600, 000 jobs cut in the public sector = 700, 000 job cuts in the private sector

ILW

marklv wrote: »

Wrong. You contribute to the salaries and pensions of private sector employees when you buy their products. Your argument is nonsensical because you are comparinbg apples with oranges; the public and private sectors are two different beasts and serve two different purposes. Even if you privatised the whole public sector, the companies doing the work would still have to raise money from taxes. You wouldn't be able to cherry pick what you want to pay for and what you don't.

I most cases, if I disagree with their employment terms I can chose not to buy their products or services.
I agree that the state sector is different but reserve the right to comment about it because I am being FORCED to help pay these people.

Mr_Mumble

marklv wrote: »

You know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

I know the value of everything to myself personally - politicians don't.

Everything to you needs to fit into a capitalist economic model in order to make sense - and this is where you are fundamentally wrong. Very wrong. I cannot understand why you are so maniacally opposed to government employment when every major country in the world does this.

Except the countries nearest to the financial Libertarian ideal such as Hong Kong and Singapore are also the wealthiest (outside of the tax haven of Luxembourg with a splattering of small well run oil countries such as Qatar, Brunei and Norway). Every major government in the world used to support slavery and believe the world was flat, "everyone else does it" is not valid reasoning imho.

The state needs to retain control of certain essential public services because you can't simply entrust private organisations with tasks that are traditionally the responsibility of government.

&

Otherwise, why have a govenrnment at all? Why have elections and MPs? Just privatise the state itself and let the country be run by Alan Sugar et al. What a nightmare that would be!!

I'm not an anarchist - protecting property rights, provision of funding for education, a&e, emergency funds for hardship. I don't have a problem with any of these. You talk of traditional services provided by the state but I'd hazard a guess most of this is post-WWII "tradition". Pre-WWI government, the last time we had a classically liberal party in power and the last time we had world-beating economic growth, Britain would spend around 10% of GDP on governance. That'd be £140bn today, compared to the £698bn we're due to spend this year. There is a lot of slack that need not be provided by the state.

marklv wrote: »

Not sure what you mean in your first paragraph.

I'm talking more generally about the labour market over the past decade. The government outbid the private sector for many below average wage earners purposely. For example: there was an addition of 250,000 "teaching assistants" between 1997 and 2009. The government can only do this by outbidding whatever job these "teaching assistants" would get in the private sector - a job in retail, cleaning, agriculture for example where there was a shortage (ergo the need to import labour from Eastern Europe).

quite frankly, would you be happier with an 'Aldi' health service or a 'Waitrose' one? We are talking about human lives here, not food.

Because we don't need food to live?! Health provision is fundamentally no different to food provision , if anything food is far more important (most will still be alive after a month without healthcare). Folk seem to forget the private sector miracles in healthcare. Paracetamol costs a penny a tablet in supermarkets, how much would it cost if the NHS controlled its supply?!

No, 'worthwhile' is something that, as far as public services are concerned, is there to be decided by the elected representatives of the people, not by Daily Mail journalists or middle aged Tory supporters who post on forums such as this one.

I'm not here to defend the stupidity of the British electorate. I'm way under middle-aged, nor did I vote Tory last election.

Name one major country in the world that doesn't have the public sector to run primary and secondary education, health, uniformed services, local government administration and central government administration. Name one country that has privatised all of these. What you advocate is utter nonsense, born of an ideological obsession with reducing state employment in the vain hope that a private sector takeover will mean lower taxes for higher taxpayers like yourself. Dream on.

Sweden's free schools or American chartered schools are not run by the public sector and are considered best practice by our current government. Health is often run by private organisations, 80% of Japanese hospitals are privately run for example and it was ranked the no.1 country for healthcare provision in the highly controversial WHO report that ranked the US lowly, talking of which most US private hospitals are non-profit. Singapore has perhaps the most efficient health service in the world and that they use a system of medical savings accounts.

I don't understand the need to bold "all", we should be looking at cherry-picking best practices not modelling how Britain does things based on any one other country that we wish to emulate.

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

You haven't quite cottoned on to the fact that no-one is going to be providing some services...

Reality is about to impinge on these Libertarian fantasies.

Which services can only be provided for by the state? I'd love to know! There seems to be an inherent ugliness in this assertion if you're talking about, say mental health care, that individuals are so greedy and selfish that they will not pay charities to provide for the less well off.

ninky_2

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

Which services can only be provided for by the state? I'd love to know! There seems to be an inherent ugliness in this assertion if you're talking about, say mental health care, that individuals are so greedy and selfish that they will not pay charities to provide for the less well off.

the fact is the welfare state has been around for a relatively short time. individual charity had many centuries to prove itself as a suitable means for providing for the less well off. it failed miserably. nothing has done more to improve the lot of the average person in this country than the welfare state.

