The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Where do you think that is - because in Local Government I know adult and child social care is a money pit which would consume every penny in council tax and demand more.
REFORM have released some policies on Net zero. Tbh they show they have a long way to go to be a serious party with decent policies, even if I really would wish they won wipe out Labour All just utterly terrible.
I feel obliged to make a point I have made before. All these fit, healthy, slim people are still going to die and if they don't die of the diseases of obesity they will die of something else which just might prove even more expensive to treat.
Its not about one thing. People will be happier. People will work longer and more effectively generating tax. Happier, productive people will be less likely to vote for Putinista shills.
Not really.
Firstly, even if they work longer they are more likely to live longer as pensioners with all the consequential costs. Socially committed and caring people like my parents smoked themselves to death and died at 66 and 67 having received almost no pension for all the NI they paid over their working lives. Kerching.
Neither of them needed any care costs either other than a bit of help for my mum with her terminal cancer. Kerching kerching.
I suppose its possible that those who don't drink, eat plenty of fish and exercise regularly are happier but I have yet to see much convincing evidence of this. I have seen even less evidence that they are less likely to vote for loons like Trump or Farage.
Type 2 diabetes has one of the highest shares of NHS costs of all diseases and is associated with obesity. Obesity is expensive for the state.
But, yes, from an entirely Machiavellian point of view, smoking is great. I do, however, think the point of government is to make our lives better, not just to save money by killing us off before we draw upon our pensions.
Going back to the polling earlier, where basically Reform form a government on 300 seats or whatever, or there is a Grande Coalition of Lab-Con -- Reform (Tice/Farage) have a massive albatross around their necks on the Putin love fst stuff.
We are effectively imho already at war with Russia.
Seems very very likely by the GE of 2029 we will be even close to war.
Their vote will be snow in April.
We aren't going to War with Russia, most likely it will be a deal on current boundaries which will stay frozen until a new President replaces Trump
Do you mean Trump or Putin?
Neither is leaving office other than in a pine box.
Under the US constitution Trump is leaving office in 4 years time even if his approval rating is 90%
As interpreted by the Supreme Court, which has been rigged by Trump and has already granted him effective total immunity from prosecution. There's no particular reason to suppose that they won't rule he's also allowed to stand again, because reasons, and the subsequent election can then be fiddled. Unless the justices show unexpected backbone, in which case expect a few accidental tragic falls out of the windows of tall buildings.
The judges can certainly try and interpret the constitution in a conservative direction but what they have never done is read exactly the opposite of what it says. The 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.'
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
Is this a new moderation policy, or just the RFK exception to the existing one ?
The c-word exclusion was the direct instruction of OGH, who is of the generation that considered it the ultimate bad word. OGH has taken a step back from the day-to-day running of the site. That function is now done by the two mods, one of which is @rcs1000. His censorship space is different to OGH and he occasionally uses the c-word. But OGH's rule has not been revoked for the non-mods.
There are also perceived misogyny issues around the use of the c-word as an expletive.
Are prick, cock, dick, penis, bollocks, bellend, knob and any other expletives derived from words for male sexual organs misandry?
No, and nor is pussy widely seen as misogynistic, so probably the extreme nature of the c-word is a factor here.
But you've reminded me of my favourite 2010s-era Viz joke – Education Secretary Michael Gove revealed that 90 per cent of the emails he received misspelled the word bellend.
Going back to the polling earlier, where basically Reform form a government on 300 seats or whatever, or there is a Grande Coalition of Lab-Con -- Reform (Tice/Farage) have a massive albatross around their necks on the Putin love fst stuff.
We are effectively imho already at war with Russia.
Seems very very likely by the GE of 2029 we will be even close to war.
Their vote will be snow in April.
We aren't going to War with Russia, most likely it will be a deal on current boundaries which will stay frozen until a new President replaces Trump
Do you mean Trump or Putin?
Neither is leaving office other than in a pine box.
Under the US constitution Trump is leaving office in 4 years time even if his approval rating is 90%
Genuine
Look at what is happening before your very eyes.
Unless there is a constitutional amendment requiring 2/3 of Congress and the states behind it or Trump has the military behind him to enforce a dictatorship, which he didn't in Jan 2021, he will be leaving office in Jan 2029
I think the pessimistic take on the current situation is a civil war in relatively short order. I can't imagine many blue states putting up with what Musk is up to for very long. And it seems USonians are pretty entrenched in their views.
I think a lot depends on whether the administration tries to defy the courts. If they do, I suspect there will be a flashpoint for violence at some point soon that will snowball.
At which point, presumably, the military will have to pick a side. So Trump may have the military behind him by 2029 (or may be forced from office by said military).
I'm not saying that will happen, but I don't think we're that far from it if a few bad things happen in sequence.
I don't think so, as long as the electoral cycle is allowed to play out its natural course. The Dems could even retake Congress in 2026
The judges can certainly try and interpret the constitution in a conservative direction but what they have never done is read exactly the opposite of what it says. The 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.'
Is this a new moderation policy, or just the RFK exception to the existing one ?
The c-word exclusion was the direct instruction of OGH, who is of the generation that considered it the ultimate bad word. OGH has taken a step back from the day-to-day running of the site. That function is now done by the two mods, one of which is @rcs1000. His censorship space is different to OGH and he occasionally uses the c-word. But OGH's rule has not been revoked for the non-mods.
There are also perceived misogyny issues around the use of the c-word as an expletive.
Are prick, cock, dick, penis, bollocks, bellend, knob and any other expletives derived from words for male sexual organs misandry?
Arguably much milder language, the female equivalent of pussy.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
No, I think there is a genuine drop in productivity in the NHS too.
It's complicated why that should be: a mix of demotivated staff, lack of investment in training, decrepit buildings that need replacing, obsolete capital equipment and IT etc. Most of all it is lack of incentives. Unlike fee for service systems* there is no reason to bust a gut.
*these have their own problems, FFS systems do encourage unnecessary investigations and interventions.
Going back to the polling earlier, where basically Reform form a government on 300 seats or whatever, or there is a Grande Coalition of Lab-Con -- Reform (Tice/Farage) have a massive albatross around their necks on the Putin love fst stuff.
We are effectively imho already at war with Russia.
Seems very very likely by the GE of 2029 we will be even close to war.
Their vote will be snow in April.
We aren't going to War with Russia, most likely it will be a deal on current boundaries which will stay frozen until a new President replaces Trump
Do you mean Trump or Putin?
Neither is leaving office other than in a pine box.
Under the US constitution Trump is leaving office in 4 years time even if his approval rating is 90%
Genuine
Look at what is happening before your very eyes.
Unless there is a constitutional amendment requiring 2/3 of Congress and the states behind it or Trump has the military behind him to enforce a dictatorship, which he didn't in Jan 2021, he will be leaving office in Jan 2029
I think the pessimistic take on the current situation is a civil war in relatively short order. I can't imagine many blue states putting up with what Musk is up to for very long. And it seems USonians are pretty entrenched in their views.
I think a lot depends on whether the administration tries to defy the courts. If they do, I suspect there will be a flashpoint for violence at some point soon that will snowball.
At which point, presumably, the military will have to pick a side. So Trump may have the military behind him by 2029 (or may be forced from office by said military).
I'm not saying that will happen, but I don't think we're that far from it if a few bad things happen in sequence.
The argument against this that the previous civil war had an obvious distinction, slavery (way of life), whereas a blue state will not be 100% democrat. So in this context Blue states doesn’t equate to the North and Red States the South.
The judges can certainly try and interpret the constitution in a conservative direction but what they have never done is read exactly the opposite of what it says. The 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.'
Reform 276 (+271) Lab 139 (-273) Con 108 (-13) LD 59 (-13) SNP 40 (+31) Green 4 (=) PC 2 (-2) Others 4 (-1)
Either way it’s a Reform government with an outright majority or assistance from the humiliated Tories
These systems completely fall apart when you get away from the norms in polling. For instance with the LDs and Tories on those numbers and Reform not contending those seats the LDs are likely to make gains not lose 13. The other prediction of 5 gains for the LDs is more likely, but I still wouldn't trust any extrapolation of seats. Now ok the LD number is trivial in the grand scheme of things with a huge number of Reform gains and a big drop in Lab/Con, and I haven't examined them to see if they are sensible or not, but really when you see one completely illogical number, knowing the seats involved, it makes the rest really dubious.
These prediction algorithms are completely useless when you come away from the 2 party system (with a few other influential but smaller parties [for fptp purposes] thrown in).
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
That's pretty much Streetings plans. The money goes to Primary care and public health.
It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
The judges can certainly try and interpret the constitution in a conservative direction but what they have never done is read exactly the opposite of what it says. The 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.'
Going back to the polling earlier, where basically Reform form a government on 300 seats or whatever, or there is a Grande Coalition of Lab-Con -- Reform (Tice/Farage) have a massive albatross around their necks on the Putin love fst stuff.
We are effectively imho already at war with Russia.
Seems very very likely by the GE of 2029 we will be even close to war.
Their vote will be snow in April.
We aren't going to War with Russia, most likely it will be a deal on current boundaries which will stay frozen until a new President replaces Trump
Do you mean Trump or Putin?
