Start that novel

Ever dreamed of writing a novel?

 

 Now you can with Greenacre Writers 

Start That Novel Course

This 6-week course will help with planning your novel, developing plot, characterisation, dialogue, point of view, first chapter, as well as giving you feedback on your writing. Plus there will be guest speakers.

Where and when:

Chislehurst Avenue, London N12 0HU

6 sessions Mondays 7-9pm:

Jan 14th, 28th, Feb 4th, 11th, 25th, Mar 4th 

About Course Tutor:

Rosie Canning is a co-founder of Greenacre Writers. She studied MA Writing at Middlesex University. She has written a novel, short stories, (some of which have been published) and is currently re-writing her autobiography, ‘Bibliotherapy: Stories that Saved my Life’.

For further details or to reserve a place, please contact:

Rosie Canning (MA Writing)

Tel: 020 8346 9449

Email: greenacrewriters@gmail.com

6-week Start That Novel Course £65.00

Book now and pay a deposit via Paypal to secure your place

Tally ho ho ho

Press Release

Tally Ho Ho Ho!

A Christmas Event for North Finchley

Visitors to North Finchley are in for a treat this Christmas as local traders organise ‘Tally Ho Ho Ho’ a town centre event packed with free family activities and entertainment. Saturday December 15th is the date for your diaries when the event kicks off with a flourish.

Father Christmas will arrive by horse and carriage at 10.00am and he will be carried through the town distributing chocolate, gold coins to children. From 11.30am children will be able to visit Santa with two live reindeer and a barn owl in a beautiful grotto at the Bohemia Bar on North Finchley High Road.

Peppa Pig and George will be making public appearances at intervals on Tally Ho Corner from 11.30am until 3.30pm where stalls will sell mulled wine, chocolate marshmallows and other sweet treats.

Children can make Gruffalo badges in the artsdepot cafe and a small stage will be erected outside the building for musical entertainment. Other activities include cupcake decorating, wreath making, carol singing, face painting and street entertainment.

In the lead up to the event children are invited to participate in a bauble decorating competition. Perspex baubles can be picked up from Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe on North Finchley High Road and children are asked to decorate them with a Christmas scene before returning them to the to the town Centre Christmas Tree during the Tally Ho Ho Ho event. Judges from Design for London will select a winner to receive a toy hamper and all baubles will be placed on the tree for public viewing.

The Tally Ho Ho Ho event has been funded by the Mayor of London’s Outer London Fund, Barnet Council and local businesses. It has been organised by the North Finchley Traders Association.

Chair of the association Helen Michael is excited about the event and thinks that it will be good for the town: ‘We are providing a real alternative to shopping centres and online shops. North Finchley has a town centre Christmas tree; we have successfully campaigned for reduced car parking charges, we have a wide range of specialist shops and cafes and this event will enable people to relax and connect with their community.’

Activities take place from 10.00am until 4.00pm

"Thin" client side?

http://finntrack.co.uk/learners/leadmet.html

At the very end of the 61 pages of the Full Business case for NSCSO (New Support & Customer Services Organisation), way after most councillors had stopped reading, presented to Cabinet on 6 December 12, was a page of blurb about the client side function which sets out a new administrative structure to manage outsourced contracts and other relationships. The council is trying to move away from its silo based approach (which there was nothing wrong with apart from the choice of who was in charge of each silo!) whereby each function of the council is fitted into a directorate and the Director of that directorate is responsible for everything it is tasked with doing, to a much vaguer and harder to manage structure in which it will be impossible to hold anyone to account and management at Barnet Council will be rife with politics and back stabbing

The aim is to align people, systems, and processes within the local context to deliver the council’s vision, so ‘form follows function’ - is what a report to the General Functions Committee said on 23 April 2012 about the reorganisation of senior management. Does that sound like b*ll*cks to you? More follows!

9.2 Organisation Structure

9.2.1 The proposed structure is designed to be simple and adaptable to change. It is based around five core units: Delivery Units; Strategic Commissioning Board; Assurance Group; Commissioning Group and Support Services/Customer Services.

