There are not enough hours in the day.

The Institute of FishCool Studies is a think tank that I set up together with my colleagues, Happy and Lippy-2 to make our own impact on the new coalition government policy.

For the story of how we were formed, see my previous post here: http://readpole.blogspot.com/2010/10/right-wing-fish-tank.html

The IFCS team have been working on a way to improve productivity and have come up with an exciting idea to revolutionise the use of working time and improve productivity by up to 33%.

We start with the premise that the drastic public spending cuts would not need to be so severe if growth were higher.

Some people in a meeting
The crux of the issue is an intuitive truth for anyone who works in management or in an office environment, that meetings are not as productive as they could be.

There are many training courses available to help managers run meetings more effectively and get more out of meetings covering attendees, prioritisation, agenda setting, chairing and so on.

But it would not be affordable to roll out a national training programme and there is a high risk that the knowledge would not make it into practice as anyone who has attended such a course will attest.

So we started to think of how meetings tend to be scheduled in hour long slots (or multiples of) whether or not an hour is required to do the business. This practice is widespread and is really based on an arbitrary division of time into hours based on the position of the sun throughout the day or possibly based on how many finger segments we have (for a discussion on this theory see Why are there 24 hours in a day from James.lab6.com). Whatever the reason for having hours of 60 minutes, it is not based on any meaningful estimate of a good period of time for which to hold a meeting.

Sumarians making out - they could be responsible for dividing the day into 24 because they counted finger segments instead of fingers? It's 'Time' to right that wrong.

So, with our hour mapped out for us, we tend to take time to 'small talk' at the beginning of a meeting rather than getting down to business because we have plenty of time. What's worse is we might use up more time than necessary towards the end of the meeting, rather than closing the meeting down when the meeting has run it's course.

Our proposal is to increase the number of slots in a working calendar by shortening the slots from 60 minutes to 45 minutes - hence the claim of a 33% increase in productivity. After 45 minutes the quality of thinking will be deteriorating anyway and we are likely to be covering old ground. We propose it is better to move onto a new 'slot' and make sure we cover the ground in the time we have available - that's what we do with our full hours currently.

A have a colleague who has tried to shorten her meetings to 45 minutes but uses the 'spare' 15 minutes as a buffer between slots. This means they tend to be used to prepare for meetings, check emails or even as slack for the previous 45 minute meeting to run into. So there are no more decision meeting slots in the day or the week - just a bit of padding, which is potentially just waste.

Our Microsoft Outlook calendars (and similar IT systems or even paper diaries and calendars) lead meeting planners to continue the practice of booking meetings to run to the end of the hour when less time would do. There even the dividing lines in the calendar and the default time when we create a new appointment is 30 minutes - which never seems enough so we end up with an hour.

Working weeks are currently split into about 35-40 hours, about 7 or 8 per day. We propose that the working week in divided into 50 time slots of 45 minutes, that's 10 for each day. We call these time slots 'Fiddies' (after Fiddy Cent - our thanks for the name go to Twitter's @iamchads).

Fiddy - notice the wristwatch, he aint late for no meetings.

As well as offering more 'slots' to work in, this has the advantage of letting you know how far through the working week (or day) you are in the decimal units that we can understand. All we need to do is double the number (to find the semi-fiddy - 100 semi-fiddies in a week) and that is what percentage through your week you are.

Consider the following example: My PA receives a phone call from someone asking to meet me for lunch. Lunch slots are Fiddy5, Fiddy15, Fiddy25, Fiddy35 and Fiddy45. Fiddy25 gets booked - this is Wednesday lunch time exactly halfway through the week (Fiddy25 x 2 = 50 semi-fiddies = 50% of the week). You might be thinking a fiddy isn't long enough to have lunch, but we could book two, or even a number of minutes as we do currently. The important thing is that the default slot is reduced.

The fiddy system also lends itself to allocating the time in a week. If you want to aim to spend 60% of your time talking to your staff, coaching, monitoring, delegating and the like, this is 60 semi-fiddies or 30 fiddies you should book out with your people. Or it's 6 of your 10 a day.

When I put my son to bed tonight, he asked me how many hours it was until Santa came. Assuming he'd visit us at about 2am on Christmas day I estimted about 582 hours.