Neither is leaving office other than in a pine box.
Under the US constitution Trump is leaving office in 4 years time even if his approval rating is 90%
As interpreted by the Supreme Court, which has been rigged by Trump and has already granted him effective total immunity from prosecution. There's no particular reason to suppose that they won't rule he's also allowed to stand again, because reasons, and the subsequent election can then be fiddled. Unless the justices show unexpected backbone, in which case expect a few accidental tragic falls out of the windows of tall buildings.
Several supreme courts in the world are happy to ignore term limits when asked. Even these GOP justices i dont see why they'd feel the need to do that, but we live in interesting times.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
No, I think there is a genuine drop in productivity in the NHS too.
It's complicated why that should be: a mix of demotivated staff, lack of investment in training, decrepit buildings that need replacing, obsolete capital equipment and IT etc. Most of all it is lack of incentives. Unlike fee for service systems* there is no reason to bust a gut.
*these have their own problems, FFS systems do encourage unnecessary investigations and interventions.
Put people's jobs on the line and they might start though. It sounds harsh but the impossibility of someone losing their job over poor performance in the state is absolutely hampering individual productivity. It's stupid to pretend otherwise, how many NHS managers sit at home doing fuck all just pretending to work while watching Netflix?
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Where does this strange fantasy come that no-one in the public sector is interested in making savings? Budgets are tight. Public sector bodies are constantly looking to see how they can cut costs. Politicians are always demanding cuts where possible.
EXCL: Education Minister Stephen Morgan ran a vile WhatsApp group which branded pensioners “terrorists”, hurled abuse at colleagues and shared memes of ex-PM Rishi Sunak being deported to Rwanda.
I'd love to know how pensioners qualify as terrorists. Isn't there an organisation that deradicalises people? I'm 76 so when is my referral coming?
Good evening, everybody.
Good evening! Just called to dinner (woodpigeon breasts - doing our thing for local agriculture and food security).
Partridge en croute tonight for me. First meal home after more than month away offshore where the food is decent enough in a transport caff sort of way.
I made a very tasty chicken risotto tonight. Apologies to PB for not going with a more exotic bird.
EXCL: Education Minister Stephen Morgan ran a vile WhatsApp group which branded pensioners “terrorists”, hurled abuse at colleagues and shared memes of ex-PM Rishi Sunak being deported to Rwanda.
I'd love to know how pensioners qualify as terrorists. Isn't there an organisation that deradicalises people? I'm 76 so when is my referral coming?
Good evening, everybody.
Good evening! Just called to dinner (woodpigeon breasts - doing our thing for local agriculture and food security).
Partridge en croute tonight for me. First meal home after more than month away offshore where the food is decent enough in a transport caff sort of way.
I made a very tasty chicken risotto tonight. Apologies to PB for not going with a more exotic bird.
Apology accepted. But I hope you both enjoyed the chicken risotto.
The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of about 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850, and the additional thousands of Native Americans and their enslaved African Americans[3] within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government.[4]
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Where does this strange fantasy come that no-one in the public sector is interested in making savings? Budgets are tight. Public sector bodies are constantly looking to see how they can cut costs. Politicians are always demanding cuts where possible.
I get arguments around things like home working, some take the view that anyone working from home is basically doing nothing, and even if that's wrong it makes for a clear proposal - make people come in. But the idea there's no effort into making savings is an easy fantasy - unspecified reforms and cuts are the new banker's bonuses for magically conjuring funds for everything.
The retort would be theres still much to be done and it needs to be drastic to have effect, which can be reasonably argued, but its not as though no one is genuine in trying now.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
That's pretty much Streetings plans. The money goes to Primary care and public health. . It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
No one who is medically fit to leave hospital should be there. We have to sort social care so it doesn’t happen. Each hospital bed costs vast sums so needs to be free for those who need the care.
Going back to the polling earlier, where basically Reform form a government on 300 seats or whatever, or there is a Grande Coalition of Lab-Con -- Reform (Tice/Farage) have a massive albatross around their necks on the Putin love fst stuff.
We are effectively imho already at war with Russia.
Seems very very likely by the GE of 2029 we will be even close to war.
Their vote will be snow in April.
We aren't going to War with Russia, most likely it will be a deal on current boundaries which will stay frozen until a new President replaces Trump
Do you mean Trump or Putin?
Neither is leaving office other than in a pine box.
Under the US constitution Trump is leaving office in 4 years time even if his approval rating is 90%
As interpreted by the Supreme Court, which has been rigged by Trump and has already granted him effective total immunity from prosecution. There's no particular reason to suppose that they won't rule he's also allowed to stand again, because reasons, and the subsequent election can then be fiddled. Unless the justices show unexpected backbone, in which case expect a few accidental tragic falls out of the windows of tall buildings.
The judges can certainly try and interpret the constitution in a conservative direction but what they have never done is read exactly the opposite of what it says. The 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.'
This administration doesn't adopt a conservative attitude to the sovereignty of the people, it is populist. The Republican Party is not conservative, it is populist. It claims to have won all of the last three presidential elections, to have been cheated out of the middle one, and the president has pardoned all the violent insurrectionists who tried to thwart that election accordingly. It is no respecter of institutions, and I doubt that it will tolerate the possibility of losing again.
If Trump wants to keep going the supreme court will probably give him what he wants. If they don't, he could either arrange for vacancies to arise through unfortunate events, allowing for the installation of more pliable replacements, or simply get Congress to change the law to expand the size of the bench to similar effect.
Like the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Empire, the institutions of the state can be retained to offer a veneer of constitutional probity, whilst all the actual power is concentrated in the hands of the chief executive. The existing political order in the US is just as open to subversion, through a combination of corruption, rabble rousing and the use or threat of force, as was that overthrown by the Caesars.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Where does this strange fantasy come that no-one in the public sector is interested in making savings? Budgets are tight. Public sector bodies are constantly looking to see how they can cut costs. Politicians are always demanding cuts where possible.
The ONS literally said that productivity is down 8.4% overall and 18.4% in the NHS vs pre-covid. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, it's not me saying this, it's the government's own bloody statistics body. I guarantee you that they don't look to cut costs the same way the private sector does. Early in my career my then employer cut 15% of jobs globally, resulting in 45k people being let go including about 50 people in my location, I survived by virtue of being cheap to employ. Since then that company has gone from a valuation of ~$12bn to around $140bn and many people place the start of the turnaround on that first big round of job cuts. In which world will the government announce 15% job losses across the state?
The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of about 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850, and the additional thousands of Native Americans and their enslaved African Americans[3] within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government.[4]
Going back to the polling earlier, where basically Reform form a government on 300 seats or whatever, or there is a Grande Coalition of Lab-Con -- Reform (Tice/Farage) have a massive albatross around their necks on the Putin love fst stuff.
We are effectively imho already at war with Russia.
Seems very very likely by the GE of 2029 we will be even close to war.
Their vote will be snow in April.
We aren't going to War with Russia, most likely it will be a deal on current boundaries which will stay frozen until a new President replaces Trump
Do you mean Trump or Putin?
Neither is leaving office other than in a pine box.
Under the US constitution Trump is leaving office in 4 years time even if his approval rating is 90%
As interpreted by the Supreme Court, which has been rigged by Trump and has already granted him effective total immunity from prosecution. There's no particular reason to suppose that they won't rule he's also allowed to stand again, because reasons, and the subsequent election can then be fiddled. Unless the justices show unexpected backbone, in which case expect a few accidental tragic falls out of the windows of tall buildings.
The judges can certainly try and interpret the constitution in a conservative direction but what they have never done is read exactly the opposite of what it says. The 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.'
The Trump immunity decision came close to saying the opposite of the what the founders intended. Some of their 2nd Amendment decisions have gone very far beyond the text.
Macmillan Cancer Support cuts quarter of staff and scraps hardship scheme
Macmillan has spent £100m more than it raised over the last six years. In 2023, spending on wages and salaries surged to £80m, up by almost one-fifth (18%) from £68m in just 12 months.
EXCL: Education Minister Stephen Morgan ran a vile WhatsApp group which branded pensioners “terrorists”, hurled abuse at colleagues and shared memes of ex-PM Rishi Sunak being deported to Rwanda.
I'd love to know how pensioners qualify as terrorists. Isn't there an organisation that deradicalises people? I'm 76 so when is my referral coming?
Good evening, everybody.
Good evening! Just called to dinner (woodpigeon breasts - doing our thing for local agriculture and food security).
Partridge en croute tonight for me. First meal home after more than month away offshore where the food is decent enough in a transport caff sort of way.
Oh, that's very nice.
Our pigeon breasts, braised slowly with shallots, ended up almost like lamb's liver. Very nice.
Listening to that, and reflecting on for example the history of Laurence Fox, I think that Richard Tice and a few others who are quite prominent may be at risk of going down a similar rabbit hole around the Trump stuff as David Icke did when he lost himself to conspiracy theories.
It's good to see someone like JHB having her feet instinctively on the ground, no matter how much I often disagree with her.
