Public sector monster needs to be tamed

perplexed.com

Any ideas what one should do ( apart from tearing your hair out!) if you are in a occupation where the NHS is the only option, yet you see loads of money being spent on eg. health promotion ( large dinners and talks laid on for businesses on how to have a healthy workforce ), fancy offices for managers, ridiculously unfit for purpose IT systems, endless, endless target setting, form filling, writing notes on the state of the wallpaper, meetings about meetings about reorganisations, whilst waiting lists grow and grow due to lack of staff and blame for that being laid at our door by managers.

Please don't think everyone who works in the health service doesn't care about all of this, because I for one, do and am totally frustrated as a result. You really wouldn't run a house ( let alone a business ) like this. I think it's akin to building a conservatory while the roof is leaking!

vivatifosi

Go to the press and blow the whistle (anonymously)?

macaque_2

Here is a classic example of the public sector exploits its own incompetence.

1. The government imposes a stealth tax on land fill.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7949761.stm

2. Local government use this as an excuse to reduce bin collections.

3. Local government then introduce recycling programmes and home owners cooperate by sorting their waste. Local authorities then snoop through dustbins and impose swinging fines for non compliance.

4. Having failed to create an orderly supply chain for handling the recycled material, local councils then send the waste for landfill. Home owners then get hit with £30 a year landfill costs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/14/waste-recycling-local-government-environment

5. Having failed to provide an effective recycling programme, the government grabs the landfill tax and claims that it is obliged to do this under EU law.

donaldtramp

Can you imagine what the unemployment figures(released today over 2 MILLION) would have been if it wasn;t for the hundreds of thousands employed by Crash Brown in the public sector?

Yup socialism working it's magic again.
You simply can't give evrybody evrything they want or demand. It simply doen't work. As proved by the unwinding of our economy. This will be a fine mess by the time the reins are wrenched from Browns clammy hands.

donaldtramp

Can't let this one lie! It has to come to an end.....
Absolutely sickening. Read some of the comments on the papers readers comments section. I'm not the only one complaining:rolleyes: ....

Public sector shielded as unemployment hits 2 million

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5934942.ece

A growing divide between a burgeoning public sector and struggling private sector emerged yesterday as figures showed that the number of people out of work rose above two millions in January – the highest level since Labour came to power in 1997.
The number of people signing on for unemployment benefits rose by 138,000 last month – the fastest rate since 1971. Meanwhile, jobs and pay are still rising in the public sector. Official figures show that 30,000 jobs were created in the public sector last year, with 105,000 lost in the private sector.
The gap between the growth in pay in the public and private sectors rose to a record 4.8 per cent. As companies slashed salaries and bonuses, earnings in the public sector continued to rise faster than inflation. Public sector pay rose by 3.7 per cent in the year to January 2009. Private sector pay fell by 1.1 per cent in that period. Inflation is currently at 3 per cent.
The figures reveal that 21,000 extra NHS staff and 5,000 public adminstrative staff were recruited in the last three months of 2008. Thousands of new teaching and police posts were also created. Jobs were lost in areas such as local government, bringing a net gain of 15,000 posts. The net loss in the private sector was 13,000 posts.

MissMoneypenny

beingjdc wrote: »

But the UK does relatively well on all counts, and the public sector is getting constantly better at value for money,

Two words...Students Loans.

It's all very well the government wanting to give work to areas where private business does not want to invest, but the tax payer has to pick up the wage bill for for the incompetent wasters.

MissMoneypenny

donaldtramp wrote: »

Can't let this one lie! It has to come to an end.....

"The gap between the growth in pay in the public and private sectors rose to a record 4.8 per cent. As companies slashed salaries and bonuses, earnings in the public sector continued to rise faster than inflation. Public sector pay rose by 3.7 per cent in the year to January 2009."

There was an article in Monday's Times about how the loss of the financial sectors corporate tax is going to hit government hard and this will mean Darling is going to have to make to some "brutal cuts" in public spending. I can't find the article online.

We are going to have a brain drain if we raise taxes to hard to pay for this governments stupidity. If the financial markets moves more to Asia, the UK is going to be hit very hard with the loss of taxes.

donaldtramp

But the UK does relatively well on all counts, and the public sector is getting constantly better at value for money,

:rotfl: :rotfl:

That's absolute nonsense. You surely don't beleive that???

