Wonderful little vignette in the post this morning, well in the ether really.
Mrs Lola has received an email from a now redundant ex-County Drama Adviser (Mrs Lola is a drama teacher). This bloke, who is actually quite a Good Bloke, has sent round a message saying goodbye as he is being laid off 'because of The Cuts'. But, he goes on, not to worry, 'as I'll still be around offering my adviser services but at a much lower cost than they were charged for by the County'!
Well, WTF? In other words we (the Poor Bloody Taxpayer) have been overcharged for your services for the last 15 years. Now that there is a real price signal to work with we will soon find out just how much this 'advisers' services are truly worth.
Hopefully, Mrs Lola is now fully armed with rebuttal arguments when she encounters the 'Oh Dear, poor thing' bleedin' heart crap from her less well educated colleagues. But being a lady she won't go for the throat as I would with this golden opportunity for a bit of a reality check for the education nomenklatura.
But it did cheer me up.
Bring back the typewriter
9 minutes ago
14 comments:
I will conjecture.
Said adviser is now self-employed and, from his seemingly light-hearted approach, will earn as much if not more than the County paid him.
Win-win.
I think VftS is right here.
From my knowledge of people in similar situations, I'm assuming:
1) the County Council used to charge schools (i.e. "itself") more for this chap's services than he's now charging for them.
2) so the relevant bit of the CC was acting as a consulting firm, trading off its reputation to sell this bloke's time for substantially more than they were paying him, despite the negligible value that this added.
3) now they've laid him off, schools save money by hiring him directly, probably on more than he was paid when employed by the county.
Plus side of cuts: everything's more transparent and efficient now. Minus side: there's *more* money being paid by the public sector to the private sector for the same amount of stuff...
So who was making the mark-up? Some other government department? Doesn't this all wash its own face?
As John B says, the Tories are reducing spending on public sector fat cats and increasing spending on private sector fat cats to "deliver" services which are largely unnecessary, same old, same old.
MW The money in the system has to come from outside the system, i.e. taxpayers, and yes you are correct that it goes round in circles. But the point leaping off the page was that (a) the 'price' charged (and the quantity supplied) was set by the LA, and (b) now that that was not happening we will find out what the true price should be for these services.
Plus of course we will now get the mighty God of competition. He is not the only Drama Adviser on the block - I have at least two other education advisers in my client files who can likely provide competing services from which the schools can choose.
Anyway it delighted me.
Management, overheads, you know how it works, Mark. Don't blame the donkey, blame the driver.
Not sure about the mighty God of competition. When formerly competing firms merge they usually get rid of 50% of management,HR ,computer capacity, the usual bollocks, in the "rationalisation"which is the point of the merger, proving that competition has inflated bureaucracy and set up unnecessary parallel management systems.
PS another Lost Cause: King Gillette and his Socialism to Reduce Bureaucracy movement.
S, you answered my question - the real cost is of course the pen pushers sitting at head office who pay the man's salary and shuffle him round from one school to another, when he'd be perfectly capable of setting up his own timetable for which school he goes to and when.
DBC, if we agree that bureaucracy is a bad thing, then why not let the man 'compete' directly with other drama teachers than let a bureaucracy shuffle him around?
I accept that competing firms have overlapping bureaucracies to some extent, but we have to look at this from the point of view of the consumer - is it better to have one powerful monopoly with higher prices, a slimmed down bureaucracy and super-profits for the senior managers to soak up the savings, or two competing businesses with lower prices etc?
LA prosecutors bill losing defendants anything from £25 to £55 per hour costs. But they pay their investigators anything from £15 to £35 per hour.
I've never worked out how this works. I did once see a defence brief challenge it, but the judge was read chapter and verse of some legislation by the prosecuting brief and that was the end of that.
OT, but could be interesting.
Der Spiegel from Chiefio
Emergency EU meeting tonight re possible Greece abandoning euro
Sl, they just make it up as they go along, that's how it works.
VFTS, interesting! I have commented at Chiefio's.
I am astounded: this is the first time I have had anyone agree that competing firms can have overlapping bureaucracies. I think I'll stick with that if you don't mind as the alternatives you then give fall back into the conventional superstition that having two bureaucracies reduces prices.
DBC, don't confuse costs and prices!
a) Monopoly = higher prices, lower costs, higher profits for monopolist.
b) Two competing firms = lower prices, slightly higher costs, lower profits for owners.
Don't forget that the 'costs' to the firm are 'salaries or wages' to the people working for them, so somebody works for competing firm A gets higher wages and can buy cheaper goods and services from firm B and vice versa. Competition is A Good Thing.
"I am astounded: this is the first time I have had anyone agree that competing firms can have overlapping bureaucracies."
This is not an argument against competition, it is an argument against bureaucracies. The private sector doesn't need bureaucracies (read Up The Organisation, by Robert Townsend), but human nature ensures that it gets them (Parkinson's Law).
Felix Dennis; (in his autobiography 'How to Get Rich'): "The certain way to ensure failure in busines is to love your bureaucracy".
The State, and Socialism for that matter, love bureaucracies, and work to eliminate any form of competition. Private, wealth creating, business hates bureaucracies, and would love to have no competiton, but in the free market that is not possible. As small business owner in the free market I love competition. I use the advantage of size to out-compete my larger competitors. Hence the redundant education adviser can now out-compete the State bureaucrat - for the advantage of us all.
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