Reading all the claims and allegations put out by Elon Musk and Trump's other defenders, including the Pres Secretary Karoline Leavitt, I don't think I have yet seen a single one that has been shown conclusively to be true or accurate. These have the nature of self-justifying tropes shouted by the credulous to silence objection.
Musk's stuff has the feel of someone engaged in a headlong hunt for props, as did his interventions in European politics.
That's an impression I get debating with some from the Trumpvangelical scene, and Brits who get sucked in.
There's imo a great need for a "pause and reflect" or "stop and think" habit, doubtless including me sometimes.
Going back to the polling earlier, where basically Reform form a government on 300 seats or whatever, or there is a Grande Coalition of Lab-Con -- Reform (Tice/Farage) have a massive albatross around their necks on the Putin love fst stuff.
We are effectively imho already at war with Russia.
Seems very very likely by the GE of 2029 we will be even close to war.
Their vote will be snow in April.
We aren't going to War with Russia, most likely it will be a deal on current boundaries which will stay frozen until a new President replaces Trump
Do you mean Trump or Putin?
Neither is leaving office other than in a pine box.
Under the US constitution Trump is leaving office in 4 years time even if his approval rating is 90%
Genuine
Look at what is happening before your very eyes.
Unless there is a constitutional amendment requiring 2/3 of Congress and the states behind it or Trump has the military behind him to enforce a dictatorship, which he didn't in Jan 2021, he will be leaving office in Jan 2029
I think the pessimistic take on the current situation is a civil war in relatively short order. I can't imagine many blue states putting up with what Musk is up to for very long. And it seems USonians are pretty entrenched in their views.
I think a lot depends on whether the administration tries to defy the courts. If they do, I suspect there will be a flashpoint for violence at some point soon that will snowball.
At which point, presumably, the military will have to pick a side. So Trump may have the military behind him by 2029 (or may be forced from office by said military).
I'm not saying that will happen, but I don't think we're that far from it if a few bad things happen in sequence.
The argument against this that the previous civil war had an obvious distinction, slavery (way of life), whereas a blue state will not be 100% democrat. So in this context Blue states doesn’t equate to the North and Red States the South.
Perhaps. Though there were plenty within the southern states that opposed slavery (and some within the northern states that still wanted it). Still, I take your point that the dividing line is less clear (and whilst Trump's popularity remains relatively high I think your point is very strong). Things can shift quickly, though.
@TimS agreed on democrats being cowed and dispirited, but I think they'll be shocked out of this at some point. Not by the boiling frog nature of DOGE, but by some catastrophe that can be convincingly pinned on Musk's dismantling of the institutions of government.
@HYUFD I also agree that if the electoral cycle continues and is still seen to be fair, that will defuse things somewhat, almost regardless of whether the Dems retake the house.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Where does this strange fantasy come that no-one in the public sector is interested in making savings? Budgets are tight. Public sector bodies are constantly looking to see how they can cut costs. Politicians are always demanding cuts where possible.
The ONS literally said that productivity is down 8.4% overall and 18.4% in the NHS vs pre-covid. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, it's not me saying this, it's the government's own bloody statistics body. I guarantee you that they don't look to cut costs the same way the private sector does. Early in my career my then employer cut 15% of jobs globally, resulting in 45k people being let go including about 50 people in my location, I survived by virtue of being cheap to employ. Since then that company has gone from a valuation of ~$12bn to around $140bn and many people place the start of the turnaround on that first big round of job cuts. In which world will the government announce 15% job losses across the state?
Do you have a link to the ONS report? How do they measure the output of a public sector employee?
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Where does this strange fantasy come that no-one in the public sector is interested in making savings? Budgets are tight. Public sector bodies are constantly looking to see how they can cut costs. Politicians are always demanding cuts where possible.
The ONS literally said that productivity is down 8.4% overall and 18.4% in the NHS vs pre-covid. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, it's not me saying this, it's the government's own bloody statistics body. I guarantee you that they don't look to cut costs the same way the private sector does. Early in my career my then employer cut 15% of jobs globally, resulting in 45k people being let go including about 50 people in my location, I survived by virtue of being cheap to employ. Since then that company has gone from a valuation of ~$12bn to around $140bn and many people place the start of the turnaround on that first big round of job cuts. In which world will the government announce 15% job losses across the state?
The question hangs on methodology though, surely? How is NHS productivity measured? How should NHS outcomes be measured? Conceivable you could say that a GP doing 5 appointments in the time he/she used to do 4 has seen a productivity increase of 25%. But what if the quality of those appointments has gone down? Measuring a companies productivity or a nation is done in simple money terms. How do you do it for the NHS?
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
No, I think there is a genuine drop in productivity in the NHS too.
It's complicated why that should be: a mix of demotivated staff, lack of investment in training, decrepit buildings that need replacing, obsolete capital equipment and IT etc. Most of all it is lack of incentives. Unlike fee for service systems* there is no reason to bust a gut.
*these have their own problems, FFS systems do encourage unnecessary investigations and interventions.
Put people's jobs on the line and they might start though. It sounds harsh but the impossibility of someone losing their job over poor performance in the state is absolutely hampering individual productivity. It's stupid to pretend otherwise, how many NHS managers sit at home doing fuck all just pretending to work while watching Netflix?
They cut the NHS England headcount by 40% a couple of years back and are talking about another 10% cuts. Everyone was re-applying for their own jobs. Again, you are in some strange fantasy land that bears no relationship with reality.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
Payrises need to be coupled with output increases. We need to end the cycle of something for nothing in the state. End WFH, stop automatic pay rises, bring in union busting laws, strike busting laws and make it much, much easier to fire people at will from the public sector, with no recourse for compensation except in cases of discrimination or foul play. A 10% pay rise must be coupled with a 5-10% cut in headcount.
Macmillan Cancer Support cuts quarter of staff and scraps hardship scheme
Macmillan has spent £100m more than it raised over the last six years. In 2023, spending on wages and salaries surged to £80m, up by almost one-fifth (18%) from £68m in just 12 months.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
No, I think there is a genuine drop in productivity in the NHS too.
It's complicated why that should be: a mix of demotivated staff, lack of investment in training, decrepit buildings that need replacing, obsolete capital equipment and IT etc. Most of all it is lack of incentives. Unlike fee for service systems* there is no reason to bust a gut.
*these have their own problems, FFS systems do encourage unnecessary investigations and interventions.
Put people's jobs on the line and they might start though. It sounds harsh but the impossibility of someone losing their job over poor performance in the state is absolutely hampering individual productivity. It's stupid to pretend otherwise, how many NHS managers sit at home doing fuck all just pretending to work while watching Netflix?
They cut the NHS England headcount by 40% a couple of years back and are talking about another 10% cuts. Everyone was re-applying for their own jobs. Again, you are in some strange fantasy land that bears no relationship with reality.
Blah blah blah, the ONS say NHS productivity is down 18.5% and you're giving me anecdotes. Get real.
Macmillan Cancer Support cuts quarter of staff and scraps hardship scheme
Macmillan has spent £100m more than it raised over the last six years. In 2023, spending on wages and salaries surged to £80m, up by almost one-fifth (18%) from £68m in just 12 months.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
That's pretty much Streetings plans. The money goes to Primary care and public health. . It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
No one who is medically fit to leave hospital should be there. We have to sort social care so it doesn’t happen. Each hospital bed costs vast sums so needs to be free for those who need the care.
This may be a very naive question but why can't the medically fit be discharged into hotels? Are hospitals less expensive than decent hotels?
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
No, I think there is a genuine drop in productivity in the NHS too.
It's complicated why that should be: a mix of demotivated staff, lack of investment in training, decrepit buildings that need replacing, obsolete capital equipment and IT etc. Most of all it is lack of incentives. Unlike fee for service systems* there is no reason to bust a gut.
*these have their own problems, FFS systems do encourage unnecessary investigations and interventions.
Put people's jobs on the line and they might start though. It sounds harsh but the impossibility of someone losing their job over poor performance in the state is absolutely hampering individual productivity. It's stupid to pretend otherwise, how many NHS managers sit at home doing fuck all just pretending to work while watching Netflix?
They cut the NHS England headcount by 40% a couple of years back and are talking about another 10% cuts. Everyone was re-applying for their own jobs. Again, you are in some strange fantasy land that bears no relationship with reality.
Blah blah blah, the ONS say NHS productivity is down 18.5% and you're giving me anecdotes. Get real.
You are talking apples and pears NHS England is not the same as the NHS.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
That's pretty much Streetings plans. The money goes to Primary care and public health. . It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
No one who is medically fit to leave hospital should be there. We have to sort social care so it doesn’t happen. Each hospital bed costs vast sums so needs to be free for those who need the care.
Quite. Streeting's plans would be much easier to take seriously if he'd not created a pointless talking shop to deliberately put off any action on social care until after the next election.
We all know that's true, and we know why he's done it. Expanding provision will cost a bloody fortune, the logical place to raise the extra capital for elderly care is from the users themselves, and we all know what happened to the last person to dare propose that we do that. From a landslide majority to a hung parliament in about five minutes.
The hospitals are therefore stuck with the bed blocking problem. I imagine that the Government will probably try to keep blaming the Tories, or start blaming councils for not finding enough places, or both. Anything to kick the can down the road.
