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Your Tax Money At Work

But is this actually true Seumas?

Lawyers are always told never to ask questions to which they don\’t know the answer. I am not a lawyer.

It\’s hardly surprising that the mainly publicly owned rail systems in the rest of Europe – several of which now run bits of Britain\’s privatised rail – are cheaper.

Is this actually true?

I know that many European systems are indeed cheaper for passengers, yes. But are they cheaper in total?

Anyone actually know? Not quite sure what the metric should be. Per passenger mile perhaps? But including all costs (which should most definitely include things like pensions!) is the British rail system actually more expensive than those others?

I have a feeling, but no more than that, that Seumas is looking only at ticket prices. Which would be a little naughty really.

Campaign to protect rural England? Pah!

It\’s the campaign to boost urban landlord\’s rents.

The vast majority of green belt is open countryside, still rural in character despite being close to London, Birmingham and other cities. This “ordinary countryside” is as precious as our great national parks but it is under serious attack, from day-to-day planning proposals and from a Chancellor who is too ready to blame planning for bigger economic difficulties. It is down to Eric Pickles — backed, I hope, by the Prime Minister — to live up to the Government’s commitments and act to save the green belt.

The actual effect of the green belt is to boost rents for those who own land inside it. London\’s green belt aids in making the Duke of Westminster, Earl Cadogan, Viscount Chelsea rich.

The costs of clipboards

Some local authorities spend almost a fifth of their care budget on the complex assessments and reviews required by law to ensure that elderly and disabled people receive the right support.

But other councils manage to do the same task for just over a third of the price, analysts at the Audit Commission said.

The Commission calculates that the taxpayer could save as much as £312 million a year if all councils were equally as “efficient” – enough to pay for home care for almost 20,000 older people.
….
But while some local authorities spend an average of more than £2,200 on each assessment, others manage it for £830 while still apparently maintaining standards.

Those councils which spend less tend to use less specialist staff to carry out basic assessments leaving highly paid social workers and experts to focus on the more complex work, the report found.

In some councils people carrying out the assessments cost the taxpayer an average of £96,000 each per year in pay and other benefits, almost twice the rate in others.

The first lesson of economics is that incentives matter. In a bureaucracy (as the Blessed C. Northcote pointed out) then incentive is to increase the number of staff reporting to you and to increase the pay of those more numerous staff reporting to you.

Bureaucracy is thus an undesirable, but alas sometimes wholly necessary, method of managing anything. The trick is to reduce the number of things run by clipboard wielding bureaucracy to the absolute minimum possible. And even then to introduce/include other forms of incentive if one possibly can. Like, for example, contracting out to market based providers if at all possible. Not necessarily do that you understand, but attempt to find some solution that overcomes the inherent problems of the incentives of bureaucracy at least.

One of the reasons we have shit and expensive public services is that we don\’t actually do this: as the Nordics do. Much of Scandinavia\’s fire and ambulance service is run by Falck AS, formerly a subsidiary of G4S. Purely on efficiency grounds: but can you imagine that ever actually happening here?

Idiot socialists again: if only we ran the economy like the Olympics

And contrary to the coalition rhetoric of spendthrift public servants, I can think of lots of private companies less exacting with their cash than UK Sport. Its Investment Policy and Principles speak of a \”no-compromise\” approach and \”a willingness to realign funding in the light of persistent under- or over-performance\”. In other words, only potential medallists need apply – a philosophy that applies to whole sports, such as handball, as well as athletes.

Lest it be thought that I am finding in a news event only a reflection of my politics, let me freely confess that there are aspects of this picture I find unlovely. The ruthless targeting, which allows little scope for invisible sports or unlucky athletes. The way officials throw around terms such as \”performance pathways\” and \”delivery\” and the other nonsense of modern public management. And the sheer professionalisation of the process will doubtless strike as abhorrent those who prefer to coo over Tom Daley.

But after this month, there is no denying that this policy – of picking winners and backing them – works. And as Grix points out: \”When it comes to sport, politicians will follow exactly the opposite policies from the ones they stick to in managing the economy.\”

The conclusion being that therefore we must pick winners in the economy and back them.

The problems with this being twofold:

1) It\’s simple enough to pick winners in sports. You\’ve a small enough number with the right genetics and they\’re pretty much already known to those in the sporting structures. You also know what your goal is. You don\’t have this level of knowledge of companies in the economy. Indeed, you cannot: for you don\’t actually have a clear goal. We don\’t know what it is that people will want to buy in 3-5 year\’s time. We don\’t know what other people will be producing at that time. It just isn\’t as simple as \”run faster than the others and you\’ll get a medal\”. Just as an example, can you imagine trying to uncover a potential winner in smartphones/tablets? Let alone properly identifying and then backing them: through the government bureaucracy?

