Interesting Times

 I’m waiting for news…not good news. My husband has been told that 10% of people in his organisation will be made redundant. He has a meeting at 10am which will clarify things. He suspects that he will be going.

 He’s worried and stressed and also a bit annoyed that it seems to be a fairly short term decision.

 I’m not quite sure what the news will mean. He won’t get much redundancy; few people do these days.. There aren’t many other jobs about although there are some. He is skilled and qualified and has experience. It could easily take 6 months to find another job. Although its not as bad as Primark in Bristol which had 14,000 applicants for 400 jobs. There are other things he can do to make money (sell his body??) mainly contracting type work which means nights and weekends providing the work actually turns up.

 In some ways I quite like the thought of him not working –I’ll get relieved of the school run, he can look after the house and make dahl. Life could be simplier.

 I like to think he might try a different occupation; maybe he could knit yoghurt or something. Although with the school run and the chronic lack of money I’m not sure he’ll be able to come up with something more fulfilling as an occupation.

 Money wise I’m not sure how we’ll cope. Assuming he doesn’t make any money at all post redundancy we should be able to manage on a day-to-day basis as long as we are less profligate but its going to be a huge change. We won’t loose the house or have to take my son out of school but I think everything else will be up for grabs. Also managing on paper is one thing- actually having to do it might be another matter.

 My husband works in the railway industry which is heavily reliant on government funding. The government have given all the money to the banks. Australia however has a long term plan to expand its rail network and a shortage of skilled designers. We might just be leaving the country. Exciting times.

mystery plays and atheists

I am trying to raise my son as an atheist and therefore haven’t spent much time telling him bible stories. However these stories are so ingrained in our culture I presumed that he knew some of them (Noahs Ark for example). I recently spent an idyllic evening with him in a park watching plays, it was sunny, children were frolicking, kites flown and plays watched.  Mystery plays turn out to be a whistle stop tour of bible stories.

My son is not aware of bible stories but loves CS Lewis which added an angle on the experience I hadn’t expected….he noticed the connection but obviously Aslan was first. God also came of rather badly in the comparison.

The first play was Adam and Eve- my son was shocked that God would put the apple tree there, tempt them, allow them to fail then cast them out. He couldn’t accept the lack of forgiveness…Noahs Ark turns out not to be a cute story about animals but a rather horrific story about God killing most of humanity (Aslan would never do that!). At this point my son decided that God was a nasty man and went to climb trees…so he luckily missed Abraham and the awful sacrifice.

He returned for the nativity which he knew from school and didn’t cause too much upset…

My husband was raised in secular France and didn’t know the stories either.

My beautiful garden

This is the time of year when we reap the benefits of a garden; mine is mainly given over to climbing frames, wendy houses, woodpiles,
chickens and rabbits but it still has a few touches of glory.
Last night I sat under the plum tree eating dinner whilst the rabbits and kittens frolicked around my feet. The olive tree has survived my ministrations (or lack of) and sat proudly on the table. My husband mowed the front lawn which had grown to a good 3 foot in my spring attempt to create a wild flower meadow and I was able to watch the bees buzzing in the long lavender border that I’ve finally achieved.

A bad parent…

  Being a parent is about doing the best you can; trying to balance competing priorities and trying to make decisions for somebody else. I frequently worry that I’m a bad parent- not that I’m making bad decisions but that I’m missing something. ( I may well be making bad decisions too).

A new mother said to me that she knew she didn’t have postnatal depression because she loved her child so strongly. Another friend (who does have postnatal depression) said she felt jealous of that, she doesn’t look at her child and feel filled with love. I love my son but it’s a love that’s grown out of knowing him, I love him because he’s him, the more I know him the more I love him. I love that he asks me 10 million questions that I can’t answer about the relationship between mammoths and elephants, I love that he now thinks I’m not that clever because I don’t know much about mammoths…But I don’t know if that’s how I should love a son; it didn’t arrive in a fit of burning passion its gradually developed.

Sometimes (often) I feel that I’m just pretending to be a parent, that I watch other people and see what they do then copy the bits I like. I read books on parenting and try to decide if the approach suggested to a particular problem would work with my son.

