725,000 public sector jobs face axe, economist warns

robin_banks

ILW wrote: »

And what happens when the Audit commision finds that a department has wasted a load of money on a project due to bad management. Absolutely nothing, as opposed to sacking the people in charge for incompetance.

Not strictly speaking true but it's widely acknowledged they need more teeth.

ILW

Norfolk_Jim wrote: »

I thought the people in charge blame the people below and let them take the consequences while they get their faces back in the trough. After all, it was obviously the bank clerks who gave us the banking crisis wasn't it? But who is it getting the sack?

I do not think the banks should have been allowed to get to the point where the govenment had to bail them out or see the economy collapse. The bail out was another example of the taxpayer being shafted due to the incompetance of the regulators and civil servants who should have stopped it from happening. Again most of them are still in their jobs drawing salaries from the state.

Norfolk_Jim

ILW wrote: »

You appear to be front line doing something of value, I would suspect that there are tiers of administrators and managers above you who have very little true value.

Thats what makes some of the sweeping generalisation on these boards hard to take. When you read how all public sector workers are filth and scum when a lot of them are doing worthwhile things.
What does trouble me in the public sector is how the number middle managers increase. Get rid of the beurocrasy and meaningless form filling and you would begin to see where the waste is. I have to waste time filling forms that probably go in a box somewhere never to see the light of day again - thats where we could start making cuts.

Why does arresting someone take a police officer off the streets for 4+ hours - mindless beurocrasy and form filling.

lemonjelly

ILW wrote: »

If the contacts were written up and negotiated correctly, the company would have to produce the result. The problem is that they know that the customer (Public sector) has a virtually limitless pot of money and no true responsibilty on how it is spent.

Hmmm...
This post effectively states that private companies & their staff will quite happily swing the lead, & will not fulfil contracts which they have.

Hardly a resounding reference for the private sector as our saviour is it?

lemonjelly

The_White_Horse wrote: »

If RBS has made a loss - then there should be no bonuses paid.

however, you also need to consider that in order for a bank to be profitable, they need good traders and to retain good traders, they need to be paid well. why would a trader work at RBS for 100k and no bonus when they could work at Barclays for 300k and 1m bonus.

If the traders eventually turn RBS around the tax payer will be far better off than if it fails.

It is the lesser of two evils.

I would have let it fail. Now that it has been bailed out it HAS to succeed.

I'm not sure whether you are missing the point accidentally, or intentionally.

You stated the private sector are wealth generators.

I responded by highlighting that the banks/financial services have cost the taxpayer an estimated £850bn. Ergo they are not wealth creators, but a drain on resources.

Further, the bright lights that led us on the merry dance are getting massive bonuses, whereas many of the people they were responsible for and are accountable to now face, or are already unemployed.

The private sector isn't the great cash generator you asserted. It is actually taking cash out of the system.

ILW

lemonjelly wrote: »

Hmmm...
This post effectively states that private companies & their staff will quite happily swing the lead, & will not fulfil contracts which they have.

Hardly a resounding reference for the private sector as our saviour is it?

Most private companies that deal with real customers would not survive if that were their attitude, the customers would just go elsewhere. It is the ones that have been put into a virtual monopoly by lax public sector spending controls where this happens.
If I had a customer that was prpeared to pay me £1,000,000 per week and not be too hot on the results I produced from them, I would probably be taking 11 month holidays in Barbados.

ILW

lemonjelly wrote: »

The private sector isn't the great cash generator you asserted. It is actually taking cash out of the system.

It is completely untrue to say the private sector as a whole takes cash out of the system. It is the ONLY thing that puts cash into the system (except borrowing)

tomterm8

lemonjelly wrote: »

I feel any reasonable minded person is well aware of the need for cuts, reductions in the public sector, the removal of waste from the system(s), and improvements in efficiencies.

So, can anyone tell me why there is such a blood lust amongst the private sector workers on here against the public sector?
.

Here are some thoughts:

Because it is useful for the government to spread propaganda to whip up public sentiment so there is less damage at the opinion polls?

Because, in a lot of cases, there are personal financial interests at play, which mean that people have good reason to think certain public sector jobs should go?

Because the public sector is always a waste of money until you need a specific service?

The troubling thing is people apply microeconomic truisms to macroeconomics... without understanding that some things that are true for a company or a private individual are not true for an entire economy. Wage cuts, for example, may benefit an individual company, but when you get wage cuts throughout an economy you have a real mess on your hands.

One thing that is not recognised is that the argument about waste on a macroeconomic scale doesn't matter in the short term. If you could miraculously find £50 billion of waste, and cut it, even without any impact on front line services, in the short term the effect is pretty much identical on unemployment, economic growth, and etc as if the £50 billion is in useful services. In the long term these cuts, if done well, may have a positive impact on trend GDP. In the short term, they mean slower growth and higher unemployment regardless of whether the services you cut are good or bad.

Norfolk_Jim

ILW wrote: »

If it is found that 1M people are in jobs with no value, would it still be lunacy?

wouldn't it make more sense to redirect them into doing jobs that did have value than suddenly flooding the market with job seekers and having to pay out a lot of benefits? Its not as if there isn't things that could be done, like a scheme to ensure that the unemployed did some work in return for their benefits.
Look for work 2 days - do vocational training and benficial works on the other 3 - and I dont mean doing peoples gardens up, actual things that could improve the nations potential, like restoring the canal network, improving the railways, regenerating sink estates and stuff like that.

P.S - dont just say we cant afford it - we'd be paying for the 1M value absent jobs already. Introduce performance related pay/benefits if you had to.

ILW

kennyboy66 wrote: »

Becuase it's in their contract - incidentally the terms of which were first agreed under a Tory government.

I am not speaking as a government, I am coming from the point of view of a taxpayer who ultimately has to pay.