At home on their own

This was originally published in 2006

This is a story that is funny in hindsight but wasn’t at all funny when it happened.

When we were living in New Zealand, Hannah and Sam (then aged 13 and 11) were happy enough, going to school and enjoying the Kiwi way of life. They attended drama lessons at a local community centre, and one evening came home with a flyer from a TV company asking for volunteers for a new TV show.

If only we’d thrown the accursed thing out! But no, that would have been too sensible for a proud dad like me!

We thought it might be exciting and educational for the kids to be involved in a TV programme and I contacted the company to find out more. I was told that the show was about the children redecorating parts of the house in fun themes. This sounded like it could be interesting. I remembered seeing some such programme where the family ended up with some great improvements to their house, so said sure, we were interested.

Our house was a pretty spectacular timber building with lots of balconies located in the Lynfield/Blockhouse Bay area of Auckland, overlooking the Manakau Harbour. We all loved it.


Inside, it had been carefully decorated (by the previous owners) with neutral colours that were used throughout the house. We had what in New Zealand was known as a ‘Rumpus Room’ and this large, mainly pine-clad room was used by the children as a space to muck around, use their computer or watch TV.

Downstairs was a spacious open plan living area that incorporated our kitchen and dining table. This area was the hub of the house, and Donna and I really liked this space.


Not long after the phone calls and email contact with the TV company, we were visited by a very pleasant researcher, who spoke to Donna and I and the children. She wanted the children to generate some ideas for redecorating parts of the house. Donna and I told her we were happy for them to do use the rumpus room, their bedrooms and outside, but under no circumstances do anything to the living area. The ideas that the children came up with were supposed to be kept from Donna and I but the children told us that they had planned a space theme for the rumpus room and a tropical beach theme for outside.

The TV company were evidently taken with the children and our house and before too long came to do some initial filming, where they interviewed us all, and then Donna and I and the children separately. We got to meet the presenter, the interior designer, the producer and director, and of course the cameraman and sound man. They all seemed great people, friendly and interested in us as a family. The presenter talked to the children about their ideas and they all seemed very excited about the prospect of making their ideas come to life.

A few weeks later, the weekend arrived. Donna and I were to be whisked off to a luxury hotel for the weekend, whilst the children got to work with the team. The first indication that things weren’t quite right was when Sam locked himself in a cupboard not long after the team arrived. I spent quite a while trying to persuade him to come out, but he was adamant that he did not want to be involved. I thought he had cold feet and tried harder to convince him that it would be a lot of fun for him. Sam said ‘They aren’t going to do what we planned’ but I didn’t register his concern or distress. I thought he was just being awkward. How wrong I was.

Donna and I were filmed saying goodbye to the children, and then getting into the luxury car provided by the TV company, to be driven off to the hotel. Within seconds, however, the car stopped and we were asked to drive ourselves in our car to the hotel. We were somewhat perplexed by this, but went along with the request. We drove into Auckland, and checked in at the hotel, and spent much of the day wandering around the city. We had been asked to be at the hotel for 6pm for more filming and duly waited in our room, when the director arrived with a small video camera. We were filmed watching two snips of video showing what looked like our kitchen being painted with a dark blue and some sand being tipped somewhere. Donna and I were quite concerned at this point, but didn’t say much. Later we phoned the house and spoke to Bharti, our friend who was looking after the children. Bharti sounded concerned. She told us that Sam wasn’t feeling too well (he had a cold) but both of the children were really worried about what was happening to the house and how we’d react.

The next day, we were asked to be ready to return home at six in the evening. During the day the luxury car arrived and we were filmed both getting in and out of it. After editing, it really did look as though we had been driven to and from the hotel by the TV company. We set off to be back home for six, but received a phone call asking us to be there by seven instead, so Donna and I hung around our local supermarket, feeling more and more apprehensive. When we finally arrived home, we were asked to go straight to the garage and wait there. We waited in the garage for two hours. Much of the equipment the crew had used in our garage was covered in black cloth, but I could see polystyrene packing from what looked like a kitchen appliance poking out from behind some cloth. The smell of paint was very strong.

