We are all in this together, well not if you are in a union.

tomterm8

Generali wrote: »

As per your OP, it's for you mugs to find the money to keep the Government sector going. Don't ask questions just dig deep!

That's rediculous, Generali, and you know it is. In real life, if you are a normal sane person, and you find yourself with a £5,000 shortfall in your income, you have choices to make. Some of these choices are better than others. You could decide paying for your water, and electricity. But maybe it would be better to stop paying for belgian buns, foreign holidays, and sky TV first?

In education, there are so many luxuries you can cut without really making much of a difference to educational results: you can get rid of ofsted, You can reverse the decision to change the compulsory education age to 18, you can look at the education grants for people to attend school, you can look at the decision to have a hundred different sylabuses for A level history. Because there are so many courses you can take, schools have to hire an admin person just to maintain details of what student takes which paper. It's rediculous. twenty years ago we had 5-6 A level history courses, these days you can select from a hundred different courses... and the selection criteria is almost always which one will get better results.

You can remove modules: final year exams are cheaper. You can teach 3 alevels instead of 5 a/s levels, when its inevitable kids are going to drop at least one. You can remove sats: they do no good whatsoever. You can look at rationalising management structures so that every school doesn't have to write a special educational needs policy, a data protection policy, and a risk assessment policy. 20 years ago, each local authority did that - imagine, each area hiring 1 person to write these policies, rather than every school hiring a person to write them!

Those are easy cuts to make, which would have very little effect on how good education is in the country. And there are many other easy cuts, cuts which wouldn't affect the quality of service: the fact is, looking at public sector in general, it is well behind the management chain. In the 80's, most private sector orginisations shredded levels of management, because a flatter management structure is cheaper and more efficient. In your average hospital, there are between 6 - 8 layers of management between the person who cleans the ward, and the hospitalities manager. Most of these managers produce nothing except paperwork. And, you can bet your bottom dolar that the hospitalities manager doesn't make difficult decisions: he hires a consultant to make them!

The decision isn't so much about whether to cut, its about what to cut... do you cut out the belgian buns or bread?

marklv

The_White_Horse wrote: »

every public sector worker should get a 25% pay cut.

Only 25%? Why not 90% then? :rotfl:

The_White_Horse wrote: »

then, they should look into seeing who can have a bigger pay cut and sack a large proportion of them.

leeches.

Oh yeah! Bring it on!! :rotfl:

The_White_Horse wrote: »

how many public sector workers are having a meeting about having a meeting to discuss the outcome of a meeting following a meeting as we speak.

they will then follow up this with a meeting.

they will never actually get anything done or produce anything.

Yes, we love meetings! The more, the merrier. 95% of my time is spent in meetings.

The_White_Horse wrote: »

public sector workers need to realise one thing - they add nothing are just a cost (sometimes a necessary cost) to the money generating sector. their pay should not be comparable.

These idiot town hall cronies on 200k a year would never earn such a figure in the real world. they should be put down to 60k. If they think they will get more in the real world, let them.

Make that £30k - even £60k is too much for these awful people!! :rotfl:

The_White_Horse wrote: »

hateful horrible "no can do" people with a massive chip on their shoulder and entitlement attitude.

Yes - nasty, 'orrible little beggars, they should all be lined up and shot if you ask me. The lot of them! :rotfl:

The_White_Horse wrote: »

When I suggested to a teacher friend of mine who was moaning about her low pay, that perhaps her salary should be linked to her pupils results, she mocked. When i said that that is how pay is determined in the real world, she soon shut up. Be paid according to results? Never. I don't blame them with all the failure around them - they would probably starve.

Oh yes, let's get pupils to interview new teachers and sack them as well. That way all the boring ones would go and the kiddies could all have fun all day instead. They would probably get better grades as well. Let's just get rid of teachers completely and let parents do the teaching - that's the way forward, right? Who needs these 'orrible tweed jacket wearing lefties anyway? Put them all in proper jobs. :rotfl:

The biggest laugh I've had since the last Harry Enfield programme. It's no use arguing with a mental case! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

marklv

Really2 wrote: »

But is that enough to cut the deficit and increase wages...................

No.

How do you know? You don't, you are just making assumptions. There is huge waste in the public sector, and with sufficient efficiency savings there is no need for pay cuts.

A_fiend_for_life

tomterm8 wrote: »

The decision isn't so much about whether to cut, its about what to cut... do you cut out the belgian buns or bread?

