BE CAREFUL if you put your head above the public sector parapet: there are stray bullets flying about out there.
Nothing unusual in that — the public sector is often under fire — but it has been a particularly savage couple of weeks for people and organisations paid from the public purse. Just ask Ruth Kelly.
But at least the Education Secretary has an ally in The Spectator (Jan 21). Kelly has been the victim of a “sickening witch-hunt”, writes Leo Mc- Kinstry, who turns his guns on the “tabloid pack”, saying that they have generated a “climate of hysteria” over paedophilia.
Health Service Journal (Jan 19) has its sights set on Kelly’s colleague, Patricia Hewitt. The Health Secretary is in the cross-hairs of NHS chiefs who say that cost-cutting in the health service means that patients will suffer. Although Hewitt wants the savings to come from administration costs, a survey of trust chief executives found that three quarters of them think that the cuts will affect care.
But it’s not just the usual public sector suspects who have come under attack. Planning (Jan 20) says that the Green movement has been criticised from within for misjudging the public’s attachment to cars. A report from the campaign group Transport 2000 says: “We fail to recognise that cars are much more than transport to most people and that they are just as much about a sense of freedom and personal identity.”
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In Third Sector (Jan 18) accusing fingers are pointed at aid agencies that have let their desire to impress the media distract them from the task of helping people affected by the tsunami in Asia. A report commissioned by the Disaster Emergency Committee says that agencies have undertaken “showpiece projects” instead of tackling basic needs.
Head teachers, meanwhile, are gunning for school inspectors. The Times Educational Supplement (Jan 20) says that angry heads have accused Ofsted of wrongly identifying schools as having serious problems. The heads blame changes to the inspection system and mistakes made by inspectors in the way school performance is assessed.
Police authorities get it in the neck in Police Review (Jan 20) for being weak, ineffective and bureaucratic. Tom Williamson, of the University of Portsmouth, suggests that their days are numbered. “Who needs police authorities as presently structured?” he asks. No one, apparently. “They will not exist for much longer.”