Originally Posted by "jagman

Not one of the political parties has said one word about what they intend to do to make me better off.

Personally i don't care if i'm not BETTER off, I just don't want to be WORSE OFF, and I don't care how they do it.

If it means cutting back on replacement for Trident - great.
If it means the workshy being forced out from their widescreen T.V.s great.

The country is broke, if it was a business the receiver would of shut it down several decades ago.

At least the Tories are honestly trying to plot a path back to prosperity(of sorts), Liabour just want to get back in , so they can keep their snouts in the trough and the general public under their control.

Originally Posted by Grownup_Rafbrat

There are two very different groups of Goverment employee, in my experience of working alongside Government Departments. First the low-paid people who face customers (JobCentre staff, HMRC staff, etc.) and they, although they don't have to make a profit, do have their performance evaluated against quite strict and demanding targets, and have had rather dim pay rises and no bonuses in the last couple of years.

But there is another group, which I've come across in spades, of Civil Servants earning well in excess of £50,000 a year, and their 'consultants, who if their performance is assessed, it's not visible, and who have no idea of the profit/loss effect of their decision. They seem to build careers on 'monitoring' or 'mirroring' the outsource companies who are 'partnering' (what a ghastly word) their organisation. It's all a jolly backslapping exercise, and it explains how millions are spent on projects and programmes that go on for months without changing anything for people who actually DO THE WORK.

Sadly, this lot are the ones who decide on where cuts, be they red, blue or yellow cuts, are deployed. They will not cut their own jobs, or enforce the contracts properly. HP-EDS, IBM, Fujitsu et al really run the Civil Service these days. Look at their boards of directors and see how many former CS and politicians are there. Gravy train? You betcha! Pay for it? You will, and so will those in the first group, with their jobs.

Which will be done by people in India, the Phillipines, China or anywhere 'cheap', and yet will actually cost more due to the massive profits being taken by the aforesaid outsourcers and all the others.

And yet still, politicians of all colours try to tell us that 'pruning the public sector' is a good thing. Like pruning a plant, it can be if done properly and with understanding of the organism, but if you just take an axe to it willy-nilly, chances are it will not be made better!

Yeah. What they said. With knobs on.

Originally Posted by Bazzinho1977

Originally Posted by jagman

Burp

Jagman - don't know where the 24 million supporting the 62 million comes from - could you explain it for us? Not saying it is wrong, just not sure how you get there with the maths.

As for your final point - a lot of people have referred to us as UK plc. Well, having worked in a number of fairly large organisation, one of the key things that you expect to see is a long term strategy. So what I want all of the parties to do is set out something like this: -

"These are the current major problems - a,b,c

We are going to over the next five years do x,y,z in year one.
When this is done we will do u,v,w in year two when we have seen their impact
In year 3 we will do the next few actions and slightly tweak earlier actions if we have found problems.
etc

We will give you a step by step plan, and measureable milestones. At the end of five years, judge us against that directly and the impact that has had on you.

We wont deviate from this in order to appease the Sun / Mirror / Mail current "anger campaign" during those five years.

Population of the UK approx 62million
Working approx 30 million
Of which the public sector employs 5.8 million

Leaving approximatly 24 million footing the bill. Yes I know its far from being that simple but the long and the short of it is that it is the efforts of those 24 million that provie income for the country.

Yes you are right, the country does need a stratergy to put it back on financial track. What I am saying os that th epolitical focus is entirely on that to the complete exclusion of the needs and desires of the general public who must foot the bill.
I want to know what Cameron intends to do about allowing me to reap the benefits of my hard work. Its just as important (if not more so) than what he intends to spend my money on once the government have heled themselves.
All we have heard so far is details of how much it is going to cost us. Is anybody going to tell me why I should bother? For the greater good? Because it will give me a warm glow inside when I got to bed at night?
I've heard jackfookinshit about whats in it for me, just whats in it for everyone else.
I don't flog my pan in for the financial benefit of bankers, politicians and the Svens of this world, or do I?

Originally Posted by Bazzinho1977

Which non-jobs from the following list would you get rid of:-

NHS Trust Chief Exec
Consultant
Registrar
SHO
HO
Ward manager
Nurse HCA
Infections nurse
etc. etc. etc.

Bazz-

I think this is a slightly unfair question as your list (edited to my area of knowledge) does not include a single non-job. Where I think there could be some trimming, or at least a severe review of salaries, is in the non-clinical management side.

There are a lot of these people who are paid (I purposely don't say earn) salaries which are highly competitive with the private sector. Many of the people in these posts do not, IMHO, demonstrate the qualities of leadership & decision making that would command these salaries outside public service.

I have come across staff who are paid extra under Agenda for Change to manage budgets who then claim thay are too busy & important to do anything relating to finance. I see the bills for events like a residential conference to come up with a strategy for an NHS body which came back with the answer "we'll use the national one as that's really good".

The people on your list from perhaps HO down are the ones who are being raped to pay for this bureaucracy. Where I work one team is being told they will just have to work harder as they can't afford to cover for someone on maternity leave while at the same time some fairly senior management appointments have been made without any costing done as a Director wants them.

