Cameron's vision for Britain ...

[Old Greg]

You have just spent the last half hour looking all that up in order to support a sweeping generalisation that is simply not true. I would not have put you down as one of the "money grows on trees brigade" The reason there are cuts is because we as a society pay far to much for poorly delivered public services and there is no longer any money to pay for them. Of cours as a one of the highest paid people in society why don't you pay to keep the library opeN?

Thank you for ignoring the presented facts. Trust your instincts - it works for IDS.

[sasguru]

Thank you for ignoring the presented facts. Trust your instincts - it works for IDS.

But you still haven't said why you think they shouldn't cut the budget, if we can't afford it as a country.
Or do you think we should have perfect public services no matter what?
And you have no evidence that Cameron is a pare-it-to-the-bone ideologue. I rather suspect that his instincts are one-nation Tory except he's come to power at a bad time.

[Mich the Tester]

his instincts are one-nation Tory except he's come to power at a bad time.

This.

[sasguru]

He kind of looks like Al Capone..

There's a good reason you're considered one of CUK's prime morons.

[DodgyAgent]

Thank you for ignoring the presented facts. Trust your instincts - it works for IDS.

The facts are that the government is reducing the money it pays to councils so what is your point?

[Jog On]

My last gig was at a local authority and the working culture and sense of entitlement was absolutely shocking. In at 10-10:30, spend the day just hanging around chatting with your mates until 4-4:30 when it's home time.

Getting anything done was absurdly difficult and took about 8 times as long as it would anywhere else. Any excuse to down tools or make up some extra red tape to prevent work going ahead was jumped on. I even had one guy get up and scream at me in the (open plan) office when i had to go and see him for something as he was ignoring my emails and voicemails. Then I got dragged into a room with the programme manager who warned me not to talk to him directly about anything (don't even say hi in the corridor) as he was a serial grievance raiser and we didn't have the time or bandwidth to deal with a grievance procedure.

Turns out it's quite common for some civil servants to raise grievances about anything they can then go on 6 months paid "stress leave". Try escalating anything and management don't want to know because they don't want to deal with anything like this either.

These people have it very very easy and they've got people like Bob Crow who will fight hard and win for them. The tail wags the dog - and apparently you should pay more tax to maintain it...

The entire culture needs to be rebooted. All things said the project was to roll out a Citrix desktop so that council services could start being outsourced - and the permies knew it - and it's still going ahead

Keep it up Dave

[doodab]

You have just spent the last half hour looking all that up in order to support a sweeping generalisation that is simply not true. I would not have put you down as one of the "money grows on trees brigade" The reason there are cuts is because we as a society pay far to much for poorly delivered public services and there is no longer any money to pay for them. Of cours as a one of the highest paid people in society why don't you pay to keep the library opeN?

The primary reason there isn't enough money is because the British population as a whole is relatively poor (60% of workers are on benefits), and because we have wholly unrealistic expectations. We want our services to compete with the "best" but we have a lower overall tax rate (as a %age of GDP) than other countries we use as benchmarks for things like education and healthcare.

I don't think public services are particularly overpriced or poorly delivered when you consider the spend relative to other countries, or in comparison with the private sector when you take into account the spend per patient or per pupil. You get what you pay for and we as a nation seem to want champagne for beer money. We need to become collectively cognizant of the fact we can only afford to shop in the bargain bin and set our expectations accordingly.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ed...school-student

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/he...ing-per-person

[Platypus]

Try escalating anything and management don't want to know because they don't want to deal with anything like this either.

Yeah, I wish I'd understood this before I poured money into my Plan B - a system which helped the public sector save pots of money. They just didn't give a tulip

[DodgyAgent]

The primary reason there isn't enough money is because the British population as a whole is relatively poor (60% of workers are on benefits), and because we have wholly unrealistic expectations. We want our services to compete with the "best" but we have a lower overall tax rate (as a %age of GDP) than other countries we use as benchmarks for things like education and healthcare.

I don't think public services are particularly overpriced or poorly delivered when you consider the spend relative to other countries, or in comparison with the private sector when you take into account the spend per patient or per pupil. You get what you pay for and we as a nation seem to want champagne for beer money. We need to become collectively cognizant of the fact we can only afford to shop in the bargain bin and set our expectations accordingly.

Spending per secondary school student statistics - Countries compared - NationMaster

Spending per person statistics - countries compared - Nationmaster

You seem to be working on the premise that governments are efficient redistributors of wealth. They are poorly delivered and simply spending more money on them is no solution to improving them.

[Jog On]

I don't think public services are particularly overpriced or poorly delivered

Have you worked in the public sector and seen any of it first hand?

My experience has shown the vast majority of workers are not fit for purpose and failing the people they're being paid to serve.

All in the belief that they've got a safe easy job for life with a golden pension