Now that's more like it!

[alreadypacked]

But we all know what will happen - nurses perm jobs will be axed and they will be replaced by agency staff, police officers will be replaced by 2x plastic plod, IT workers will be axed and replaced by large. expensive consultancies etc. etc. You reduce the perm head count, it all looks good but the bill still goes up.
The public sector needs a major shift in its thinking if it is ever going to save money.

Also police officers who are unable to work on the beat due to injury can't be given desk jobs because the desk jobs have been given to civilans, now have to be retired. More money down the drain.

[stillooking]

Where my wife works in the NHS (admin), they are cutting permie staff and replacing them with businesss consultants getting paid a grand a day.

They run around high on coffee with their flip charts and meetings, permeating the feel of an investment banking atmosphere, but they dont get anything done.

The guy who is at the top there (on a £350K salary, and that's only one of his salaries!) is bringing in all his mates on lucrative contracts. Jobs for the boys.

So even if public sector jobs are cut, the expensive consultants will probably remain. It's a farce

I'm contracting and that sounds like a good gig to me

On the flip side, in the same dept where I work there are senior pay rated NHS staff on far too much money doing 'jobs' that do not deliver anything, and remember they'll continue to do this until they retire and then be amply rewarded with a juicy pension.

[SantaClaus]

Where my wife works in the NHS (admin), they are cutting permie staff and replacing them with businesss consultants getting paid a grand a day.

They run around high on coffee with their flip charts and meetings, permeating the feel of an investment banking atmosphere, but they dont get anything done.

The guy who is at the top there (on a £350K salary, and that's only one of his salaries!) is bringing in all his mates on lucrative contracts. Jobs for the boys.

So even if public sector jobs are cut, the expensive consultants will probably remain. It's a farce

[NickFitz]

The story I ready on the BBC specifically mentioned cutting costs on both permanent staff and consultants/contractors, and at the higher end of the pay ranges. Not that this should be trusted, but it's nice to hear them pretend to do something that might be sensible.

That's a different story relating to the Government's pre-Budget report, and nothing to do with the Torygraph "story"/editorial based on some nonsense from the unthink-tank Reform that HAB cited as the basis for this thread.

[d000hg]

But we all know what will happen - nurses perm jobs will be axed and they will be replaced by agency staff, police officers will be replaced by 2x plastic plod, IT workers will be axed and replaced by large. expensive consultancies etc. etc. You reduce the perm head count, it all looks good but the bill still goes up.
The public sector needs a major shift in its thinking if it is ever going to save money.

The story I ready on the BBC specifically mentioned cutting costs on both permanent staff and consultants/contractors, and at the higher end of the pay ranges. Not that this should be trusted, but it's nice to hear them pretend to do something that might be sensible.

[NickFitz]

But we all know what will happen - nurses perm jobs will be axed and they will be replaced by agency staff, police officers will be replaced by 2x plastic plod, IT workers will be axed and replaced by large. expensive consultancies etc. etc. You reduce the perm head count, it all looks good but the bill still goes up.
The public sector needs a major shift in its thinking if it is ever going to save money.

WSS++

The solution isn't cutting public sector jobs per se, although it will doubtless involve cutting unnecessary public sector jobs. Then again, nobody needs Reform to tell them that.

I notice that Reform's report (the inspiration for the thinly-disguised editorial HAB links to) doesn't seem to offer any concrete suggestions as to how the putative savings it speaks of might actually be achieved.

In other words, as with everything that comes out of Reform, it's a piece of vague hand-wavery along the lines of "Something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done - but we can't say how or why because we don't know why or how."

Still, Camerloon and co will doubtless prate on about it in the vague hope that the imbeciles think they're offering solutions, when all they seem able to come up with is vacuous pseudo-policies backed up by vacuous pseudo-studies like this one.

I notice the Tories (George wotsisname? he's the fat one, isn't he?) backtracked on reform of Inheritance Tax again, basically saying that it ain't gonna happen. Did that get much coverage over in the Tory press?

[TimberWolf]

Bearing in mind a lot of these people will probably end up unemployed having their mortgages, council taxes, etc paid for them, will it save a lot sacking public sector minimum wager's?

[Zippy]

But we all know what will happen - nurses perm jobs will be axed and they will be replaced by agency staff, police officers will be replaced by 2x plastic plod, IT workers will be axed and replaced by large. expensive consultancies etc. etc. You reduce the perm head count, it all looks good but the bill still goes up.
The public sector needs a major shift in its thinking if it is ever going to save money.

[HairyArsedBloke]

Telegraph: 'Cut 1 million public sector jobs to pay off Britain's debts'

Now double it and then it will begin to get close to what has to be done.