2) Let\’s actually look at the Olympics. Somewhere around £20 billion of the taxpayers\’ money spent on sports day for drug addicts. Makes the bureaucrats who \”delivered\” this feel very good indeed. You might get a different answer from the populace if you actually asked them, well, was that worth £300 to each and every one of you? £1,200 for the family of four?

Quite. If we did run the economy like we ran the Olympics we\’d get to pay for what we don\’t want and others would buy with our money what they want.

Bureaucrats love rules: idiot bureaucrats

This is a particularly fine vintage of rule making stupidity:

However, Cabinet Office rules state that the sport committee, which is chaired by the Locog chief Lord Coe, can recommend only one knighthood a year, along with four CBEs, 20 OBEs, and 38 MBEs.

The general rule is that Olympic gold gains an MBE, with advancement to OBE, CBE, for subsequent such at subsequent games.

One of the things we might like to note about this event is that it happens on a four year cycle.

Those bureaucrats, the Rolls Royce minds of our generation, have the gong giving based upon annual quotas.

With this level of rule making stupidity it\’s not all that surprising that that planned economy idea never really worked, is it?

Well of bloody course

Councils told to sell most valuable houses to build more affordable homes
Councils told to sell most valuable houses as research finds that one in five tenants are living in properties worth more than nearby private homes.

Sell the expensive stuff to build cheap stuff. Why the hell not?

Mostly it\’s location that makes them expensive after all. That cost of planning permission.

Critics warned that it would lead to “social cleansing”, with low-paid workers progressively moved out of more expensive areas.

Err, yes, and?

Don\’t we actually want to maximise the volume of subsidised housing for whatever limited amount we\’re prepared to pay on subsidising it?

Well, if they are impartial that is

However keen Mr Maude may be to import political sympathisers into key Whitehall posts, the current exodus of impartial mandarins

There is always a certain suspicion that they are not impartial.

Too keen on the civil service view: that the civil service must by necessity run everything. Entirely typical of any bureaucracy, \”let people get on with it themselves\” is not something that is often uttered by those employed to get on with things for people.

So, anyone really know about the state pension?

I\’m sure that among the readership here there are one or two who really understand about the state pension system. Across Europe that is.

My basic starting point is that if you\’ve not got a state pension then buying one is a very, very, effective use of money. It is, essentially, an inflation proofed annuity in exchange for national insurance payments. And it is a much better deal than anything you can get on the private market. Simply because those pensions are not paid from the earnings on investments, not even from the premiums being paid, but subsidised out of general tax revenues.

Further, you can, in the UK at least, purchase back years of pension contributions. I think it used to be you could purchase two blocks of 7 years in a lifetime. Now only one block of 10 years maybe.

The NI rates required to just make these pension contributions (which you can regard really as the capital sum purchasing that annuity) make doing so, if you haven\’t already got a full UK pension, a very attractive deal.

OK, here\’s where I now go off into areas I know nothing about.

I would assume that most such state pension schemes across Europe (more importantly, the EU, where they\’re not allowed to discriminate against EU furriners) have similar arrangements. So that mothers who took years out of the workforce, as an example, can top up their pension rights.

So, what\’s to stop someone purchasing pensions in all 27 such EU countries? Not Estonia, obviously, as pensions there are based upon real investment returns.

But is, and I repeat if, other state pension schemes are better than private annuities, and if, I repeat if, it is possible to back purchase years of eligibility, then what\’s to stop someone purchasing 5 or 10 or 20 different state pensions from across the continent?

Anyone know?

I keep telling you about trade offs…..

However, a partial ban on sow stalls, due to take effect throughout Europe from 1 January 2013, will have a major impact on the EU pig meat market, according to experts.

BPEX, the body that represents the interests of pig producers, said that similar animal welfare legislation, which came into force at the start of this year, has caused serious disruption with the price of eggs up 75% compared with a year ago.

BPEX warns that pig production is likely to fall by between 5% and 10% with the result that retailers will be face substantial price increases.

Maybe animal welfare is more important than the price of bacon (mmm, bacon, the one major food group!). Maybe the cost of feeding our own little ones is more important than the way the little ones we eat are treated.

It\’s a trade off. And there are no solutions, there are only trade offs. That\’s a pretty obvious statement and I\’m sorry to have to keep repeating it. But all too many just don\’t grasp the point.

Sure we should concern ourselves with the welfare of the little piggies. Sure, it is even possible that we should give up some of what we have to increase that porcine welfare. But that there is a trade off which has to be considered is exactly the same whether we are talking about bacon or civil servants troughing for grander pensions.

