Monday, Mar 01, 2010
Not 25,000 but 100,000... seems more like it
Telegraph: 100,000 council jobs could go as funding from central Government is slashed
'The figure is four times higher than forecasts suggested by local authorities in a survey of 49 councils. Tony Travers, a local government expert from the London School of Economics, described suggestions in the BBC survey that 25,000 jobs could go as cautious.'
Posted by hpwatcher @ 06:59 PM (915 views) Add Comment
14 Comments
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1. Andy Goften said...
Good - an excellent start. Just make sure it's box ticking jobsworths that interfere in every single part of our lives. Keep cops, bin men, teachers and a few other genuinely useful front line workers and ditch the rest.
2. Ken Gilmour said...
The more the merrier I reckon. They'll have to get proper jobs. No doubt it will be the cultural services we lose though. I expect bureaucracy will continue to prosper.
3. debtfree said...
Exactly, 25,000 as mentioned earlier was a minimum which would probably have an impact on 150,000+ people.
Now you are talking 100K which would bring the total to 350-500,000 people.
When someone loses their job, it's not one job, its the shop they used to stop in on the way to work, the cafe at lunch time, train ticket or fuel costs, shopping for clothes and food. Then there is the family that cuts back, so it's not just one person, you have to take into account the bigger picture of who is affected by the job loses. Plus, the services that are cut back, that's less work which means less pay and income that would be put back into the economy.
We are still lagging behind USA, maybe because of the elections and the current government is doing everything in its power to prop things up.
california issued 450,000 IOUs worth $2.6 billion between July 2 and Sept. 4 which is just obscene.
I got a feeling that we haven't seen nothing yet. If a council in the UK was issuing IOU's what do you think the papers would be saying, holy smoke, and America thinks Greece has problems ?
This is it, this is what should have happened last year.
4. chrisa said...
Recent opinion polls show the Tory lead evaporating as 'Cast Iron' Dave appears to be deliberately throwing the election knowing the complete shambles he would inherit should he win. Brown has created a scorched earth economic inheritance for what was expected to be the incoming Tory party but now worries that he himself will inherit it. Answer: authorise the BBC to come out with loads of stories about hundreds of thousands of council jobs going and that should lose Brown a proportion of the public sector vote and restore Daves lead.
5. debtfree said...
for example : Southend says it will not be buying any library books this year.
Who else won't be buying books ?
Does the book supplier rely heavily on council purchases ?
If so, how many people do they employ ?
In Newcastle, a homeless hostel said it was turning away four out of five people who asked for a bed because it did not have the funding to look after them all. Its council grant was reportedly frozen.
What are the social benefits of more homeless people on the streets, will crime rise ?
Implications are massive.
6. sneaker said...
Best news of 2010!
Just shut the goddam quango state down!!!!!!
7. montesquieu said...
Daily Mash has it spot on:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/horrible-dragon-threatens-council-worker-fantasy-land-201003012514/
8. mark wadsworth said...
@ Debtfree, yes, the lefties like to play on the 'multiplier effect', but let's take a reality check:
a) Only about a quarter of taxpayer funded jobs are actually frontline - this is a simple fact - add up all the teachers, coppers, nurses, doctors, social workers, librarians, lollipop ladies (and lollipop gentlemen) etc, and you will not get past two million or so. I've tried, and it's impossible. If anybody can do a comprehensive list of all 'frontline workers' and arrive at more than two million, I would love to see it.
b) The taxes needed to fund one new public sector job destroy slightly more than one job in the private sector.
c) Ergo, for every street football co-ordinator, one and a half people in the private sector lose their job; for every Trevor Phillips, about twenty people in the private sector lose their jobs. For every Council CEO, thirty people in the private sector lose their jobs. For sure, the private sector is massively wasteful, but the customer is not forced to pay for it; neither is the taxpayer - it's the shareholders who lose out (and their voice has been carefully emasculated by the pensions industry and fund management industry).
d) The multiplier effect is a huge great fat lie anyway, it is the biggest load of nonsense since [insert big fat lie to suit your own prejudices]
9. paul said...
Only about a quarter of taxpayer funded jobs are actually frontline
Mark, that's a bit naiive isn't it? Like saying that because you can't see it, it doesn't exist? Are you trying to say that a country of 60 million will simply administer itself? Really?
I'm all for public sector cuts and even better private sector cuts in the ivory towers of finance that created this mess but you have to be realistic.
10. fallingbuzzard said...
I was laughing at the Southend example. Southend library buys no books. Guess what happens, people that want books buy them. And buy more copies than Southend library would have. So rather than selling one overpriced copy to Southend library, it sells 5 normal priced copies to the people that want them. Who ends up better off? The people that never wanted to read that book. The "we can't do without" argument is always false. I could go on, when do libraries open? When the majority of people that fund them and pay for them are busy working. That's a good deal.
As for front line, I've seen a document from Reform that pretty much claimed that nigh on everyone in the public sector is frontline. The easiest solution would be to cut public sector salaries by 15%, let the small number of overly indebted burn, and keep all of those valuable frontline workers employed.
11. paul said...
when do libraries open? When the majority of people that fund them and pay for them are busy working.
Hmmm, that's probably not completely fair - they often open weekends or even Sundays. Problem is they can almost certainly only pay for one shift a day.
I take your point about people buying books if they are not at the library. Certainly true for me - I'd never buy a book if it's already at my library where I can read it for free!!
12. 51ck-6-51x said...
Paul said, "Are you trying to say that a country of 60 million will simply administer itself?"
- No he said 2 million front line, that's 1 person to administer 29 others - sounds about right, too high in my opinion ...how about letting the private sector do even more, would that count as "administering ourselves"?
13. mark wadsworth said...
666, I like your one-to-twenty nine ratio.
My two million includes teachers, coppers, prison officers, dustbin men and nurses, doctors, cleaners, social workers, carers etc. Let's be generous and add on another 50% for back up staff, gives us three million.
If you are hard right (which I am not) and think that the only people we need are police, prisons, defence and dustbin men, that's about half a million people, absolute tops. And maybe a couple of town planners - let's say one town planner per ten thousand of population?
14. 51ck-6-51x said...
MW - I do not deny the need for what are called public services - security [aka police]; justice; doctors; nurses; etc. Just the need for these public goods to be provided by a government. The only right-wing ideals I agree with are those of the free-market (I am an anti-nationalist, anti-religious, anti-conservative*, anti-monarchist). As I said on another thread I have little representation as there is no-one running for my local office who's manifesto states that they would strive to diminish their own and government's power.
* Although once freed from central control I would, by definition, become conservative as I would agree with the form of the new systems & organisations that result from ensuing organic growth.