Senate Republicans say they won’t support tax bill that doesn’t make Trump cuts permanent
“Let me just say that a 10-year extension of President Trump’s expiring provisions is over $4.7 trillion according to CBO,” Smith told reporters, referring to the Congressional Budget Office, the official legislative scoring body. “Anything less would be saying that President Trump is wrong on tax policy.”
Is this a new moderation policy, or just the RFK exception to the existing one ?
The c-word exclusion was the direct instruction of OGH, who is of the generation that considered it the ultimate bad word. OGH has taken a step back from the day-to-day running of the site. That function is now done by the two mods, one of which is @rcs1000. His censorship space is different to OGH and he occasionally uses the c-word. But OGH's rule has not been revoked for the non-mods.
There are also perceived misogyny issues around the use of the c-word as an expletive.
Are prick, cock, dick, penis, bollocks, bellend, knob and any other expletives derived from words for male sexual organs misandry?
Best to avoid all of them. Arsehole is a perfect gender-neutral insult.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
That's pretty much Streetings plans. The money goes to Primary care and public health. . It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
No one who is medically fit to leave hospital should be there. We have to sort social care so it doesn’t happen. Each hospital bed costs vast sums so needs to be free for those who need the care.
This may be a very naive question but why can't the medically fit be discharged into hotels? Are hospitals less expensive than decent hotels?
Usually because these are elderly patients living at home but in need of a care package (e.g. four home visits a day to get them up, feed them, put them to bed etc). Hotels don’t provide that normally, sadly.
But you know what did? The old community hospitals in smaller towns etc.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
That's pretty much Streetings plans. The money goes to Primary care and public health. . It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
No one who is medically fit to leave hospital should be there. We have to sort social care so it doesn’t happen. Each hospital bed costs vast sums so needs to be free for those who need the care.
This may be a very naive question but why can't the medically fit be discharged into hotels? Are hospitals less expensive than decent hotels?
That would provide the accommodation but not the care. The problem isn't usually having somewhere to go back to, it's having someone to come round three times a day to feed you and wipe your bottom.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Where does this strange fantasy come that no-one in the public sector is interested in making savings? Budgets are tight. Public sector bodies are constantly looking to see how they can cut costs. Politicians are always demanding cuts where possible.
The ONS literally said that productivity is down 8.4% overall and 18.4% in the NHS vs pre-covid. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, it's not me saying this, it's the government's own bloody statistics body. I guarantee you that they don't look to cut costs the same way the private sector does. Early in my career my then employer cut 15% of jobs globally, resulting in 45k people being let go including about 50 people in my location, I survived by virtue of being cheap to employ. Since then that company has gone from a valuation of ~$12bn to around $140bn and many people place the start of the turnaround on that first big round of job cuts. In which world will the government announce 15% job losses across the state?
Do you have a link to the ONS report? How do they measure the output of a public sector employee?
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
That's pretty much Streetings plans. The money goes to Primary care and public health. . It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
No one who is medically fit to leave hospital should be there. We have to sort social care so it doesn’t happen. Each hospital bed costs vast sums so needs to be free for those who need the care.
Quite. Streeting's plans would be much easier to take seriously if he'd not created a pointless talking shop to deliberately put off any action on social care until after the next election.
We all know that's true, and we know why he's done it. Expanding provision will cost a bloody fortune, the logical place to raise the extra capital for elderly care is from the users themselves, and we all know what happened to the last person to dare propose that we do that. From a landslide majority to a hung parliament in about five minutes.
The hospitals are therefore stuck with the bed blocking problem. I imagine that the Government will probably try to keep blaming the Tories, or start blaming councils for not finding enough places, or both. Anything to kick the can down the road.
Or just fund social care via national insurance, as Boris tried to do or by a separate insurance system as the Japanese do
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
No, I think there is a genuine drop in productivity in the NHS too.
It's complicated why that should be: a mix of demotivated staff, lack of investment in training, decrepit buildings that need replacing, obsolete capital equipment and IT etc. Most of all it is lack of incentives. Unlike fee for service systems* there is no reason to bust a gut.
*these have their own problems, FFS systems do encourage unnecessary investigations and interventions.
Put people's jobs on the line and they might start though. It sounds harsh but the impossibility of someone losing their job over poor performance in the state is absolutely hampering individual productivity. It's stupid to pretend otherwise, how many NHS managers sit at home doing fuck all just pretending to work while watching Netflix?
They cut the NHS England headcount by 40% a couple of years back and are talking about another 10% cuts. Everyone was re-applying for their own jobs. Again, you are in some strange fantasy land that bears no relationship with reality.
Blah blah blah, the ONS say NHS productivity is down 18.5% and you're giving me anecdotes. Get real.
Here's a mischievous thought: To begin any negotiation, Ukraine should ask for St. Petersburg and Moscow as compensation for their losses. While letting it be known quietly that Putin might keep Moscow if he gives in quickly on all the other issues.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
No, I think there is a genuine drop in productivity in the NHS too.
It's complicated why that should be: a mix of demotivated staff, lack of investment in training, decrepit buildings that need replacing, obsolete capital equipment and IT etc. Most of all it is lack of incentives. Unlike fee for service systems* there is no reason to bust a gut.
*these have their own problems, FFS systems do encourage unnecessary investigations and interventions.
Put people's jobs on the line and they might start though. It sounds harsh but the impossibility of someone losing their job over poor performance in the state is absolutely hampering individual productivity. It's stupid to pretend otherwise, how many NHS managers sit at home doing fuck all just pretending to work while watching Netflix?
They cut the NHS England headcount by 40% a couple of years back and are talking about another 10% cuts. Everyone was re-applying for their own jobs. Again, you are in some strange fantasy land that bears no relationship with reality.
Blah blah blah, the ONS say NHS productivity is down 18.5% and you're giving me anecdotes. Get real.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
That's pretty much Streetings plans. The money goes to Primary care and public health. . It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
No one who is medically fit to leave hospital should be there. We have to sort social care so it doesn’t happen. Each hospital bed costs vast sums so needs to be free for those who need the care.
This may be a very naive question but why can't the medically fit be discharged into hotels? Are hospitals less expensive than decent hotels?
A bit more than maid service is generally needed.
My Trust has just opened its own 70 bed Social Care home.
Only a cynic would suggest that it is deliberately poor in order to incentivise residents to move elsewhere...
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
Payrises need to be coupled with output increases. We need to end the cycle of something for nothing in the state. End WFH, stop automatic pay rises, bring in union busting laws, strike busting laws and make it much, much easier to fire people at will from the public sector, with no recourse for compensation except in cases of discrimination or foul play. A 10% pay rise must be coupled with a 5-10% cut in headcount.
You are comparing nominal and actual. So, a 10% wage increase is entirely justified if we have 10% inflation simply to retain the real value of the wage. It does not mean that there needs to be a cut in headcount as well. Of course management should always be looking to reduce headcount where possible regardless of what people are being paid.
I am highly sympathetic to some of your points. I fear WFH, combined with an anxiety about everyone's mental health and work life balance simply means that it is a lot easier not to work as hard as you do in an office where your output is readily assessable and comparable.
But you are sounding like Elon Musk. A more measured and focused way to address these problems is needed.
Going back to the polling earlier, where basically Reform form a government on 300 seats or whatever, or there is a Grande Coalition of Lab-Con -- Reform (Tice/Farage) have a massive albatross around their necks on the Putin love fst stuff.
We are effectively imho already at war with Russia.
Seems very very likely by the GE of 2029 we will be even close to war.
Their vote will be snow in April.
We aren't going to War with Russia, most likely it will be a deal on current boundaries which will stay frozen until a new President replaces Trump
Do you mean Trump or Putin?
Neither is leaving office other than in a pine box.
Under the US constitution Trump is leaving office in 4 years time even if his approval rating is 90%
As interpreted by the Supreme Court, which has been rigged by Trump and has already granted him effective total immunity from prosecution. There's no particular reason to suppose that they won't rule he's also allowed to stand again, because reasons, and the subsequent election can then be fiddled. Unless the justices show unexpected backbone, in which case expect a few accidental tragic falls out of the windows of tall buildings.
The judges can certainly try and interpret the constitution in a conservative direction but what they have never done is read exactly the opposite of what it says. The 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.'
The Trump immunity decision came close to saying the opposite of the what the founders intended. Some of their 2nd Amendment decisions have gone very far beyond the text.
No, it did not contradict any of the articles or amendments of the constitution and the 2nd amendment literally gives a right to bear arms that can be interpreted widely in that parameter.
The 22nd amendment however cannot be interpreted in any other way than a 2 election limit for presidents as that is precisely what it says. I suppose the court could at the extreme say he can just continue as president indefinitely with no 3rd election to run for but unless the military backed that that would almost certainly not be enforceable and even if most of the military did back it would just lead to blue states secession from the union and maybe even a second civil war
Poor productivity has been a growing issue for a long time. With all the AI innovation, businesses won't survive if they don't revolutionize with all these instant win technologies at their fingertips. It will be interesting to see if the public sector can follow suit.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
Careful - there was a study going round that showed the massive cut in middle management from 2010 onwards led to consultants doing loads of paperwork, killing productivity.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
That's pretty much Streetings plans. The money goes to Primary care and public health. . It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
No one who is medically fit to leave hospital should be there. We have to sort social care so it doesn’t happen. Each hospital bed costs vast sums so needs to be free for those who need the care.
This may be a very naive question but why can't the medically fit be discharged into hotels? Are hospitals less expensive than decent hotels?
A bit more than maid service is generally needed.
My Trust has just opened its own 70 bed Social Care home.
Only a cynic would suggest that it is deliberately poor in order to incentivise residents to move elsewhere...
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
No, I think there is a genuine drop in productivity in the NHS too.
It's complicated why that should be: a mix of demotivated staff, lack of investment in training, decrepit buildings that need replacing, obsolete capital equipment and IT etc. Most of all it is lack of incentives. Unlike fee for service systems* there is no reason to bust a gut.
*these have their own problems, FFS systems do encourage unnecessary investigations and interventions.
Put people's jobs on the line and they might start though. It sounds harsh but the impossibility of someone losing their job over poor performance in the state is absolutely hampering individual productivity. It's stupid to pretend otherwise, how many NHS managers sit at home doing fuck all just pretending to work while watching Netflix?
They cut the NHS England headcount by 40% a couple of years back and are talking about another 10% cuts. Everyone was re-applying for their own jobs. Again, you are in some strange fantasy land that bears no relationship with reality.
Blah blah blah, the ONS say NHS productivity is down 18.5% and you're giving me anecdotes. Get real.
Here's a mischievous thought: To begin any negotiation, Ukraine should ask for St. Petersburg and Moscow as compensation for their losses. While letting it be known quietly that Putin might keep Moscow if he gives in quickly on all the other issues.
Not a very convincing negotiating tactic.
I mean, who would ever believe somebody could actually *want* Moscow?
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
Payrises need to be coupled with output increases. We need to end the cycle of something for nothing in the state. End WFH, stop automatic pay rises, bring in union busting laws, strike busting laws and make it much, much easier to fire people at will from the public sector, with no recourse for compensation except in cases of discrimination or foul play. A 10% pay rise must be coupled with a 5-10% cut in headcount.
You are comparing nominal and actual. So, a 10% wage increase is entirely justified if we have 10% inflation simply to retain the real value of the wage. It does not mean that there needs to be a cut in headcount as well. Of course management should always be looking to reduce headcount where possible regardless of what people are being paid.
I am highly sympathetic to some of your points. I fear WFH, combined with an anxiety about everyone's mental health and work life balance simply means that it is a lot easier not to work as hard as you do in an office where your output is readily assessable and comparable.
But you are sounding like Elon Musk. A more measured and focused way to address these problems is needed.
The problem, David, is that we've tried "measured and focussed" and it hasn't worked. Sometimes you need to throw a bit of dynamite in the water to catch the fish. We're well past that stage now, £127bn in borrowing, record tax rate, growth slowing to a crawl. Something has got to give and cutting spending by slashing jobs in the state is the only sane route left. 1m extra workers and no extra output is where we're at.
Here's a mischievous thought: To begin any negotiation, Ukraine should ask for St. Petersburg and Moscow as compensation for their losses. While letting it be known quietly that Putin might keep Moscow if he gives in quickly on all the other issues.
The problem is that Ukraine doesn't get a seat at the talks.
They are between Trump and Putin. A bit like the Munich talks on the Czechoslovakian crisis of 1938 featuring Brits, Germans and French with no Czechoslovakian representation
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
Payrises need to be coupled with output increases. We need to end the cycle of something for nothing in the state. End WFH, stop automatic pay rises, bring in union busting laws, strike busting laws and make it much, much easier to fire people at will from the public sector, with no recourse for compensation except in cases of discrimination or foul play. A 10% pay rise must be coupled with a 5-10% cut in headcount.
You are comparing nominal and actual. So, a 10% wage increase is entirely justified if we have 10% inflation simply to retain the real value of the wage. It does not mean that there needs to be a cut in headcount as well. Of course management should always be looking to reduce headcount where possible regardless of what people are being paid.
I am highly sympathetic to some of your points. I fear WFH, combined with an anxiety about everyone's mental health and work life balance simply means that it is a lot easier not to work as hard as you do in an office where your output is readily assessable and comparable.
But you are sounding like Elon Musk. A more measured and focused way to address these problems is needed.
I’m more productive on the days I WFH than the days I go into the office. In the office, the day fills with meetings that achieve little.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
Payrises need to be coupled with output increases. We need to end the cycle of something for nothing in the state. End WFH, stop automatic pay rises, bring in union busting laws, strike busting laws and make it much, much easier to fire people at will from the public sector, with no recourse for compensation except in cases of discrimination or foul play. A 10% pay rise must be coupled with a 5-10% cut in headcount.
Max I kept drafting a reply to say I basically agree with your position (but didn't send it quickly enough to keep up with the discussion) but in this response you just reveal that you have very little idea about how to drive public sector productivity.
'Output increases' are complex in the public sector. What do output increases look like in education? Bigger classes so you get more GCSEs per teacher?
'Automatic pay rises?' look at the first graph on this IFS report on relative pay. https://ifs.org.uk/articles/what-has-happened-teacher-pay-england. If you stop pay rises all you get is experienced (read: more productive) professionals leaving the profession.
Coupling pay rises with a reduction in head count? We're getting that anyway with the recruitment crisis.
There are many productivity issues that do need addressing, in education as well as elsewhere as @foxy notes.
But to try to apply your (clearly extensive) experience of the private sector without adequate knowledge of the particular challenges of the public sector is just naive.
Danielle R. Sassoon, Manhattan’s acting U.S. attorney, resigned on Thursday rather than obey a Justice Department order that she drop a corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, that she had championed, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Holy Shit. They're burning through people pretty fast now. After Sassoon refused/resigned, the next two people - heads of Public Integrity Section (DC) and the Criminal Division also refused/resigned. This all JUST happened. And these are all 'actings', so they're people the Trump crew chose.
A Ghanaian tourist was granted the right to live in Britain under Brexit marriage rules – even though she did not attend her own wedding.
Francisca Boateng, 42, won her immigration appeal after claiming that her “proxy” marriage to a German citizen living in Britain had lasted long enough to qualify her to remain in the UK.
Ms Boateng had come on holiday to Britain where she met Fatao Sualihu, a German citizen, before returning home to divorce her husband at the time. She then organised the “proxy” wedding in Kumasi, Ghana in December 2018 that neither she nor her new husband attended.
She moved to the UK with her two children to join her new husband, but the marriage broke down within 15 months and she instituted divorce proceedings, which concluded in January 2022.
Danielle R. Sassoon, Manhattan’s acting U.S. attorney, resigned on Thursday rather than obey a Justice Department order that she drop a corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, that she had championed, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Holy Shit. They're burning through people pretty fast now. After Sassoon refused/resigned, the next two people - heads of Public Integrity Section (DC) and the Criminal Division also refused/resigned. This all JUST happened. And these are all 'actings', so they're people the Trump crew chose.
I don't quite understand why Trump has gone into bat for Eric Adams in the first place.
It is total banana republic stuff that we have seen from both Biden and Trump over the past couple of months in regards to criminal cases.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
Payrises need to be coupled with output increases. We need to end the cycle of something for nothing in the state. End WFH, stop automatic pay rises, bring in union busting laws, strike busting laws and make it much, much easier to fire people at will from the public sector, with no recourse for compensation except in cases of discrimination or foul play. A 10% pay rise must be coupled with a 5-10% cut in headcount.
You are comparing nominal and actual. So, a 10% wage increase is entirely justified if we have 10% inflation simply to retain the real value of the wage. It does not mean that there needs to be a cut in headcount as well. Of course management should always be looking to reduce headcount where possible regardless of what people are being paid.
I am highly sympathetic to some of your points. I fear WFH, combined with an anxiety about everyone's mental health and work life balance simply means that it is a lot easier not to work as hard as you do in an office where your output is readily assessable and comparable.
But you are sounding like Elon Musk. A more measured and focused way to address these problems is needed.
I’m more productive on the days I WFH than the days I go into the office. In the office, the day fills with meetings that achieve little.
More anecdotes. That's literally all you have. An 18.4% drop in productivity as measured by the official statistics body and you give us "but this one small agency had a few job cuts" and "I promise I work better from home and don't fuck about all day watching netflix and running errands". Delusional.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Where does this strange fantasy come that no-one in the public sector is interested in making savings? Budgets are tight. Public sector bodies are constantly looking to see how they can cut costs. Politicians are always demanding cuts where possible.
The ONS literally said that productivity is down 8.4% overall and 18.4% in the NHS vs pre-covid. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, it's not me saying this, it's the government's own bloody statistics body. I guarantee you that they don't look to cut costs the same way the private sector does. Early in my career my then employer cut 15% of jobs globally, resulting in 45k people being let go including about 50 people in my location, I survived by virtue of being cheap to employ. Since then that company has gone from a valuation of ~$12bn to around $140bn and many people place the start of the turnaround on that first big round of job cuts. In which world will the government announce 15% job losses across the state?
Do you have a link to the ONS report? How do they measure the output of a public sector employee?
Figure 8 shoes that NHS productivity was growing quite a bit in the run up to the pandemic, up nearly 25% compared with 1997. Given overall productivity growth has been rubbish, you might actually find the NHS is ... 👀
Poor productivity has been a growing issue for a long time. With all the AI innovation, businesses won't survive if they don't revolutionize with all these instant win technologies at their fingertips. It will be interesting to see if the public sector can follow suit.
Somewhat related. Anthropic (makers of Claude) released their own research on usage based on 'anonymised' conversations with their LLM the other day :
Also, my experience of 'AI' in the public sector is that there is a lot of use day-to-day, but all by the grunts. Management is still 'developing policy', which involves away days, consultants, reports, meetings...
Slow payment of invoices - is this a French thing? I have a design / build / operate deal for a webstore owned by the French bit of Big Client group. I shoulder all operating expenses and we swap invoices (they invoice for all the stock sold, albeit free issued). They're now 3 months late paying and making excuses. If it wasn't for the other projects I'm doing for Mexican and Spanish bits of the group I'd be tempted to just stop until they cough up.
Sir Keir Starmer’s national security justification for the Chagos Islands deal has been “blown out of the water” by a minister who admitted it was impossible for an international body to shut down British communications in the Indian Ocean,
Sir Chris confirmed on Wednesday that any action taken against the UK by the ITU would only involve arbitration and dispute resolution, and that communications channels cannot be closed by the ITU.
“The ITU cannot challenge the UK’s use of civilian or military spectrum,” he said in response to a written parliamentary question.
Poor productivity has been a growing issue for a long time. With all the AI innovation, businesses won't survive if they don't revolutionize with all these instant win technologies at their fingertips. It will be interesting to see if the public sector can follow suit.
Somewhat related. Anthropic (makers of Claude) released their own research on usage based on 'anonymised' conversations with their LLM the other day :
Also, my experience of 'AI' in the public sector is that there is a lot of use day-to-day, but all by the grunts. Management is still 'developing policy', which involves away days, consultants, reports, meetings...
This is the crucial bit. You need to the streamline processes about how you are going to use them effectively and also what tools you want to build on top of them. I am sure everybody is whacking writing their emails into an LLM these days.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
Payrises need to be coupled with output increases. We need to end the cycle of something for nothing in the state. End WFH, stop automatic pay rises, bring in union busting laws, strike busting laws and make it much, much easier to fire people at will from the public sector, with no recourse for compensation except in cases of discrimination or foul play. A 10% pay rise must be coupled with a 5-10% cut in headcount.
Max I kept drafting a reply to say I basically agree with your position (but didn't send it quickly enough to keep up with the discussion) but in this response you just reveal that you have very little idea about how to drive public sector productivity.
'Output increases' are complex in the public sector. What do output increases look like in education? Bigger classes so you get more GCSEs per teacher?
'Automatic pay rises?' look at the first graph on this IFS report on relative pay. https://ifs.org.uk/articles/what-has-happened-teacher-pay-england. If you stop pay rises all you get is experienced (read: more productive) professionals leaving the profession.
Coupling pay rises with a reduction in head count? We're getting that anyway with the recruitment crisis.
There are many productivity issues that do need addressing, in education as well as elsewhere as @foxy notes.
But to try to apply your (clearly extensive) experience of the private sector without adequate knowledge of the particular challenges of the public sector is just naive.
Again, we've been playing by your (well maybe not yours but the normal) rules until now and things keep getting worse. Maybe it's time to adopt what the private sector does and see what happens. Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Why should anyone believe that we're going to magically get a different result by doing the same thing again?
It's time for drastic action which includes mandatory headcount losses across all departments including the sainted NHS and and drop in output should be punishable by wage freezes and further job cuts for senior and top managers. These people all say they could "do better in the private sector" well I say it's time to call that bluff. Put these people on the spot and if they can't do it then find people who can.
Slow payment of invoices - is this a French thing? I have a design / build / operate deal for a webstore owned by the French bit of Big Client group. I shoulder all operating expenses and we swap invoices (they invoice for all the stock sold, albeit free issued). They're now 3 months late paying and making excuses. If it wasn't for the other projects I'm doing for Mexican and Spanish bits of the group I'd be tempted to just stop until they cough up.
Nope it is very much a British thing as well. In the building trade it has long been common practice to drive small suppliers into bankruptcy by delaying payments. And big companies are doing it more and more commonly in many industries. A number of big multinational companies in the Oil and Gas sector have moved from 30 day payment to 90 day payment without warning.
Sir Keir Starmer’s national security justification for the Chagos Islands deal has been “blown out of the water” by a minister who admitted it was impossible for an international body to shut down British communications in the Indian Ocean,
Sir Chris confirmed on Wednesday that any action taken against the UK by the ITU would only involve arbitration and dispute resolution, and that communications channels cannot be closed by the ITU.
“The ITU cannot challenge the UK’s use of civilian or military spectrum,” he said in response to a written parliamentary question.
I think that justification was "blown out of the water" a couple of minutes after it was first posted on here the other day. It would be nice to be told what the real reason is not this guff for PR.
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
Payrises need to be coupled with output increases. We need to end the cycle of something for nothing in the state. End WFH, stop automatic pay rises, bring in union busting laws, strike busting laws and make it much, much easier to fire people at will from the public sector, with no recourse for compensation except in cases of discrimination or foul play. A 10% pay rise must be coupled with a 5-10% cut in headcount.
You are comparing nominal and actual. So, a 10% wage increase is entirely justified if we have 10% inflation simply to retain the real value of the wage. It does not mean that there needs to be a cut in headcount as well. Of course management should always be looking to reduce headcount where possible regardless of what people are being paid.
I am highly sympathetic to some of your points. I fear WFH, combined with an anxiety about everyone's mental health and work life balance simply means that it is a lot easier not to work as hard as you do in an office where your output is readily assessable and comparable.
But you are sounding like Elon Musk. A more measured and focused way to address these problems is needed.
The problem, David, is that we've tried "measured and focussed" and it hasn't worked. Sometimes you need to throw a bit of dynamite in the water to catch the fish. We're well past that stage now, £127bn in borrowing, record tax rate, growth slowing to a crawl. Something has got to give and cutting spending by slashing jobs in the state is the only sane route left. 1m extra workers and no extra output is where we're at.
We made some serious progress in this direction during the Coalition years with Osborne's hated austerity programs that drove head count and expenses down sharply. Part of the problem since 2019 is that so much of that work has been unwound, not least under the Tory government post 2019. Its hard, grinding, unpopular work. I think it used to be called "government" but it went out of fashion.
I am not holding my breath for Reeves attempting anything similar.
Here's a mischievous thought: To begin any negotiation, Ukraine should ask for St. Petersburg and Moscow as compensation for their losses. While letting it be known quietly that Putin might keep Moscow if he gives in quickly on all the other issues.
The problem is that Ukraine doesn't get a seat at the talks.
They are between Trump and Putin. A bit like the Munich talks on the Czechoslovakian crisis of 1938 featuring Brits, Germans and French with no Czechoslovakian representation
Plus ça change.
Handily, history provides us with a guide that at least indicates how this may go in the medium term.
Danielle R. Sassoon, Manhattan’s acting U.S. attorney, resigned on Thursday rather than obey a Justice Department order that she drop a corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, that she had championed, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Holy Shit. They're burning through people pretty fast now. After Sassoon refused/resigned, the next two people - heads of Public Integrity Section (DC) and the Criminal Division also refused/resigned. This all JUST happened. And these are all 'actings', so they're people the Trump crew chose.
I remember Sassoon from cross-examing that fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried at his trial.
Surprised Trump hasn't pardoned him actually, given his newfound love of crypto.
It is also really really hard to prosecute people for corruption over there, thanks to the SC. Hopefully it is not so bad here.
Sir Keir Starmer’s national security justification for the Chagos Islands deal has been “blown out of the water” by a minister who admitted it was impossible for an international body to shut down British communications in the Indian Ocean,
Sir Chris confirmed on Wednesday that any action taken against the UK by the ITU would only involve arbitration and dispute resolution, and that communications channels cannot be closed by the ITU.
“The ITU cannot challenge the UK’s use of civilian or military spectrum,” he said in response to a written parliamentary question.
I think that justification was "blown out of the water" a couple of minutes after it was first posted on here the other day. It would be nice to be told what the real reason is not this guff for PR.
Starmer and Labour are traitors being lead by the biggest traitor "Lord" Hermer who wants to humiliate the country as much as he can.
Danielle R. Sassoon, Manhattan’s acting U.S. attorney, resigned on Thursday rather than obey a Justice Department order that she drop a corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, that she had championed, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Holy Shit. They're burning through people pretty fast now. After Sassoon refused/resigned, the next two people - heads of Public Integrity Section (DC) and the Criminal Division also refused/resigned. This all JUST happened. And these are all 'actings', so they're people the Trump crew chose.
I remember Sassoon from cross-examing that fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried at his trial.
Surprised Trump hasn't pardoned him actually, given his newfound love of crypto.
