The number of managers and senior managers employed across the National Health Service rose by 11% between October 2014 and April this year. In the same period, the number of nursing staff and health visitors grew by just 1.1% (and it has fallen since April). (The Daily Telegraph)

What do you want more managers for, especially since the Tory government has been cutting and cutting? What you do need is to recruit more good doctors and trained nurses, and get patients back home and into the hands of health visitors.

I have always thought that an organization with a management structure bigger than that of the worker’s structure is an organisation with a short future ahead of it. Admittedly, this is a very British phenomenon (maybe shared by Italy and Greece?). It is typical that Buggins, the manager, wants to feel more grand and important, control more staff and do less work. It is also a reflection on the dire lack of skill at the very top, particularly in the field of human relations. In England accountants reign, bless them (we need them, but in modest numbers and as seldom as possible as CEOs). Poor management that created uppity unions typified the nationalised industries, and private enterprise was showing clear signs of incompetent management when I worked in England. In America they have a similar problems, only they have loads of semi-trained workers, paid a minimum wage you cannot live on, so that a very comfortable fat-cat management (many hospital managers and doctors reputedly get over a million dollars a year) can hire more loads of workers.

I blame the business schools, neo-liberal policies and human nature. Nothing will ever change, though. The vested interests are too entrenched.