Makes my blood boil

Tromking

agarnett wrote: »

Oh - the getting away with it school? Morally corrupt but not fraudulent? You mean when did fairness ever count - every man for himself? Ah yes. Wear your badge of politics with pride, eh?

You really are the master/mistress of hyperbole aren't you?
As someone who god willing will be in receipt of an admittedly generous civil service pension within the next ten years I obviously have skin in the game, but the question many people of your opinion fail to answer is what happens to public services if the state joins the private sector style race to bottom as regards pensions.
There are real problems for the country if we can't recruit and retain Paramedics and Nurses for example, not so with fruit pickers or car mechanics though. Public sector pensions are affordable because they have to be and you secretly know that.

Tromking

Well_excuse_me. wrote: »

I think you're right.
Having visited my council offices and made numerous phone calls about (of all things) rubbish, I have given up, they seem totally inept, and slow doesnt cover it. I doubt anyone in industry would employ any of the people I dealt with.

You have a local council that hasn't outsourced its waste collection services to a private company?

agarnett

Tromking wrote: »

Public sector pensions are affordable because they have to be and you secretly know that.

What? I don't know that at all! Public sector recruitment is difficult because those who have been doing it for years now are a right shower, that's all!

Do you really know what you on about?

Recruitment to public sector is perhaps the most difficult because few people know what most of you do! And another reason is that apart from interesting cutting edges like GCHQ, bright young things simply cannot bear the idea they might be working in a place where talent is not respected, but treated as tall poppy!

Our main exposure to public sector (the administrative parts) constantly shows us high degrees of ineptitude - you can't all hide behind your firefighters and nurses and armed forces and claim that you are somehow suffering in public service or making some personal sacrifice as a life's calling to do public good - when did anyone ever issue you with a formal personal warning on your file when you did the public no good ? :rotfl:

In general, administrative types in the civil service have a far too high opinion of their own worth. How many are recruited to public service by other public servants? Almost none in the first stages of recruitment because it is skilled work attracting the right talent and keeping the right employees, so for decades it has been outsourced to the likes of Capita who have a say in the hiring, but none in the firing!

Who ever fires public servants individually? Or do you get Capita back again for the difficult cases and bung them a wedge to pay off the real problem cases? Can't do that generally with the public sector workforce, eh? Best that can be done with them is to abandon them in groups via TUPE to private sector, and you think that is de rigeur and clever, and that local governement is then no longer accountable for what outfits like Veolia get up to??

Don't you think the public sector might by now be a bit top heavy with dead-wood? You can't all be overseeing outsourced contracts - and most showing suggests none of you are.

I do.

Well_excuse_me.

Tromking wrote: »

You have a local council that hasn't outsourced its waste collection services to a private company?

Dunno, I ring the council offices and they transfer me on an internal number to "someone" who deals with the query, (or rather doesnt).

Well_excuse_me.

uk1 wrote: »

I think the higher up the scale they get, many become more and more institutionalised. It seems to me that there is also a greater tendency in the public sector to see the customer as "the enemy" compared to the private sector. People I suspect deal with more complaints and more "entitlement" based calls than in the private sector and perhaps this makes them more defensive? And if you don't have to work hard to attract and retain customers because the go to prison if they do not pay then this can easily lead to what we see.

I do not believe there is any real inherent difference in the quality of the people on the coal face in both private and those in the public sector. All people are capable of great customer service if they are led competently by decent and enthusiastic management who care about what they do. This is a management disinterest issue rather than the people you encounter imho. I think it is management that leads the degree of complacency and perceived disinterest you encounter.

Jeff

lol

When I visited the council offices yesterday there seemed to be me, and a steady stream of people wanting help with their accommodation costs.
If that is "customers", then I'm not surprised the employees arent "great" at customer service.
In the private sector customers are people passing money into the business.

I dont think councils are overly interested in the people paying in, (their real customers) most of the time they are dealing with people taking money out of the business.

agarnett

Well_excuse_me. wrote: »

I dont think councils are overly interested in the people paying in, (their real customers) most of the time they are dealing with people taking money out of the business.

I agree - so perhaps it's not their fault they have become anaesthetised to the concept of entitlement - their biggest "customers" ultimately being themselves via their over-generous pensions payable for half their entire lives if they remain so lucky! Self-service on steroids?

Tromking

agarnett wrote: »

What? I don't know that at all! Public sector recruitment is difficult because those who have been doing it for years now are a right shower, that's all!

Do you really know what you on about?

