Rates and water charges - just curious.....

darwin-rover

Currently 57% of the working population in NI works for the civil service

I think you mean the public sector . Most public sector workers arent civil servants but public servants ie. the Police , NHS , fire service , teachers , councils etc.
Belfast has the highest % of public sector workers of any city in the UK and one of the highest in Europe . But on the flip side , we still have a lot of sectors that are government controlled , whereas in England etc. , they are privatised (water services , road workers etc) so a direct comparison is hard and unfair .
Privatising has its advantages , but has many downsides , such as your money is going into some fatcats pocket while the workers get minimum wage . At least with in the government sector , a senior civil/public servant is on a flat pay (and can be held accountable for mistakes and not just fly off to some foreign country) and the workers get above minimum wage , and will be legally entitled to work here . Government businesses also cant be sold off to foreign companies at the drop of a hat .

Many internal jobs are nothing more thanmoving paper from one civil servant to another causing the private sector mases of red tape for no other reason than job protection.

True , but you have to careful of critisism . I work for Dept of Agriculture as a scientist . A few years ago Ian Paisley stood up and moaned about the amount of staff in DARD , that there were more staff than farmers . Ever since then DARD have gradually reduced the amount of scientists by "natural wastage" - not hiring people when someone leaves . And farmers now get charged for our services where before it was free . But yet there is still the same amount of admin staff . In fact , believe it or not there are now more admin staff for the scientists than there are scientists !!! Senior civil servants tend to come from the admin side of things , my bosses arent scientists , they're not going to get rid of their freinds are they ?
Someone needs to go in and evaluate the amount of paper chasers there are , but its not likely to happen in my lifetime .

IvanOpinion

darwin-rover wrote: »

I think you mean the public sector . Most public sector workers arent civil servants but public servants ie. the Police , NHS , fire service , teachers , councils etc.
Belfast has the highest % of public sector workers of any city in the UK and one of the highest in Europe . But on the flip side , we still have a lot of sectors that are government controlled , whereas in England etc. , they are privatised (water services , road workers etc) so a direct comparison is hard and unfair .

I will accept either definition .. public sector or civil service ... I see the distinction similar to someone saying each tesco store has nothing to do with any of the others (I know its not the same, I am just using it as an analogy)

Privatising has its advantages , but has many downsides , such as your money is going into some fatcats pocket while the workers get minimum wage . At least with in the government sector , a senior civil/public servant is on a flat pay (and can be held accountable for mistakes and not just fly off to some foreign country) and the workers get above minimum wage , and will be legally entitled to work here . Government businesses also cant be sold off to foreign companies at the drop of a hat .

I agree with you, there are several business that I thought were better in public than in private hands ... the problem was that the governments idea of 'investment' meant that all they did was throw more money and people into it but nothing ever came out the other side.

Someone needs to go in and evaluate the amount of paper chasers there are , but its not likely to happen in my lifetime .

Again I agree with you ... nobody is willing or has the guts to take the decisions that need to be taken. First off the local assembly needs to generate some large scale inward investment and then it needs to prune away at itself effectively moving jobs from the public to the private sector.

Ivan