9.2.2 Whilst each unit has a distinct role and function, there will be a high level of joint working across the functions. Each function is described in more detail below:

Delivery Units: A mixture of in house and private service providers.

Delivery Units are primarily operational and focused on executing commissions set by the Commissioning Group. Delivery Units will have autonomy to seek operational solutions based on their front-line and professional expertise. (Appendix 2a)

Assurance Group: Supports Members providing independent oversight and assurance to them and the organisation on governance procedures and business processes.

Commissioning Group: Translates priorities and outcomes set by the Members into a range of delivery specifications or ‘commissions’ using specialist expertise from across the council and its partners. The Commissioning Group commissions services from a range of providers in line with the delivery specifications it develops. It manages commercial relationships, contracting, procurement and the council’s business planning cycle. (Appendix 2b)

Externalised Support Services and Customer Services: Provides support services, such as finance and HR, to support the day to day operations of the council as well as the management of the council’s interactions with customers.

Strategic Commissioning Board: Provides overall management and leadership of the organisation and works with Members to set the strategic outcomes for the borough. Sets and monitors the future direction of the council and ensures high performance against outcomes. It is accountable for the delivery of these outcomes.

So how does this translate into numbers of people?

So we need 6 experts to design strategies. That is an awful lot of strategy.

Add to that 5 advisors to do the work of the experts? It is noted that they have to be able to devise policy across every area which seems unlikely to be achievable.

So most of the Deputy Chief executive's department has been (will be) outsourced (Finance, HR, Revenues & Benefits) and now we find a 40 strong Deputy Chief Operating Officer section of 40 people arising out of the ashes.

To manage relationships will need another 11 to 15 people whose job it is to make sure the contracts work. Given the parlous performance of NSL at PATAS and the apparent lack of action, those 11 to 15 people are unlikely to properly be able to hold Capita to account in a much more complicated contract. Are they all going to read the 8,000 page contract to start with?

These structures are hard to visualise in words, so here is the proposed organisational structure in pictures.

Proposed organisation structure

All crystal clear now? No, thought not.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

"Investment" = borrowing from Capita

http://icelandwordpress.com/

The following email although addressed to Cllr Robert Rams was sent to all 63 councilllors:

8 December 2012

Dear Cllr Rams

I have seen your letter (above) in the Barnet Times in which you claim that the "Council has acted responsibly" a self-delusional title with which I profoundly disagree.

Your letter is mostly a pathetic party political point scoring exercise which is unattractive and irrelevant ( as Labour are not in control of the town hall so all that currently matters is the lash-up that you and your colleagues are making of running the council ) and is based upon the spurious notion that Capita are some sort of generous benefactor who are pumping money into Barnet out of the goodness of their hearts. The money being spent on IT is not a gift from Capita, nor is it an investment, it is simply the routine procurement of more modern computers and systems ( hopefully no more of the hated and inefficient tablets ) and as ever there isn't a comprehensive breakdown in the business case although there is a claimed "investment" of £17.5m of which only £7m is clearly identifiable as being on IT as the table from the business case shows:

So where are you getting the money to update the IT system?

Oh, it's from Capita who are providing the funding.

Will they want their money back or is it a gift?

Capita will be repaid through the "core service payments made by the council."

Your criticism that Labour would borrow £13.5m and so they cannot be trusted with taxpayers' money is thus worthless drivel as you plan to borrow even more money.

I can see someone whose word cannot be trusted and it isn't Cllr Alan Schneiderman of Labour, is it Robert? It is you.

I don't expect to hear any member of the Cabinet ever again say that Capita have invested £millions in the council IT as if it is a benevolent gesture. It isn't. Capita have simply made a commercial decision to give the council credit. Is interest being paid?