Finally, the team were ready to film the reveal. We were asked to keep our eyes closed and led up the back stairs to the rumpus room. Upon opening our eyes, we discovered a bizarre scene of a spaceship, floating spaceman and smoke. The presenter was evidently quite excited by this spectacle and crowed about how marvellous it all was. I wasn’t too impressed, but thought that seeing as it was the rumpus room, there was no harm done.

Next we were led into our bedroom, where I was asked to lie on the bed and pretend to snore. I was immediately drenched by a jet of water from a small pipe that had been tacked to the door frame, and this jet continued to squirt haphazardly despite the fact that I had leapt off the bed. I watched the bed slowly becoming drenched with a heavy heart.

Following this discomfiture, Donna and I were led through the upper floor of the house and down the stairs to our living area. It sounded ominously hollow as we made our way down the stairs with our eyes shut.

The final reveal was presumably the highlight of the evening – at least as far as the team was concerned. What we saw was unbelievable. Our kitchen and dining area had been turned into an undersea world, complete with a mural of a killer whale on the wall, a boat built around the work surface and around two tons of sand deposited on the dining area floor. To cap it all, a rusty 'treasure chest’ sat on top of the sand to complete the effect.


The presenter by this time was squealing with pleasure, but Donna and I were stony faced and unable to say much. We were really angry. The director, realising how upset we were, made some comment about how these programmes affect real people, but the producer curtly told her to do her job of directing and shut up.

The team promptly packed up and left. That was it, as far as they were concerned.

They had left the house virtually uninhabitable. Sam became really distressed at this point, and his anguish was punctuated by the house fire alarm suddenly going off. A smoke machine had been accidentally left on in the rumpus room for over an hour. I was devastated. It was one in the morning, my son was in tears, we couldn’t even make a coffee and I was due to present a key lecture at nine in the morning. To cap it all, the bed was soaking wet.

Whilst we were naive in letting this happen, the situation revealed that 'reality TV' has its dark side. All of us were misled by the team, but the extent to which the children were manipulated only became evident in the following days. Not only had their wishes been disregarded, but they had also been put in a position where they were directed to do things that they knew would upset their parents and were actually directed in what to say on camera too.

The contract I had signed (under the mistaken assumption the TV company were decent people) was watertight. If I took any action against them or made any public mention of our experience, I would be held responsible for any losses if the programme was not transmitted - up to NZ$100,000. I had never felt so angry, nor so impotent.

Dialogue doesn't work where there is no will to engage

Dialogue requires listening to other points of view. It involves collaboration and the commitment of all parties involved to be prepared to suspend their own assumptions and to listen genuinely to different perspectives. It means a commitment to trying to understand why people might hold very different opinions.

From my perspective, Jeremy Corbyn has consistently tried to be dialogical. It could have been one of his greatest strengths but has sadly proved to be a fatal flaw, given the current political context.

The UK political system is adversarial  - based on one side scoring points over the other and trying to win an argument and persuade through arguments. It is not dialogical or collaborative.

Part of the UK context also includes newspapers that are primarily owned by a wealthy elite who have a vested interest in retaining and maximising the wealth of the owners. Interestingly, in the recent election, Liverpool, where ’The Sun’ (owned by Rupert Murdoch) is shunned, overwhelmingly voted Labour. The predominantly right-wing media has shaped popular perceptions of Corbyn as weak, a terrorist sympathiser and not to be trusted.

Dialogue works. It works in peace processes. It works in therapy. It helps heal divisions. But only where there is a will to engage.

Corbyn’s has attempted to be dialogical and collaborative both within the Labour Party (which, to be fair, has lots of divisions within it) and in his broader approach. His attempt to be inclusive led to the perception of him not dealing with the issue of antisemitism within the Labour Party. His appreciation that the UK has been divided over Brexit again has led to his even-handed position appearing to ‘sit on the fence’, leading to the perception of him being weak and undecided.

