Best Of

I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.

I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.

Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.

Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.

It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.

You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.

At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.

You don't think it's likely, inevitable even, given profit motive, that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector? In any case I don't give a monkey's about a private company being inefficient unless I'm a shareholder, I'm not paying for that out of taxes.

That's exactly right. Being efficient means maximising the output from a given amount of land, labour and capital inputs. It is a constant, tedious, demanding grind and even when you put in the effort you still need judgement to get it right, because it involves making decisions about the future.

It is much easier to demand a subsidy from a spineless government or whack prices up on captive customers. Then inefficiencies get built in and you quickly end up with business that serve their employees and shareholders, not their customers.

The two defences against those practices are competition and the possibility of bankruptcy. Competition without bankruptcy is no use, like for instance a nationalised industry in a competitive industry. Nor is bankruptcy without competition - then you just get fat monopolists. Sometimes effective economic regulation can mimic competitive discipline, but it is very difficult and always a second best option.

The competitive, dynamic economy we desperately need, needs as much competition and as little state support as possible. Unfortunately of course this government is pulling in the opposite direction, and the last one was hardly a vigorous champion of free enterprise. We may get a saner government one day.

The nasty fringe on here who attack the “lazy” public sector on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, and with no reference to any of the work done on why “public sector productivity” metrics are bollocks, do annoy me. The myth of the “efficient private sector” crumbles instantly if you’ve worked in or with it at senior levels.

Large private firms are at least as inefficient and prone to error, but don’t have to disclose those errors as much, even when publicly traded, so pretend they are not. Small firms are often quite efficient, but also doing something quite simple and niche, where it’s a lot easier to do that.

In fact there are almost no private sector firms attempting to do anything half as complex as a Government Department or the NHS, or managing their way through as much ambiguity and change.

PB is becoming a class ridden shithole.
The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do.
You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it.
You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres.
I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡

Legendary rant. Love it! 👌

Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.

What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?

The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.

On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.

Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.

I expect more tumbleweed sadly.

Social care is the real destroyer of inheritances, not IHT.

Only if you need residential care for dementia, at home care is still exempt after May scrapped the dementia tax.

Personally I favour an insurance model for social care like the Japanese

I’ve never understood why the idea doesn’t take off. It makes total sense to me. We all face the risk of a long life in a home, but in practice only a minority get there. Classic case for insurance.

Um, no. There's nothing wrong with a Conservative pledging to reverse socialist policies. And, indeed, this is part of what they'll need to do to rebuild their coalition.

Oh, and first.

You are right.

I totally agree with your post. It’s an appalling header.
The last paragraph doesn’t even make grammatical sense does it? Is it “does” in this sentence that torpedoes the paragraph “her actions on this tax is further evidence of that does”. ?

TSE’s Kemi Attack is blatantly Kemi Centric completely ignoring she is figure head of a broad coalition on this one - LibDems side by side on platform with Kemi, Greenpeace and Just Stop Oil side by side with Kemi too on this one - TSE ignored that bit - Kemi is heading a broad alliance of all those in society who care and give a damn. All Labour have on their side is Treasury, IFS, BBC and Sky and ITV with out of date figures and dodgy fact checking. A state broadcaster should be focussing on financial stress, bankruptcies and suicides in farming. The Tractors should blockade the ports and oil refineries next as promised to make them shamed at their mistake of supporting help taken away where more help should be coming in. That’s the bottom line.

PS this weather is bad news for sheep. Hashtag difficult week.

PB is becoming a class ridden shithole.
The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do.
You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it.
You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres.
I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡

Becoming?

Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.

What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?

The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.

On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.

Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.

I expect more tumbleweed sadly.

I know you, like me, are knee deep in this.

An illustration of the waste:

My father is still at home with regular carer visits. He falls from time to time. Inevitable given his condition. No biggee. Check he's OK, help him up on sofa and make him a cuppa you might think.

But no. The carers will not apply common sense. They immediately call 999. Ambulance is booked but may be 4 - 6 hours. Dad expected to sit on floor for all this time, waiting to be helped up.So I (in another part of the country) get a call from the care agency, looking to be relieved. WTF do they expect me to do? I ring around best I can and - with luck - get a neighbour on phone who goes and helps him up. So I tell carer to cancel the ambulance. 'No' I'm told they can't do that. So now we have an ambulance coming at some point for an emergency which never existed. This has happened six times over last couple of months.

What a waste of time for the ambulance service. How many times is this scenario being played out across the country?

It's about discretion. A relative was working in care facility. She lifted a patient, by herself. Just off the bed, patient still over the bed. 6 inches or so. The patient was a little old lady. My relative likes to bench far more than the patients weight, at the gym. Risk to patient zero. Risk to my relative zero. Patient was in distress.....

Fired of course.

This is a huge issue. I have the same with ambulances being called.

The crew tell me they spend half the day dealing with this kind of stuff. No wonder wait times are 8 hours etc etc.

Agencies refuse to pick people off the floor. I even have equipment which I use myself to get relative off floor (i can provide details if anyone is interested).

They wont use that.

I assume this is all to do with modern insurance and risk and legal liability and all that shite.

But the nhs is picking up the pieces.

We've had the same thing. It is one of the reasons we've gone outside of the 'proper' agencies now.

We have a slide sheet and a lowerable bed which allows us to get the patient on to it without lifting, just a bit of dragging. The bed can then be jacked up.

Would the formal agency staff do that? No. Ambulance please.

Even for someone who just slid slowly onto the floor.

PB is becoming a class ridden shithole.
The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do.
You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it.
You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres.
I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡

Lol. In your list of jobs 'rich fuckers denigrate' do you have farmers?

As usual the best way to defeat right wing populists is to put them in power and let them destroy themselves - but at what cost to the rest of us???

*cough*BREXIT*cough*

Brexit came about due to centrist Dad Call me Dave.

Yep, never should have called the referendum.

Calling the EU referendum was not the problem. The trouble is Cameron is a lousy campaigner who ran a lousy campaign, but thought he was great at it.

Had Cameron campaigned for Leave in the Referendum do you think Remain would have won?

See my other post. But yes. Partly because Cameron would be leading Leave, and partly because someone else would have fronted Remain.

Interesting. My assumption at the time was that Cameron leading the Leave campaign would have given Leave a victory by around 60-40.