I'm saying it's easy to say things when you aren't in the position to follow through.

In UK, as an example:

Labour are in power and so find it very difficult to cut Public Spending. This is due to the fact that most Spending has been cut to the bone already over the last few years to fund the increased spending in things such as Health and Education.. things it cannot cut.

The Tory's, of course, are free to say that they will make huge cuts in public spending, without quantifying where these cuts will come from.



It must be a real bummer to go into a recession following a shit load of "Spending Reviews" that have already brought much of the Public Sector to it's knees due to lack of funding, just for a Political Dogma.

A few Ironic facts this type of politics have already produced:

Job Centre Plus frontline staff have only 5 minutes to get people to both sign for their benefits and try and find them a job, and get into trouble if they miss these targets for any reason. It's so bad that even if they KNOW that the guy is working on the side, they often dont have the time to fill out the paperwork to start an investigation, because they will get into trouble for missing their targets.

HMRC, the department that collects taxes and duties, have a "Tax Gap" that runs into 10's of Billions of ££ anually. Their running costs have been cut so drastically that they are closing or have closed 70% of Offices and reduced the number of staff by 10,000 or so. In this department, each extra member of staff brings in about 100X their salary to the treasury.

The HMRC call centres are only staffed for 50% of the calls they know they will receive. The Staff get into trouble if they take more than 3 minutes to get rid of a call.. it takes about this to identify the caller sometimes, never mind answer the bloody question.

All Departments have been under pressure to reduce the number of Civil Servants for years, even if they need the staff to do the job. This means that in many places they bring in "Consultants" that are actually doing the same Job as the guy they are sitting opposite, but are getting paid upto 10 times his/her salary to do it. Despite the savings they could make by employing a Civil Servant, the politics of the British Media and the current Government (and opposition) make it an impossible thing to do.

Many Departments are run on overtime, for the same reason. Keep the staff numbers down.. despite the fact that it costs twice as much per hour than just to employ enough staff.

HMRC "Saved" £105,000,000 the other year from one of its budgets. It cost them £106,000,000 from another budget to do it and involved a huge loss in service. It's been estimated that the changes have resulted in a net loss to the country of about £750,000,000 annually, but they could show the Treasury that the money had been saved from the budget in question, so thats all right then.

I'm sure there are similar examples in just about every Civil Service in the western hemisphere. If the Governments just told the staff they needed to save money and asked the question, the staff themselves could show them where the money is being wasted.

There is waste, but the Spending Reviews and outside managers dont know where this is. They just go for big one off hits that make things worse instead of the little stuff that is cumulative and costs nothing to change.

But thats much too simple a solution.

Rant over.

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An It Harm None, Do What You Will

Hope the government don't take notice of this or they will ask for an inquiry so that they can get a "proper" report. Of course, the costs for such an inquiry will have to come out of existing budgets.

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Political correctness is based on the principle that it's possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Well, then - sounds as if government has run amok over there.

So this is the model you say we should emulate?

I also said you'd find similar stories in just about every Civil Service in the western hemisphere.. including your own.

The problem is that Public Services are not profit making organisations, the people that control them these days come from the Private Sector and don't understand the way Government works.

An example:

An Agency that will remain nameless hired a new CEO.

The Budget of the Agency comes from it's clients, which are other Government Agencies and Departments, it gets nothing directly from Government and does not have a Trading Fund status. ie: The work it does pays for itself and the work for one client should not subsidise another, it should therefore not make a profit.

The new CEO came from a Private Sector company (again) and treated the Agency as one, he brought in his own Financial Director, again from the Private Sector.

In order to please the Treasury he made a "Profit" of 6% of the total Budget, returning this money to the Centre. However, in real life he didn't, as he did not count the work in progress which the Agency had already been paid for.

This means the following year he not only had 6% less resource to do the Job, as they were already committed, but the other Departments and Agencies wanted the same amount of work done as he'd reported for 6% less. The books showed the Agency had made a Profit, ergo the others were being overcharged. This was on top of the 5% efficiency savings he was committed to find as part of a Savings Review.

As soon as he'd realised what he'd done, but before the Ministers were made aware, he went for Promotion and got it, based upon the remarkable savings he'd made at the Agency.

He's now responsible in large part for setting Budgets for a number of different Departments, despite the fact he couldn't get the hang of the way budgets work for one small Agency.

It appears only those that use the services can appreciate that the Public and Private Sectors are different and cannot be compared in the round. However they can learn from each other where they overlap.

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An It Harm None, Do What You Will

You say this as if it weren't immediately apparent.

Let me invert your phraseology to offer you this:

'The problem is that Privately-Owned businesses are ideated and designed as profit making ventures, the people (sorry, it's 'who') control them these days come from the Public Sector and don't understand the way Capitalism works.'

You are hereby enlightened...or "un-", as I prefer to be.

Why did you think I'd disagree?

Someone that has been trained in the Public Sector will probably not look after the bottom line as well as someone that is from the Private Sector.

However, when costs need to be cut they will look at where this can be achieved without wholesale redundancies etc first, and are more likely to try and get the staff onboard to achieve it.

As I said, both sectors can learn from the other, there is an overlap.

The ethos, however, is different each. One doing "the job" of the other usually ends up costing heavily in the medium to long term.

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An It Harm None, Do What You Will