Recruitment to public sector is perhaps the most difficult because few people know what most of you do! And another reason is that apart from interesting cutting edges like GCHQ, bright young things simply cannot bear the idea they might be working in a place where talent is not respected, but treated as tall poppy!

Our main exposure to public sector (the administrative parts) constantly shows us high degrees of ineptitude - you can't all hide behind your firefighters and nurses and armed forces and claim that you are somehow suffering in public service or making some personal sacrifice as a life's calling to do public good - when did anyone ever issue you with a formal personal warning on your file when you did the public no good ? :rotfl:

In general, administrative types in the civil service have a far too high opinion of their own worth. How many are recruited to public service by other public servants? Almost none in the first stages of recruitment because it is skilled work attracting the right talent and keeping the right employees, so for decades it has been outsourced to the likes of Capita who have a say in the hiring, but none in the firing!

Who ever fires public servants individually? Or do you get Capita back again for the difficult cases and bung them a wedge to pay off the real problem cases? Can't do that generally with the public sector workforce, eh? Best that can be done with them is to abandon them in groups via TUPE to private sector, and you think that is de rigeur and clever, and that local governement is then no longer accountable for what outfits like Veolia get up to??

Don't you think the public sector might by now be a bit top heavy with dead-wood? You can't all be overseeing outsourced contracts - and most showing suggests none of you are.

I do.

I can't speak for the administrative types as I`m a front line uniformed public service type.
Forgive me, but yours is a rather old fashioned some would say hackneyed view of the public sector, it obviously goes down well with all your buccaneering steely-eyed privateer mates at the golf club on a Sunday lunchtime, but its not the public sector I recognise.
Almost all of my 30 year service has been dominated by a dogma driven adoption of private sector business practices, most of it I admit probably wholly necessary. Its quite easy to get sacked from the public sector now, but what is becoming harder is to retain staff willing to stay in post, that may not bother you, but Governments have to worry about such things.

Tromking

Well_excuse_me. wrote: »

Dunno, I ring the council offices and they transfer me on an internal number to "someone" who deals with the query, (or rather doesnt).

So your useless local council employee could very well be an equally useless private company employee?
Nice story.

agarnett

Note your view of my view Tromking, but don't worry - I haven't frequented golf clubs for decades except by rare invitation. I used to deliver the Rules of Golf each time a new edition came out (free and out of the goodness of my heart when added to all the other stuff I was paid to do with my day!), so frequented a lot of them once upon a time.

So hackneyed is it? As in common old pony? It may be an old view and widely held, but that alone doesn't make it any less accurate, does it?

Yes of course the dogma driven adoption of private sector business practices has been largely unnecessary - worse than that, it is probably more akin to having simply gone through the motions to satisfy some green behind the ears boss' limited idea of what a proper implementation looks like, and then calling it a more skilled job than previously!

We all know broadly how it went

Accepted it is frustrating for many inside the public sector to have seen it go downhill in such ways, but you can't complain about bright young things moving on if the environment they find themselves in is so stuffy and unexciting and just about survival to pension age whilst keeping ones nose clean, head down but with always one eye out for jumping neatly across the occasional passing logs in the stream as in some game of frogger!

Tromking

agarnett wrote: »

Note your view of my view Tromking, but don't worry - I haven't frequented golf clubs for decades except by rare invitation. I used to deliver the Rules of Golf each time a new edition came out (free and out of the goodness of my heart when added to all the other stuff I was paid to do with my day!), so frequented a lot of them once upon a time.

So hackneyed is it? As in common old pony? It may be an old view and widely held, but that alone doesn't make it any less accurate, does it?

Yes of course the dogma driven adoption of private sector business practices has been largely unnecessary - worse than that, it is probably more akin to having simply gone through the motions to satisfy some green behind the ears boss' limited idea of what a proper implementation looks like, and then calling it a more skilled job than previously!

We all know broadly how it went

Accepted it is frustrating for many inside the public sector to have seen it go downhill in such ways, but you can't complain about bright young things moving on if the environment they find themselves in is so stuffy and unexciting and just about survival to pension age whilst keeping ones nose clean, head down but with always one eye out for jumping neatly across the occasional passing logs in the stream as in some game of frogger!

If you can stereotype then so can I surely?
Does it not bother you that public services are going downhill, does your antipathy toward public servants and their pensions blind you to the negative that are worsening public services?
Time served Bods like me aren't the frustrated ones per se ,its the people trying to access those services and the politicians who are trying to staff their politically sensitive public services in straightened times that are struggling. Ask yourself the question why the state feels the compunction to cover public sector pension liabilities. You won't like the answer you come up with as it will chime with mine....its because they have to!:)