Cutting back the state

TrevorsDen

Good old Heffer - lets go into the election with the slogan - "we want more unemployment!"

We already heard Paxman last night trying to skewer the Tory proposals to help ALLEVIATE unemployment by effectively asking (at least twice) "well you have said in the past unemployment is a price worth paying - so how can we believe you mean what you say now?"

Heffer is a dork a useless pillock.

Lets be clear - the Tories are in OPPOSITION !! geddit? Opposition.

Right now they have no strings and levers to pull they can DO nothing - except show they deserve to be elected.

Geddit again? geddit? ---- ELECTED

Wake up you useless dopes, geddit?? DOPES !!

mark c

hear hear ... though one has to wonder also just how many of the public sector that were there before the 700,000 joined are necessary too. Its simply not cricket to claim big gov as good and small gov as intrinsically bad, what it means though is people have to stand on their own two feet rather more than they may like

Pete Hoskin

TrevorsDen: I'm not completely advocating the Heffer approach. The question at the end of my post is genuinely an open one, that I'm keen to hear CoffeeHousers' views on. I guess your answer to it is 'no'...

Short the UK

Are interest rates going to increase in the coming months as the pound collapses?

Come on you Tories...

Forlornehope

Requiring all civil service departments to take a five or ten percent cut in administrative staff is exactly what a private sector employer would do; such a policy is hardly going to ensure that the Conservatives win the next election. There are just too many votes on the state payroll

James J

Of course the State payroll and the unaffordable index linked final salary pensions need to be reduced. The way to do it is to reduce the legislation that leads to the employment of all these Coordinators and Diversity Officers.
Should the State be so intrusive in our lives? Do we need Environmental Health Officers checking the menus of Snack Trucks (Guildford) to ensure they offer Healthy Alternatives on pain of not licensing them? Do we need Health & Safety Officers to order the removal of door mats (Bristol City Council) outside council flats as ‘tripping hazards’?
We need to look at the concept of vicarious liability to protect organizations from the unauthorized actions of staff, such as in Race and Sex discrimination cases, and accept ‘Risks’ such as children playing with conkers having nut allergies (Brookwell primary school Cumberland.)

C Powell

People who advocate cuts in the state are always asked what particular services they think should be cut, as if the questioner believes that the answer will expose the person as some harsh unfeeling booby snatching meals on wheels from the trembling hand of a starving pensioner.

Perhaps the question should be turned round. This morning the papers are full of the tragic and stomach-wrenching case of Baby P. All that money spent on Haringey Social Services and for what? To hear people say that the case showed that "some aspects" of the case showed that the "system" worked well. Apparently, the booby making this statement believed that the fact of 60 visits showed that there was good co-ordination between the relevant agencies, apparently oblivious to the fact that a child died, despite all this hyper-active visiting going on. And we even had some reader in social services claiming on the Today programme that this case showed the need for more people to work in the department so they could fill in data while others cared for children. As if it was lack of money or staff which prevented a paediatrician from not noticing a broken back on a child or a social worker from not noticing that the child was being beaten.

Enough: time for those who advocate a smaller more efficient state to say to the advocates of big government. No - you've had the money, you're not able to show that you can spend it wisely and sensibly, that you can employ people with brains and judgment, that you can hold your employees responsible for their actions, that you believe that the purpose of public services is to better the lives of taxpayers not to provide a meal ticket for life and gold-plated pensions for its employees.

So time for a different approach. If the state did less but did it better we might, just might, have a chance of really helping those who need the state's help. If we have a Leviathan - whose raison d'etre is little more than preserving and extending its own existence, power and privileges - at the expense of those whom it is meant to serve, we have no chance.

Tiberius

When they were Shadow Chancellor, Oliver Letwin said it is not the fault of the 700,000 that thet have been employed to do nothing, and Michael Portillo said it will take time to turn the ship around. Agreed.

If Heffer really was as radical as he likes to make out (rather than just taking every opportunity to slag off Cameron), he might say that now was an excellent opportunity to freeze public sector pay for three years (giving those who are unhappy about it the opportunity to move to the private sector), and cut the pension rights in line with the reductions suffered in the private sector since Brown's smash and grab.

The unions? Stuff them. Now would be a stupid time to go on strike.

Thus, you avoid the human misery that Heffer doesn't even mention, and you cut national debt and reduce spending all in one go.

James J

C.Powell
At least if Redbridge Council is involved in the Fostering of the surviving children from this Hell Hole they won’t be put in a home where there is a Smoker.
The Climbie Report showed the problems in Haringey including ‘literacy and numeracy problems of some Social Workers ‘It was the culture of politically correct recruitment policies that were at fault employing inappropriate people. Public servants such as Social Workers should be personally responsible, by which I mean facing criminal charges for negligence.

JR

I keep on making this point but if you're talking about central Government you need to do need to ask the question what should the Government do less of. The reason the state has increased is because the state is trying to do more - Tax Credits, Pension Credit, Sure Start etc, etc. In addition the state is trying to do more by contracting out various services - unfortunatly to have even a semblence of accountability you need an army of people to monitor contracts for delivering public goods (which by their very nature are more complex to monitor delivery of).