The new mother said to me: we love our children so much don’t we, if they asked us to lay down in the street and die we’d just do it without thinking, we love them so much….I didn’t say anything but I thought why, why would we do that? If my son wanted me to lay down in the street (even without dieing) I’d want to know why? How would it help? Is there another way of achieving the same thing?

As a parent I do very little without thinking.

A corner (FRS5)

I seem to have backed myself into a corner I really ought to write about FRS5 and how government accounts for PFI transactions- but I can’t quite bring myself to do it.

FRS11 and local government

 

Local authority accounts are impenetrable to most council tax payers. This is a shame as the council tax payers are also the voters and therefore responsible for judging the local authorities. Arguably most council tax payers aren’t happy with numbers or accounts and therefore any type of accounting system would be impenetrable. But local authority accounts are impenetrable to most council tax payers who are qualified accountants.

 Local government accounts are directed by a Statement of Recommended Practice. This document attempts to interpret accounting standards fore local authorities in the light of their many statutory requirements.

The first (and arguably most significant of these) is the minimum revenue provision. Back in the midst of time (Ok 1987 ish), local authority councillors (it was said) found a way to make themselves more popular with voters. They would undertake large capital projects (for example build a leisure centre) but not pay for them. How was this achieved? Well they would borrow the money on an interest only basis making no provision to repay the capital. In 25 years time when the loan was due for renewal the Councillors would be long gone and paying for it would be somebody else’s problem.

 It was therefore decided (in the 1989 Local Government and Housing Act) that local authorities should put aside an amount each year to repay debt. It wasn’t necessary for them to actually repay debt each year as this may not be efficient treasury management practice; but each year the council tax should include a charge for debt. This charge was to be approximately 4% of outstanding debt and was known as the minimum revenue provision. The Councillors could then be held accountable for their spending.

 This sounds fairly logically; as a householder you would want to put aside money to repay any outstanding debts. However in the corporate world we are all ready charging depreciation (to represent the consumption of the asset).

 Local government want to comply with accounting standards, they really do…but they also like the minimum revenue provision. What to do?

 Well, first they charge depreciation (and any extra consumption of economic benefit) to the service that uses the asset. If for example education has a mini-bus for school trips; then the depreciation on that mini-bus will be charged to education. They then go on to calculate any surplus or deficit that the authority has made. Then they reverse out the depreciation (and impairment) and replace it with the Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP).

 This is extremely complicated; so complicated local authorities have to produce a statement that nobody else produces and in turn makes there accounts less understandable.

 What are the alternatives? We could just charge the MRP instead of depreciation- the problem here is that we are not showing the cost of assets used we only show the cost of those that are debt financed. We could just charge depreciation, this would make the accounts consistent with other organisations and would show the cost of assets used. It would mean charging the council tax payer a non-cash based charge but as that would represent the cost of the assets used it would make sense. We could always get around this by calculating the council tax on the cash requirement.

Financial Reporting Standards and the Public Sector

In the UK we have something that is known as Generally Accepted Accounting Practice. This is things that all accountants do (or should do) and is largely defined by accounting standards. Accounting standards are published by the Accounting Standards board which is a part of the Financial Reporting Council. They exist so that we know what generally accepted practice is.

 The reason we have generally accepted practice is to make published accounts meaningful. We treat like items in similar ways so that we can understand accounts produced by different organisations. Accounting standards aren’t overly prescriptive but where we have made a significant judgement this should be disclosed so readers of accounts know what happened.

 The Accounting Standards board sets accounting standards with the private sector in mind and recognises that accounting for the public sector is a matter for government. Significant differences exist (for example in funding streams) and therefore slightly different accounting treatments are required in places.

 Therefore in the public sector accounting standards are applied not directly but via some sector specific instructions. So in central government and the NHS standards are applied via manuals published by the treasury. They choose which accounting standards to adopt and how. In local government, higher education and charities practice is guided by a series of Statements of Recommended Practice published by the appropriate body (e.g for universities the SORP is published by the funding council).

 The government also sets targets for the public sector and specific parts of the public sector. The governments desire to set and meet targets leads to some strange anomalies.