The UK is not yet ready for Corbyn’s style of leadership – unlike some Nordic countries, where his politics would seem reasonable, and certainly not extreme.

We now face at least five years of what may prove to be a repressive right-wing government that will do more to look after the wealthy than the poor, increase inequality and possibly lead us dangerously towards intolerance.

The Labour Party must find a way forward, in the face of a biased media an adversarial parliament and voting system that is weighed heavily against it. It may be even more unbalanced going forward, so progress for the party will not be an easy task.

Retirement deferred by 11 years.

In another world, I would be retiring this month.  As it is, I still have to work another 11 years and 1 month.

I started paying into the NHS pension scheme in 1983. From 1988 I had ‘mental health officer’ status, which meant I could retire at 55 and have every year over 20 years’ service ‘doubled’. When I moved into education in 1992 I shifted to what is known as special class status, which meant still being able to retire at 55, but without the doubling of years. This also makes provision for up to five years break in service before losing special class status

Maybe this would have compensated for the sarcoidosis I acquired after working with TB patients as a student nurse in 1982 or the chronic back pain I have that is almost certainly as a result of poor lifting technique taught in the 1980’s further exacerbated by being regularly called to other wards to help lift very heavy patients.

In 1996, the NHS College of Health I worked for was integrated into a University.  When I transferred from the NHS pension scheme to the University Superannuation Scheme (USS) I was informed that all my NHS pension benefits, including my special class status, would be preserved by the USS and the terms of appointment deemed me to have had continuous service from 1st September 1983.

I had a break in service to work abroad (two years and eight months) from December 2000 until September 2003, when I then joined another University.

When I telephoned USS to enquire about my status early in 2011, I was informed on the telephone that although I had lost my MHO status, I still had Special Class status and would be able to retire at 55. However, in 2012 when I enquired again, I received written confirmation that I had lost all these benefits.

I returned to the NHS in 2013, to work as a therapist. Stupidly, I transferred my USS pension back into the NHS scheme and because of austerity measures, I now find that my retirement date is in 2026 and I no longer will receive a lump sum. If I’d left my funds with the USS, perhaps I might have had something at 60.

I guess this a salutary lesson in being careful with your pension planning and taking advice before career changes and development, but it speaks of the inherent unfairness in today’s financial climate, too.

I've been putting money into my pension all this time, but discover it isn't really my money if the government needs to subsidise the bankers.

Polar Opposites

The natural world is devoid of opposites. There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in nature. Opposites are constructions of human consciousness.

Conscious purpose is selective, and leads inevitably to decisions that do not take into account the totality of systems involved.  We want the best outcome for as little cost and effort as possible and things that hinder us are ‘bad’ and things that help are ‘good’.

Most conscious purpose is well-intended, for example, to cure disease. The use of antibiotics has benefited many people, but the systemic costs of not fully understanding the implications of the wide scale use of these drugs are only now beginning to be felt.

Even the conscious purposes of being ‘wealthy’ or ‘powerful’ are usually well intended, after all, who doesn't want security and comfort for themselves and their loved ones? But the wider consequences of this thinking are dangerous and have resulted in millennia of wars, environmental damage and inequality. Naturally, once someone has power and wealth, they need to protect these assets, and therefore more power and wealth is required and so on.

This polarisation of wealth and power has ultimately led to a small number of people with unimaginable wealth and power who profit from conflict, disease and the resources required for human life. Of course, their wealth and power insulates these well-intentioned (from their perspective) folk from much disease and conflict.

As with any conscious purpose, factors that hinder wealth or power are ‘bad’ and factors that help are ‘good’.  The next step is to polarise further; from ‘us’ to ‘them’, and ‘bad’ quickly becomes ‘evil’, ‘stupid’ or ‘sub-human’. Racial and religious differences become intensified, problems associated with poverty are blamed on the victims and critics are insulted or silenced.

I am increasingly despairing at the widespread hatred and suffering in the human world and the damage we are doing to the very environment we depend upon. This crisis isn't a matter of learning from the past, but of changing the way we think, but so much vested interest is in keeping this particular status quo, because it is profitable to those with wealth and power. This addiction threatens us all.

