One of the less appealing legacies of the Thatcher era, magnified throughout the Blair/Brown continuum, is the contention that all Public services will perform more efficiently if they were run like businesses.
This wrong-headed philosophy has landed us with a Post Office which is no longer capable of making twice-daily deliveries and whose employees routinely lie to their customers; national and local transport systems which, despite their nominally private ownership, are as heavily subsidised as they were when all transport was publicly owned; water companies who, after twenty years of trying, still cannot plug the leaks in their networks let alone guarantee continuity of supply; energy companies who exist solely to enrich their foreign owners and crucial health and social services that cannot even provide clean, safe accommodation for their sick and elderly customer base.
Many from these sectors report to or liaise with local and national Government agencies who slavishly follow the dictates of assorted lobbies, pressure groups and the EU rather than the people who elect or appoint them.
What they share with each other is the mistaken belief that services and service businesses are synonymous. The fastest growing sector in the UK economy for the last two decades has been the Service sector. Ergo, all we have to do to achieve the same levels of productivity and efficiency in our public services is to mimic those successful private service industries.
Wrong. Wrong and wrong again.
Despite the Service tag , these businesses exist for one reason only; to make money. They do this by making a profit. If, to achieve this, they need to close facilities, sack people, reduce working hours, relocate staff, slash benefits and even selectively shed customers, that is what they will do.
Public services exist for a very different reason; to provide vital services. That means running buses in rural areas where demand is intermittent, delivering letters to out of the way locations, manning fire and police stations in sparsely populated areas, emptying bins when the local populace wants them emptied; making sure that hospital and care staff follow basic hygiene routines to prevent infections. And accepting that to achieve these aims it will sometimes be necessary to subsidise some aspects of the service.
There is nothing remotely similar between balancing a budget to create value for shareholders, placate the bank manager and reward employees, and ensuring that bins are emptied, streets are cleaned, pot holes are filled, pensioners and other vulnerable people in the community are cared for and the police, fire and ambulance services are both local and respond rapidly when they are needed.
The problem is, of course, that "learning from business" has become the conventional wisdom. Councils, the Civil Service, the Police and Fire Brigades all routinely send their brightest and best to colleges where they rub shoulders with genuine business people. What they bring back from these courses - apart from an unhealthy addiction to management speak - is a mind set that makes no distinction between cost and value.
So, faced with a choice between maintaining a police station in a rural community or taking care of things from a central station twenty miles away, the new Police manager will opt for the latter. As long as he still ticks the right boxes, his decision Will be judged the correct one by his political masters. They, and he for that matter, are unlikely to live in the community thus affected.
The people on the ground might take a somewhat different view. Once the police are no longer in situ, they are no longer local. No glossy brochure can reassure like a blue light over a police station in the centre of town. No matter how artfully presented, all the statistics, pie charts, spreadsheets and matrices in the world will not convince the community that a mad twenty mile dash is as effective a deterrent as a large, uniformed bobby strolling down the High Street.
Does one provide better "value for money" than the other? It depends on your definition of value. If all of your assumptions are based on cost efficiency, then there can be no argument. (Unless, of course, the policies of our latest, mad Energy Minister drive fuel costs so high that a forty mile round-trip becomes as expensive as a month's rent and council tax.)
If, however, you evaluate the service on the basis of its value to the community, then the argument takes on a different complexion altogether. Only a business-man would choose the first option. Someone with the service of the public as his principal obsession would, unhesitatingly, opt for the latter.
Until and unless our political masters and their acolytes learn that lesson, our Public services will continue to decline to the point where, as is the case with the Post Office, it will be hard to make a sensible argument for their continued existence.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Thursday, 14 July 2011
Bully boy Brown
Methinks the News of the Screws hacking row has now passed the point where there is anything new or useful left to say.
Granted, the NoW and News International mined a very large seam of filth with their hacking of Millie Dowler's Voicemail and the mobiles of the families of dead soldiers.
All involved should already have been hauled before a beak. That includes assorted Murdochs, the unlovely Rebekah ( where did she get that spelling?) Wade/Brooks, Andy Coulson and any and all of the police officers who took money for information. No new legislation is needed to make this happen. Everything is covered by laws already in existence, ranging from those governing illegal interception of telephonic communications to the 2006 Companies Act which makes it clear that a company is considerd an individual when it comes to criminal activity - and the officers of that company are responsible for its actions,jointly and severally.
Given this fact, it is sickening to see an assortment of chancers, self-seeking publicity hounds and creeps baying on the BBC and in Parliament for heads to roll, enquiries to be launched, the Press to be neutered and, generally demanding that SOMETHING MUST BE DONE, when they all know that the remedies already exist.