 One of the fundamental accounting concepts is accruals (or matching). According to this concept income should be recognised in the period that it is earnt and expenditure should be matched to the income it generates. Therefore if we buy a big asset that will last more than one year we charge the cost of the asset against income over the life of the asset (so for example if we bought a mini-bus for £10k and expected to use it in the business over 10 years we would charge £1k for each year we owned the mini-bus). This is called depreciation.

 FRS11 (accounting standards are called either FRSs or SSAPs) deals with impairments. An impairment is the reduction in value of an assets.  One type of impairment is the consumption of economic benefit. The consumption of economic benefit occurs when we’ve used are asset up more quickly than we expected; we’ve consumed it. So, if we take the example of the mini-bus, we buy this mini-bus but we drive it like crazy fools and give all our friends lifts. After 5 years we take a look at our mini-bus and say ‘uh-oh that’s not going to last another 5 years- I’d give it another 2’. We have therefore not charged enough against income for our mini-bus. FRS11 Impairments of Fixed Assets and Goodwill tells us that we should charge the extra depreciation against income. Now.

 NHS Trusts have statutory targets, in theory the finance director and chief executive can be sent to prison for failing to meet these targets- in practice they are more likely to be given a stiff talking too or possibly lose their jobs. One of these targets is to break-even, if the NHS Trust suffers an impairment it makes it tricky for them to break-even. The government felt that the NHS Trusts shouldn’t fail to break even because of a change in accounting policy and introduced the funds flow arrangements

 

Department of Health

Primary Care Trust

NHS Trust

 

The NHS trust will recognise the impairment in their accounts. They will then apply to the PCT for funding. The PCT will give the Trust cash to cover the cost of the impairment; which creates a cost for the PCT. The PCT will then apply to the DofH for funding to cover this cost. The DofH will give them the cash. This creates a cost for the DofH and they will ask the NHS Trust to repay this through a repayment of capital in the next year.

 This is insane, it’s complicated and inconsistent. But what else could we do? Well there are 3 choices- firstly we could change the target. This is what happens if an impairment occurs in a PCT; rather than having a funds flow arrangement some bod at the DofH simply changes the target. Secondly, we could make the Trust bare the cost of the asset (after all they have consumed the economic benefit) or thirdly we could just not adopt that accounting standard.

 Making NHS Trusts bare the cost of the assets they have used would be my favourite. The real reason NHS Trusts are failing to meet their break even targets at the moment is because they were pushed to use PFI arrangements to finance necessary building works and are now having to service those contracts.

 The government was very keen on PFI because of another target. The sustainable investment rule which stated that all other things being equal public sector net debt should be less than 40% of GDP. PFI projects were kept off the balance sheet and therefore didn’t contribute towards debt.

But is it for Boys…

 

After the arts and crafts is for girls comment I’ve been trying to gender activities and I’m really struggling!

 

1)     Making a wooden car, powered by an elastic band and decorating it. Is this art or engineering? It’s partly about how things work…and it’s a car surely cars are for boys?

2)     24 Hour scalextric..Le Mans in 32 scale. The boy angle- racing cars; the girl angle- the event was put on by a theatre company to enable a 24 hour commentary as extended improv….it was all done by men….

3)      Woodland adventure…we went out to the woods with a group of 7 year olds. They collected sticks and built a den waterproofed with bracken. Then collected sticks, lit a fire with flints and cooked sausages on it. Is this homemaking and cooking or adventuring?

4)     Canoeing

5)     Cycling

6)     Playing Star Wars (dressing up and light sabre fighting)- is this dressing up and acting or is it fighting? It looks like a dance to me- they all know not to hit each other…dancing makes it definitely girls

7)     The kissing game…the girls pretend to be racoons then chase the boys and try to kiss them. Sometimes the boys let them…sometimes the boys chase the girls (apparently this is a girls game)

8)     And what about books…are books generally for girls or can some be for boys/ What about Robin Hood, King Arthur, The Famous Five….