My opinion, a purely personal one you understand, is that Babe and siblings can have a bit more of my money, live happier and more carefree lives. The bureaucrats, well, we would seem to have some empty slaughterhouses as a result of the first policy…..

Paying Prisoners £3 an hour

There\’s a very, very, simple solution to this:

Prisoners paid £3 a day to work at call centre that has fired other staff

The reason you don\’t pay prisoners more than this is because you don\’t want prisoners, even in an open prison, swanning around with £200 a week in their pockets.

But if you\’re going to employ them, outside the prison then you also don\’t want them being hired out at £3 a day. For the obvious undercutting reasons (although there is a good argument that training and rehabilitation are a good idea for them and thus justify low wages).

The answer being: they can earn £3 a day, just as much as they would in jobs inside the prison. But they should be paid more normal rates. To be collected upon their release from an escrow account.

And wouldn\’t that be a good idea, that a prisoner leaves with a little nest egg to get them started?

Hurrah!

Planning laws could be watered down again in a desperate Treasury move to rescue the UK economy from recession.

Not that it\’s likely to happen soon nor be very radical when it does.

I\’ll agree that supply side changes are unlikely to have much short term effect on the growth rate of the economy. But they matter hugely in the long term and there\’s no time better to attack the privileges of those protected by supply restrictions than when everything is shite anyway.

But it matters what teachers are trained in

Usual nonsense from someone inside the cartel about relaxing the entrance rules to the cartel:

The news today that the education secretary is to remove the requirement for academies to employ qualified teachers sent a shudder down my spine. For a teacher like me, who has taught for more than 20 years in various comprehensives and has spent a great deal of time, quite a bit of it my own time, being \”trained\”, I know that pupils get a raw deal if they are taught by an untrained teacher.

Firstly, a properly trained teacher is fully conversant with the various theories about how children learn; he or she understands that you can\’t just stand at the front and bark orders, that you need to engage children in \”active\” learning where they are doing things that assist with their learning. A well-trained teacher knows how to assess their pupils lesson by lesson, and use their assessments to shape further lessons, building upon a child\’s strengths and tackling their weaknesses.

I know I wouldn\’t be nearly as effective as a teacher had I not been trained.

No one at all is suggesting that teachers should not be trained.

The argument is over whether a teacher needs to have a post-graduate course (even a degree at all) in trendy arguments about \”how children learn\” or they need 6 weeks of standing in front of a class and being told what they\’re doing wrong.

I can quite easily find you a current teacher who would say that the 6 weeks or so of classroom practice helped a great deal more than the year of academia (Hallo Shuggy!).

It probably would be a good idea if someone teaching Further Maths A Level had a Maths Degree….or something close to that level of education in the subject. The idea that someone needs a post-graduate degree in order to oversee the finger painting in Year One is rather harder to support.

You know what I\’d do about this PCS strike?

A strike by 25,000 British border staff aimed at \’inflicting maximum pain\’ on the eve of the Olympics has been called off this morning.

The Home Office has averted 24 hours of industrial action by members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) at airports tomorrow after agreeing a last minute deal.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka says 800 new jobs will be created in the UK Border Agency and 300 in passport offices.

I\’d wait a couple of months. Train up a few more people. Then renege on the deal.

Serwotka has quite clearly indulged in a little blackmail here and there\’s no shame in cheating a blackmailer out of the demanded reward.

Bloody good question

Meanwhile, as I sit in the sunshine after breakfast, I wonder why G4S\’s chairman should have to worry about losing £1 billion per year of government contracts over his company\’s Olympic cock-up, while governments which always cock everything up, and rarely on such a small scale, never lose their contract with the taxpayer.

The Home Office: Hang \’em all

Commonwealth recruits to the British forces can claim citizenship after four years’ service.

But a Sunday Telegraph investigation has found that a growing number are being refused it. Unable to work or claim benefits, they and their families rely on charity handouts to survive.

Yes, there are rules. Yes, some of them have broken some of them.

Lance-Corporal Bale Balewai, a Fijian, served for 13 years in the Army, including operational tours to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Northern Ireland, winning four medals, exemplary reports from his commanding officers and even being used in recruitment adverts.

He has a British wife and children. But he has been refused citizenship, banned from working, and faces imminent removal – because he once accepted a commanding officer’s punishment after getting into a fight with another soldier.

The punishment was imposed at a military summary hearing in the CO’s office lasting ten minutes. L/Cpl Balewai had no legal representation.

No witnesses were called and he was not told that five other soldiers were prepared to testify that he had acted in self-defence.

However, for immigration purposes, a military summary punishment counts the same as a criminal conviction in a civilian court, disqualifying the applicant from citizenship.

