The Rise and Fall of Public Service

Ealing Town Hall

My UK public service career began here in 1970 as a pre-graduate experience placement. In 1974 I joined Surrey County Council, moving on to Devon County Council in 1975 and to Dorset County Council in 1978 where dealing with “Social Services” was the biggest challenge.  I left for overseas life and work in 1985, going to St Helena; Saudi Arabia, Malawi and Rwanda before settling in SE Asia working mainly in Cambodia. My profession and training is in “organisational development” and “human resources” - how to obtain the best performances from people.  I retired from full-time work in June 2016, only to encounter maladministration at Northumberland County Council.

Update June 2022 - it seems I am not the only one to have misgivings about the way Northumberland Council was operating. Belated Vindication? Please see this article, latest update below and links to reports. The main report makes graphic and sad reading.

Please see the sequel to this blog and my website entry - the case for better public service everywhere also published here.

Bournemouth Dorset 1984

Mr Ricketts couldn’t believe his luck.  He’d asked for a pay rise and got twice as much as he’d asked for.  His trade union representative Mr Watson beamed approvingly: “Never” he said  ”Never has his union won a pay upgrade by two whole grades”.  Mrs Bicknell chairing the Appeals Committee addressed all three of us. “We don’t care what the rules are supposed to be.  We are correcting an injustice and that is our job as elected Councillors.”

The Unlikely Foreign Aid Worker

A follow-up to my most popular Blog “Smarter Aid, not More Aid”.

Play on words. Cambodia is known as the Kingdom of Wonder but because of corruption this is changed to Kingdom of Plunder. This is the default position in human resources management where seldom does the best person get the job.

Life can be strange.  Although things can work out as expected for people, often they don’t.  We see that there are some born to follow family traditions. Sometimes we also see children who harbour very early keen ambitions for what they want to do in life, and they adopt clear study and career paths.  For others opportunism matters more than a concerted plan.  Then there are a few of us – Lally Brown is one - who have discarded sensible plans to let fate take its course.

Time and Tide Waits for No Man

Marooned on the Holy Island Causeway

Please click on this link to enjoy the full video.

If there is one thing in Northumberland that reminds me of parallels in Cambodia it is the Holy Island crossing, where fools never cease to try beating the tide and end up marooned in mid-sea.  Even a Buddhist monk in this video defies his Karma as if to allow me to make my connection here with Cambodia.

MFI micro-credit can increase poverty, not help to solve it.

I have written the contents of this blog for the World Bank's Inspection Panel. They contacted me, to my surprise, in response to several of my Twitter postings where I complained about the World Bank's inaction. I am very pleased that they did. Most Tweets were in relation to the treatment of community activist Tep Vanny whose land disputes should have been resolved after an Inspection Panel's previous report. In fact she continued to be detained by authorities for maintaining her community's protest. Next to her case I criticized the way Micro-Finance Institutions were operating in Cambodia in increasing rather than alleviating poverty: “MFI's have lost their way”. By chance our journalist colleague David Hutt released an article this week making much the same points.

August 2019 - please see in-depth analysis by LICADHO on how and why MFI malpractice is posing a danger to so many poor Cambodians. The issue aroused more controversy in July 2020 when Acleda Bank and the Khmer Times weighed-in. (See updates below)

Cambodia Election 2018: Neither Free nor Fair nor Credible.

Takhmau Cambodia the CPP Election Post nearest our house. Please note the Church poster. I tweeted that what it depicted might be apt for what CPP did to the Opposition CNRP party but had they overlooked that after the crucification came the resurrection?

For more photographs capturing the "atmosphere" please visit John Brown's album.

Cambodia in the modern era, since the Paris Peace Accords of 1991, and its subsequent new democratic constitution, has had national elections every five years since 1993 as well as local commune elections. Until the National Assembly election in July 2018, every election was fought competitively - if not fairly - by the ruling and opposition parties with the processes subjected to scrutiny by reputable international election observers.

This year, however, the only real challenging opposition party, was dissolved and banned from participating, accused by the ruling party of fomenting a colour revolution to overthrow it and risking a return to conflict.

Malfeasance in Foreign Aid: the Essay

Some images first to set the scene:

Link to Tweet and full article in DEVEX by Sophie Edwards.
My comment at the end of the article:

Forward:

This piece is about a definition submitted to Wikipedia I hope to add to Foreign Aid literature so that misconduct whenever it occurs is not kept being seen in isolation but part of a wider phenomenon peculiar to the sector, with circumstances creating a culture that tolerates it instead of deterring it.

As well as "Malfeasance in Foreign Aid", there are three closely-related pages:

Abuse of Power

Malfeasance in Office

Development Aid - section on Corruption

My suggestions for amendments here can be found below "Notes".

There is some excellent work done by Oliver May, formerly of OXFAM, including an excellent tool-kit that should be used extensively by all charities and NGOs operating abroad.

.....ooo0ooo.....

Malfeasance in Foreign Aid

Malfeasance  [1] in Foreign Aid [2] or Development Aid [3] is wrongdoing by an officer or agent of an organisation, public or private, not-for-profit or commercial, engaged in the administration and arrangement of funds and assets given for the relief and development of people in need usually in a “developing” or “least developed country”. [4].  Malfeasance also occurs in Humanitarian Aid. [5] (Old English includes the word "misfeasance".)

Malfeasance in Foreign Aid has existed for many years, reported as far back as 2002 [6] and before, but has become more well-known after 2017 because of serious cases rapidly receiving widespread attention in mainstream and social media.

Children know best!

This article was written when child abuse scandals were to the fore on tiny St Helena and in Australia but meanwhile it was also lurking in the greater depths of the worldwide Catholic Church and across so many establishment institutions in many countries not just the UK. Ironically the UK with its "advanced" system of social services has been found most wanting for example in the Church of England, and most prominently in terms of publicity in the "Rotherham" scandal.  One thing was apparent above all others - covering-up and denials. Can adults be trusted? If not, should we not just trust children more as indeed proven by Cambodian children? (First advocated 20 years ago.)

Article for St Helena Independent

Thea surprised us all.  For a start she was a girl [1].  She was neither the oldest nor the brightest. She was one of the more disabled in our troupe of mixed-ability children.  She had been reluctant to join.  She was shy.  Yet there was no mistaking it.  Thea (short for Sokunthea) had emerged as their leader.  All the children were poor [2].  That’s why they were with us.  They just wanted to be like “normal” children [3] able to learn Computing and English, a small element in our project for mainly poor and disabled people with two main components. One was to improve livelihoods. The other “was to do something about their low status”.