Lets have, why do people hate the public sector?

bails87

W1 wrote:

notsoblue wrote:

Well help me to understand then :P All I'm hearing is "Public sector is inefficient"

Well I think that's right IMO - but I don't think that non-profit activities are naturally inefficient, nor have you suggested that inefficiency is excusable. However not having a profit, but instead having a "benefit" does make hiding inefficiency easier becuase it's much hard to put a figure on a benefit. Equally it makes hiding super efficiency easier too.

bails87 wrote:

bails87 wrote:

Where were those stats that showed that the NHS was massively more efficient than the US system.....

Aha, food for thought. Possibly suggests the 'public sector= inefficient/Private=efficient' argument isn't always necessarily true.

W1

BTW DDD - I've done some of my own digging.

Non-exec directors can be personally liable for their Trusts. However it appears that Trusts agree to indemnify the non-execs from this liability. The reality is therefore that they won't lose their house if the trust fails - which is what personal liability really should mean. The "risk" is therefore negligable.

Glad to be of service. No charge.

tailwindhome

Greg66 wrote:

MonkeyMonster wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

but had no idea who Superman would fight.

Doomsday of course - he's lost twice to him already...

Foregone conclusion, then, innit? No fun there.

Lets hope the Germans take the same view.

andyrm

davmaggs wrote:

DDD, I don't know how long you've been in the public sector but my advise would be not to stay in it too long. All organisations do to a certain degree institutionlise people over time and they become inflexible and they think that things work/or should work according to their experience.

Whilst this applies to all sectors the thing about the public sector is much of the work and the jobs are created by other demands from the public sector (or laws). In other words people are doing work because the workload is created by other PS staff. These roles aren't needed or wanted out in private companies. I know HR people who don't look at CVs from public sector people with too much time in roles that only make sense to other public sector staff as those people often become rigid, lack business skills and are used to work patterns (like the flexi time wheeze) or a working style that doesn't work outside the bubble of the public sector.

2) second rate people are protected

4) If I don't like an airline or a company serves enough people badly then I can go elsewhere. If a service or product is not useful then that organsiation closes.

So very true, particularly about second rate people being protected and kept in their jobs when the private sector would have booted them out way before. That's the thing I find abhorrent, the culture of acceptance of poor performance/lack of striving for excellence.

singlespeedexplosif

I think you've missed the point of the "exercise" Wink
not at all. I'm merely pointing out that there are only two legitimate 'who would win this fight' scenarios.
1) lion vs tiger in gravy
2) Thatcher's face and a pitching wedge.

DonDaddyD

TailWindHome wrote:

I did try to to contrive a post suggesting that one superhero was better than another, just to rekindle the ashes, but had no idea who Superman would fight.

The Superman clause:

The conumdrum of Superman is that he can be as strong or as weak as the story needs him to be. DC comics have seen Superman from Earth 1 (with Superman from Earth 2) fly Superboy from Earth Prime (Infinite Crisis) through a Sun. Equally, we have seen Superman from Earth 1 (i.e. our Superman) be punched and lifted from the air by Batman who was merely wearing a kryptonite ring.

Now not questioning the physics of how heavy a Superman must weigh, this conumdrum allows writers a larger degree of creative freedom with Superman than arguably any other character. Superboy from Earth Prime, for example, punched the walls of reality thus changing it.

The effect of this however, is splitting, is Superman the strongest person in DC continuity or average in the grandscheme of cosmic beings. The question divides comic fans some like their Superman juggling planets others like their Superman to be a little less ostentatious. For me, however, I just hate the discontinuity. I like structure and consistentcy such as Blackbolt the Inhuman king (and Marvel's most consistent dealer of whoop ass and b*tch slaps) dying at the hands of the very mutant human, Vulcan. But what annoyed me most about that was Vulcan taking the master blow and withstanding Blackbolts screaming voice when a mere whisper has knocked Gladiator unconcious. All of that pales to the inconsistent portrayal of Supermans powers,

Superman is one of the most rigidly defined persona's never faultering from doing the right thing I find annoyingly reckless when it comes to portrayals of what he can do. Nothing I found more annoying than him, catching Thor's magical hammer, Mjolnir, and decking Thor in Marvel vs DC. Superman is known to be vulnerable to magic so Mjolnir should have taken off Supermans arm.

The short answer is that with the write writing and understanding of characters Superman can be made to fight any character. Superman vs Goku is one that appears often on comic book message boards.

Basically as long as I have knowledge on each modern comic character, and its likely that I will, I'm always up for a comicbook based e-battle-debate.

