Thursday, Apr 22, 2010
This could get Ugly
World Socialist Web Site: Britain: What will a 20 percent cut in public spending mean for workers?
If the information is accurate in the article, then a serious crash will happen, significantly impacting housing prices. 20% cut = 1.5 Milo job loses = post war record. Currently # of people in work = 28.86 Milo (lowest since 1996). It also states that in 2007 (before the crash) the Finance sector only employed 1 milo people with an additional ~500k related jobs - "That is not much more than half the number employed in Britain’s now depleted manufacturing sector". Puts it into perspetive really.
Posted by layers @ 02:27 PM (1208 views) Add Comment
15 Comments
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1. mark wadsworth said...
That article is fairly well researched and written, it backs up what I've been saying for yonks - but where the article is wildly wrong is right at the end:
"[A 20% cut in government spending] can only be achieved by across the board sackings, including “core” professional workers such as teachers and nurses, who form the largest proportion of the public sector workers."
That's the whole point! The article lists all the 'para statals' and where the government is wasting our money (including bailing out banks, fakecharities, all this green subsidy nonsense, PFI and so on) and it is those that need cutting. Actual teachers and nurses together are about one-in-eight of all taxpayer funded jobs, and those are the ones we'd keep, for crying out loud.
2. doomwatch said...
My heart is bleeding for the vile large [US] consultancies who have leeched our public sector since 97 and lobbied endlessly
for the hateful IR35 to ruin independent [British] contract/freelance businesses (competition).
Whoever get's in should cut their rates immediately. Some of these guys are charged out at £4000 a day, so 20%
seems too little to me, especially as they usually deliver stuff over-budget, late and wowfully short of the requirements (so
they can charge a fortune for "enhancements").
Please forward this to Vince, as his 1st priority.
Rant over.
3. timmy t said...
What doomwatch says. These muppets get targeted with cutting costs, and the first thing they do is hire a bunch of consultants who are targeted on generating revenue... Rather than pay these goons a million quid to figure out how to save 2 million, why don't they start by looking at the bleedin obvious!
4. str 2007 said...
I have a friend who earns £140k p/a employed to find cost savings in the governmennt legal processes.
Great if he really finds things others couldn't, but you really have to ask questions about an organisation that is so out of control it can't find its own savings.
My friend actually works for a company who's services are employed in this avenue of work, so its not just him, our government are supporting a whole industry with their inefficiencies.
5. rumble said...
"you really have to ask questions about an organisation that is so out of control it can't find its own savings."
It can't manage itself, yet somehow it's supposed to manage a country.
6. enuii said...
Doomwatch@2, have had first hand experience of the US consultancy scum running what was once one of the best run UK companies. Trotting out endless self glorifying PR solely aimed at government/quango land they bull up tivialities that were the accepted unpublicised norms whilst completely neglecting the underpinnings of the core business and undermining UK staff and sub-contractors at every available opportunity. Rates for their second rate and frankly clueless engineers in a UK regulatory environment frequently top £200/h in place of UK engineers who only charge their services at an average £35/h.
Globalisation and the open nature of business in the UK has just resulted in us being shafted at both ends (roasted) by European and American companies.
7. clockslinger said...
Para state would actually include not only PPP jokers but far more significantly all indirect providers of what you may now think of as pretty essential services which funded from general taxation. Legal aid is one example. Now if, like MW at 1, you think that only a few managment consultants will get the push and a 20% cut in these areas won't impact the real world service provided, don't bitch when, as of next month, you won't get legal aid to defend yourself against even the most serious indictable offences you may be falsely accused of if you earn over about 18k or so (admitedly the calculations are not simple). Many, many essential services will be like decent NHS dentistry...a folk memory. By the way, the reason the MP expenses cheats got under the barrier was that in their court the "phased" introduction of the new rules hadn't been implemented as of three weeks ago( because it is so unweildy to calculate). Won't help you, though, will it?
8. icarus said...
The reason these American "consultants" get away with this is that civil servants commissioning their "services" haven't a clue and are impressed by their "energy", salesmanship and knowledge of quango-speak. American consultants are the more daring liars and since the only talent possessed by the buyers of their services is for getting and holding office they can easily be persuaded that if a rose smells better than a cabbage it would also make better soup.
9. Mr G said...
This will be a good election for any party to lose but it would be interesting to see if Cable really is as good as he is bulled up to be when the chips are down and cuts have to be made and, having cut, the brown stuff hits the fan from the public sector unions.
10. mr g said...
This will be a good election to lose for any party. It would be interesting though to see if Cable is as good as he is bulled up to be when the chips are down and cuts have to be made and following the cuts, the brown stuff hits the fan from the public sector unions.
11. mark wadsworth said...
@ Clockslinger, the Legal Aid bill is £2 billion and is a subsidy to the legal 'profession'.
I'm quite happy with the idea of legal aid (although I don't like the savage means testing) but surely this is best funded by a modest extra tax on legal services, so it would be self-funding to a large extent.
12. letthemfall said...
Agree with MW here (strange but true), especially on PFI and bank bailouts. PFI illustrates a point I made elsewhere about certain private companies' economic clout being used to rip off all of us. Reminds me of a public sector institution that replaced its cleaners with a private company, which employed immigrant workers on low wages who left the place filthy. Presumably they saved a few quid, in return for a rubbish job.
It is certainly unnecessary to cut funding to the important services, but that looks exactly what's about to happen. Higher education is in for the chop - astonishingly. We keep hearing that high education levels are vital to the economy, yet they're going to cut university budgets. As a Libdem MP said to me yesterday, it's mad.
13. clockslinger said...
MW, Yes, I have no argument with you on how LA is funded...academic really...my preferred option would be a levy on city firms, but that will never hapen. However, I still say that a cut of the magnitude of 20% will have some really savage effects. If only it were the PPP and managment consultants who were culled, but it won't be. To stick with the wonderful example of legal aid, check out the findings of the public accounts committee on the competence of the Legal Services Commission, a body which any high street lawyer could have told you for the last ten years has been the the biggest waste of legal aid funds going with not even a law degree amongst it's six figure top executives whose pointless meddling and almost weekly reform "initiatives" were financed entirely FROM THE LEGAL AID BUDGET! Replaced by...yep, the brand new MOJ, another excuse to feck things over a bit more with it's not very well thought through notion of a "market" in providing legal aid services. This, of course, following a million pound enquiry into legal aid spending by that giant of legal...sorry, supermarket retailing, Lord Carter of Coles. All at your expense. All financed from of the "out of control" legal aid budget. All going to exactly the wrong people whose pockets are already bulging. So, guess what they discovered? Theres not enough cash to go round..well, not now anyway. And the learned solution proposed as a result of all this spending on experts who know nothing relevant is the one least likely to preserve the average practice delivering the goods. Result!
14. drewster said...
"What will a 20 percent cut in public spending mean for workers?"
- It will mean they each take a 20% pay cut. Simples! *squeak*
15. orcusmaximus said...
The article is not well written at all!
They say "to reduce the debt by 50 percent in the lifetime of the next parliament, as Labour has promised..."
Labour has promised nothing of the sort! They have promised to reduce the deficit, which given that their starting point is in the middle of a recession, should be achievable without making any spending cuts at all (not that I'm endorcing this).