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Ah, got it.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
It is all spending, but the parts that involve spending on people's wages could be made considerably more productive if we could get public sector productivity or be somewhere near that of the private sector. Apart from unions and those public sector employees who are a bit workshy, most people will probably support this over tax rises.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
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I have also been struck by the change in persona of Sunak, from his concession speech to first PMQs. Now the pressure is off he seems far more relaxed and conciliatory in tone. Which begs the question, why did he allow himself to be dragged into populist culture wars as PM. He had a chance to forge his own agenda and re-centre the party post Johnson and Truss and he blew it quite spectacularly.
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Even in the private sector it's very hard to sack people if they want to be difficult.
- Genesis Croix de Fer
- Dolan Tuono0 -
Yeah, although some (e.g. Atkins, Cleverly and Badenoch) are carrying on as if nothing happened, to see Sunak & Patel being almost normal doesn't yet quite compute.
Still, the likely contenders for the leadership election suggest that they've not come up with a viable plan for turning the sinking ship around: all were part of the worst Tory government, in both governing and electoral terms, and all seem to be pretending they can carry on as before. It's all good news for Labour.
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I’m always surprised to hear this. It very rapid in my own company if you’re not performing and similar in my clients.
Always hearing about cuts.
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Can't disagree with that.
In my view the absence of a profit motive and in many cases, competition contribute to the lack of public sector productivity. I also mentioned separately the massive burden of public sector final salary pensions which we all have to pay for.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Not in my experience. We're in the middle of one now in a few countries and its just a process in the UK. Compared to what were doing in France, Germany and Netherlands its a walk in the park...
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
And while you're at it taxpayers, time to put a magazine down the back of our financial trousers, as the lefties are gearing up to spank us...
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Cuts due to business reasons (aka redundancy) is a very different proposal to a straight sacking. Although it can be used to clear deadwood in the process.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Obviously given the OBR report from the last budget, it's a choice to increase taxes, or try to borrow more, or to continue with the plans as they were, and cut everything until it goes to shit.
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This is a bit like saying I had a choice between trying to stabilise my front wall to stop it falling down, or not spending quite a lot of money to do so.
Somehow, despite raising taxes to the highest level in our lifetimes, the Tories managed to break just about everything, or leave them in such a state of disrepair that they are in danger of falling down. It's hardly a surprise that Labour are having to spend money to try and fix the front wall, despite the black hole in the finances. Not to do is not really an option, unless you want the whole system to break... which, to be fair, the loons do, I suspect, but won't admit it.
Perhaps if Dido Harding hadn't spaffed £37bn on Test & Trace (I'm still baffled by how they predicted that figure at the outset) and several billion more on useless PPE from their mates & donors, we'd not be in the pickle we're in now.
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Do you mean ‘goes further to shit’?
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I am obviously totally biased but in general I think part of the productivity puzzle in Europe is it is too hard to hire and too hard to fire.
I obviously hear about these things disproportionately but it’s not efficient to have people in jobs that the firm would rather get rid of.
It is ultimately bad for everyone.
Ive also had bad experiences joining 3 firms but the 4th was a total revelation and I’ve actually not only happy but it’s absolutely turbocharged my earning success too - not unrelated I am sure.
I think being sacked for not being good is not necessarily a bad thing. I do believe there are jobs out there that are right for every type of person, temperament etc and I think people are happier and more productive in jobs that suit them better.
If we could find a way to allow for this without the exploitation the bottom end it would be great….alas
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Very easy to write that. Significantly harder to achieve and I don't see any suggestions as to how. It's hard enough increasing productivity in a small team of generally highly motivated people where you have the flexibility to reward that productivity. I'm sure you're also aware that those who left like to put in the minimum effort are not restricted to public services, nor does an absence of unions provide a panacea.
The converse is also true. When publicly funded employment offers middling remuneration and little in the way of promotion opportunities, the better people just leave, This does not lead to improved productivity: it just leads to understaffing. Education and Health have been particularly hit by this, but I see the same every day in the planning system.
And again, it's still not clear how productivity is measured for services that aren't directly charged for. Clearly teaching more children with the same number of staff would improve productivity on one measure but would be unlikely to lead to better educational outcomes.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Still obsessed with the nasty Tories I see. So what exactly will Labour do to fix it all?
The massive economic impact of the pandemic and the earlier parts of the Ukraine war pretty much necessitated tax rises, but one of those is done and the economic impact of the other is less now. But still Labour are about to try to squeeze more tax out of us. Unfortunately the impact of higher taxes on economic growth will go directly against their stated aim of promoting growth, but they don't seem to have figured that out. I guess Reeves is about to get a practical lesson on that front.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
If its possible in the private sector then the public sector needs to see how it can do some of that. It's not as if all the good people work in the private sector. However with Labour in charge we're more likely to spot Elvis riding the Loch Ness monster than the govt putting pressure on the public sector to do more for their money. They're already signalling that they'll cave in to public sector wage demands and guess who will have to pay for that.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
There are quite a few countries where the Labour laws are a definite barrier to businesses performing well. The three countries we have had issues with in terms of results over the last few years are Germany, France and Netherlands - in each case a large part of that is down to the difficulty and expense of getting rid of people who are no longer required because the nature of the business has changed or because the level of business in certain sectors does not support than number of people any more.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
You don't seem to recognise that pretty much everything is broken and needs fixing. Even if you dismiss the £50bn on T&T and covid fraud/bungs, it still needs fixing.
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So no specifics then, just hand-waving "something must be done". And you've still not explained how you think productivity should be measured in a service where there are no customers.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
That's redundancy, which you've already pointed out is not that much of an issue in the UK.
Given that understaffing is such a big problem across a number of public services due to poor retention, redundancy is not likely to exist in many public services.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Pretty laughable that you think we would have paid off the additional borrowing required for Covid less than 4 years after the fact. Ditto subsidising everyone's heating bill for a year. Comparable events took several decades to pay off.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I think Stevo's entire manifesto is 'cut taxes', and everything else is just incidental/collateral.
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I guess when so many lefties are repeating that you come to believe it. Most things can be improved but broken implies does not work at all. But either way, where are they going to get the money from and how much extra are you willing to contribute to that?
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Nope, that's a leftie oversimplification - again.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
So what's your answer? Just tax people more and throw more money at the issues?
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
I don't claim to bean expert on productivity, but that sort of gap is significant and indicates where we should be focusing, rather than trying to extract ever more money from people.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
I wouldn't claim to be an expert either but I do have some practical experience of improving our productivity over the last 5 or 6 years. It's difficult, takes years rather than months, and the things that you would think make a difference often don't and vice versa. On an individual level, letting staff see as direct a link as possible between their performance and what we can charge, and rewarding extra effort has been one of the things that helped the most, but it's taken a lot of effort to design a system that incentivises the right sort of behaviour and doesn't lead to unintended consequences. And that's in a small business with easily measured outputs through our billing. What worked for us can't be assumed to be a template for other businesses, let alone the public sector.
You say that the gap indicates where we should be focusing but you've not demonstrated what that gap is beyond an unattributed chart with no explanation of how public sector productivity is calculated. And just saying the whole of the public sector should improve productivity is the opposite of focusing. It's not even clear what the gap is: only that the private sector has improved on its previous performance and the public sector has remained at the same level (however that is measured - and there seems to be significant disagreement on how it should be measured).
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
The plan under all of the major parties *was* to tax people more. I suppose you could have voted for Reform who planned to magically spend even more and tax less.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0