Greg T

notsoblue wrote:

Well help me to understand then :P All I'm hearing is "Public sector is inefficient"

It depends on how you define "efficient"

Let's say the Public sector is efficient.

Our NHS example = £94Bn a year perfectly spent.

That's still £94 Bn of perfectly efficient cost. If you don't have the money then you can't commision your perfectly run service anyway.

We don't have the money.

So we either buy less of the perfectly run service - close hospitals, stop offering gastric banding for Pie fans etc, sack cleaners, nurses, Doctors etc or - admit that the service isn't perfectly efficient and look to get more for the money.

You choose.

What you can't choose is "do nothing".

notsoblue

W1 wrote:

Well I think that's right IMO - but I don't think that non-profit activities are naturally inefficient, nor have you suggested that inefficiency is excusable. However not having a profit, but instead having a "benefit" does make hiding inefficiency easier becuase it's much hard to put a figure on a benefit. Equally it makes hiding super efficiency easier too.

Ok, so the Public Sector is inefficient, and the Private Sector can be also be inefficient.... the difference being that inefficient Private Sector companies will inevitably fail and be replaced by more efficient Private Sector companies, whereas Public Sector bodies will continue a downward spiral of inefficiency, wasting public money?

rolf_f

davmaggs wrote:

4) If I don't like an airline or a company serves enough people badly then I can go elsewhere. If a service or product is not useful then that organsiation closes.

If you don't like the way a country is run, and can see one that you do think is run well, you can always leave and go to that one. The choice is there.

gtvlusso

So - we agree that we all love the PS, but we just don't agree on where the money should be spent and that there are a few people on the gravy train! And sometimes it can be wasteful - all pointed out to us by the media because it is tax payers money and we have an interest nationally - pay and payrises that we pay for, but don't get ourselves if we work in private industry.....to a point!

However, we don't all have an interest in private businesses unless we work for them and money gets wasted behind closed doors by useless tossa's there too - but nobody hears about it and private industry does not give payrises....ever!

:-)

*waits for wrath of DDD......

My vote is for Jenny Watson.....

Monkeypump

DonDaddyD wrote:

Basically as long as I have knowledge on each modern comic character, and its likely that I will, I'm always up for a comicbook based e-battle-debate.

Thankfully, few (if any) BR forumites share your enthusiam on this subject.

But I'm sure we all bow to your superior nerdiness... sorry, knowledge

DonDaddyD

Greg66 wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

I did try to to contrive a post suggesting that one superhero was better than another, just to rekindle the ashes, but had no idea who Superman would fight.

Hulk.

We have joked about using "Who would win in a fight between King Kong and Jaws" as an interview question.

A remarkable number of colleagues immediately respond with "well, it would depend where they were fighting". WTF do they think Jaws on land will do? Grow limbs and lungs?

We couldn't agree whether candidates should be marked down if they failed to realise that the fight had to take place in water. *

Ho hum.


*many aspects of this post are not wholly true

Jaws was just an Average sized shark right? King Kong was like a 50foot Gorilla, but then if we take Planet of the Apes (the remake) logic (because I've never thrown a monkey into water) mokeys and apes can't swim and sharks can't survive out of water. Unless a bizarre account was to happen like Kong hovering over a body of water and Jaws jumped out to bite I can't really see the fight happening.

I've long since championed for Hulk to fight Superman, it did happen once and Superman just allowed Hulk to punch him in the chest until he calmed down (see above for Superman clause reference). This of course could no longer happen as i believe its been established that Hulk doesn't suffer fatigue enducing toxins and will stay Hulk as long as he stays angry, punching Superman continuously and not hurting him would, iMO, anger the Hulk further thereby making him stronger. That said, Superman is faster than the Hulk and has the benefits of ranged attacks, so if he didn't go blow for blow but used heat vision and the like he might win.

If it was Hulk from Planet Hulk and World War Hulk, Superman would have no chance.

Doomsday is constantly evolving after every death, eventually he would defeat Superman and in the first fight, the only one that matters Superman died. It was in Death of Superman, I have the comic.

simonaspinall

I think a large resentment comes from workers from SME organisations, which make up a sizeable quantity of workers in the UK.

They don't have the (previous) job security, union protection, flexi-time, pension contributions, standard pay increases that the public sector has been given.

SME organisations have also suffered massively in the recession and of course are not part of the financial sector.

SME organisations are also the first to suffer in terms of having credit taken away from them and will have to make people redundant.

SME organisations don't generally pay as much as a larger private sector company and so you have the worst of both worlds in terms of job and pay conditions. It's not as if I haven't tried to get a job in a larger company, but there really is no one hiring or when there is there is a massively more experienced person going for it who has just been made redundant as a stop-gap job and the whole cycle starts again.

