Public sector monster needs to be tamed

beingjdc

Turnbull2000 wrote: »

Mega flaw in your argument beingjdc.

Does the Richmond Chief Exec have to manage profit margins, turnover and maintain competitiveness in order to ensure the survival of Richmond Council and it's employees, or is this income forcibly removed from taxpayers with the threat of jail and is essentially a cartel of local services?

Managing the public sector is a different challenge from managing the private sector, but that doesn't mean it's easier or harder. It's not about 'profit margins', because almost everything the public sector does is unprofitable on a pure P&L basis. If it were profitable, it would have been privatised over the last three decades.

On the other hand, in the private sector if you have customers who are damaging your bottom line, you can stop selling that particular product, or attempt a price increase to test the market demand and see whether you can continue it profitably, or whether you should concentrate on a different market.

In a local council, you have to deliver the services to a lot of your customes by law, however much it costs, and however many of them there are, and you have to find a way to make it add up within the money available, which is, to within a few per cent each way, decided by central government. Run out of money and yes, you will end up with a government bailout and the sacking of all your senior staff, having been forced to make deep cuts into the rest of the staff on the way.

Some of the other tools available to the private sector to cut costs simply aren't available to the private sector - for all that people claim their priority is lower council tax, the local press and much of the public go spare if a public body tries to outsource its call centre to a different part of the country to save money, let alone abroad. Try and cut the most expensive services, and you'll have the government department responsible for that particular service area on your back demanding to know what you think you're playing at.

Meanwhile, you have to do all this in the glare of publicity - one big advantage of being a private company director in my view is that your minutes are commercially confidential, and you don't have to announce your decisions until you've made them. In the public sector, you have to issue a press notice if you're thinking about sneezing, and then respond to an FoI request on where you bought your handkerchief. I'm all for accountable government, but at the moment people's attitudes to the public sector are that they want fire and they want ice, and they want them together, and they want it cheap.

bigheadxx

treliac wrote: »

I don't begrudge anyone, working a full-time week and no doubt providing a service valued by the people of Glasgow, earning c. £14k a year.

Your outrage is very sad.

Does that mean that it has collected the £25million of outstanding council tax it was owed in 2007, the largest CT uncollected in the country. Not many private businesses have the luxury of ignoring 25% of their income stream let alone issuing such "challenges"

macaque_2

treliac wrote: »

I don't begrudge anyone, working a full-time week and no doubt providing a service valued by the people of Glasgow, earning c. £14k a year. Your outrage is very sad.

It is fair enough to sit back in an armchair and compliment Glasgow on the soundness of it's socialist credentials but there are two things to bear in mind:

1. Glasgow Council are using money stripped from old pensioners and English tax payers to make this gesture of largesse.
2. Small businesses will pay the price of Glasgow's enlightened policies.

donaldtramp

It is fair enough to sit back in an armchair and compliment Glasgow on the soundness of it's socialist credentials but there are two things to bear in mind:

1. Glasgow Council are using money stripped from old pensioners and English tax payers to make this gesture of largesse.
2. Small businesses will pay the price of Glasgow's enlightened policies.

Yup shows you just how socialism "works".
25% uncollected Council tax.
Forcing small businesses to pay over the odds to employ staff (how many of these companies will go out of business because of this?)
Big gestures about giving people what they want without doing the sums to back it up.
It aint only the Engish taxpayers that are annoyed, us up here in Scotland aint too happy about it either!

beingjdc,
I think you'll find most of the people in charge of councils, councillors etc, are the local loud mouths who left school without a standard grade between them. They are now in charge of tens of MILLIONS of pound budgets and are way out of their depth.

ruggedtoast

Gosh, having read this thread I can only say that its a jolly big relief no one cares what people on the internet think when they write on anonymous public message boards.

Otherwise my unfunded public sector guaranteed final salary pension could have been in serious jeapoardy.

beingjdc

donaldtramp wrote: »

beingjdc,
I think you'll find most of the people in charge of councils, councillors etc, are the local loud mouths who left school without a standard grade between them. They are now in charge of tens of MILLIONS of pound budgets and are way out of their depth.

No they aren't. I don't know how many you work with, but I've worked with Councils and Councillors across England. The overwhelming majority of the staff are very experienced, competent, and dedicated. I expect that to get more true in a recession as there's more choice of staff for each job, as opposed to the other way round.

The elected Councillors are a very varied bunch in all sorts of ways, but the ones who make it to Leader and Cabinet are largely up to that job, or if they're not it is noticed pretty quickly. The ones who are more suited to being "backbench" local councillors for a specific area tend to stay at that level and focus on their patch and a particular policy area where they can have input without being in charge.

One Councillor did describe Councillor training to me as 'the ultimate experiment in mixed ability teaching' and I think that was fair - but that's up to the public, very few council wards are uncontested, and they're pretty small - lots of people get in as independents, so if it's so bad it's easy to stand yourself.

There's a problem in some very small councils that don't have the capacity to pay the right amount for senior staff or for Councillors' allowances, so tend to end up with the people who couldn't get a job elsewhere, or cliques of the retired (and there's nothing wrong as such with Councillors who are retired, I've known a lot of really good ones, but if it's all of them you have to wonder what's going on). This is especially a problem where one party has dominated for generations so the choice is even more limited, and vulnerable to faction-fighting rather than competence. But ultimately that's one of the prices paid for having local government rather than just local administration.

bigheadxx

beingjdc wrote: »

No they aren't. I don't know how many you work with, but I've worked with Councils and Councillors across England. The overwhelming majority of the staff are very experienced, competent, and dedicated. I expect that to get more true in a recession as there's more choice of staff for each job, as opposed to the other way round.
'the ultimate experiment in mixed ability teaching' and I think that was fair - but that's up to the public, very few council wards are uncontested, and they're pretty small - lots of people get in as independents, so if it's so bad it's easy to stand yourself.

There's a problem in some very small councils that don't have the capacity to pay the right amount for senior staff or for Councillors' allowances, so tend to end up with the people who couldn't get a job elsewhere, or cliques of the retired (and there's nothing wrong as such with Councillors who are retired, I've known a lot of really good ones, but if it's all of them you have to wonder what's going on). This is especially a problem where one party has dominated for generations so the choice is even more limited, and vulnerable to faction-fighting rather than competence. But ultimately that's one of the prices paid for having local government rather than just local administration.

'the ultimate experiment in mixed ability teaching'? can see the job advert now, Director for the ultimate experience in mixed ability teaching.

treliac

You do a valiant job beingjdc, but it has little impact on such small-minded bitterness.

beingjdc

donaldtramp wrote: »

25% uncollected Council tax.

I hate to cheat and use facts yet again, but Glasgow's council tax collection rate in 2007-8 was 88%

http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/2A4CEC91-568B-4467-8C01-15DBBA127763/0/FSAnnPerfReport200708.pdf

Not good enough, but twice as good as you seem to think. I can tell you some things that would help councils improve the collection rate, but the trouble is, the Daily Mail would describe them as "anti-terror legislation", which seems to cover everything government does in Mail-land.

beingjdc

bigheadxx wrote: »

'the ultimate experiment in mixed ability teaching'? can see the job advert now, Director for the ultimate experience in mixed ability teaching.

The accepted euphemism is "member development officer".

Here you go.

http://www.teignbridge.gov.uk/media/pdf/g/m/Devon_Member_Development_Officer.pdf