My solution is to keep trying to do good; to make little differences and simply hope that maybe they will add up and make a real difference. But it's an uphill struggle.

Dishonesty in making peace

The Treaty of Versailles reneged on the terms of the Armistice. This dishonesty in making peace directly led to the second world war and indirectly to many conflicts following it, with the loss of millions of lives. Dishonesty in making peace is a dangerous precedent. 

No matter how abhorrent the crimes of John Downey and other criminals who were given what appears to be an amnesty (notwithstanding that these agreements may have been made in less than transparent circumstances), to renege on these agreements is treading on very thin ice.

Lean methodologies, KPIs and the NHS: A recipe for trouble?

The concept of lean originated from Toyota and is founded on a model of continuous product and process improvement and the elimination of non-value added activities. The value adding activities are simply only those things the customer is willing to pay for; everything else is waste, and should be eliminated, simplified, reduced, or integrated.

One of the significant aspects of lean is that of key performance indicators (KPI). The KPIs by which a plant/facility or organisation are judged will often be driving behaviour, because the KPIs themselves assume a particular approach to the work being done.

In the NHS, KPIs are used to examine and compare performance across NHS organisations. These indicators focus on areas such as length of stay, costs per episode of patient care and number of staff employed. Many assess efficiency within the service, whilst others examine clinical performance. The intention is to define a service and judge its effectiveness and KPIs also provide benchmarks to implement incentives and sanctions in an effort to improve overall quality. However, there is little or no evidence of what sorts of incentives and sanctions actually work to drive up quality.

For example, a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) that has approximately 100 referrals per month, has KPIs that define service levels with regard to how referrals are managed. Urgent cases need to be seen within 24 hours, with a follow up within a week. Another KPI is that young people who require assessment but are not urgent will be seen for a routine assessment within three weeks of the referral being made. There are also limits imposed regarding the number of cases not appropriate for specialised CAMHS who can be signposted to other services, for example local authority family support.

In terms of sanctions, if a young person is not seen within that period, the service will be penalised with a reduction in funding of £30,000. In a team that is already undergoing budget cuts and staff losses, it is hardly surprising that meeting KPIs dominates the management of the team, and leads to an emphasis on getting though as many assessments as possible. The downside of this emphasis is less attention being paid to the actual interventions and therapies provided for young people and their families; caring for desperately troubled young people has become simply a matter of meeting targets.

It is important to recognise that these KPIs were established by the commissioners of the service, and agreed by the senior managers of the service, none of whom have any clinical experience of working within CAMHS. This process also provides an insight into a significant flaw in the artificial ‘internal market’ of the NHS; those specifying and agreeing services may have little knowledge of the service and often do not consult with the practitioners.  

Another KPI specifies a DNA (did not attend for appointment) rate of 10%, so not only is the practitioner's time wasted at a cost to the service, but the service is punished by financial sanctions if the DNA rate goes over 10%.

One of my concerns with the lean culture is that it pays little attention to the wider impacts an organisation can have on the context in which it operates. For example, by ordering parts’ just in time’ from external suppliers, the external suppliers are bearing the costs of uncertain revenue streams and fluctuating demands, which may tempt them to cut costs in other ways; perhaps by employing staff on fixed term or temporary contracts – thus shifting uncertainty down to the workers themselves.

Other criticisms of lean are that lean practitioners may easily focus too much on the tools and methodologies, and fail to focus on the philosophy and culture of lean, or that management decides what solution to use without understanding the true problem and without consulting shop floor personnel. As a result lean implementations often look good to the manager but fail to improve the situation.

Whilst many hold up Toyota as an exemplar for lean working, it might be borne in mind that earlier in February, Toyota announced it is recalling 1.9 million of its Prius hybrids, 30,790 of which are UK-registered, because of a computer problem that could cause the vehicle to stop. This follows a series of recalls over many years as listed below:

Sep 26, 2007 – US: 55,000 Camry and ES 350 cars in "all-weather" floor mat recall

Nov 02, 2009 – US: 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles again recalled due to floor mat problem, this time for all driver's side mats.