Then I wanted to know how many Fiddies it was. I did the ratio of 1.33 and estimated 774 fiddies until Santa came. But then I realised that this was wrong and in a moment of inspiration, I rushed back to the Institute (my study) to tell the team (my goldfish). Fiddies, we decided, should only to be used for working time. There are no fiddies in a weekend (not in mine anyway) and there are only 50 in a week. This now has the added benefit of separating the ever destructive 'work-life balance' blur. So I have 3 weeks and 3 days, only 180 Fiddies until Christmas.

Santa to visit in 180 Fiddies time (pic from NORAD).

This change will only work if it is given support by the government. It will be viewed as an infrigement of civil liberties or heavy handed dictation from the state, but the alternative is the savage spending cuts we face today, which represent far greater infringements. The government are already toying with the idea of messing with the clocks and are giving us an extra bank holiday for the Royal Wedding next year. We at the Institute for FishCool Studies are not proposing to steal any time from the people, we are giving it back.

Right Wing Fish Tank

There are two fish living in my study - they're called Happy and Lippy and we won them at a hook-a-duck stall and took them away in a plastic bag.

When we got them home, having spent £25 on the equipment to house these otherwise 'free' fish, I had an inspiring plan to get a return on my investment and have more influence over public policy with this hotch-potch of a Government, that nobody voted for, but who were about to go ballistic on the economy's ass.

Yes - I was going to set up one of these Right Wing Think Tanks that had the ear of the Government and were the source of some of the craziest ideas that were lining up to get implemented as policy. My plan was to appear Right Wing but to subvert more progressive ideas in the details. I already had the tank - now I needed the thinking.

I needed to give the fish an education and I did this by balancing my Economics text books up against the side of the tank - showing them one page per day, being careful not to rush them.

Now, I didn't think that either fish was of any particular political persuasion, more like a blank canvas waiting to be influenced and I wanted to use this to my advantage.


But then Lippy, the smaller of the two fish, started showing signs of being a bit too Party Political 'Liberal Democrat'. It came on slowly at first, Lippy would float right next to the other fish in supportive manner, as if a protege, he seemed to look up to the more confident 'Happy' but acted assertive in his own right - looking right out into the room and fighting for his turn at the food flakes. Eventually, however, the condition became critical and over a period of time Lippy went yellow, finally gave up all together and died.

Lippy was called Lippy because he had black marks around his mouth, like some kind of Goth/Punk lipstick. He belonged to my three year old daughter, so when Lippy died we opted out of the death conversation and pretended Lippy was having a sleep underneath the shell at the bottom of the tank. This 'sleep' lasted about a week, after which Lippy emerged, now slightly larger than Happy and without the lipstick. A bit like Jesus in a way - he did something with two fishes once didn't he?

Finally I could get back to my programme of creating a right wing think tank and there was no time to waste. During Lippy's sickness and 'sleeping time', we had already missed all of the Party Political Conferences, a new leader for Labour, several 'independent' reviews into Policy areas and even some leaked policies ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review, which now loomed like an emaciated spectre in the shadows.

The new Lippy learned fast and, what was more, he kept Happy on her toes. My new dream team really got into their stride, bouncing ideas off each other, working into the wee hours of the morning. We brainstormed a mood board, developed a strategy and really got our shit together.

Pictured above - the Dream Team hold a focus group that got particularly animated!

Fortunately 'Pets at Home' had convinced us that we must have filter to clean the water, so working into the wee hours and getting our shit together was not a problem.

One morning I came down stairs, walked into the study and there on my desk was a soaking wet document - With our proud logo emblazoned on the front and the title of the report.

The Institute of FishCool Studies
What is wrong with the world Vol.1.

I have never been so proud - now I had to get it read by 'The Powers That Be'

Find out what happened next time on...
ReadPole

Free Schools (with pics of male and female models)

Michael Gove, UK Education Secretary (not pictured) is pushing forward the Conservative policy of allowing people to set up their own schools, 'Free Schools' based on the Swedish model.

I am all for Swedish models (the picture above is probably of one) but there seems to be a number of problems with the citation of success in Sweden. Not least of these is that there is no evidence that free schools do better. Another problem is that, whereas the policy idea is for free schools to plug the gaps in rural communities, but Swedish free schools are predominantly concentrated in three urban areas. Finally 'Free Schools' don't come for free - in an environment of spending cuts, the funding for free schools could very possibly mean mainstream school closures. Otherwise free schools will make education cost more not less.

'Free Schools' of course doesn't mean we'll be getting them in our cornflake packets for free. It refers to the fact that they are liberated, unshackled from the rules, regulations and good governance (pehaps?) and support of Local Education Authorities and the like. This implies that the level of burden on non-free schools is unduly arduous to the point of them being imprisoned. So why isn't the policy to remove this burden from all schools? This would possible improve the schools and save public money.