9)     Films? Star Wars (boys) Indiana Jones (that was girls when I was young but is apparently boys now!). Film geeks are usually male but my colleagues only go to the cinema under sufferance…

Raising Boys

Raising Boys

 The talk on ‘Raising Boys in the 21^st Century’ was interesting. It made me feel like a feminist, man hater, bra burning fanatic. The talk was based on a book that I haven’t read; this is a critique of the talk not the book.

 To start with we take 4 examples of ‘failing boys’

 The first is five years old and is very active- always climbing, fighting and jumping. He plays roughly and the only time he is quiet or still is in front of the TV.

 The second is 8 and a half, going on 30. He can talk about a serious topic intellectually and enjoys exploring something that captures his interest. However  he struggles to socialise with other children and when a subject doesn’t capture his interest he misbehaves in class.

 The third is 14, he hates school and gets into trouble drinking and smoking etc.

 The fourth is 16 and disappears into a black bedroom, he lacks communication and spends lots of time plying computer games.

 The UK has the unhappiest children in Europe and boys are the biggest problem, they struggle educationally (75% of children with reading difficulties are boys, 80% of those with developmental and mental health issues, 90% of crime is committed by boys etc)

 So we’ve conjured up a picture of doom and gloom, with lots of stereo types we can all recognise. This gets us into a nice nostalgic mood….remember the golden years, lets go back there..

 So why has this happened?

 Well of course there was the feminist movement that drove woman out to work and away from the home so that traditional female nurturing skills were not passed on. My god some women don’t even cook….

 There is an imbalance between the traditional male/female skills. From the stone age men have been more aggressive, competitive and risk driven . They needed to be to catch mammoth…Woman have been better at social skills, community based skills.

 The media…boys like TV more it captures their attention in a different way to girls.

 So what should we do?

Love

Language

Discipline/boundaries

Play

Literacy

 I’ve nothing particularly against the idea that we should love our children, or talk to them or even that they should have lots of outside time. However I d object to the original analysis.

 Firstly I object to the idea that men didn’t used to fail. That they used to be successful developed people. Men used to be violent, they used to hit their wives and children and this was considered acceptable. Woman weren’t allowed to succeed –they weren’t allowed to go to university, in the 1960s the number of girls passing the 11+ was limited. Men succeeded when there was no competition. And finally there wasn’t a golden age where all children (or even all male children learnt to read). It was a class based thing- huge numbers of working class children got no opportunity for education.

 Secondly I object to the woman in the home argument. For centuries working class woman have had to work, to feed themselves and their children. Woman had to work as servants, take in washing, work in mills…in short do hard backbreaking work for long hours and little pay. They weren’t at home nurturing…Even in the 1950s many women worked. Also studies (wish I could remember which damn study) have shown that working woman spend a very small amount less quality time with their children than stay at home mums; but the husbands of working woman spend significantly more time with their children than the husbands of stay at home mums. The children have a net gain on parental attention.

 Plus where are the fathers in this? Children learn partly my emulating the adults around them. My sons image of what it means to be a man will be formed by looking at his father. His father is a caring man who spends time with him and tries to explain the world around him.

Education in the 1980s

I took my GCSEs in 1990. I got an A for English and yet my grammar is terrible. It was the year of ‘anything goes’. My English teacher had been instructed that you could not mark students down for poor grammar (or spelling or punctuation) if it did not impede the comprehension of the piece in question. Unfortunately as a professional the world is not quite so forgiving. Children were sent out into the world of work without the skills that they needed to write without embaressment. Luckily I read a lot and mainly manage to write in a way that is comprehensable even if I don’t know why…

Affect and Effect

I’ve just found out that these words actually mean different things. I’m very excited as it will prevent lots of professional embarrassment. I had had it explained to me that they were verbs or past participles or something but as I had no idea what these mean it didn’t really help. Feeling rather desolate about a writing project that will engulf much of my summer and would require both words to me used often I looked them up in the dictionary and discovered that they are not different forms of the same word but different words. As they have different meanings its fairly obvious were you would use one or the other.

Affect: make a difference to

Effect: a result or bring about a result

 

Obviously I’ve used the dreaded colon in the above and I’m still not sure about these. I did once buy a book on grammar but I think it may have been the wrong one as I didn’t understand a word of it.