It's these workers who see their public sector counterparts having much better pay and conditions. My housemate is a council worker who is a data entry clerk, has no uni or a level qualifications and has been working in the same position for 13 years. She is paid more than me and has immensely better working conditions (I am a degree level and professionally qualified marketer with 4 years expereince). As a tax payer I also subsidise her pension. She's a nice girl and all that but it can't be fair when a private sector worker is subsidising a better paid public sector worker when they struggle to pay their own pension.

So the gap between wages and conditions and the resultant union calls for strikes winds people in SMEs up as if tried to be unionised and went on strike we'd be out of a job!

I believe in the public sector and greatly appreciate it being there for me should the worst happen and I need healthcare, my (one day in the future) kids need educating or I need help from the police. However, the feeling of complacency and entitlement in comparison to the private sector seems grossly out of step.

W1

notsoblue wrote:

W1 wrote:

Well I think that's right IMO - but I don't think that non-profit activities are naturally inefficient, nor have you suggested that inefficiency is excusable. However not having a profit, but instead having a "benefit" does make hiding inefficiency easier becuase it's much hard to put a figure on a benefit. Equally it makes hiding super efficiency easier too.

Ok, so the Public Sector is inefficient, and the Private Sector can be also be inefficient.... the difference being that inefficient Private Sector companies will inevitably fail and be replaced by more efficient Private Sector companies, whereas Public Sector bodies will continue a downward spiral of inefficiency, wasting public money?

Quite possibly because where is the incentive to be efficient? The public sector won't "fail".

What do you think?

notsoblue

Greg T wrote:

notsoblue wrote:

Well help me to understand then :P All I'm hearing is "Public sector is inefficient"

It depends on how you define "efficient"

Let's say the Public sector is efficient.

Our NHS example = £94Bn a year perfectly spent.

That's still £94 Bn of perfectly efficient cost. If you don't have the money then you can't commision your perfectly run service anyway.

We don't have the money.

So we either buy less of the perfectly run service - close hospitals, stop offering gastric banding for Pie fans etc, sack cleaners, nurses, Doctors etc or - admit that the service isn't perfectly efficient and look to get more for the money.

You choose.

What you can't choose is "do nothing".

Well isn't that what the NHS does already? Rationing treatment? If the assessment is that we have to ration more harshly, then so be it.

However the answer in my view isn't to reduce the NHS by outsourcing to private firms.Though I can see how it is attractive for NHS management to have a defined cost per unit of time and a nice SLA with a nursing agency rather than having to take staff nurses on. Privatisation of this kind is not more efficient (in terms of value provided), it is just far more convenient for the short term.

MonkeyMonster

DonDaddyD wrote:

Doomsday is constantly evolving after every death, eventually he would defeat Superman and in the first fight, the only one that matters Superman died. It was in Death of Superman, I have the comic.

Except he didn't did he... he was merely in a very low level health coma and just needed to sit inside the matrix for a while to recover his breath. Come on man.

on a more pertinant note - why is it only 3.30pm?

edit: and no, jaws was a far larger than normal great white.

Monkeypump

Rolf F wrote:

davmaggs wrote:

4) If I don't like an airline or a company serves enough people badly then I can go elsewhere. If a service or product is not useful then that organsiation closes.

If you don't like the way a country is run, and can see one that you do think is run well, you can always leave and go to that one. The choice is there.

Possibly a slight over-simplification...

greg66_tri_v2.0

MonkeyMonster wrote:

edit: and no, jaws was a far larger than normal great white.

*And* he was really, really smart. And mean, too.

Let's say the battle takes place in the shallow end, but that Mighty Kong isn't allowed to touch the side or get out. That should progress matters.

greg66_tri_v2.0

Monkeypump wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

davmaggs wrote:

4) If I don't like an airline or a company serves enough people badly then I can go elsewhere. If a service or product is not useful then that organsiation closes.

If you don't like the way a country is run, and can see one that you do think is run well, you can always leave and go to that one. The choice is there.

Possibly a slight over-simplification...

Gordo did his best to close that door, by devaluing the pound through the floor.

Bangladesh, here I come...

andyrm

simonaspinall wrote:

I think a large resentment comes from workers from SME organisations, which make up a sizeable quantity of workers in the UK.

They don't have the (previous) job security, union protection, flexi-time, pension contributions, standard pay increases that the public sector has been given.

SME organisations have also suffered massively in the recession and of course are not part of the financial sector.

SME organisations are also the first to suffer in terms of having credit taken away from them and will have to make people redundant.

SME organisations don't generally pay as much as a larger private sector company and so you have the worst of both worlds in terms of job and pay conditions. It's not as if I haven't tried to get a job in a larger company, but there really is no one hiring or when there is there is a massively more experienced person going for it who has just been made redundant as a stop-gap job and the whole cycle starts again.

It's these workers who see their public sector counterparts having much better pay and conditions. My housemate is a council worker who is a data entry clerk, has no uni or a level qualifications and has been working in the same position for 13 years. She is paid more than me and has immensely better working conditions (I am a degree level and professionally qualified marketer with 4 years expereince). As a tax payer I also subsidise her pension. She's a nice girl and all that but it can't be fair when a private sector worker is subsidising a better paid public sector worker when they struggle to pay their own pension.

So the gap between wages and conditions and the resultant union calls for strikes winds people in SMEs up as if tried to be unionised and went on strike we'd be out of a job!

I believe in the public sector and greatly appreciate it being there for me should the worst happen and I need healthcare, my (one day in the future) kids need educating or I need help from the police. However, the feeling of complacency and entitlement in comparison to the private sector seems grossly out of step.

I work within an SME and have previously been in the corporate sector. I'd choose SME every time due to the ability to move fast, take on more responsibility and shine brighter within the workplace. Yes there is a bit less security than corporate private sector work, but I thrive on pressure and challenging myself - SME employment gives me all that.

But working for an SME makes the difference in attitude between private sector and public sector employees all the more apparent. While a private sector employee will battle to get a job done on time, on budget and right first time (because their survival in the workplace probably depends on it), a public sector worker generally doesn't have that same motivation, or if they did have, it's been institutionally removed from their psyche.

Add to that the complete anachronism of union activity within the public sector and you can see why private sector employees have issue.......

daviesee

I don't hate the public sector, ot it's employees.

I just detest the mismanagement of it...........

DonDaddyD

davmaggs wrote:

DDD, I don't know how long you've been in the public sector but my advise would be not to stay in it too long. All organisations do to a certain degree institutionlise people over time and they become inflexible and they think that things work/or should work according to their experience.

Whilst this applies to all sectors the thing about the public sector is much of the work and the jobs are created by other demands from the public sector (or laws). In other words people are doing work because the workload is created by other PS staff. These roles aren't needed or wanted out in private companies. I know HR people who don't look at CVs from public sector people with too much time in roles that only make sense to other public sector staff as those people often become rigid, lack business skills and are used to work patterns (like the flexi time wheeze) or a working style that doesn't work outside the bubble of the public sector.

You have a point, but it is very singular in its perspective and largely depends where you are in the organisation and where you can go. If say you were speaking to a Director on £115,000 (whose job needs to exist) would you tell them their work is created by other staff and that they should get out? Would you be saying to a Director/Head/Manager of Business Development and Strategy (basically contract and writing business proposals, developing the organisation and planning the operationl strategy to expand the business within its market) on £40,000 - £80,000 that their Masters, professional qualifications, Degree, training and years of doing business to business contracting will be dismissed as not having business skills?

My view (based on my area of expertise, its different for others) if you only do your first 2-3 roles for 2-3yrs at the start of your career, develop your qualifications and try to continually move up the organisation demonstrating, learning new and utilising current skills along the way then I can't see any harm carving a career in the public sector.

If you were a administrator and did that for 5 years and then got another administrator role at the same level and did that for another 5 years then sure, you have a point. But even then the person may like being an administrator and there is nothing wrong with that.

DonDaddyD

Greg66 wrote:

MonkeyMonster wrote:

edit: and no, jaws was a far larger than normal great white.

*And* he was really, really smart. And mean, too.

Let's say the battle takes place in the shallow end, but that Mighty Kong isn't allowed to touch the side or get out. That should progress matters.

Have you ever tried to throw a punch under water? Try it.

The minute the fight is in the water Jaws wins.

If Jaws jumped out of water and Kong was able to:
i) Catch him
ii) Avoid the mouth
ii) Keep him out of water or snap him

Kong would win.

Also was Jaws a man fish or a lady fish?

MonkeyMonster,

Superman died, Louis Lane cried, Waverider (a time traveller) cried (so he must have died if the future hadn't had him done as alive yet) AND they had a funeral.

I am invulnerable to retcons.

Clever Pun

MonkeyMonster wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Doomsday is constantly evolving after every death, eventually he would defeat Superman and in the first fight, the only one that matters Superman died. It was in Death of Superman, I have the comic.

Except he didn't did he... he was merely in a very low level health coma and just needed to sit inside the matrix for a while to recover his breath. Come on man.

on a more pertinant note - why is it only 3.30pm?

edit: and no, jaws was a far larger than normal great white.

and you should have picked up that a monkey can swim

il_principe

simonaspinall wrote:

I think a large resentment comes from workers from SME organisations, which make up a sizeable quantity of workers in the UK.

They don't have the (previous) job security, union protection, flexi-time, pension contributions, standard pay increases that the public sector has been given.

SME organisations have also suffered massively in the recession and of course are not part of the financial sector.

SME organisations are also the first to suffer in terms of having credit taken away from them and will have to make people redundant.

SME organisations don't generally pay as much as a larger private sector company and so you have the worst of both worlds in terms of job and pay conditions. It's not as if I haven't tried to get a job in a larger company, but there really is no one hiring or when there is there is a massively more experienced person going for it who has just been made redundant as a stop-gap job and the whole cycle starts again.

It's these workers who see their public sector counterparts having much better pay and conditions. My housemate is a council worker who is a data entry clerk, has no uni or a level qualifications and has been working in the same position for 13 years. She is paid more than me and has immensely better working conditions (I am a degree level and professionally qualified marketer with 4 years expereince). As a tax payer I also subsidise her pension. She's a nice girl and all that but it can't be fair when a private sector worker is subsidising a better paid public sector worker when they struggle to pay their own pension.

So the gap between wages and conditions and the resultant union calls for strikes winds people in SMEs up as if tried to be unionised and went on strike we'd be out of a job!

I believe in the public sector and greatly appreciate it being there for me should the worst happen and I need healthcare, my (one day in the future) kids need educating or I need help from the police. However, the feeling of complacency and entitlement in comparison to the private sector seems grossly out of step.

Wot he said.

gtvlusso

Il Principe wrote:

simonaspinall wrote:

I think a large resentment comes from workers from SME organisations, which make up a sizeable quantity of workers in the UK.

They don't have the (previous) job security, union protection, flexi-time, pension contributions, standard pay increases that the public sector has been given.

SME organisations have also suffered massively in the recession and of course are not part of the financial sector.

SME organisations are also the first to suffer in terms of having credit taken away from them and will have to make people redundant.

SME organisations don't generally pay as much as a larger private sector company and so you have the worst of both worlds in terms of job and pay conditions. It's not as if I haven't tried to get a job in a larger company, but there really is no one hiring or when there is there is a massively more experienced person going for it who has just been made redundant as a stop-gap job and the whole cycle starts again.

It's these workers who see their public sector counterparts having much better pay and conditions. My housemate is a council worker who is a data entry clerk, has no uni or a level qualifications and has been working in the same position for 13 years. She is paid more than me and has immensely better working conditions (I am a degree level and professionally qualified marketer with 4 years expereince). As a tax payer I also subsidise her pension. She's a nice girl and all that but it can't be fair when a private sector worker is subsidising a better paid public sector worker when they struggle to pay their own pension.

So the gap between wages and conditions and the resultant union calls for strikes winds people in SMEs up as if tried to be unionised and went on strike we'd be out of a job!

I believe in the public sector and greatly appreciate it being there for me should the worst happen and I need healthcare, my (one day in the future) kids need educating or I need help from the police. However, the feeling of complacency and entitlement in comparison to the private sector seems grossly out of step.

Wot he said.

Wot he quoted

DonDaddyD

Clever Pun wrote:

MonkeyMonster wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Doomsday is constantly evolving after every death, eventually he would defeat Superman and in the first fight, the only one that matters Superman died. It was in Death of Superman, I have the comic.

Except he didn't did he... he was merely in a very low level health coma and just needed to sit inside the matrix for a while to recover his breath. Come on man.

on a more pertinant note - why is it only 3.30pm?

edit: and no, jaws was a far larger than normal great white.

and you should have picked up that a monkey can swim

A Gorilla is an Ape.

They can't swim.

Clever Pun

DonDaddyD wrote:

Clever Pun wrote:

and you should have picked up that a monkey can swim

A Gorilla is an Ape.

They can't swim.

And... a monkey can swim. Monkey isn't an ape.

yet you said both couldn't swim ergo your argument is an invalid

wgwarburton

Clever Pun wrote:

...and you should have picked up that a monkey can swim

Monkey? Yes. Gorilla? No.

There seems to be some debate as to whether large primates like Orangs & Gorillas are able to swim. Kong is close enough in form to compare, I would think, and it seems that he would be extremely unlikely to be in deep enough water to encounter a large shark.

So- no fight... sorry.

Cheers,
W.

rjsterry

Orangutans, at least, can swim - they just don't do it very often, which is why we thought they couldn't. He's not exactly a normal ape either is he?