Yesterday, it was Gordon Brown's turn to try to snatch the moral low ground away from the likes of Blair, Peter Mandelson, David Mellor, Hugh Grant, David Cameron and Alastair Cambell.
There he was in the Commons, making his first appearance since before the flood, one huge bundle of resentment and thwarted ambition.
Sullen with anger, and seeking sympathy for the way that Rebeka and her friends had stalked the Brown family at the time of a terrible tragedy, he failed to mention the times subsequent to this terrible harassment when he and Sarah had the fragrant Rebeka, Mrs Murdoch Junior and Elizabeth Murdoch to stay and play with them at Chequers. Or that the Browns, en famille, had been guests of the same Rebeka when she married the old-Etonian, Charlie Brooks and became a close neighbour and chum of David Cameron.
No. any outrage our Gordie felt in those times was carefully disguised as affection and respect for all things Murdoch and News International.
It's only now, when the Murdoch connection is getting a right old kicking, that big, brave Gordon decides it's safe to put his own boot in.
So very typical of the man. A terrible bully and coward in office and a cowardly bully out of it.
Granted, the NoW and News International mined a very large seam of filth with their hacking of Millie Dowler's Voicemail and the mobiles of the families of dead soldiers.
All involved should already have been hauled before a beak. That includes assorted Murdochs, the unlovely Rebekah ( where did she get that spelling?) Wade/Brooks, Andy Coulson and any and all of the police officers who took money for information. No new legislation is needed to make this happen. Everything is covered by laws already in existence, ranging from those governing illegal interception of telephonic communications to the 2006 Companies Act which makes it clear that a company is considerd an individual when it comes to criminal activity - and the officers of that company are responsible for its actions,jointly and severally.
Given this fact, it is sickening to see an assortment of chancers, self-seeking publicity hounds and creeps baying on the BBC and in Parliament for heads to roll, enquiries to be launched, the Press to be neutered and, generally demanding that SOMETHING MUST BE DONE, when they all know that the remedies already exist.
Yesterday, it was Gordon Brown's turn to try to snatch the moral low ground away from the likes of Blair, Peter Mandelson, David Mellor, Hugh Grant, David Cameron and Alastair Cambell.
There he was in the Commons, making his first appearance since before the flood, one huge bundle of resentment and thwarted ambition.
Sullen with anger, and seeking sympathy for the way that Rebeka and her friends had stalked the Brown family at the time of a terrible tragedy, he failed to mention the times subsequent to this terrible harassment when he and Sarah had the fragrant Rebeka, Mrs Murdoch Junior and Elizabeth Murdoch to stay and play with them at Chequers. Or that the Browns, en famille, had been guests of the same Rebeka when she married the old-Etonian, Charlie Brooks and became a close neighbour and chum of David Cameron.
No. any outrage our Gordie felt in those times was carefully disguised as affection and respect for all things Murdoch and News International.
It's only now, when the Murdoch connection is getting a right old kicking, that big, brave Gordon decides it's safe to put his own boot in.
So very typical of the man. A terrible bully and coward in office and a cowardly bully out of it.
Friday, 1 July 2011
Pension potty
Retirement. There's an emotive word for you. So emotive, multitudes of teachers, filing clerks and other assorted Civil Servants have thrown off their cardigans and taken to the streets of London to protest against plans to make them work until at least 65 like the great mass of the population.
In the old days, Civil Servants used to justify their generous retirement packages by comparing their salaries with what they would earn in the Private Sector. N.B. For Private Sector read The City of London; none of them ever really considered bashing metal or flipping burgers for a living. Not for them the continuous lusting after wealth and privilege. What drove them was nobility of purpose and an unselfish desire to burn themselves out in the service of the Nation (even if the salaries on offer were pitiful.) All they asked in return was the right to retire at 60 - or even earlier - on an index-linked, final salary pension.
Even though they now, with the odd exceptions, make 7% more on average than their equivalents in the private sector they are still playing the same old song. While the rest of us are having to accept the need to work until 67, or 68 or whatever figure the next right wing Think Tank arrives at, they demand the right to call it a day at 60.
Now, I remember when I first returned to the UK having lived in the US for a number of years, the newspapers were full of stories about how much the EU - or at least various of its member states - wanted to get their claws into British private pensions; rightly regarded at the time as the gold standard. A significant proportion of the workforce was the beneficiary of final salary pensions. Encouraged by government, not a few of them fattened their pots with AVCs (additional voluntary contributions). The future looked, if not rosy, at least predictable and relatively safe.
Then Gordon Brown, encouraged by that beacon of economic literacy, Ed Balls, ended the tax relief private pension schemes had traditionally enjoyed. This garnered him lots of extra dosh to lavish on his favoured client groups. What it also did was explode a grenade under the whole edifice of private pensions and, at a stroke, destroyed the retirement plans of millions who, up to that point, were quietly confident that they had everything covered.
14 years later, apart from the CEOs and CFOs of large corporations for whom a feater-bedded pension is an essential element in any contract negotitations, few in the private sector will enjoy the type of index-linked final salary pension scheme that was common prior to 1997. The only people guaranteed an index-linked pension when they eventually hit retirement are those in the public sector
Here, I have to put my hand up and say that I am one of the fortunate few. I will receive a private pension based on my final salary built up over the 14 years I have worked for my current employer. In fact, don't tell anybody but it was the principal reason I stayed with them for so long. In itself not particularly munificent, it is still considerably better than other pension schemes I have subscribed to at various times in my working life.
Now approaching retirement, I have started to review my options and, quite frankly, they are not that uplifting. Having paid income taxes and National Insurance contributions for 48 years I will recieve a State pension of around £5000 p.a. Munificent!
Of course, I have my work pension but 14 years is not that long when it comes to building a pension pot.
What of the other years, you ask. Were you in prison, hospitalised or simply bone idle?None of the above.
I was self-employed. In fact, I ran a small business and thus also provided a number of other people with gainful employement. During these years, encouraged and incentivised by various governments, I paid fairly large sums into a private pension plan. At the time, interest rates in the UK were in the high teens and the returns the pension company were promising conjured up visions of a retirement spent travelling between a house on the South Coast and a villa in the South of France in a stretch limo.
Once I moved to the States , I no longer paidUK tax and had to leave my pension scheme.
When I returned I tried without success to resurrect the scheme. It was disallowed because one of the perks of my new job was a generous pension provision . So, my private pension went back into a state of suspended animation. As I am rapidly approaching retirement, I have been showing more interest in its health in recent years.
The scheme grew rapidly in the early stages, fuelled by interest rates of 12% and more per annum. At that time, anyone could grow money simply by sticking it in a Post Office savings account. However, when the markets tightened and then the recession bit, the people managing the funds had to work reallyhard and intellligently to keep the pot bubbling. This they signally failed to do . In fact, so comprehensive was their failure that not a single farthing has been added to my pot for the last seven years.
Villas and stretch limousines are now out of the question. What my cherished scheme will provide is so reduced that it will struggle to pay the fuel bill for a small house and car.
At least that sheme did show some growth. Another occupational pension that I had almost forgotten about I subscribed to in my twenties, forty years ago, When I left the company I also left the scheme. Nonetheless, after forty years I thought it might be worth enquiring about. After all, forty years on, inflation should have grown the admittedly pitiful sum I invested quite considerably. The pension company was very helpful. They had my policy and confirmed that they would be paying a pension. Then they sent me a lavish pack, full of images of sailing boats on sun-dappled lakes and hearty elderly people cycling, mountaineering and gorging themselves on nouvelle cuisine and detailed instructions on how to apply for my rightful share of this cornucopia.
Excitedly, I turned to the last page of the pack, to the illustration of benefits. £478. I looked again. £478 a month would come in useful, no doubt.
One drawback. The £478 wasn't a monthly amount. It was an annual payment. Since the company I had worked for had not set the plan up on a With-Profits basis, the funds had not grown at all. . The pension company might just as well have put the money under a mattress for all the good they had done in the intervening forty-odd years.
So, there you have it. I followed government advice, made what I thought would be adeqaute provison for my old age and a combination of ideological economic chicanery, financial ineptitude and sheer highway robbery has blown all my plans apart.
Anyone who joined the Civil Service at the same time as I started work, has probably already been retired for the last four years. Unlike me, they are enjoying an index-linked pension dependent not on the vagaries of the money markets or the whims of inefficient fund managers but guaranteed by the British Government and paid for out of the taxes taken from me for nearly half a century.
In the old days, Civil Servants used to justify their generous retirement packages by comparing their salaries with what they would earn in the Private Sector. N.B. For Private Sector read The City of London; none of them ever really considered bashing metal or flipping burgers for a living. Not for them the continuous lusting after wealth and privilege. What drove them was nobility of purpose and an unselfish desire to burn themselves out in the service of the Nation (even if the salaries on offer were pitiful.) All they asked in return was the right to retire at 60 - or even earlier - on an index-linked, final salary pension.
Even though they now, with the odd exceptions, make 7% more on average than their equivalents in the private sector they are still playing the same old song. While the rest of us are having to accept the need to work until 67, or 68 or whatever figure the next right wing Think Tank arrives at, they demand the right to call it a day at 60.
Now, I remember when I first returned to the UK having lived in the US for a number of years, the newspapers were full of stories about how much the EU - or at least various of its member states - wanted to get their claws into British private pensions; rightly regarded at the time as the gold standard. A significant proportion of the workforce was the beneficiary of final salary pensions. Encouraged by government, not a few of them fattened their pots with AVCs (additional voluntary contributions). The future looked, if not rosy, at least predictable and relatively safe.
Then Gordon Brown, encouraged by that beacon of economic literacy, Ed Balls, ended the tax relief private pension schemes had traditionally enjoyed. This garnered him lots of extra dosh to lavish on his favoured client groups. What it also did was explode a grenade under the whole edifice of private pensions and, at a stroke, destroyed the retirement plans of millions who, up to that point, were quietly confident that they had everything covered.
14 years later, apart from the CEOs and CFOs of large corporations for whom a feater-bedded pension is an essential element in any contract negotitations, few in the private sector will enjoy the type of index-linked final salary pension scheme that was common prior to 1997. The only people guaranteed an index-linked pension when they eventually hit retirement are those in the public sector
Here, I have to put my hand up and say that I am one of the fortunate few. I will receive a private pension based on my final salary built up over the 14 years I have worked for my current employer. In fact, don't tell anybody but it was the principal reason I stayed with them for so long. In itself not particularly munificent, it is still considerably better than other pension schemes I have subscribed to at various times in my working life.
Now approaching retirement, I have started to review my options and, quite frankly, they are not that uplifting. Having paid income taxes and National Insurance contributions for 48 years I will recieve a State pension of around £5000 p.a. Munificent!
Of course, I have my work pension but 14 years is not that long when it comes to building a pension pot.
What of the other years, you ask. Were you in prison, hospitalised or simply bone idle?None of the above.
I was self-employed. In fact, I ran a small business and thus also provided a number of other people with gainful employement. During these years, encouraged and incentivised by various governments, I paid fairly large sums into a private pension plan. At the time, interest rates in the UK were in the high teens and the returns the pension company were promising conjured up visions of a retirement spent travelling between a house on the South Coast and a villa in the South of France in a stretch limo.
Once I moved to the States , I no longer paidUK tax and had to leave my pension scheme.
When I returned I tried without success to resurrect the scheme. It was disallowed because one of the perks of my new job was a generous pension provision . So, my private pension went back into a state of suspended animation. As I am rapidly approaching retirement, I have been showing more interest in its health in recent years.
The scheme grew rapidly in the early stages, fuelled by interest rates of 12% and more per annum. At that time, anyone could grow money simply by sticking it in a Post Office savings account. However, when the markets tightened and then the recession bit, the people managing the funds had to work reallyhard and intellligently to keep the pot bubbling. This they signally failed to do . In fact, so comprehensive was their failure that not a single farthing has been added to my pot for the last seven years.
Villas and stretch limousines are now out of the question. What my cherished scheme will provide is so reduced that it will struggle to pay the fuel bill for a small house and car.
At least that sheme did show some growth. Another occupational pension that I had almost forgotten about I subscribed to in my twenties, forty years ago, When I left the company I also left the scheme. Nonetheless, after forty years I thought it might be worth enquiring about. After all, forty years on, inflation should have grown the admittedly pitiful sum I invested quite considerably. The pension company was very helpful. They had my policy and confirmed that they would be paying a pension. Then they sent me a lavish pack, full of images of sailing boats on sun-dappled lakes and hearty elderly people cycling, mountaineering and gorging themselves on nouvelle cuisine and detailed instructions on how to apply for my rightful share of this cornucopia.
Excitedly, I turned to the last page of the pack, to the illustration of benefits. £478. I looked again. £478 a month would come in useful, no doubt.
One drawback. The £478 wasn't a monthly amount. It was an annual payment. Since the company I had worked for had not set the plan up on a With-Profits basis, the funds had not grown at all. . The pension company might just as well have put the money under a mattress for all the good they had done in the intervening forty-odd years.
So, there you have it. I followed government advice, made what I thought would be adeqaute provison for my old age and a combination of ideological economic chicanery, financial ineptitude and sheer highway robbery has blown all my plans apart.
Anyone who joined the Civil Service at the same time as I started work, has probably already been retired for the last four years. Unlike me, they are enjoying an index-linked pension dependent not on the vagaries of the money markets or the whims of inefficient fund managers but guaranteed by the British Government and paid for out of the taxes taken from me for nearly half a century.
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