Nov 26, 2009 – US: floor mat recall amended to include brake override and increased to 4.2 million vehicles.

Jan 21, 2010 – US: 2.3 million Toyota vehicles recalled due to faulty accelerator pedals[ (of those, 2.1 million already involved in floor mat recall).

Jan 27, 2010 – US: 1.1 million Toyotas added to amended floor mat recall.

Jan 29, 2010 – Europe, China: 1.8 million Toyotas added to faulty accelerator pedal recall.

Feb 08, 2010 – Worldwide: 436,000 hybrid vehicles in brake recall following 200 reports of Prius brake glitches.

Feb 08, 2010 – US: 7,300 MY 2010 Camry vehicles recalled over potential brake tube problems.

Feb 12, 2010 – US: 8,000 MY 2010 4WD Tacoma pick-up trucks recalled over concerns about possible defective front drive shafts.

Apr 16, 2010 – US: 600,000 MY 1998–2010 Sienna minivans for possible corrosion of spare tire carrier cable.

Apr 19, 2010 – World: 21,000 MY 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado and 13,000 Lexus GX 460 SUV's recalled to reprogram the stability control system.

Apr 28, 2010 – US: 50,000 MY 2003 Toyota Sequoia recalled to reprogram the stability control system.

May 21, 2010 – Japan: 4,509, US: 7,000 MY 2010 LS for steering system software update.

July 5, 2010 – World: 270,000 Crown and Lexus models for valve springs with potential production issue.

July 29, 2010 – US: 412,000 Avalons and LX 470s for replacement of steering column components.

August 28, 2010 – US & Canada: approximately 1.13 million Corolla and Corolla Matrix vehicles produced between 2005 and 2008 for Engine Control Modules (ECM) that may have been improperly manufactured.

February 22, 2011 – US: Toyota recalls an additional 2.17 million vehicles for gas pedals that become trapped on floor hardware.

Russell Brand’s Revolution: A call for systemic thinking?

Russell Brand’s idiosyncratic but perceptive call for revolution is welcome.  I welcome it because it is one of the most public articulations of the need for us to think differently about our relationships to each other and with the planet.

Brand was invited to edit an issue of the New Statesman  and he outlined some of his ideas in a recent interview with Jeremy Paxman:

  
Not voting, from Brand’s perspective makes sense; voting to change the system maintains the system.  However, Brand’s revolution is not one of apathy, nor is it a revolution of bloodshed and uprising. It is a revolution in how we think.

This revolution has been slowly gaining momentum since Gregory Bateson outlined what he called a ‘cybernetic epistemology’; a way of thinking in terms of relationship, of recognising patterns, a way of thinking that also requires humility and an appreciation of the sacred.

 “What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all four of them to me? And me to you?” he asks us to consider at the outset in Mind and Nature (p. 8).

This focus on both the content and relationship aspects of all messages invites us to think about pattern also in human relationships and how we create patterns that we live and that define us. And it is becoming vital that we heed and respond to this need.

Bateson warned us in his essay Form, Substance and Difference (in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972):

“If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or co-specifics against the environment of other social units, other races and the brutes and vegetables.

If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of over-population and overgrazing. The raw materials of the world are finite.

If I am right, the whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable in the pre-cybernetic era, and which were especially underlined and strengthened during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroy us.


Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. The most important task today is, perhaps,  to learn to think in the new way”.

Unfortunately, there are the few who will not want to hear Bateson’s warning and challenge, for they have a vested interest in this status quo that in reality is a slow decline into more inequality and destruction.

Brand’s revolution is to reject this status quo in which the very few profit, and the price for this profit is paid by people who are starving, killed in conflict and sick.

Yes, we can reject this system by not voting. We can reject it by becoming critically aware of the propaganda spewed out of the mainstream media that services the needs of the few.

But this revolution is not just about rejection of an old, unfair and destructive system. It is about accepting others, about sharing ideas, engaging in dialogue, and re-evaluating our relationships.