Yes you can cut jobs but we also need to face up to cutting the scope of Government. In addition i should point out large swaths of the private sector (builders, call centre staff, consultants, security guards, IT experts, exam marking companies, crapita, mail companies etc) are dependent on public sector contracts. So in theory that is another big area you can cut costs in parrallel as you reduce jobs and the scope of the public sector.

Wily Trout

James J - shouldn't it be the Directors of the public services, in this case the director of the Children's Service, that should be personally responsible rather than the front-line workers? There would be real savings from cutting some of these hugely-paid leaders-from-behind, without any real protest from any sector of the public. One Director of Children's Services given the chop would be worth 5 or 6 social workers losing their jobs.

C Powell

James: your point about Redbridge is well made. It is precisely because the state concerns itself with silly matters like smoking or fatness that it is unable to do anything about the violent torture and killing of a baby. It's precisely because it is obsessed with placing "ethnic minority" children with "ethnic minority" adoptive/foster parents rather than with people who will love and care for them that those same children spend years in care where their chances of a decent life are vanishingly small. The state has spent years infantilising professional staff with their culture of targets and procedures and form-filling so that those professionals are quite unable or unwilling to act like professionals, exercise judgment and take responsibility. In short, the state does too much and does it badly - and children die as a result.

This is criminal irresponsibility by the state and its officers - and far more important than a penny on or off tax. I would willingly pay the money if children like P were protected, nourished, cared for and loved. But to pay the money and learn that this is the result is sickening.....

HJ

JR makes a good point. A key reason why this government was popular with much of the private sector for so long was that it was handing out juicy contracts to the likes of consultants, Capita, etc.. However, little of this is productive work.

Simon Heffer is right about one thing: The government has diverted far too much of our national resource (plus a lot of borrowed money) into areas that don't produce anything that anyone would choose to pay for out of their own pockets. Only by allowing resources to be re-allocated towards the productive sectors of the economy will we get out of this mess. Simply spending more on the unproductive part (as Brown proposes) will only make things worse.

As Jim Callaghan said in 1976: “What is the cause of high unemployment? Quite simply and unequivocally it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce. We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. But I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists.”

James J

Wily Trout
There is a system in place now where it is necessary for every Local authority to identify one officer ‘responsible’ for Social Services. Just as there is an officer ‘responsible’ for finance.
We need to define ‘Responsible’.
C.Powell
There is, to use their jargon, a ‘Culture’ problem with Social Services. Adoption decisions should be taken away from them and some system of Citizen juries set up to monitor policies and decisions. Our public sector does not seem to share the values of the public it serves so we need to reduce its power.

Susan Hill

Baby P is on the at-risk register and has God knows how many visits from Social Services. He is tortured to death. A family near me have had a visit from SS and now a letter saying their 2 children, aged 9 and 13 will be taken into care if they have not lost X amount of weight in 6 months time. Yes, the children are quite fat. But yes,they are also well loved and from a stable family. Cost of all this rubbish if they do get taken into care ? Emotional cost to them and their parents as well as pounds and pence to the taxpayer ? They waste their time and our money on this and cause huge shock and distress to a delightful, if somewhat well-fed, family while Baby P dies an appalling death under their damn noses.

James J

Susan Hill
The cost of “Care” goes beyond the financial ,as can be seen from the disproportionate numbers of former In-Care children now adult prisoners.
That is why we need to put an end to policies that prevent the “wrong” race, smokers or the obese adopting or fostering children. In fact we need to remove these decisions from local councils and as I wrote before make them subject to appeal to randomly selected citizens’ Juries to ensure they reflect the majority’s values. Decisions about taking children into “Care” should also be made in this way.

JimBob

Short term the public sector should be shedding 10% minimum just like firms do in the real world. Longer term-pension reform. My concern is that if, as seems likely, the Tories get elected on a small majority then this won't happen.

TGF UKIP

Aren't politicians supposed to have convictions and present arguments to voters in support of those convictions to persuade the electorate that their diagnosis of and remedies for economic ills are the correct ones?

Why does it seem to be only journalists who can articulate a conservative alternative to the prevailing, disastrous social democrat analysis.

Incidentally, speaking of SocDems am I correct in understanding from a piece on the World at One Yesterday that the hero of so many Coffee Housers, Ken Clarke, had been on radio or TV on Monday night declaring that he thought Gordon's sticking an extra £15bn on borrowing was just fine and dandy. Did he actally say this, or something very like it, and if so doncha just love him!

Please, please Dave give The Mouth the most important high profile role you possibly can, nothing would give me greater pleasure.

James J

JimBob
Then we need to remove duties imposed by legislation, which is the vehicle used to create various posts. This extends from Energy Performance certificates (Trading Standards) for all residential rented property to promoting good Race relations (various posts in most areas) Not forgetting the employee(s)of Worchester Council who erected signs around 50 year old pear trees in Cripplegate Park warning of pear danger.