Giving busy bodies a bigger say under the 'Big Society' agenda is one thing but don't let them set up their own schools from scratch. They can just gt more involved in existing schools.
Enough of the political ranting it really was not my intention. I wanted to consider five schools that might be set up under this new initiative.

1) The School of 'ard knocks
This would be set up by all those people who reckon a bit of bullying never did them any harm and consequently there would be a bullying policy in place.

Under this policy, anyone caught not bullying would be given an atomic wedgie by the Head (case) Teacher in front of the whole school. (bullying UK website)

This schools would have special links with, and act as a feeder to 'The University of Life'.
The school of 'ard knocks would lead to two possible outcomes for it's students.

To support this, careers advice would be limited to [A] - Becoming an amazing, against all odds, rags to riches Entreprenuer. Or [B] - becoming a criminal.

2) The School of fish
Fish are experts in schooling so why not give them a chance to set up a free school? Subjects would include Fishstory,

give me a minute...

Bass-ematics

You can also study Fishical Education and Fishics (Thanks to @grahamtcousins) and before you graduate you will be offered work Plaicements (Thanks to @JackiePatie).

Finally you will learn that, although things to do with Fish are supposed to be easy to pun, at 2am it is hard to generate many fish puns without good friends and a Twitter hashtag called #fishschool.

Oh and if you feel Eel you can see the school nurse (leave it).
phew!

3) The School of Rock
No, Not the fish 'Rock Eel' (enough with your fish puns- ten-a-penny).

I am talking, of course, about a real life version of the Movie 'School of Rock'. Only Jack Black would be allowed to teach and at this school we would only admit uptight posh kids who have perfectly (prefectly) good prospects of becoming an obnoxious lawyer or something, and then turn them into personable, likeable, soulful kids, you know really nice kids like all kids are underneath - who haven't not a hope in hell of getting a job in the current economic environment. I mean even established talented rock stars have to work their asses off on tour now the performing right gravy train has ended. That will show your stupid posh parents - send them to my private schools of Rock!

Moto: "We can make them nice and rock and roll, but they're coming back home and going on the dole."

4) The School of Thought


There would have to be more than one 'School of Thought' and some of them would not agree with the idea of free schools at all. Children in schools of thought would all develop the same attitude to a subject as everyone ese in that school of thought, which would make the debating society completely boring. Lessons would take the form of quiet reflection on a subject that everyone agrees with and no questions would be permitted.



In order to work effectively different schools of thought would have to organise exchanges through the internet, during which total chaos would break out and the children would fight and argue and would never be able to agree. They could never agree if they stay in their own Schoold of thought because they would be arguing from different premises.


5) The School of the Swedish Model
The Swedish model of free schools is the one that supposedly works. I have to clarify this would be an adult school - I am not sick, just a bit excited by the prospect of a lot of Swedish models together.

The teachers would all wear swimware, the furniture would be simple classic design and lovely wife of Tiger Woods could just be there, looking all nice. ahhh.

Here's some pics - even some for those who prefer their Swedish Model's male.

Laws We Could Scrap - the ridiculous ones.

Nick Clegg has issued an online invitation for members of the public to suggest rules, regulations and laws that we think should be scrapped.

This is my second post examining what laws could be scrapped. In an earlier post, I was looking at some non-laws to scrap just for fun. This post will deal with some of the laws that have been left in place long after their purpose has gone and been forgotten - these are also called unrepealed laws.

These unrepealed laws would never be enforced either because the situation is no longer important or, if it is important, other laws now override them. This leaves them bizarre nuggets of knowledge, quirks of law to be known by school children, smart arses and panelists on the BBC TV's QI Show.

The first law of this kind that I remember hearing about, was one about having to practice archery every Sunday. I think this was to do with being at war with the French (100 years war era perhaps?). More recently, I seem to remember hearing that this archery law was not infact a law, but it is a popular misconception that it is.

The archery law is not on the top ten list set out below, for which I must credit Paul Birkin http://socyberty.com/law/ten-unrepealed-laws-in-the-uk/

Here we go:

(1) It is illegal to slide on ice or fly kites in a public place. (Under the Town Police Clauses Act 1847).

Now I remember getting told as a child not to slide on ice, because it made it more slippery for old people. I never knew it was illegal though. That could have been a good way to get the few children who were willing to risk an oldie or two in the name of fun.

