Allister Heath in today's City AM:
The government is right to seek to regain control of the public finances – but its inability to implement austerity properly could yet destroy the coalition. The wrong cuts are happening – and far too little meaningful restructuring of the public sector is taking place...
The result is a looming disaster for the coalition. Take cuts: yesterday, London Ambulance said that it would be cutting 560 frontline positions over the next five years, which is very bad news. Yet at the same time local councils are still recruiting politically correct non-jobs.
One recent investigation revealed that “walking coordinators", “obesity strategy officers”, and “active” workers are still being recruited. One council has just hired an “age friendly communities” manager, a walking and cycling officer, a “community conservation”officer and an “Energy Island” administrator.
Meanwhile, many bureaucrats prefer to shut services such as libraries* rather than seek the help of more efficient private providers to keep them going at a much cheaper cost.
Worth a read in full.
* Brent Council recently announced it was closing six libraries in order to 'save' £500,000 a year; at £80,000 per library per year, they seem like exccellent value to me (sure, that's no reason not to charge for internet use etc, which might get the net cost down to +/- nothing).
Must stop scanning headlines
1 hour ago
7 comments:
I'd really like to see (down to the last man), the list of the 560 "frontline" positions being cut. Metro talks about "frontline" jobs like paramedic and technician jobs, despite the fact that a technician isn't "frontline".
The nurses union were talking about "frontline" nurses being cut, and the example was in things like "family nurse partnerships".
It's a lot of scaremongering, that the evil LibCons "cuts" are going to see you or your loved ones suffer in some way. It's designed to push buttons in a way that cutting Heritage Trails websites or Twinning Commitees don't.
JT, sure, the unions ham this up dreadfully on behalf of their non-productive members, but in turn, the non-productive genuinely do sack the productive ones rather than themselves.
There is a correct way to do this, i.e. send all 2 million productive public sector workers a "Your job is safe" notice and allow each to nominate one more position on a lower salary for back up staff. So five or six million non-frontline will have to sweat it out.
Of course, what always puzzles me is why the Lib-Cons and people like A Heath constantly talk about public sector workers (annual cost £169 billion) and never mention private sector largesse (£281 million annually).
The unions are too stupid to mention it either, unfortunately.
Mark,
True. They're really one and the same thing. Both are about the public getting money taken from them, and gov deciding where it's going to be spent.
And while those suppliers might not have unions, they do a huge amount of lobbying. What "research" was Patricia Hewitt doing as "Director of Research" for Accenture, a post she quit soon after Labour got elected and started giving Accenture business again. Look at Tim Yeo's non-exec directorships: most of them are for companies that would go down the tube if the government climbed off the green bandwagon, and he just happens to be chair of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee.
I know a couple of internet design companies that basically depend on quangos and fake charities for the whole of their business. One went to the wall within months of the LibCon government coming to power.
Personally, I've kept my business supplying the private sector. I'll take fake charity crap, but I haven't gone looking for it, because I can't get very excited about applying my efforts building software that isn't going to be useful.
Perhaps Mr Heath should look at this:
http://www.dogw.co.uk/
Scottish Labour have some interesting "austerity measures" planned, should they gain power in the elections for the Scottish Parliament - and they are definitely to be implemented in a good cause - so they can then fund things like - well how about we let the manifesto do the talking :-
"We understand the urgency of delivering homes that are affordable. Scottish Labour will introduce First Foot – a new mortgage indemnity guarantee scheme that will reduce the level of deposit required of first time home buyers to only five or ten per cent, helping them to realise their aspiration of owning a home".
Anon, nice bit of Home-Owner-Ism there. At least they left a space, rather than writing FirstFoot, see page 59 here, cf. HomeBuy or FirstBuy etc.
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