Imagine you want to go walking but you don't have any shoes. You have no money so you need to apply to a grant-awarding body for a pair of shoes. You soon discover that the first grant holder you approach tells you that they will only fund one of the laces and only then if you find another grant holder who will fund the second lace.
Bloody marvellous. What use is a lace or two without a shoe? You ask for advice on who to approach for funding for a pair of shoes. You find a funder but it will only fund one shoe. And, what's more, there are conditions attached. You need to form a company with 'charitable purposes'.
The shoes, they add unhelpfully, mustn't be worn for any other purpose than walking on grass. But you live in a city where it is impossible to stick to walking on grass. Back to the grant for laces. It soon emerges that you need to fill out a form and have it signed by at least three people, supply your latest financial accounts, have a company constitution with 'charitable purposes', an annual report, insurance documentation, a birth certificate to to prove that you are who you say you are, an equal opportunities policy, a child protection policy, a walking policy, a health and safety policy, a tie-ing up your laces policy.
You also need a letter of support from the 'Business Sustainability Directorate' at the local council.
The plot thickens.
They won't write a letter of support unless you have a business plan. You produce one. That isn't good enough because how do they know that you haven't made it up. How do they know that you are not making absurd propositions? How can prove that your statements are true?
However, help is at hand at the 'Business Sustainability Directorate'. They can provide you with funding to pay for the business plan. But first you have to do a feasibility study which will inform the business plan. They can provide funding for that as well. But first you have to fill in an application form which they have to approve.
Meanwhile, you are stuck at home unable to go anywhere because you have no shoes. You are nowhere near getting any laces, let alone shoes. However, you are kept busy by filling in forms, writing a tender for the feasibility study, making phone calls, producing policies, having meetings (they have to come to you obviously).
Everyone is happy (except you) because they are kept busy ticking their tick boxes and meeting their output targets. Meanwhile, amazing fortune, you have managed to secure funding for two heels for the shoes, but no shoes or laces. One heel is brown and the other black. Not ideal but it will have to do.
Unfortunately, you have promised the heel funder that in return for supplying the heel you will meet a target of walking 200 miles in the heels to justify the funding. Obviously, you can't go anywhere with just two heels, so that is a problem, but you won't worry about that right now.
The feasibility study (which will 'inform' the business plan, which will secure a letter of support by the 'Business Sustainability Directorate', which will, in turn, improve - though not guarantee - the prospects for getting lace funding) has been held up because you need to supply a shoe walking strategy (for grass) document as well. You don't have one. You write one which is full of jargon about 'how you will fully engage with the shoe and how the shoe will feedback into the laces which are fully underpinned by the heels'.
Quality will be fully assured, you (laughably) claim, by 'a robust process of double knots which will be monitored by the socks'. Something like that.Realising that this could take up to six months to filter through the multiple tiers of bureaucracy, you apply elsewhere for other money for shoes. One of the funders will only fund Cuban-heeled boots that can only be used in Cuba; another will fund a stilletto heel but nothing else, another will fund size 18 wellies, and one will fund Winkle Pickers but without the winkles (you have to find separate funding for the winkles).
Eventually you come across one funder who will fund a pair of soles and after hunting high and low, you find another that will fund the upper shoe, providing it is orange. Not ideal, but anything will do at this stage.Meanwhile the heel funder wants a 'monitoring and evaluation' report on progress so far.
Foolishly you stated in the initial application that by this stage (6 months after you received the funding) you would have walked 200 miles with those heels. Well, on second thoughts, it wasn't that foolish because if you hadn't made grand claims you wouldn't have got funding for 2 heels.
Obviously, the heels haven't been anywhere because they have no shoe attached to them. So, rather naughtily (but what can you do?) you sit at home rubbing the heels furiously on the carpet to make it look as if the heels have been out walking. You lean out of the window and rub the heels into the grass to add to the effect that the heels have been somewhere.One day, out of the blue, you receive one pink lace! Jesus, you had forgotten all about that application!But dark clouds are gathering.
You can't go on like this. You need to go shopping to eat! The tins of beans are running low! So you decide to call it a day with the shoe game. Obviously, you have to send back the two heels and the pink lace. You decide to put on your slippers, which is completely illegal of course, and go to the shops to get some food.Well, you guessed it. I went out shopping in my slippers and promptly got arrested. I pleaded starvation.
When I went to court, they gave me a pair of shoes to wear, but took them off me as soon as I was sent down. The police were happy because they had a successful conviction which was good for their targets and therefore next years budget allocation.
The Home Secretary was happy because he could stand up and say that the government were keeping their promises on crime figures. I am glad I have a useful purpose in life. I should get an OBE for my contribution to targets and outputs.
Several years later, I heard on the grapevine, the feasibility study concluded that the propositions about walking with shoes on grass were solid ones and we could proceed with the business plan, which, if successful, would lead to a letter of support. The Business Sustainability Directorate were happy because I was a successful output which meant that they were meeting their targets, which meant in turn, that they would get a pay rise and have enough money to buy themselves yet another pay of designer shoes.
© Andrew Hawkins 2008
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