I am not, and never have been, a member of the Labour Party.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Something to look forward to

Recent news coming out of Hendon Town Hall has been relentlessly negative for residents and for staff and Mr Mustard thought that rather than spending his time writing a meeting report that wasn't

as timely as Roger's over at the Barnet Eye

as direct as Citizen Barnet's except that she has been so busy causing delicious trouble she hasn't had time to write herself up (Mr Mustard predicts that Citizen Barnet will be taking her thermos off to Starbucks somewhere in North London this morning, with a bit of luck it will be the same police team as Thursday, familiar faces on both sides)

as instructive as Mr Reasonable's 

as amusing as Mrs Angry's 

as visible as Amanda Christie's 

as access all areas as the Barnet Bugle's (the only footage of the actual decision being taken)

as festive as Reema Patel's

and Brian Coleman's accurate independent account (Brian is getting the hang of this blogging lark, just wait till he gets twittering properly, one small correction though Brian my gusset was not moist thank you very much and in actual fact you may not even have seen me quietly tweeting from the back of room 2 from a seated position)

that he decided instead to give you something to look forward to. It seems that London borough elections take place on the first Thursday of the month every 4 years except if the first Thursday is the 1st of the month so the most likely date for the next borough wide election is 8 May 2014.

Of course, if One Barnet goes even further off the rails than it already has in the One Barnet parking contract with NSL, and it will, then anyone with honour will resign and anyone without any honour will probably find themselves being vocally called upon to resign and the recipients of blog posts, emails, letters and petitions to go.

So here is the countdown clock

COUNTDOWN CLOCK WIDGETS

and here, ward by ward, are the candidates that need to go as they have all taken an active part in, or failed to curb the stupidity of their Cabinet colleagues (One Barnet Cabinet members in red) with the odd exception

Brunswick Park

Lisa Rutter
Andreas Tambourides

Coppetts

Kate Salinger (except that Mr Mustard would vote for Kate if he was in her ward)

East Barnet

Barry Evangeli
Robert Rams

Joanna Tambourides

Edgware

Helena Hart

Joan Scannell
Darrell Yawitch

Finchley Church End

Eva Greenspan
Graham Old
Daniel Thomas

Hampstead Garden Suburb

Andrew Harper
John Marshall
Daniel Seal

Golders Green

Dean Cohen

Melvin Cohen
Rueben Thompstone

Hale

Thomas Davey

Brian Gordon
Hugh Rayner

Hendon

Maureen Braun
Anthony Finn
Mark Shooter

High Barnet (Mr Mustard's ward, future blog title in May 14 "A golden goodbye to goldenarse"?)

David Longstaff

Bridget Perry
Wendy Prentice

Mill Hill

John Hart
Sury Khatri
Brian Schama

Oakleigh

Sachin Rajput

Brian Salinger
Stephen Sowerby

Totteridge

Alison Cornelius

Richard Cornelius

Underhill


Andrew Strongolou
Rowan Turner


Time to do some gardening.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Use Friern Barnet library whilst you still can

+++++++FriernBarnetCommunityLibrary+++++++

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

SATURDAY 8 DECEMBER
11.15am Meet at the library to take part in a co-ordinated direct action against Starbucks: turning a North London Starbucks into a library

SUNDAY 9 DECEMBER

5.00pm Warm up: capitalism's last Christmas carol - bring songs and creativity

MONDAY 10 DECEMBER

6.00pm - 7.00pm Monday organisational meeting

7.30pm - 10pm An Economy For the 99% - share ideas and tools to make it happen. Speakers will include Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party. Read more...

TUESDAY 11 DECEMBER

7.00pm - 8.15pm Yoga with Luana

WEDNESDAY 12 DECEMBER

11.15am -11.45am Drama and rhyme time (run by a local drama teacher)

THURSDAY 13 DECEMBER

11.00am -11.45am Story & Song time for pre-schoolers (run by a pre-school teacher)
7.30 pm - 9.00 pm Open Mic Night - all welcome to watch or participate! Read about our previous open mic nights...

FRIDAY 14 DECEMBER
4.00 pm - 5.00 pm French

6.30pm - 7.30pm Yoga

7.00pm - 10.00pm Showing of Billion Pound Gamble, followed by music from Roger Tichbourne with Allen Ashley.

SATURDAY 15 DECEMBER

3.00pm - 5.00pm Family Christmas Party - with Christmas arts and crafts for children

7.00pm - 10.00pm Earth Circus Presents: Save the Libraries Cabaret (poster attached). Read more ...

