A Political Thread pt. 2

[Deleted member 90256]

Government and councils are notoriously wasteful, so it doesn't surprise me at all.

 

[Saintjay]

Kent County Council to be subject of Reform's first Reform to begin Musk-style audits of councils

Reform says a team lead by an as-yet unnamed tech entrepreneur will review council spending in Kent.

www.bbc.co.uk

What the **** is left to cut?

Not much tbh. Councils might as well just do services they have a legal duty to provide and cut everything else. My local authority has to find 11million in savings, there's not much left to cut. We've just had a restructure and redundancies.

I think Kent are in a unique position with the need to house asylum seekers and especially unaccompanied children.

 

[dirty harry]

Not much tbh. Councils might as well just do services they have a legal duty to provide and cut everything else. My local authority has to find 11million in savings, there's not much left to cut. We've just had a restructure and redundancies.

I think Kent are in a unique position with the need to house asylum seekers and especially unaccompanied children.

I was surprised to see they named family social housing and child school travel costs in the article, makes more sense now

 

[ncurd]

Government and councils are notoriously wasteful, so it doesn't surprise me at all.

Please tell me this is tongue in cheek. Just about every council is basically stripped to the bone every round of cuts makes them wonder which services they have to cut next.

 

[Saintjay]

As long as the enemy kindly wait till we have defence spending at 3%, around 2072 at this rate.

Or we only fight people armed with sporks.

Keir Starmer says UK moving to 'war-fighting readiness' as he unveils defence spending plans

But the prime minister declines to give a precise date on when defence spending will hit 3% of GDP.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Deleted member 90256]

Please tell me this is tongue in cheek. Just about every council is basically stripped to the bone every round of cuts makes them wonder which services they have to cut next.

I've had to work with them, so no. Even the simplest of things they turn into a drama. They lose forms, haven't looked into it, have no idea what you're talking about, hold it up because they don't want to be responsible even when it's outside their control etc.

Yes, they have been stripped to the bone, but so has everywhere.

 

[BrokenWing]

Or we only fight people armed with sporks.

Ah, back to the days of The Empire.

Although, sporks would have made us think twice.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

I've had to work with them, so no. Even the simplest of things they turn into a drama. They lose forms, haven't looked into it, have no idea what you're talking about, hold it up because they don't want to be responsible even when it's outside their control etc.

Yes, they have been stripped to the bone, but so has everywhere.

I don't think councils are wasteful but they can be infuriating and incompetent at times. However isn't that chicken and egg? They rarely have the resources to do things in a timely manner nor the financial means to pay to get good people in.

Generally there is an optimum funding level for things to work efficiently, if you drop below that, things become less efficient. The idea that you can keep cutting away and making things more streamlined and efficient simply isn't always true.

If underfunded and understaffed services face even greater cuts, it won't improve them, it will make them even worse and even more wasteful as you get even less return for the resources put into it.

 

[Deleted member 90256]

I don't think councils are wasteful but they can be infuriating and incompetent at times. However isn't that chicken and egg? They rarely have the resources to do things in a timely manner nor the financial means to pay to get good people in.

Generally there is an optimum funding level for things to work efficiently, if you drop below that, things become less efficient. The idea that you can keep cutting away and making things more streamlined and efficient simply isn't always true.

If underfunded and understaffed services face even greater cuts, it won't improve them, it will make them even worse and even more wasteful as you get even less return for the resources put into it.

Broadly I agree, but they do seem to attract a lot of incompetent people tbh.

 

[TommiG88]

I've had to work with them, so no. Even the simplest of things they turn into a drama. They lose forms, haven't looked into it, have no idea what you're talking about, hold it up because they don't want to be responsible even when it's outside their control etc.

Yes, they have been stripped to the bone, but so has everywhere.

I think that is down to understaffed levels. I worked for a council, and the staff reduction in the last 15/20 years has been huge. There is a lot of processing / red tape, so nothing goes quickly. But it’s also down to people being spread thinly across the ground.

 

[Ddanno]

Broadly I agree, but they do seem to attract a lot of incompetent people tbh.

They pay peanuts, so they can't really attract top employees tbf

 

[Deleted member 90256]

They pay peanuts, so they can't really attract top employees tbf

True. Friend worked at one in the midlands before and left due to the environment. They were apparently messing about on the Internet a lot. The manager who had the key to the office was frequently late do to going shopping in town before starting.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Broadly I agree, but they do seem to attract a lot of incompetent people tbh.

They don't attract the best but they don't pay the best. It's a bit odd really having people wanting to cut councils everywhere, who think it's terrible if the public sector pays as well as the private, and then point to the failures this attitude creates as evidence of why councils are bad.

If things are set up to fail, they will fail. If public sector is set up to not be competitive with the private sector, it won't compete.

Note to self, always ensure I type public sector and not pubic sector...