Really2

marklv wrote: »

If these jobs have clear terms of reference and objectives, together with budget approval, then they are worthwhile jobs, regardless of whichever titles are used to describe them. It's not for you to determine what is and isn't a proper job; there are people who manage these organisations and it's their decision.

No it is not, but some departments and jobs are non-statutory. So just as it is not my decision to call them non jobs (and I never said it was) but someone made these positions in boom times.
Non jobs overall are non statutory council jobs, basically services they do not need to provide from central guidence.
Why do you think it is not fair to ease the tax payer burden in a bust. Do you really think the public sector should not cut one job?

On my wifes office you could not make it up, they are cutting 30% of the officers, but making one additional management job.:rotfl:
1 Director + 4 managers now to mange what will be 12 people. No they don't waste money honest, cut the front line whilst bolstering the generals.

ninky_2

Really2 wrote: »

Non jobs overall are non statutory council jobs, basically services they do not need to provide from central guidence.
.

but i thought the condems were all about local decision-making, no? or is that only when it's decision that suit their agenda.

you have changed the goalposts slightly. previously non jobs were described as ridiculous and totally non useful tasks. now it is any job that hasn't been specifically proscribed by central government - even if it's deemed very useful and necessary on a local level.

Really2

ninky wrote: »

but i thought the condems were all about local decision-making, no? or is that only when it's decision that suit their agenda.

you have changed the goalposts slightly. previously non jobs were described as ridiculous and totally non useful tasks. now it is any job that hasn't been specifically proscribed by central government - even if it's deemed very useful and necessary on a local level.

What are you on about, my idea of the term non-job and that of councils basically are jobs that are non-Statutory as they are services they do not need to provide.edit, this is not to say all non-statutory jobs are non-jobs, but non-jobs generally fall under non-statutory.
(Any one could argue any job has a use if the person is doing something.)
That is why they (councils) are cutting those first.
It is the councils that deem them useful as that will be reflected in their budget cuts, but I dare say the toothbrush adviser post could be decided as less useful than a bin collector.

If all jobs are equally important on a local level why are councils cutting non-statutory now not april? They have the funds to run them until then.

The_White_Horse

my council recently sent me a magazine. first, it was trash and not a good read. second, they have paid people - out of my taxes to write this trash. Third, they probably pay people at the council to work full time to work on the magazine. Fourth, they probably pay printers to print the magazine.

Fifth - it is trash, a waste of time and money and NOT NECESSARY in any shape way or form. These are NON-JOBS. jobs for the sake of jobs. Get rid of all this nonsense now.

stonethrower

The_White_Horse wrote: »

my council recently sent me a magazine. first, it was trash and not a good read. second, they have paid people - out of my taxes to write this trash. Third, they probably pay people at the council to work full time to work on the magazine. Fourth, they probably pay printers to print the magazine.

Fifth - it is trash, a waste of time and money and NOT NECESSARY in any shape way or form. These are NON-JOBS. jobs for the sake of jobs. Get rid of all this nonsense now.

my pet hate these magazines I live in a block of 14 flats and there is a bunch of this rubbish left in the hallway every month and no one appears to read them so in the end they are thrown into the recycle bin.

Prudent

Our council has given out leaflets at the local supermarkets which outline expenditure and ask for suggestions for cutbacks. These very irritating magazines were the top of my list.

tomterm8

The_White_Horse wrote: »

my council recently sent me a magazine. first, it was trash and not a good read. second, they have paid people - out of my taxes to write this trash. Third, they probably pay people at the council to work full time to work on the magazine. Fourth, they probably pay printers to print the magazine.

Fifth - it is trash, a waste of time and money and NOT NECESSARY in any shape way or form. These are NON-JOBS. jobs for the sake of jobs. Get rid of all this nonsense now.

My council does the same. The reason my council does this is that my council is obliged to advertise all kinds of silly notices in the local papers. Since the local papers knew this, they used to charge the council hundreds of thousands of pounds to advertise. So, the council made its own local paper, to save itself money.

It's rather like tree preservation orders: a good idea in theory, but in practice every single land owner or occupier adjacent to the tree has to be notified. It costs a fortune.

There are a lot of really rather silly statutory jobs that have been imposed over quite a long time. Much more silly than 'yoga instructor', when we live in a country full of fat people that need to be fit so they can get on their bike:rotfl: