h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Take our cue from the Monster Raving Looney Party manifesto, all lawyers and accountants should be set in concrete and used as traffic bollards. That's the lower house taken care of then

What are we going to do?

How about building up the productive economy? (Says something about h2g2 that we get 580 posts and rising to the Convo about public sector threats but so far only 3 in what was supposed to be a parallel one about productive economy opportunities)

Anyway, it's pretty clear that the HMG agenda is now to size the public sector according to the delivery end of its services (in other words, the 'fighters', be it against disease, crime, ignorance, fires, the Taleban etc) and to cut the supporting admin level back to the corresponding minimum. This isn't just about numbers employed but also about the terms and conditions. HMG is trying at the same time to ensure that salaries, pensions and employment security are all at a level that makes public sector admin careers less attractive than either sharp-end service delivery or the private sector.

So the public sector once again exists to deliver services efficiently, not to create employment. Whether you think that's right or wrong, we've got five years of it now, and it's going to change society. We have some broad choices to make - either something like a million out of six million out of work, or the wages of five million paid out between six million, or we can get our heads round the considerably better idea of getting the one million doing something productive that earns and hence self-funds directly.

The idea of taxing the productive economy more to maintain the public sector overhead is simply not going to happen. When recessions happen, public sectors need to be cut before productive economies. Period.

So like I said, the challenge is to build the productive economy. It's going to mean fresh training for many, perhaps some sailing close to the wind as regards protectionism, but most of all it will mean a massive attitude change for hitherto misused people.

I'm not talking about the low paid. I'm talking about the top two-thirds of the white-collar administrative tiers of the public sector and civil service. To illustrate exactly what I mean by the attitude change, then sorry about those defined benefit pensions. They have to go, and people who've been enjoying them are just going to have do like the rest of us, and match their paying in according to the ups and downs of national economic performance if they want to maintain their post-work living standards.

It's pretty tough, sure, but it's something that millions in the productive economy have endured already. Let's face it, the public sector was the last place that anyone should ever have been given the profligate gift of standing outside that reality.

"Says something about h2g2 that we get 580 posts and rising to the Convo about public sector threats but so far only 3 in what was supposed to be a parallel one about productive economy opportunities"

Well you could draw a number of conclusions from that - for example, that it's easier to gripe about the public sector than to come up with ideas about how to turn the economic situation around.

what about scrapping the ministry of justice and bringin it all back under the home office??? like it used to be

What! and leave Kenneth Clarke nothing to privatise for the benefit of himself and his cronies. That will never happen

put all the MOJ parts together into a justice department

scrap prison management, probation management, imigration management and national offender management and have one management structure for the lot

"Anyway, it's pretty clear that the HMG agenda is now to size the public sector according to the delivery end of its services (in other words, the 'fighters', be it against disease, crime, ignorance, fires, the Taleban etc) and to cut the supporting admin level back to the corresponding minimum."

It's surely naive to take this "no cuts to front line services" stuff remotely seriously, especially as those cuts are already happening.

Otto, I'm not interpreting. I'm suggesting.
Of course we should protect front line services. IMO, we should also wherever possible keep infrastructural projects going because they maintain useful employment and build skills.
That means we'd have to cut hard at public sector admin, but that's the most appropriate objective, because that's where the highest proportion of overpaid and overprotected people who aren't actually needed are working at present.

strictly enforce retirement age and offer early retirement of up to 5 years

the older civil servant are usually the most senior, making the bigger savings, promote from below to fill vacancies with re negotiated contracts and smaller pay rises or fill vacancies from side ways moves

all pending industrial tribunal cases offer, no contest and accept constructive dissmisal, settle up and pay them off

all long term sick, dissmiss and pay them off

a lot of the dead wood can be cut out before looking at redundancies

< A lot of the dead wood can be cut out before looking at redundancies >
That dead wood has grown and died in service and is well protected.
Why single out 'Civil Servants' doesn't the same apply across the whole of the public sector.
It's like a benefit system. Once you're in you're in it for life.

So no cuts to education, except the end of the Building Schools For the Future scheme - Labour's last truly good idea. Oh and Aimhigher. And staff recruitment, meaning class sizes are on their way up.

Whatever your political opinions, I implore folk to go and check out a school built under BSF: they are palaces, better than anything we were educated in.

Surely, if we do nothing else with our lives, we should try and give the next generation better than the current one had.

Mind you, why would the Tories or Lib Dems give a about state schools, their kids are all in private schools.

aren't all the public sector civil servants, by nature

i was not singling them out i have posted other points for other departments

i was just pointing out that due to the regulations on redundancies it might be cheaper to give the more senior members early retirement as a pension is less in the short term, like 5 years, than a full salary, promotions from within would then trickle up with apropriate pay rises on promotion, which would relieve for some the hardship of a pay freeze, the new pay scale of the post could be reduced thus increasing the savings being made

the same could be done for the MOD, when the general has done his 22 years service, say thank you very much, heres your watch, don't let the door hit you in the arse, and have only serving operational officers on the general staff and not generals in their 50s and 60s

reundancies are tricky due to the amount you have to pay out, in some cases 6 years salery

as opposed to an extra 5 years of a pension which is usually half the total salery, thus opening up the promotion ladder for people to move up or across and reduce the total numbers in the organisation

<>



Do you honestly still believe there's a difference between Labour/LibDems/Tories? Where did that paragon of socialism Diane Abbott send her kids? And Blair? And all the rest? I seem to remember posting here about the huge proportion of Labour ministers who had gone to fee-paying or elite schools themselves before Oxbridge.

They're all the ing same when you get to the business end of the parties HI, an identikit political class born into politics who have experienced nothing but politics their entire lives.

The cuts will be made with an eye to votes, as always. Just as the Labour Govt made sure Tory areas didn't get new hospitals or schools, the ConDems will make sure that the worst job losses fall in Labour heartlands.

< who have experienced nothing but politics their entire lives. >
A similar accusation could be made about public sector workers/civil servants.

Very true I'm totally institutionalised

>>Do you honestly still believe there's a difference between Labour/LibDems/Tories? Where did that paragon of socialism Diane Abbott send her kids? And Blair? And all the rest?<<

Fair point: I woke up today, it's a Monday and BSF means a lot to me and I got a touch ranty

It's still obscene that the ConDemNation are cutting it.

Front line services need to be just that. You can not call doctors, nurses, police, firemem, fighters in the armed services,and even the dustbin men, civil servants, it would be doing them an injustice. We can bracket all forms of administration in the public sector as civil servants as far as cuts are concerned because it is there where the cuts should come.
With regard to building programs they need to be planned on an all party basis and set in stone. If we can plan for Olympic Games we can plan for modern developments country wide. It needs new town thinking. Whole developments complete with schools, hospitals, transport and full infrastructure. Replacing new for old is not planning.

I agree with Iago about schools - where I used to live, at least three primary schools have been rebuilt. Crumbling Victorian buildings with insufficient space and facilities replaced with shiny new purpose-built schools. Most of my schooldays were in the 1980s, and what kids have today is worlds away from what my generation had to put up with. (Thanks, Thatcher). Learning environment is a key component of effective learning.

On public sector administration (and indeed administration generally).... surely people realise that administration is both essential and unavoidable in any large organisation or service provider? Surely people realise that front line services depend on effective administration? "Administration", "bureaucracy", and "red tape" are easy targets for criticism, but it's rather harder to criticise when armchair experts called on to explain *exactly* what functions are objected to.

Regarding "front line services".

If you cut support staff, the work they did has to be done by the remaining staff and/or front line staff. Read any of the numerous Policemen's blogs - all of them will describe how in a typical working day they will often only be able to deal with two, maybe three incidents a day due to the paperwork involved. Granted a lot of that paperwork is down to idiotic politicians trying to measure *everything*, but the essential paperwork has to be done by someone.If it's not a clerk, the policeman has to go back to the station to do it and all the time he's in the station he's not on the beat deterring crime.

Schools - yup. I went to a crumbling Victorian school in the 70s. Thanks a bunch Heath/Wilson/Callaghan.

Of course 'front line services' need effective backup it's when that backup needs backup and so on ad infinitum. Then internal memos to confirm each others action begin to flow, the numbers build up and new helpers/auxilliaries abound and before you know it hospital records get lost and personal information becomes an open book. Most public service establishments have a tea fetcher or two in some of them there is enough staff to run shifts so that the service they are expected to provide could be available from 6.00am to 10.00 pm and some of them round the clock.