Beyond convicting SBF, all the rest of the stuff was very conveniently buried because neither political party wants anybody looking at all the money they got from SBF and his mates. I think they all just want it forgotten forever. SBF is also very very unpopular in crypto land, so Trump won't win from releasing him. And finally, SBF parents are very friendly with democrat politicians, so again, no benefit for Trump.
Slow payment of invoices - is this a French thing? I have a design / build / operate deal for a webstore owned by the French bit of Big Client group. I shoulder all operating expenses and we swap invoices (they invoice for all the stock sold, albeit free issued). They're now 3 months late paying and making excuses. If it wasn't for the other projects I'm doing for Mexican and Spanish bits of the group I'd be tempted to just stop until they cough up.
I remember doing an international arbitration where the French respondents denied even receiving the invoices that they had not paid. They opened up their file and there they were. They were not even slightly embarrassed by this. We were ready to leave the room. It is a different mind set.
Edit, on a more practical level, if the contract is subject to UK law, start sending them invoices for the interest due in terms of the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act 1998. That might get their attention.
Going back to the polling earlier, where basically Reform form a government on 300 seats or whatever, or there is a Grande Coalition of Lab-Con -- Reform (Tice/Farage) have a massive albatross around their necks on the Putin love fst stuff.
We are effectively imho already at war with Russia.
Seems very very likely by the GE of 2029 we will be even close to war.
Their vote will be snow in April.
We aren't going to War with Russia, most likely it will be a deal on current boundaries which will stay frozen until a new President replaces Trump
Do you mean Trump or Putin?
Neither is leaving office other than in a pine box.
Under the US constitution Trump is leaving office in 4 years time even if his approval rating is 90%
As interpreted by the Supreme Court, which has been rigged by Trump and has already granted him effective total immunity from prosecution. There's no particular reason to suppose that they won't rule he's also allowed to stand again, because reasons, and the subsequent election can then be fiddled. Unless the justices show unexpected backbone, in which case expect a few accidental tragic falls out of the windows of tall buildings.
The judges can certainly try and interpret the constitution in a conservative direction but what they have never done is read exactly the opposite of what it says. The 22nd amendment is clear 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.'
The Trump immunity decision came close to saying the opposite of the what the founders intended. Some of their 2nd Amendment decisions have gone very far beyond the text.
No, it did not contradict any of the articles or amendments of the constitution and the 2nd amendment literally gives a right to bear arms that can be interpreted widely in that parameter.
The 22nd amendment however cannot be interpreted in any other way than a 2 election limit for presidents as that is precisely what it says. I suppose the court could at the extreme say he can just continue as president indefinitely with no 3rd election to run for but unless the military backed that that would almost certainly not be enforceable and even if most of the military did back it would just lead to blue states secession from the union and maybe even a second civil war
I'm sure California, Oregon, Washington and New York would get a nice welcome in Canada
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Where does this strange fantasy come that no-one in the public sector is interested in making savings? Budgets are tight. Public sector bodies are constantly looking to see how they can cut costs. Politicians are always demanding cuts where possible.
The ONS literally said that productivity is down 8.4% overall and 18.4% in the NHS vs pre-covid. You can bury your head in the sand as much as you want, it's not me saying this, it's the government's own bloody statistics body. I guarantee you that they don't look to cut costs the same way the private sector does. Early in my career my then employer cut 15% of jobs globally, resulting in 45k people being let go including about 50 people in my location, I survived by virtue of being cheap to employ. Since then that company has gone from a valuation of ~$12bn to around $140bn and many people place the start of the turnaround on that first big round of job cuts. In which world will the government announce 15% job losses across the state?
Do you have a link to the ONS report? How do they measure the output of a public sector employee?
Sir Keir Starmer’s national security justification for the Chagos Islands deal has been “blown out of the water” by a minister who admitted it was impossible for an international body to shut down British communications in the Indian Ocean,
Sir Chris confirmed on Wednesday that any action taken against the UK by the ITU would only involve arbitration and dispute resolution, and that communications channels cannot be closed by the ITU.
“The ITU cannot challenge the UK’s use of civilian or military spectrum,” he said in response to a written parliamentary question.
I think that justification was "blown out of the water" a couple of minutes after it was first posted on here the other day. It would be nice to be told what the real reason is not this guff for PR.
Yes, there has to be something really significant driving it, as 'to comply with a ruling' is all very well and good but not the sort of thing that would put such urgency on it that we've seen, so there's got to be more. People have said India is part of the reason?
The latest DOGE executive order makes it something akin to the old Soviet General Secretariat, at least as far as the US executive is concerned.
The second part is meatier.
New hires have to be approved by newly-installed DOGE Team Leads in each agency. These Team Leads will report what goes on in the agency they're assigned to on a monthly basis.
And federal agencies are ordered to participate in their own dismemberment. … Agencies are ordered to develop a comprehensive reorganization plan that identifies offices that can be purged because they lack statutory protections..
As a result, the head of DOGE will now wield something close to full executive power in the US bureaucracy. Domestically, it’s now the second most powerful position in government, de facto.
If, for a minute, we ignore the process and look at the results isn't there a good case for someone to be doing this? And not just in America but here too.
"Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.
Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest."
Isn't it right for someone out there to be asking the question about making savings in the public sector, even if the money is shoved into other bits of it or infrastructure investment. The complete lack of oversight of state spending by politicians for the last 8 years since Theresa May turned on the taps (and Labour look like increasing further) has resulted in an almost 10% drop in productivity, that's literally £70bn in spending we could cut tomorrow from departments to push into infrastructure or just not spend and reduce the deficit. There's £40bn of productivity loss in the NHS alone.
We need more focus on outcomes and less focus on processes. It's that incessant focus on process that has resulted in an 18.5% drop in NHS productivity. The lack of accountability has slowed them to get away with it too.
Process isn't everything and a rebalancing may be needed, a shock even, but are there no limitations?
Maybe there shouldn't be because what we're doing isn't working. Sending someone like Musk in to slash at the unproductive parts of the state so we can stop borrowing so much money for basically no loss in output might actually be the way out of the current conundrum for the government. Yes the unions would be upset and we'd end up with 1m or so people looking for work (resulting in lower inflation) but we're going to borrow £127bn this year and £70bn of that is due to productivity losses vs pre-covid era productivity. Imagine if the NHS was as productive today as it was in 2019 and had the same funding, literally 20% more operations, 20% more appointments, 20% more resource overall, instead we've been shoving ever more cash into a system that has peaked in output terms and can no longer expand it's output regardless of how much we put in.
This is like the benevolent dictator argument though. It may work brilliantly for a time, then it doesnt, so there's processes to avoid it.
Sure, but again, maybe we need to slash and burn at the current "process state" because it's causing a huge burden on the taxpayer for no real gain. We're spending more on the state than ever but receive less service from it than we did in 2017. That money has just gone into the ether, wouldn't it be better if we just didn't spend it and reduced state borrowing?
The extra money has gone on debt service and ageing related costs. It's not a mystery.
Again, it's not me saying this, the ONS have said there's an 18.5% drop in productivity in the NHS and 8.4% overall in the public sector. That accounts for basically all of the additional departmental spending since then, not even getting to the extra debt interest and age related spending. Dress it up how you like, since 2019 all of the additional money that government departments have got has amounted to precisely zero additional output. Maybe the way Elon Musk is doing it in the US is suboptimal, yet no one who says so admits that £70bn in additional departmental spending giving us zero incremental output is also suboptimal.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Max, it is deeply frustrating, bordering on infuriating, that all this public money has been thrown at departments for no return but the idea that the spending can simply be cut and we have the same service for what it cost before is, with due respect, nuts. A lot of this money has gone in additional wages and to buy peace both in the NHS and the train sector. Are we to return their wages to 2019 levels despite the inflation since?
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
Payrises need to be coupled with output increases. We need to end the cycle of something for nothing in the state. End WFH, stop automatic pay rises, bring in union busting laws, strike busting laws and make it much, much easier to fire people at will from the public sector, with no recourse for compensation except in cases of discrimination or foul play. A 10% pay rise must be coupled with a 5-10% cut in headcount.
Most public sector pay rises since the start of the Coalition Government in 2010 have been below the rate of inflation, i.e. there was a period of more than a decade when pay contracted in real terms. The starting salary for a newly qualified nurse is still only about £30k, and their 5.5% pay deal last year was the first above inflation settlement in fourteen years, including through the entire period when the profession was drowning in a deluge of plague victims.
This notion of something for nothing is a fever dream imagined by people who have a libertarian distaste both for public service and for taxes, and want rid of both. And the idea that you can get better standards of service from a hospital, a school or a care home by demanding that they can only ever have a pay rise if they agree to get rid of a corresponding proportion of their staff is completely mad.
Comments
All just utterly terrible.
But, yes, from an entirely Machiavellian point of view, smoking is great. I do, however, think the point of government is to make our lives better, not just to save money by killing us off before we draw upon our pensions.
I don't have an answer to NHS productivity but it would be easy to make things much, much worse. It remains in international terms a decent service for the relatively small proportion of GDP we devote to it. It's the underlying growth rates in spending, particularly in secondary care, that are so worrying.