What about the UK's "third world health service" killing hundreds and thousands unnecessarily??? Absolutely outrageous. How do these people live with themselves. Donkeys on good salaries and pensions who are absolutely useless.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/patients-die-in-thirdworld-hospital-1646950.html

The "shocking" state of affairs at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust meant patients admitted as emergencies suffered due to serious lapses in care.
Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected in a three-year period, the head of the investigation for the Healthcae Commission said........It continues.....

donaldtramp

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5b09bc82-146d-11de-8cd1-0000779fd2ac.html


Tax receipts down due to private sector job losses and cutbacks meanwhile the public sector has carried on building up massive debt.
It's very clear from the article that even the intervention with the banks is far less of a problem to the UK than the bloated public sector(Over 40% of GDP to be exact!).
At least over time the banks should be able to work the debt off. The public sector can't and will just simply keep on getting fatter and fatter unless someone does something about it.
How can we keep srippling the private sector and keep expecting it to pick up the tab for the ever expanding public sector?
The sums just don't add up.

<H2>Crisis batters UK public sector revenues

By Norma Cohen
Published: March 19 2009 10:28 | Last updated: March 19 2009 10:28

Falling corporate profits and rising job losses are taking their toll on public sector finances, official figures published on Thursday show, with revenues last month falling well below those of the previous year.
Total receipts in February were £40.7bn down from £45.1bn in the same month in 2008, according to the Office for National Statistics, while for the financial year through to the end of February, receipts were £14.3bn below where they were at the same time last year. The biggest declines in government revenue came from smaller VAT and income tax receipts.
Expenditure in February was £26.7bn higher than in the previous financial year. Net social benefits, which include payments to the unemployed, were £1bn higher at £12.1bn.
Peter Spencer, chief economic adviser to the Ernst & Young Item Club, said, ”The public finances are continuing to deteriorate at an alarming rate. And as the economy continues to shrink, the outlook for public finances is bleak.“ He added that Alistair Darling, chancellor, would certainly overshoot the borrowing target for the current financial year.
The public sector current budget was in deficit by £1.8bn in February compared with a surplus of £4.6bn in 2008. In the financial year to date, the public sector current budget deficit totalled £43.8bn, sharply higher than the deficit of £2.1bn recorded a year ago.
Public sector net debt at the end of February was £717.3bn, equal to 49 per cent of GDP, but if financial sector intervention is stripped out, that falls to £594.1bn or 40.7 per cent of GDP.
Colin Ellis, economist at Daiwa Securities SMBC, said: “While recent developments – particularly financial sector interventions – can make it difficult to piece together the precise underlying state of the public finances, today’s disappointing data are a further sign of the pressure they are under as a result of the economic downturn.“
Mr Ellis noted that the government’s own pre-budget report forecasts “have been progressively exposed as being too optimistic and said that the actual deficit for 2008/09 could turn out to be as large as £90bn.
The government is widely expected to revise both its economic and financial outlook when it releases its budget on April 22.
Thursday’s data include some reclassifications related to government intervention in the financial sector. The main change in February was a reclassification of Government claims on the Icelandic banks following the payment of compensation to UK depositors. These claims, totalling around £7bn, have inflated the public sector net cash requirement and net debt by a similar amount.

</H2>
NHS shows biggest increase in jobs

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d85ea4c-13a1-11de-9e32-0000779fd2ac.html

The biggest rise in public-sector employment has been in the NHS, where the number employed rose 59,000 last year to 1.56m.
Jobs in education were boosted by 5,000 to 1.41m as the government continued to pump money into public services to offset the impact of the recession.

macaque_2

The past couple of days has seen some excellent posts with very damning evidence. I see Vladimir Posner (beingJDC) has scuttled off.

If you are skulking in the background Vladimir how about a response to this one?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/bu...ss-398501.html

The British decline seems to be largely down to the activities of Government and officialdom. Despite the relative success of monetary policy under an operationally independent Bank of England, the UK's worst ranking among the various measures of competitiveness is 46th – for macroeconomic stability. When asked about the problems of doing business in Britain, the WEF's panel of respondents, comprising business people and economists, were clear that tax was the principal obstacle; both tax rates and tax regulations were cited as off-putting, with government bureaucracy not far behind.