A question of policy

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1480150]

Note - by "public" here, I mean to people outside of the company, like journalists or similar, not openly to people inside of the company.

Comments

[andrewducker]

This is a discussion I've been having with people at a tangent to that.

And if he's not an employee, how can he be sacked?

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

You can sack a consultant, can't you?

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

Yes definitely.

[andrewducker]

So, he was employed as a consultant?

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Well, I think technically he was employed as an advisor but surprisingly I've not seen any of the paperwork. If you question is really "is there a difference between being employed as a consultant and being employed as an employee?" then yes, of course there is.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

He isn't employed at all, at least not in a financial sense. Being a government special advisor is an unpaid position. He still holds his post as an academic and presumably gets paid for that. It should also be noted that he did not go running to a tabloid with his comments, they were taken from a paper he published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

I contend that the two positions are incompatible. An academic cannot only publish work that is in line with government policy whilst a government advisor apparently cannot publish anything that the government does not agree with.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Several things:

Government special advisers are paid, often very well paid.
SpAds also get to say things the government disagrees with; they're not civil servants and are not bound by the same rules as civil servants.
Many academics are in fact employed as civil servants; when this happens they tend to have discussions about getting a dispensation to continue to publish in their specialist areas.
A lot of them are employed as consultants anyway, in which case the rules covering civil servants don't entirely apply.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

According to the BBC, David Nutt's advisory position was unpaid.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8334948.stm

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

There is a clash of terminology here. Special Advisors are something specific (essentially party apparatchiks) whereas (as I understand it) Nutt is just an advisor.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

He wasn't paid, but he was doing a job, and it is reasonable for his boss to relive him of responsibilities.

Johnson has been an arse, though.