As I've said before, we need to rip the plaster off and freeze hospital spending, increase it for public health and primary care.
It's complicated why that should be: a mix of demotivated staff, lack of investment in training, decrepit buildings that need replacing, obsolete capital equipment and IT etc. Most of all it is lack of incentives. Unlike fee for service systems* there is no reason to bust a gut.
*these have their own problems, FFS systems do encourage unnecessary investigations and interventions.
These prediction algorithms are completely useless when you come away from the 2 party system (with a few other influential but smaller parties [for fptp purposes] thrown in).
It's probably correct too, but a courageous decision as they say in Yes Minister.
Cut that spending and reduce the deficit, stop borrowing so much, reduce gilt supply, push down yields and get inflation down (and therefore debt interest) down. The additional £70bn isn't getting us anything anyway.
Tim Apple - Get ready to meet the newest member of the family. Wednesday, February 19
Wonder what how much they will be relieving TSE of this time?
The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of about 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850, and the additional thousands of Native Americans and their enslaved African Americans[3] within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears
The retort would be theres still much to be done and it needs to be drastic to have effect, which can be reasonably argued, but its not as though no one is genuine in trying now.
If Trump wants to keep going the supreme court will probably give him what he wants. If they don't, he could either arrange for vacancies to arise through unfortunate events, allowing for the installation of more pliable replacements, or simply get Congress to change the law to expand the size of the bench to similar effect.
Like the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Empire, the institutions of the state can be retained to offer a veneer of constitutional probity, whilst all the actual power is concentrated in the hands of the chief executive. The existing political order in the US is just as open to subversion, through a combination of corruption, rabble rousing and the use or threat of force, as was that overthrown by the Caesars.
Macmillan has spent £100m more than it raised over the last six years. In 2023, spending on wages and salaries surged to £80m, up by almost one-fifth (18%) from £68m in just 12 months.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/feb/13/macmillan-cancer-support-cuts-quarter-of-staff-and-scraps-hardship-scheme
Our pigeon breasts, braised slowly with shallots, ended up almost like lamb's liver. Very nice.
It's good to see someone like JHB having her feet instinctively on the ground, no matter how much I often disagree with her.
Reading all the claims and allegations put out by Elon Musk and Trump's other defenders, including the Pres Secretary Karoline Leavitt, I don't think I have yet seen a single one that has been shown conclusively to be true or accurate. These have the nature of self-justifying tropes shouted by the credulous to silence objection.
Musk's stuff has the feel of someone engaged in a headlong hunt for props, as did his interventions in European politics.
That's an impression I get debating with some from the Trumpvangelical scene, and Brits who get sucked in.
There's imo a great need for a "pause and reflect" or "stop and think" habit, doubtless including me sometimes.
@TimS agreed on democrats being cowed and dispirited, but I think they'll be shocked out of this at some point. Not by the boiling frog nature of DOGE, but by some catastrophe that can be convincingly pinned on Musk's dismantling of the institutions of government.
@HYUFD I also agree that if the electoral cycle continues and is still seen to be fair, that will defuse things somewhat, almost regardless of whether the Dems retake the house.
We certainly need to address the way that public service both deteriorates and increases in cost as time goes by. It is a major factor in our economic underperformance. But it is not a simple problem.
If it's the latter I will be racing TSE to buy at least one because it will allow me to finally replace my old slimdevices squeezeboxes.
We all know that's true, and we know why he's done it. Expanding provision will cost a bloody fortune, the logical place to raise the extra capital for elderly care is from the users themselves, and we all know what happened to the last person to dare propose that we do that. From a landslide majority to a hung parliament in about five minutes.
The hospitals are therefore stuck with the bed blocking problem. I imagine that the Government will probably try to keep blaming the Tories, or start blaming councils for not finding enough places, or both. Anything to kick the can down the road.
Senate Republicans say they won’t support tax bill that doesn’t make Trump cuts permanent
“Let me just say that a 10-year extension of President Trump’s expiring provisions is over $4.7 trillion according to CBO,” Smith told reporters, referring to the Congressional Budget Office, the official legislative scoring body. “Anything less would be saying that President Trump is wrong on tax policy.”
https://thehill.com/business/budget/5143370-senate-republicans-trump-tax-cuts/
But you know what did? The old community hospitals in smaller towns etc.
Have at it.
https://www.hsj.co.uk/nhse-to-cut-a-further-2000-posts/7038592.article reports they are actually proposing 15% cut now. See also https://www.healthcare-management.uk/nhs-england-axe-jobs
Previous recent staff cuts at 36% says https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/report-on-the-completion-of-the-new-nhs-england-programme/
My Trust has just opened its own 70 bed Social Care home.
Only a cynic would suggest that it is deliberately poor in order to incentivise residents to move elsewhere...
I am highly sympathetic to some of your points. I fear WFH, combined with an anxiety about everyone's mental health and work life balance simply means that it is a lot easier not to work as hard as you do in an office where your output is readily assessable and comparable.
But you are sounding like Elon Musk. A more measured and focused way to address these problems is needed.
The 22nd amendment however cannot be interpreted in any other way than a 2 election limit for presidents as that is precisely what it says. I suppose the court could at the extreme say he can just continue as president indefinitely with no 3rd election to run for but unless the military backed that that would almost certainly not be enforceable and even if most of the military did back it would just lead to blue states secession from the union and maybe even a second civil war
I mean, who would ever believe somebody could actually *want* Moscow?
They are between Trump and Putin. A bit like the Munich talks on the Czechoslovakian crisis of 1938 featuring Brits, Germans and French with no Czechoslovakian representation
'Output increases' are complex in the public sector. What do output increases look like in education? Bigger classes so you get more GCSEs per teacher?
'Automatic pay rises?' look at the first graph on this IFS report on relative pay. https://ifs.org.uk/articles/what-has-happened-teacher-pay-england. If you stop pay rises all you get is experienced (read: more productive) professionals leaving the profession.
Coupling pay rises with a reduction in head count? We're getting that anyway with the recruitment crisis.
There are many productivity issues that do need addressing, in education as well as elsewhere as @foxy notes.
But to try to apply your (clearly extensive) experience of the private sector without adequate knowledge of the particular challenges of the public sector is just naive.
Danielle R. Sassoon, Manhattan’s acting U.S. attorney, resigned on Thursday rather than obey a Justice Department order that she drop a corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, that she had championed, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
@joshtpm.bsky.social
Holy Shit. They're burning through people pretty fast now. After Sassoon refused/resigned, the next two people - heads of Public Integrity Section (DC) and the Criminal Division also refused/resigned. This all JUST happened. And these are all 'actings', so they're people the Trump crew chose.
Francisca Boateng, 42, won her immigration appeal after claiming that her “proxy” marriage to a German citizen living in Britain had lasted long enough to qualify her to remain in the UK.
Ms Boateng had come on holiday to Britain where she met Fatao Sualihu, a German citizen, before returning home to divorce her husband at the time. She then organised the “proxy” wedding in Kumasi, Ghana in December 2018 that neither she nor her new husband attended.
She moved to the UK with her two children to join her new husband, but the marriage broke down within 15 months and she instituted divorce proceedings, which concluded in January 2022.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/13/ghanaian-tourist-granted-asylum-after-proxy-marriage/
It is total banana republic stuff that we have seen from both Biden and Trump over the past couple of months in regards to criminal cases.
https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-anthropic-economic-index
Also, my experience of 'AI' in the public sector is that there is a lot of use day-to-day, but all by the grunts. Management is still 'developing policy', which involves away days, consultants, reports, meetings...
Sir Chris confirmed on Wednesday that any action taken against the UK by the ITU would only involve arbitration and dispute resolution, and that communications channels cannot be closed by the ITU.
“The ITU cannot challenge the UK’s use of civilian or military spectrum,” he said in response to a written parliamentary question.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/02/13/chagos-islands-deal-keir-starmer-security-mauritius/
Maybe Starmer needs better security briefings....
It's time for drastic action which includes mandatory headcount losses across all departments including the sainted NHS and and drop in output should be punishable by wage freezes and further job cuts for senior and top managers. These people all say they could "do better in the private sector" well I say it's time to call that bluff. Put these people on the spot and if they can't do it then find people who can.
I look at ebay listing and despair at the "AI" text
I am not holding my breath for Reeves attempting anything similar.
Handily, history provides us with a guide that at least indicates how this may go in the medium term.
I did see one the other day where the seller wrote "the following is an AI description, but I looked at it and I think it's OK"
He was wrong
Surprised Trump hasn't pardoned him actually, given his newfound love of crypto.
It is also really really hard to prosecute people for corruption over there, thanks to the SC. Hopefully it is not so bad here.
Edit, on a more practical level, if the contract is subject to UK law, start sending them invoices for the interest due in terms of the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act 1998. That might get their attention.
That's somewhat weird, because healthcare spending is just over 10% of GDP in the UK.
This notion of something for nothing is a fever dream imagined by people who have a libertarian distaste both for public service and for taxes, and want rid of both. And the idea that you can get better standards of service from a hospital, a school or a care home by demanding that they can only ever have a pay rise if they agree to get rid of a corresponding proportion of their staff is completely mad.