From the BBC:
Mr Osborne replied that cutting the deficit was a "very serious national challenge", saying much of it was "structural" - so would not disappear as the economy returned to normal growth levels.
"What we want to do is make sure that all political parties, that the brightest and best brains across Whitehall and the public sector, that voluntary groups, think tanks, trade unions [and] members of the public are all engaged in the debate and discussion about how collectively we deal with the problem - after all it is our collective national debt."
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Putting the public first last...
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12 comments:
Poor bastard can do nothing right can he?
Cut deficit you criticize him for the ORDER in which he asks people for ideas.
Have you considered joining the Labour party? Pathetic.
Cheeky git. It's not my debt. I don't do debt, so why should I pay it off?
Sue, Don't you realise the country owns you?
J:
1. Yes he can. He's had five years to plan all this, and the first two weeks with £6 bn cuts were a good start (although within the govt's margin of error), had he kept that up for a year we'd be back in the black.
2. Had Alistair Darling said exactly that a year ago, I would have made the same comment and you would probably have applauded me.
3. No I haven't, why would I? (see 2)
4. Lighten up.
S, no, you can pay off Portugal's debt instead :-)
AC1, see my reply to Sue.
I'm wth Sue on this and can only hope that when Osborne said 'our' he meant 'our' as in politicians - in which case why should I bail them out?
There's an ad on telly where he could go and concentrate all his debt into one gigantic debt........
Sue, agreed, we didn't borrow the money or spend it or even benefit from the spending of it, but it's still "our debt" because we are the ones who are going to pay it off.
brightest and best brains across Whitehall
Eh?
He's had five years to plan all this
Exactly. It's pathetic. He did nothing about the debt for years, then noticed it once the banks collapsed, was an embarassment during that episode (Cable became the effective opposition) and despite talking about debt for a year or more, hasn't worked out the priorities for cutting it.
The first priority is to get rid of the stuff that's neither the stuff required of government, nor would be paid for by the public (e.g. fake charities). Next, stop spending on stuff which is a luxury, but the public wants (e.g. subsidising businesses in the market). Then you deal with the stuff that can be brought open to competition but has a social dimension (e.g. schools, NHS). Finally, you deal with the stuff that people want done and only government can do (e.g. courts, army, planning).
The thing to remember is that it's very hard to actually make government perform better. The NHS IT system is a total disaster, but then, LIBRA, the courts system is equally so. Defence procurement is wasteful on both sides of the Atlantic.
You only get a saving by completely cutting out functions, simplifying what functions have to do, or by privatising those functions that can be put out to competition.
If I was GO, I probably wouldn't even bother with stuff like the police and the courts. The amount of effort you'd have to apply to get much saving is huge. Work on the other stuff first.
WFW, yup, The Daily Mash did that one two years ago, which they in turn pinched from The Onion.
B, it must be possible to work out who benefitted most from this, they are the ones who ought to repay it...
JH, that B&B comment is particularly worrying. It willl be exactly the B&B who will be best at explaining why their department's budget should not be cut. He should have said 'the most honest'.
JT, that's an excellent way of prioritising. To be fair to GO, Labour only went mental with deficit spending about a year and a half ago, but even five years ago there were plenty of things near the top of your list which GO could have started talking about.
One point about Government IT systems...
They are mostly a reflection of the underlying over-complexity of government (Of course some systems are massively over engineered for management reporting rather than staff use).
If it can't be easily done on a computer then your PROCESS is wrong, not the IT department.
ACO,
I agree. It's one of the reasons I'm so big on simplicity in government. If stuff is simple, you don't just need less programmers, you need less time wasted in meetings talking about it, less training time, you are also less likely to need as many call staff. You are not likely for someone to find a loophole to exploit.
Take all the exceptions for disabled people. It would be far more efficient and far more useful to just work out how much all those things are worth and just send them each an extra chunk of cash every month, and they pay full price.
Disabled people might prefer it, and it would be simpler, but it doesn't make bureaucrats feel benevolent with other peoples money.
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