Flying kites in a public place was a big issue right up until the end of the film, Mary Poppins when every bastard in London was flying one and singing about it too. That is the power the people have when we all want to do something - anarchy rules when there's kites to be flown!

(2) Any resident of Chester is allowed to shoot a Welshman with an arrow if he is within the city walls on a Sunday.

I live fairly near Chester, it is relatively near the English border with Wales so it is understandable where the law might of came from, presumably being at a time of war with Wales.

It is bizarre to think it has not been repealed these days though, many Welsh people live in Chester and can be seen just freely roaming around 'within the walls' which are still there. Don't take this as some kind of weird Internet threat but I reckon it would be easy to shoot a load of Welsh people on any given Sunday.

I can see a problem with this though, how do you know from your sniper vantage position (needed to get more than one), which men are really Welsh? Also I wonder if you're allowed to push or entice a Welshman to within the city walls to increase your hit rate.

(3) Taxi drivers are required to ask all passengers if they have smallpox or the plague.

This sounds like a health and safety issue first. 'Permitting' drivers to ask for their own safety. But it's more than that. Drivers are 'required' to ask, they have to ask. It doesn't say what they should do with the information, but if today's are anything to go by it would at the very least increase the fare trariff.

(4) It is illegal to eat mince-pies in England on Christmas Day

Then I am a master criminal. And I am not alone, there's a network of us who know that once you open a box of six and you fancy one or two, after a while they're half gone and you need to eat the rest to destroy the evidence.

(5) A boy under ten years of age is not allowed to see a naked mannequin.

If I just say....
"Let them say we're crazy.
What do they know?
Put your arms around me, baby, don't ever let go.
Let the world around us just fall apart.
Baby, we can make it if we're heart to heart."

Hmmmm. Naked. Hee hee.

(6) A bed may not be hung out of a window

...And usually cannot, I might add.

Like the anti kite flying law in #1, this sounds like another knee jerk law that was put in place after someone important and influential was injured (perhaps Harold Lloyd?). I think this law could stay in place, but with an exemption applied so that a bed may be hung out of a window if it knows where the bomb is and Jack Bower has only one hour left.

(7) In Scotland it is illegal to be drunk and in possession of a cow.

Just in case, I think this should stay in place. I have seen nights out in Scotland and I wouldn't rule it out. In fact to be safe let's say 'livestock'

On the other hand I don't think this next one happens very often and could be another one for the law bonfire.

(8) It is illegal for a lady to eat chocolates on a public conveyance.

Oh maybe it does happen, I thought it said public convenience (WC) not public conveyance (transport).

I am not quite sure what the issue was that threw up this law. It is either about being unladylike or about greed and not sharing! I would like to hear from any ladies who have ever eaten chocs on the loo or the bus.

(9) It is illegal to be drunk on licensed premises. Yes of course there's no need for this now we have the charge of Drunk and Disorderly, which is much more flexible. Of course it could still be useful if the premises is licenced to practice brain surgery, glass tower stacking or selling tropical fish and the like.

(10) In Liverpool it is illegal for a woman to be topless in public, unless they are a clerk in a tropical fish store.

Now what the fuck is going on here? I understand the basic premis of lewdity, particularly as Liverpool has a strong conservative Catholic influence. I'm not sure how it got to be a big problem in the cold rainy climate of the city though, I can only think it was to do with clubs and theatres. But what's going on with that exemption for tropical fish store clerks? Whoever the girl in the Liverpool Tropical Fish Store was at the time must have had a fantastic pair of tits and the law makers just couldn't bring themselves to rule it out.

I must say the girls in the Liverpool branch of 'Pets at Home' megastore were not very friendly when I told them it would be okay for them to go topless.

Pictures: The original tropical fish clerk - "d'ya wan any fish like?", The Liver Building, Daughter of Liverpool Danielle Lloyd and a lovely pair of beautiful specimens.

Laws we could scrap - the jokey ones.

Nick Clegg has issued an online invitation for members of the public to suggest rules, regulations and laws that we think should be scrapped.

I don't know about anyone else, but after the initial excitement thinking of the wonderful possibilities, when I tried to think of any laws I would like scrapped I couldn't really think of any suitable candidates.

First of all I found it hard to get past the jokey ones and the quirky ones - the latter being laws that I don't know if they're real laws or popular misconceptions (e.g. We must practice archery every Sunday - boy could do without that every weekend!).

