessible via the government's Directgov website, is a bid to get over the well-known problem of previous inspections: councils were capable of meeting the targets, but missing the point. Their internal workings could be four-star, but the services they were actually delivering might fall well short of excellence.
Oneplace assesses not just councils, but also police authorities, primary care trusts and fire and rescue services. The output is not a league table or star system, but a “narrative in plain English” of the priorities that areas have themselves set, and inspection is no longer a matter of inspectors descending on a council, or a fire service, for one or two weeks, and then going away to write a report.
All this fits in with a drive towards greater local partnerships and great interest in the government's Total Place pilot schemes, where all public bodies in a specific area add up what they are spending and try to identify unnecessary duplication.
The new monitoring system, which covers 152 areas of England, uses a flag system to signal examples of particularly good or bad practice.
It's new for local areas and it's new for the six inspectorates involved, led by the local authority watchdog, the Audit Commission. But will it get closer to what the public perceive as good-value local public services? That's a harder question to answer. The new system means there is no longer a simple, standardised national measurement of councils.
However, there's a strong counterpoint to this. There are two words that make many public managers and politicians shudder: postcode lottery. The very mention of these words is enough to derail many innovative plans for reforming public services, says David Halpern, former government adviser and now director of research at the Institute for Government thinktank.
Halpern's book on the policy challenges posed for government in the face of social and economic change, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, also published this week, is in many ways an enlargement on the ideas that underlie the Smarter Government report. It sets out the many paradoxes in our ideas as a society, about prosperity, wellbeing, crime, inequality and fairness — or unfairness.
Real challenge
One of Halpern's points is that the government faces a real challenge as it moves towards the idea of greater allocation of public sector funding at local level. For instance, finding the right ways to allocate budgets, so that services can be spent in more innovative ways, has proved elusive.
Will the prospect of major cuts finally propel government services into true joined-up services? No one yet knows. There will be big resistance to some of the government's more sweeping proposals – but there is also, among senior managers, more acceptance of innovative ideas and the need to explore the inherent tensions involved in organising public services.
• Jane Dudman is editor of Public, the Guardian's website for senior public sector managers. guardianpublic.co.uk
Mark Stuart, Derek Morris and David Krejci scored to give the Bruins a 3-0 lead after two periods. Mikhail Grabovski and Nikolai Kulemin had goals in the third to cut Toronto's deficit to 3-2, but Recchi scored with 2:37 to play and then added an empty netter with 12 seconds left to clinch it.
Vesa Toskala made 29 saves for Toronto, which lost 7-2 in Boston on Saturday night.
The Bruins improved to 8-1-1 in the last 10 games and took over first place in the Northeast Division.
It was the second time in six days Boston took a big lead on the Maple Leafs and former Bruins forward Phil Kessel, who signed with Toronto as a restricted free agent in the offseason. On Saturday, the Bruins scored the first seven goals and coasted.
This time, Boston squandered most of a 3-0 lead before getting a late power play when Jason Blake was called for high-sticking with 4:01 left.
The Bruins put pressure on, bouncing the puck in front of the net, but Recchi and Krejci failed to put it in until it went wide to Blake Wheeler. He passed it back into the slot where Recchi redirected it in to make it 4-2.
Recchi added an empty netter with 12 seconds left.
Just as they did on Saturday, when the Bruins dominated in Kessel's first visit, the crowd booed him virtually every time he touched the puck. At least one fan in the crowd wore a Kessel T-shirt, but the name and number on the back had been X'd out.
The Bruins controlled the game from the start when Blake was sent off 16 seconds in with a double minor for high-sticking. Boston couldn't score on the power play, but took a 1-0 lead with 11:59 to play in the first when a faceoff went around the horn and found its way to Stuart, who slapped it in from the point.
It was his first goal since Oct. 17, and Johnny Boychuk's first NHL assist.
Morris made it 2-0 with a slapper from the point 35 seconds into the second period, 6 seconds after Ian White was sent off for holding. Krejci gave Boston a 3-0 lead midway through the second when he blocked a shot with his skate and took off on a breakaway, faking out Toskala to score.
Toronto made it 3-1 just 18 seconds into the third period when Blake shot the puck across the net, and Grabovski slammed home the rebound. Kulemin cut the deficit to one goal, deflecting a shot in from the side of the crease.
Kessel was scoreless for the second time in two games against the Bruins. The No. 5 overall pick in the 2006 draft scored 36 goals last season – and a total of 66 in his first three NHL seasons but he couldn't come to terms with the Bruins.
Boston general manager Peter Chiarelli said Kessel had told the Bruins he wanted to play elsewhere and traded him to Toronto for two first-round draft picks and a second-rounder.
NOTES: Rask has not lost in regulation since Nov. 16. … Bruins forward Byron Bitz was sick and didn't play.
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These days, everywhere you turn there is another “celebrity” scandal. When I was young, kids could look up to the people in the news: little boys wanted to be ball players, little girls beauty queens and both sexes President. These days, the thought of our children wanting those same things, send chills down our spine! Now, we read about athletics taking steroids, the President, well, I don't have enough time to go into that and the beauty queens, what has happened to the Beauty contestants? Let's just review:
1. The latest beauty-queen-gone-bad episode is 25-year-old Kumari Fulbright who has recently been indicted. Back in 2005 Fulbright was Miss Pima County in 2005 and then went on to participated in the Miss Arizona pageant. She was also Miss Desert Sun in 2006.
Fulbright is charged with allegedly kidnapping, taunting, torturing (with a knife and gun) and biting her former 24-year-old boyfriend for 10 hours. The Arizona Daily Star has reported that court documents stated Kumari Fulbright, and three men kept the unidentified man subdued by tying him up with plastic cable ties and duct tape. They are also accused of taking over $500, his wallet, cell phone and briefcase.
Great behavior for a so called role model not to mention the fact she is employed as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Raner Collins.
2. Probably the most viewed (thanks to youtube) is the answer Miss South Carolina Lauren Caitlin Upton gave to a question during the Miss Teen USA 2007. If you somehow missed this, here is the transcript of the funny, yet so sad, question.
Question: “Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can't locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?”
Upton's answer: “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uhmmm, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and uh, I believe that our, I, education like such as, uh, South Africa, and uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uhhh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for our .”
Here is the great part, she ended up still being 3rd runner up!
3. Katie Rees, 22, was crowned Miss Nevada 2007 in Las Vegas in October only to have it stripped from her in December. The title was handed over to her runner up after racy photos (exposing one of her breasts, kissing and licking both sexes etc) started showing up all over the Net. Donald Trump (USA co-owner) stated on CNN that “These pictures were pretty far out there and that is not representative of Miss USA. We had no choice but to terminate her.” Rees insisted that was “not who she was” and that it was an “isolated incident” but apparently nobody cared.
4. Tara Conner is known as the Miss USA 2006 and as the alcoholic thats crown was saved by Donald Trump. Many are unsure as to why she was allowed to “break the rules” and standards (underage drinking, drug use and promiscuous behavior) while other contestants are dropped without a second chance. Conner had to enter rehab, but was able to hang onto her title. After leaving rehab, Conner gave an interview with People magazine where she admits to taking her first drink at the age of 14, that she also tried drugs and came out “a completely different person.” Since she tested positive for cocaine I doubt anyone was shocked to hear she had tried drugs, or were we suppose to miss that?
Another reason to push our kids to get an education!
Francis Cantrell