Do teachers have car allowances? They would sound like belgian buns.

Really2

marklv wrote: »

How do you know? You don't, you are just making assumptions. There is huge waste in the public sector, and with sufficient efficiency savings there is no need for pay cuts.

I bet it would not cover a 3% payrise for all public sector staff.

Did you not make an assumption it would cover it?

What efficiencies can you make not resulting in job losses if you have to have pay rises?
Then how do you cut the deficit of public sector spending?

No one has come up with anything yet that in reality would touch the sides.

Lets not forget who spends all this money on these contracts and who put them in place. It wasn't the private sector.
The NHS one is failing is not adjudged to be the contractors fault but I believe it was extra things wanted.

If you tender for a contract you get the value of the contract it can not go up without agreement. So it must have been added to or they would have been held to the original value.

Government contracts are always written in the purchases interests not the suppliers.

marklv

Really2 wrote: »

I bet it would not cover a 3% payrise for all public sector staff.

Did you not make an assumption it would cover it?

What efficiencies can you make not resulting in job losses if you have to have pay rises?
Then how do you cut the deficit of public sector spending?

No one has come up with anything yet that in reality would touch the sides.

Lets not forget who spends all this money on these contracts and who put them in place. It wasn't the private sector.
The NHS one is failing is not adjudged to be the contractors fault but I believe it was extra things wanted.

If you tender for a contract you get the value of the contract it can not go up without agreement. So it must have been added to or they would have been held to the original value.

Government contracts are always written in the purchases interests not the suppliers.

I accept that some job losses would be necessary. I would rather see 'dead wood' turfed out than across the board pay freezes/cuts. The problem with the NHS contract (and similar ones) is that the suppliers agreed to deliver within fixed timescales and then failed to do so. This is a clear error in project management on the part of the suppliers in the sense that they failed to accurately estimate the amount of work required and the necessary resources. Therefore the contracts have had to be renegotiated, often with new suppliers, costing huge amounts for the taxpayer. Anything extra which is outside the original contract has to be paid for, so it's not the fault of the NHS people.

kabayiri

To save money, we should enable the savings to be determined locally.

Cut the budgets of the Local Authorities, and let them determine how they save money; be it equipment or teachers or IT spend.

Let them choose. Personally, if they choose to maintain teacher's pay, I'm not bothered. As long as they save money.

ninky_2

marklv wrote: »

OK, so what? Almost everyone has debt, it's called a mortgage. Debt is not a monster that must be slayed at any cost, debt must be managed. Lots of countries, including major ones, have bigger debt than us, take Japan or Italy for example. All this paranoia about debt is created by the media, but in reality debt is a necessity because it enables the government to carry out its spending plans through all the troughs and peaks of tax intakes.

there is a big difference between national debt and personal debt. osborne on that chancellors debate thing and elsewhere keeps talking about the national debt as if it is the same as personal debt. i.e. that you need to tackle it sooner and quickly. however, our nation debt is unlike a personal debt on a depreciating asset such as a new car. cutting it swiftly and soon will end up with mass unemployment and a spiral deeper into recession. public spending needs to take up the slack of private capital in times like this.

bendix

I love how marklv gets so animated when people dare to suggest the public sector should undergo the same financial hardship that has been endured by the private sector. Is that because he is a recent joiner to the public sector perhaps?

As to his oft-repeated examples of public sector waste being down to hiring external consultants, could that be explained by the fact that the public sector - because it is fiscally responsible to noone - hires such crap staff that they need external consultants.

I look forward to the public sector being slashed severely. I'm sick of the whining b****rs who, frankly, haven't given a monkey's kiss to the fortunes of the private sector over the last two years.

All they have cared about is their 'im alright jack' mentality, a mentality that typifies marklv

lostinrates

ninky wrote: »

there is a big difference between national debt and personal debt. osborne on that chancellors debate thing and elsewhere keeps talking about the national debt as if it is the same as personal debt. i.e. that you need to tackle it sooner and quickly. however, our nation debt is unlike a personal debt on a depreciating asset such as a new car. cutting it swiftly and soon will end up with mass unemployment and a spiral deeper into recession. public spending needs to take up the slack of private capital in times like this.

Its different in more ways than this than personal debt. Would personal debt have been allowed to get so unweildy? Personal debt is usually also signed for and taken on by a person, not taken up on their behalf!