Then there are the obvious ones (drugs and prostitution) and the ones that we haven't got a hope in hell of scrapping (European Human Rights and Common Agricultural Policy). Oh and finally I think there's some that it is interesting and frightening to imagine what the world would be like without (e.g. Murder).

In a series of posts I will consider these categories. Firstly the Jokey ones...

Jokey ones
So lets get these jokey ones out of our system so we can have a serious think shall we? I would like to scrap the following laws. These have been selected just because I can't resist a pun and then I thought of the reasons afterwards.

1) Jude Law (suggested by @surzy & @willfrost)

Hard to hate pretty boy Jude, when you look at his face it's almost as if he understands, but he is a Law that is no longer necessary.
Although I believe he turned out a good Hamlet and with 2 Oscar nominations might be on the verge of a breakthrough, for his involvement in one of the worst remakes ever, 'Alfie', and his unhealthy, sinister grooming of a robot boy in AI, Jude is a Law that must be scrapped. I think his part in AI was actually a good performance - but when you're good at acting as a Peado robot, you've got to be worried. He doesn't mind acting out the old Pleasure Mecha routine in front of his real kids either. His kids former nanny, Daisy Wright, was reportedly sacked by Jude's ex Sadie Frost after his kids caught him driving Daisy crazy. At the time he was engaged to Sienna Miller (who he blamed for his affair!).

2) Sod's Law (suggested by @HLNdevon and me @deedpole)

How many times a day does sod's law raise it's ugly head? Yes it's like ray-ee-ain on your Wedding Day (and most of the other things that ALANIS MORISSETTE mistakenly thought were ironic - credit to Ed Byrne for this observation). It is clear that life would be easier if we could get rid of those moments when we say 'bloody typical'. This would (ironically) prevent the inevitable situation at the end of Mr Clegg's consulation, when all the laws we wanted to be scrapped are kept in place and a load of laws are scrapped that we either (a) could not care less about or (b) make our lives more difficult. So lets scrap sod's law first to avoid disappointment.

Of course sod's law might have meant sodomy, but the UK laws against sodomy have already been ditched. The age of consent was equalised to 16 in most of the UK in the year 2000 (perhaps prompting the song that goes "lets all MEAT UP in the year 2000" Cocker) - with the backward Isles of Man, Jersey and Guernsey only falling into line as recently as 2005, 2007 and March 2010 respectively. I wonder how many legal buggers have taken place in Guernsey since March 2010. I digress.

3)Gravity (suggested by @HLNdevon and me @deedpole)

Lets ditch the law of gravity too -it makes our faces and bodies head south and things smash on the floor. Without gravity we would quite literally be 'floating on air'. I wonder what life was like before Newton's law of universal gravitation. I imagine there were apples flying around all over the place. Clearly the picture of Newton above was pre-gravity, either that or hairspray was invented earlier than we previously thought.

4) David Laws

A whole series of Laws (David Laws) could easily be got rid of - oh, what's that? The Telegraph already got rid of them? ok, now we're cracking. (see also Sod's Law).

5) Others.
Other suggestions on a recent Twitter #hashtag game I tried to run on Twitter(#scrapthelaw)turned up the following other laws to scrap:
Mother-in-Laws suggested by @draregslim
Coles-law suggested by @Ita99
Murphy's Law by @Surzy

I really wish I had time for more - but I set myself this silly 'law' that I would post every day and it is midnight. Hey, perhaps I could scrap that one yet.

If anyone has anymore suggestions, please post them below or on Twitter with the #scrapthelaw tag. You must do this, it is the law. I will send them on to Nick.

Boris Goes Skiing

In February 2010, writing for the Telegraph, Boris Johnson (Mayor of London) questioned the need to wear a helmet whilst skiing. Boris gave helmet wearing as an example of "the elf and safety madness that is sweeping our culture" (yes he actually wrote "elf" - funny guy).

Boris goes on to explain some of the many injuries he's had whilst skiing, but still refuses to wear a helmet, opting instead for a wooly hat. In the picture above, Boris has obviously just taken off his ski hat.

You can't help thinking that all those knocks and bumps might just be accountable for Boris being such a buffoon. Or at least it could account for his assertion in the same article that the increase in helmet wearing on the slopes is down to people having seen how the bankers took too many risks and ended up crashing on the slopes of financial woe.



So that's Boris, I prefer Horace - from the budget computer game of the early 80s 'Horace Goes Skiing'. Although there are some visual similarities between the two skiers, Horace didn't know what he was getting into when he went skiing - $15 for an ambulance ride! That's the Tory vision for London on budget cuts.