Hi Folks,
With "You and Yours" on in the background this morning,
my ears pricked up to the opening words:
Female presenter:
"Hello! Today -- quangos. There are 529 of them
in the UK, and a new report says many of them
are worthless."
Male interviewer:
"So what do quangos do for you? I mean I'm just
thinking about some of the new ones, like the
Zoos Forum, or the Statistics Commission."
Female Interviewee:
"Well, they're just waffle shops, aren't they?
I don't think they do very much at all, for anybody."
With that taster, I leave it to you to Listen Again if
you feel like it: the quangos item starts about 28min
into the broadcast, so point your RealPlayer to
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/youandyours/
youandyours_wed.ra?start="00:28:30.0"&end="00:44:15.0"
[all one line]
which should capture it nicely.
Not uninteresting about quangos in general, though the
Statistics Commission does not come on stage in person.
The "new report" referred to in You&Yours in fact seems
to be "The Essential Guide to British Quangos 2005", author
Dan Lewis, Director of the Efficiency in Government
Unit which is sponsored by the Centre for Policy Studies
and the Economic Research Council, and dated Feb 2004 [sic].
A PDF copy of the 17-page Summary can be downloaded from
http://www.cps.org.uk/pdf/pub/402.pdf
though it seems the full 104-page report has to be purchased
from the Centre for Policy Studies.
For what it's worth, the Statistics Commission is only
mentioned by virtue of being in the list of those established
since 1997, and does not figure amongst:
a) The 10 most costly
b) The 9 most useless [why only 9?][*]
c) The 10 highest employers
d) The 10 headed by the most highly paid quangocrats
e) The 10 oldest
Nor does it figure amongst the large number (some 132 out
of 529) of those which
"either chose not to reply following two requests
by post in June and August 2004; or did reply and
refused to provide any information. The information
requested was straightforward and limited to what
they would be expected to provide under the Freedom
of Information Act."
[*] And one of the 9 most useless is the Economic and Social
Research Council.
Ah well, it all adds some distraction to life ...
Best wishes to all,
Ted.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[log in to unmask]>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 09-Mar-05 Time: 16:28:42
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