Give over you fucking tosspots.

We\’ll have a much more pleasant land once we\’ve hung the last Home Office Minister with the intestines of the last Home Office bureaucrat.

Remploy: To be fair and balanced

An email I have received from one of the Remploy workers/trade unionists:

Your article Remploy on strike

July 20th, 2012 · No Comments

Is one I wish to bitterly dispute.

I am a Remploy employee at Remploy Spennymoor in Co Durham and have worked there for the last 34 years. I am also a Union branch secretary for Remploy disabled employees and an elected member trustee on the Remploy pension scheme as well as being a national negotiating delegate for the Trade Union consortium. All of these roles mean I have regularly met with senior management and the board of directors as well as having access to financial information over the years.

So let me explain.

This is only an accusation thrown out by the minister who is only repeating what she is being advised is a suitable political argument to close Remploy.

The correct interpretation is this.

This cost is derived by dividing the subsidy provided to the Board of directors to run Remploy by the number of employees it employees.

I would put it to you that the way to manipulate these figures to arrive at a high cost which you mention as being 25,000 per disabled employee is this.#

Since overheads generally go up each year the cost of running factories like any other business also goes up. However if you reduce the number of workers in either the company or a factory the cost per person goes up accordingly.

Let me give you an example. Since 2008 we have had 2 rounds of voluntary redundancies which has slashed our workforce from over 5,000 to under 1500. In my own factory in 2008 50% of them went in 2008 under voluntary redundancy. (just 5 people have found a job since by the way )

Of course the cost per person has gone up. As I said in my factory the cost per person doubled because of this situation which is now used to beat us over the head with verbally by the minister Maria Miller.

But it does not mean that the actual cost to the taxpayer of employing a disabled person has gone up. This is a paper exercise weighted to manipulate cost per person.

(I myself know a number of factories who got their own costs down to a level approaching only £10,000 per person. Despite the government wanting factories to fail)

So how can this be?

By having a structure of over 500 managers including highly paid senor managers and directors which equates to 1 manager for every 3 people in a factory( plus expense accounts) which is also part of the subsidy given by the government. Meaning this 25,000 also includes their costs not just that of a disabled worker.

You also need to add this in also. Remploy created a central costs dept.

Basically what this meant a lot of money was being paid to them by ever factory. For example did you realise that to have a computer on site it cost the factory over £100 per week. Where can you get a computer, which are now ancient by the way, for £100 per week?

An email account costs £100.

If your factory had its workforce slashed and despite increasing productivity by 12% in 12 months you were to find yourself in a similar situation where jobs were turned away as being to costly and only low paying jobs were taken on, in addition tot these costs you would find yourself in the same situation as remploy factory workers.

We all feel utterly angry and bitterly insulted by this political argument to justify our closure. Disabled workers tend to earn just over £200 per week to take home. Its not even £14,000 per year. If we were given the opportunity to make money in the factories then the cost per person would soon go down and the profit could be used to employ more disabled people and invest in factories.

That does not happen because this government wants factories to fail. Because its an easy way of attacking the pubic sector.

Same argument is used to turn people against each other that private sector = good

public sector = bad.

Check it out where you can, when you can, but I would hope you remove that 25,000 bit.

Kenneth Stubbs

GMB TU Consortium Delegate for Remploy (North East)

The truth or not of any of this I have no idea. But good to have both sides, eh?

And if the above is true then there\’s certainly some of that old \”as we\’re subsidised we\’re horribly inefficient\” isn\’t there?

And finally: what possible justification is there for a £25,000 a year subsidy to produce £14,000 a year wages?

Finally finally, aren\’t the unions getting better at this online response stuff?

Quite right too

David Cameron doesn’t “see a time” when the government’s austerity programme will end and is poised to extend public spending cuts until 2020.

Seriously:

1) They are spending our money, raised at gunpoint: of course we want them to continue to be frugal with doing so.

2) If the bad times continue then there won\’t be any money to be anything but frugal.

3) If boom times return then we need to do Keynesianism right this time around. A booming economy is exactly when you need to be taking the fiscal stimulus out: when you need to be running that mythical budget surplus.

And Polly fails the G4S test

G4S shares plunged as police were drafted in to guard the Olympics amid warnings more soldiers will be needed. Yet another outsourcing company collects profits when all goes well and the state picks up the pieces if the company fails.
….
Some are – but there is no evidence that siphoning profits into private companies is any panacea. One thing is certain. These contracts create moral hazard on a grand scale, where profits are private but losses are ours.

G4S is, as they should be, coughing up the cash for those soldiers and policemen.

In what manner are the losses \”ours\”?