 

[dirty harry]

I don't think councils are wasteful but they can be infuriating and incompetent at times. However isn't that chicken and egg? They rarely have the resources to do things in a timely manner nor the financial means to pay to get good people in.

Generally there is an optimum funding level for things to work efficiently, if you drop below that, things become less efficient. The idea that you can keep cutting away and making things more streamlined and efficient simply isn't always true.

If underfunded and understaffed services face even greater cuts, it won't improve them, it will make them even worse and even more wasteful as you get even less return for the resources put into it.

If anyone thinks council aren't wasteful, you havnt spent 5 minutes in the homeless sector, or social care.

There are 7300 children in Wales who are in residential care, 10% are in secure units.

The lower end cost per child in Wales is 300k per year. That's more than £5500 per week, councils pay mostly private care homes, about 88% I think.

Cardiff Local Authority can run a residential home on £1400 per child, and break even. Companies like the Prioiry are earning a 60%+ profit margin.

There's a Home in Cardiff, they charge £8k per week per child, x 6 bedrooms in the house. £48k per week income, £2.5 million pounds per year for 1 home.

The Priorys running costs for this home is barely 900k. 64% profits, more than 1.5 million pounds per year per residential home. That's 200k per child!!!

There are 7300 of these children in Wales, 6400 live in private residential homes, each worth 200k per year.

And that's not even taking into account the higher needs children, or secure units who charge double the usual fees.

Infact there are stories of million pound children per annum, and a famous one in Merseyside costing 2 million pounds per child per year.

Councils don't waste money ffs, it's an absolute scandal noone wants to talk about, well there is bigger scandals around these places that noone wants to talk about but that's probably not for this thread today!

Edit: apologies for the rant

 

[Deleted member 90256]

They don't attract the best but they don't pay the best. It's a bit odd really having people wanting to cut councils everywhere, who think it's terrible if the public sector pays as well as the private, and then point to the failures this attitude creates as evidence of why councils are bad.

If things are set up to fail, they will fail. If public sector is set up to not be competitive with the private sector, it won't compete.

Note to self, always ensure I type public sector and not pubic sector...

I can understand the difficulty with complex cases, but I'm talking about basic stuff that requires simple reading comprehension they're failing.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

I can understand the difficulty with complex cases, but I'm talking about basic stuff that requires simple reading comprehension they're failing.

Yes and often it's because anyone who is worth anything goes into the private sector. It's like how the people who work at watchdogs for industries, particularly things like finance etc are generally there because they weren't good enough to actually work in finance where the pay is significantly better.

The same people who complain about the public sector being poor quality also complain any time the public sector offer anything approaching a reasonably competitive pay packet and bonuses as "wasteful". Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

The "government is bad mkay" batch ensure their claims are self-fulfilling. They say government is bad, they then do everything they can to undermine it, prevent any chance of it actually operating efficiently and then point at the mess they made and go "told you" before then repeating it again and again until it breaks. They then sell it off to the private sector and suddenly those same inefficiencies and waste are ok. Just look at the water authorities and rail to see exactly how incompetent and wasteful private entities can be too. The thing is, waste and incompetence don't matter at the private level if you have a captive market and keep a much more limited group of people happy.

The NHS is run at a fraction of the cost of something like the American system and yet we constantly hear about NHS inefficiency. In fact even when the NHS was working well, people constantly moaned about inefficiency. Things like the NHS will always have some degree of inefficiency as they are so big. American healthcare is also grossly inefficient, but they charge such ridiculous fees that it hides all that.

 

[Saintjay]

Broadly I agree, but they do seem to attract a lot of incompetent people tbh.

In all fairness, I work for a LA. With some very bright and capable people. I see a lot of incompetence from the private sector. Over inflated prices, lack of ability to deliver on time. Private companies staff paid and treated really poorly, especially those in care homes, cleaning etc.

Quite a few problems stem from out sourcing to the private sector. Residential care, cleaning, grounds maintenance, property management etc the list goes on.

Works both ways.

 

[McTallshort]

Having worked in both I have to say there isn't much in it when it comes to waste or incompetence. Public sector gets a bad wrap from the right wing media and the private sector gets bashed by anyone who ever feels they are getting ripped off or suffering from poor service.....which is kinda everyone

 

[Ddanno]

It's capitalism, baby!

 

[Deleted member 90256]

In all fairness, I work for a LA. With some very bright and capable people. I see a lot of incompetence from the private sector. Over inflated prices, lack of ability to deliver on time. Private companies staff paid and treated really poorly, especially those in care homes, cleaning etc.

Quite a few problems stem from out sourcing to the private sector. Residential care, cleaning, grounds maintenance, property management etc the list goes on.

Works both ways.

It's office workers. In any other job, you would get called out for being so unproductive and incompetent, but for some reason they don't seem have the same system. If they screw up, no action is taken and it's lead to just accepting it as normal.