SUNDAY 16 DECEMBER

7.00pm - 10.00pm Film: Rise Like Lions

DEMONSTRATIONS AND IMPORTANT DATES:

17th Dec - Meeting at Hendon Town Hall to discuss marketing the LIBRARY!!! If you can’t attend the meeting then either attend the ward surgeries or phone or email councillors to object to any decisions being made before the court hearing. If you phone, make sure it is at a reasonable hour and you are polite. This is a crucial time for the library and we need your help to lobby councillors leading up to the meeting and the court case. Let the councillors know how you feel about your library and why it is important for the community to have this resource in this building in Friern Barnet.

17/18th Dec (changed from 18/19 Dec)- Court case at Barnet Civil and Family Courts Centre, St Marys Court, Regents Park Road, Finchley Central, London N3 1BQ

Big appeal for local volunteers to come in and stand behind the desk and run your library and community centre. Two hour shifts. Now is the time for the local team to step in, step up and reclaim their library and community centre.

We help us keep the library running we also need:

• Food, including hot vegetarian meals
• Paint and brushes
• Tools
• Books
• Foldable tables
• Working video projector
• Money donations
• Computer kit
• Printer ink
• Stationery
• Rope
• Big ladders
• Plants
• Big kitchen pots
• Christmas presents for the community librarians and the homeless
• Sheets and banner material
• Sleeping bags
• Tents

THE WEBSITE IS UP AND RUNNING... LINK ON YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE, TWEET - @occupiedlibrary, FORWARD VIA EMAIL, TELL THE WORLD!!

http://fbpeopleslibrary.co.uk

Brass Neck of the Year Award

BrassNeckTheatre

From: First Team
Sent: 07 December 2012 16:27
To: AllStaff
Subject: Weekly message from the Chief Executive

Obviously the most striking event of the week was Cabinet last night, approving Capita as preferred supplier for the NSCSO contract. Can I again remind those people who will be affected by the switch of some services to Capita to look here (probably a link on the intranet to Change and Me and other alleged sources of support) for the range of support services being offered by the council.

You may be aware that protestors prevented the entire meeting going forward in Committee Room 1 as planned, and that part of it took place in an adjoining room with councillors, staff and the local newspapers present (possibly illegally but that one will be left to the lawyers to discuss. Aren't bloggers press these days. Mr Mustard will be checking the latest legislation and writing to uncle Eric Pickles over the weekend). It is disappointing that what I thought was a good discussion took place without critics present. Good discussion. Oh, you mean the alternative Cabinet that met after you had all scurried into hiding. Not the listed question and answer session which was the question and no answer session.

There is always a debate about what constitutes frontline service (no there isn't, you know when you are in the front line), but I think we can safely say the staff from Corporate Governance, who did a brilliant job in making sure the meeting continued, would have felt they were a frontline service yesterday. Given the actions of critics, the Cabinet meeting was very effectively run (like clockwork, no-one fluffed their pre-scripted lines), and the democratic process protected (One Barnet is so democratic that residents were unable to ask anything about it and sod all information of any substance has been presented to them).

The decision now potentially goes to a further scrutiny meeting next week before we enter an ‘Alcatel’ (or standstill) period until the new year. There is little doubt that the decision will be called in if it hasn't been put on hold thanks to the Judicial reviews that are piling up..

Returning to business as usual, I would like to draw your attention to two other council initiatives. For the second year running, we are asking staff and residents to ‘donate a gift’ for one of our many young carers who do such a remarkable job throughout the year. Click here for more information on the process and how to sign up. Are these the same staff whose jobs you are so happy to sell to the highest bidder who are expected to feel charitable towards such an appalling employer? You have the money to buy the entire set of gifts yourself Andrew; now that would show leadership and compassion.

We are also now just a week from the deadline for nominations for the People Values Awards 2013. If you know a colleague who lives and breathes the council’s values and deserves recognition, click here to download a nomination form and send it to peoplevalues@barnet.gov.uk Will the PVA pay the mortgage or buy food for the family?

Andrew

 

Mr Mustard also awards the "skin like a rhino" cup at the same time. 

 

The cabinet and the senior management simply don't get their role as a large local employer nor do they understand how they should act towards the people who work for them.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard