It's a double dip!

TheStone

Peddle Up! wrote:

No problem with that, if I trusted that the Gov was working in the interests of the electorate, but I'm afraid I don't...

I'm not convinced they're deliberately working against the electorate. I think they probably mean well and see efficiencies in the private sector.

They are however ... stupid. All our governments seem to be. Constant, pointless, expensive tinkering.

Peddle Up!

TheStone wrote:

Peddle Up! wrote:

No problem with that, if I trusted that the Gov was working in the interests of the electorate, but I'm afraid I don't...

I'm not convinced they're deliberately working against the electorate. I think they probably mean well and see efficiencies in the private sector.

They are however ... stupid. All our governments seem to be. Constant, pointless, expensive tinkering.

We are as one on your second point! I'm off for a ride shortly to clear my head of the gloom.

rhext

TheStone wrote:

Peddle Up! wrote:

No problem with that, if I trusted that the Gov was working in the interests of the electorate, but I'm afraid I don't...

I'm not convinced they're deliberately working against the electorate. I think they probably mean well and see efficiencies in the private sector.

They are however ... stupid. All our governments seem to be. Constant, pointless, expensive tinkering.

Thing that annoys me a little bit about this sort of thread is that while there may be many things to dislike about 'the guvverment' and 'politicians', we'd be absolutely b***ered without them. You don't have to look far around the world to see the alternatives and frankly they're not in the least attractive. As for politicians - well, there are over 600 of them and they're all human. Take a cross-section of 600 humans and there will be a handful of criminals, a handful of stars and just under 600 people who basically want to go to bed at night leaving the world a slightly better place than it was when they got up. Sometimes I feel sorry for them, and I certainly wouldn't want to be one. We expect perfection of them, a standard that most of us fall far short of ourselves, and then judge them all by the handful of bad apples.

Basically, if you don't like 'the guvverment' my recommendation is to run for office and change it.....or go and live somewhere that doesn't have one and see how much better things really are.

Blacktemplar

finchy

rhext wrote:

That's just different ideology: the government believe that these schools will provide better education at lower cost. You don't So their quality improvement programme is your 'pet project'.

Yet, when people see what they consider to be an absolute waste of taxpayers' money (as I do in this case), then they will question why cuts have to be made elsewhere.

rhext wrote:

I suspect the only way of finding out the truth will be to try it.But for every person who's saying '....complete amateurs...' there's another person saying '....free schools from beaurocracy and let teachers teach...' Ironically, a fair few of them are the same people.

Which other part of our public services should be handed over to people who have got no experience and no qualifications in the area? Health? Water supplies? Teaching is not easy - you can't just say "hmmmm, well he's a good engineer, so why don't we let him walk in to a classroom and teach physics". There are issues such as behaviour management, giving feedback, etc. There's a reason that teachers are given a year's training.

rhext wrote:

The 'privatisation' one is interesting, because 'privatisation by stealth' is an accusation which gets trotted out regularly by people opposing government policy as if it were a bad thing. But as long as the service is free at point of delivery, I'm not sure that it matters that segments of it are delivered by private companies if they can do it cheaper and better than a state-owned outfit. Schools use a lot of toilet rolls: should the goverenment therefore own forests, construct paper mills and packaging plants, own and manage a fleet of delivery trucks etc etc or does it perhaps make more sense to buy them in? If they do buy them in, then should the owners of the company that produces them go without profit simply because it happens to be a government department that buys their product? I don't care: if it's cheaper and more convenient to buy them in then do so, but please don't try to charge me every time one of my kids goes to the loo!

Not the same at all. If you are unhappy with your toilet roll provider, you can quickly and easily change it. You can't do that with a school.

TheStone

rhext wrote:

Thing that annoys me a little bit about this sort of thread is that while there may be many things to dislike about 'the guvverment' and 'politicians', we'd be absolutely b***ered without them. You don't have to look far around the world to see the alternatives and frankly they're not in the least attractive. As for politicians - well, there are over 600 of them and they're all human. Take a cross-section of 600 humans and there will be a handful of criminals, a handful of stars and just under 600 people who basically want to go to bed at night leaving the world a slightly better place than it was when they got up. Sometimes I feel sorry for them, and I certainly wouldn't want to be one. We expect perfection of them, a standard that most of us fall far short of ourselves, and then judge them all by the handful of bad apples.

Basically, if you don't like 'the guvverment' my recommendation is to run for office and change it.....or go and live somewhere that doesn't have one and see how much better things really are.

I take your point.

I just feel somewhere in the last few decades, politics has been taken over by career politicians. Very few have lived 'normal' lives and I'm not sure many even care which side of the house they're on.

I'd prefer to see a bigger mixture in every way.

finchy

rhext wrote:

Thing that annoys me a little bit about this sort of thread is that while there may be many things to dislike about 'the guvverment' and 'politicians', we'd be absolutely b***ered without them. You don't have to look far around the world to see the alternatives and frankly they're not in the least attractive. As for politicians - well, there are over 600 of them and they're all human. Take a cross-section of 600 humans and there will be a handful of criminals, a handful of stars and just under 600 people who basically want to go to bed at night leaving the world a slightly better place than it was when they got up. Sometimes I feel sorry for them, and I certainly wouldn't want to be one. We expect perfection of them, a standard that most of us fall far short of ourselves, and then judge them all by the handful of bad apples.

Basically, if you don't like 'the guvverment' my recommendation is to run for office and change it.....or go and live somewhere that doesn't have one and see how much better things really are.

I don't think people are opposed to the concept of government - it's more that the feeling that they do not really represent us is very widespread now.

rhext

johnfinch wrote:

Yet, when people see what they consider to be an absolute waste of taxpayers' money (as I do in this case), then they will question why cuts have to be made elsewhere.

Yes, but that's only because you think it is a waste of money. The people proposing it do not, and presumably there is some basis for that. I don't believe there's any reliable way of telling which of you is right in advance, and the only way to find out is to try it.

johnfinch wrote:

Which other part of our public services should be handed over to people who have got no experience and no qualifications in the area? Health? Water supplies? Teaching is not easy - you can't just say "hmmmm, well he's a good engineer, so why don't we let him walk in to a classroom and teach physics". There are issues such as behaviour management, giving feedback, etc. There's a reason that teachers are given a year's training.

I don't believe that the management of any public services should be handed over to people who have no experience and no qualifications in the area. Is the proposal that free schools will be able to use unqualified teachers, that the management organisations do not have to be fit and proper for the task, and that there will be no quality control inspections in place? Or is this just another smoke screen to discredit a policy you disagree with? Or are you suggesting that no private organisation is capable of managing a public service?

johnfinch wrote:

Not the same at all. If you are unhappy with your toilet roll provider, you can quickly and easily change it. You can't do that with a school.

Well, if you're unhappy with your state school, you certainly can't quickly and easily change it now. Perhaps what we need is some alternative service delivery model.......

rick_chasey

What is disappointing is that the biggest criticism of the plan put forward by the chancelor is now beginning to bear fruit, and there is NO attempt to even address this criticism.

The cuts are also pretty back loaded - so we can expect bigger cuts than we've seen already from now till the election.

All seems a bit odd from where I'm sitting. Perhaps labour's position have made a change of tune politically difficult.

finchy

rhext wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

Yet, when people see what they consider to be an absolute waste of taxpayers' money (as I do in this case), then they will question why cuts have to be made elsewhere.

Yes, but that's only because you think it is a waste of money. The people proposing it do not, and presumably there is some basis for that. I don't believe there's any reliable way of telling which of you is right in advance, and the only way to find out is to try it.

That's just the thing - I (and many others) don't believe the government actually is acting in the way they believe to be deliver the best results. For example, academies aren't given school nutrition guidelines. Why not?

rhext wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

Which other part of our public services should be handed over to people who have got no experience and no qualifications in the area? Health? Water supplies? Teaching is not easy - you can't just say "hmmmm, well he's a good engineer, so why don't we let him walk in to a classroom and teach physics". There are issues such as behaviour management, giving feedback, etc. There's a reason that teachers are given a year's training.

I don't believe that the management of any public services should be handed over to people who have no experience and no qualifications in the area. Is the proposal that free schools will be able to use unqualified teachers, that the management organisations do not have to be fit and proper for the task, and that there will be no quality control inspections in place? Or is this just another smoke screen to discredit a policy you disagree with? Or are you suggesting that no private organisation is capable of managing a public service?

Free schools are under no obligation to hire qualified teachers. Just as an example, the London Academy of Excellence's person specification states that a teaching qualification is desirable but not essential. I'm not saying that this will be typical, I'm saying that the government are happy to allow it.

rhext wrote:

johnfinch wrote:

Not the same at all. If you are unhappy with your toilet roll provider, you can quickly and easily change it. You can't do that with a school.

Well, if you're unhappy with your state school, you certainly can't quickly and easily change it now. Perhaps what we need is some alternative service delivery model.......

We shouldn't be in a position in which we are unhappy with state schools. And the government's idea of just putting more power into the headteachers' hands and then everything will magically work out fine is ludicrous. Anyone who's ever worked in a school (and I've worked in a few) will tell you that if the senior management is any good, the school will succeed. If they are useless, the school will fail. Whether they are state or academies or free schools, this is just fiddling while Rome burns.

rhext

johnfinch wrote:

<...discussion - see above....>

When you put it like that, I can agree with a lot of what you're saying.

My own position is simply that I feel that cuts are inevitable and to a large degree desirable. The public sector are fairly unique in that there are generally no competitive downward pressures. If you don't prune occasionally then costs seem to grow steadily and every so often it's prudent to come in and say 'is this really what we had in mind when this service was introduced'. The fact that we're being forced down that route rather quicker than is comfortable is an unfortunate reflection of the world economic situation, but before I criticise the coalition too much I first look over my shoulder at Greece, Spain, Ireland, Iceland etc and say 'they have a difficult balancing act, but broadly speaking they're doing a lot better than some'.

finchy

^^^

I agree that the government will, at some point, have to cut spending, and I think that most people would (NB my understanding of economics is fairly basic), it's just some of the details which annoy me.

Jez mon

Rick Chasey wrote:

What is disappointing is that the biggest criticism of the plan put forward by the chancelor is now beginning to bear fruit, and there is NO attempt to even address this criticism.

The cuts are also pretty back loaded - so we can expect bigger cuts than we've seen already from now till the election.

All seems a bit odd from where I'm sitting. Perhaps labour's position have made a change of tune politically difficult.

I think labour are just biding their time until closer to the election, there's no point in laying on too thick yet. Anyway, fundamentally, their leading lights don't scream economic credibility and they haven't sold the idea that macroeconomics have slightly different rules to those of the individual.

The one party who you might expect to make more noise about it, can't, as they're part of the coalition.

It's all a bit of a mess, Osborne can't do a u-turn on the cuts policy as admitting you are wrong and doing something about it is, for some stupid reason, seen as a more heinous crime than being wrong. The party who can often be relied upon to make intelligent comment have been amalgamated into the coalition, and labours policy seems to be to try not to create to much noise.

NB. I don't actually think a total u-turn is required, obviously, running the economy with a deficit is not desirable, but there must be some policies which provide the basis for growth.