There is a lot of fat to be trimmed out - I can think of an entire level of managment that could be removed if the senior clinicians spoke directly to the finance function rather than having to route everything through so called "business managers". I'd also have a good look at the impact of reporting that is required - a large chunk of what I'm doing at the moment is writing reports which are sent to the department for reading reports. I really cannot see how this work is adding anything to what the NHS is about - patient care.

Of course, If I Were Chancellor, I'd hit those beggars in the CS, but not before I'd made the likes of Philip Green (pays his wages to his wife who is domiciled in Monaco to avoid paying for the roads and facilities his shops use), Lord Rothermere (domiciled in France for tax purposes, but lives in Wiltshire where his children go to school, and various other 'filthy rich' pay their fair share towards public services.

And I'd bring all the tax offices back into public ownership, rather than them being owned by a company based in Bermuda (to avoid taxes whith the tax offices are collecting - you couldn't make it up).

And I'd simplify the tax system, thus removing the need for millions of tax collectors / accountants / loophole creators. Just have everyone pay a set percentage once they earn a given amount. For example at £15,000 per year, you pay 12%. Everybody. No exceptions, allowances, or loopholes.
Companies could have a similar simple structure, allowing for R&D (although not a Westland-type 'milk the taxpayer' setup.

And I'd keep Defence Research, Defence Training, Defence Housing, (do you get my drift - anything to do with the Defence of the Realm) in the public's ownership.

That'll never catch on, because it's about providing a public service for the benefit of the public, rather than for the benefit of American Consultancies and Retired UK Politicians.

Originally Posted by mick_sterbs

Originally Posted by "jagman

Not one of the political parties has said one word about what they intend to do to make me better off.

Personally i don't care if i'm not BETTER off, I just don't want to be WORSE OFF, and I don't care how they do it.

If it means cutting back on replacement for Trident - great.
If it means the workshy being forced out from their widescreen T.V.s great.

The country is broke, if it was a business the receiver would of shut it down several decades ago.

At least the Tories are honestly trying to plot a path back to prosperity(of sorts), Liabour just want to get back in , so they can keep their snouts in the trough and the general public under their control.

But thats the point, evertime a politician opens their gob we are made worse off.
I want to know whats in it for me. Call it selfish if you like (call it what you want, I won't be offended) but I work hard for what I get, so does my Mrs and I want value for money. I want some of those earnings left for me instead of pished up the wall by multi-milionaire politicians who are playing Monopoly with my money.

Originally Posted by CaptainPlume

Bazz-

I think this is a slightly unfair question as your list (edited to my area of knowledge) does not include a single non-job. Where I think there could be some trimming, or at least a severe review of salaries, is in the non-clinical management side.

There are a lot of these people who are paid (I purposely don't say earn) salaries which are highly competitive with the private sector. Many of the people in these posts do not, IMHO, demonstrate the qualities of leadership & decision making that would command these salaries outside public service.

I have come across staff who are paid extra under Agenda for Change to manage budgets who then claim thay are too busy & important to do anything relating to finance. I see the bills for events like a residential conference to come up with a strategy for an NHS body which came back with the answer "we'll use the national one as that's really good".

The people on your list from perhaps HO down are the ones who are being raped to pay for this bureaucracy. Where I work one team is being told they will just have to work harder as they can't afford to cover for someone on maternity leave while at the same time some fairly senior management appointments have been made without any costing done as a Director wants them.

There is a lot of fat to be trimmed out - I can think of an entire level of managment that could be removed if the senior clinicians spoke directly to the finance function rather than having to route everything through so called "business managers". I'd also have a good look at the impact of reporting that is required - a large chunk of what I'm doing at the moment is writing reports which are sent to the department for reading reports. I really cannot see how this work is adding anything to what the NHS is about - patient care.

Yep - but the way to do that is not to say - get rid of the bureaucrats. It is to sensibly sit down and say:

Do we really need a market system in the NHS? What has it achieved?
Do we really need to hire in consultants to tell us where money is wasted? Maybe we should just have, oh I don't know, a locally elected accountable body to make those decisions.

Do we need national targets - or should we have local targets in more areas and peel back the reporting to the central DH?

Is it a good thing that the locally managed body cares about health & safety, clinical standards, education (continuous), equality? If so, lets make sure that is a strong area. If locally we think not - what is the minimum we can get away with?

Should we have KPMG / PwC / McKinsey contracts in place or should we be hiring people ourselves to do these jobs?

But the point is - this is about being sensible and rational. There are savings to be found, but in a rationa way. Not in a lets just cut 20% and go hang and oh, you are not getting pay rises either approach being advocated.

Originally Posted by Bazzinho1977

Oh and one, possibly two nurses. Two nurses who would get limited clinical training and never amount to anything other than nurses without a career path and help to achieve it.

This post (which is actually from my experience pretty important) at Band 8A is the equivalent of 1.79 at Band 5 and 2.19 at Band 4, the grades at which most actual nursing goes on.

The actual cost once so called on costs (NI, superannuation etc) are added is more like a scale of £47-£57k, the high figure being possible if the successful applicant is already employed at that level.

Originally Posted by jagman

Population of the UK approx 62million
Working approx 30 million
Of which the public sector employs 5.8 million

Leaving approximatly 24 million footing the bill. Yes I know its far from being that simple but the long and the short of it is that it is the efforts of those 24 million that provie income for the country.

Yes you are right, the country does need a stratergy to put it back on financial track. What I am saying os that th epolitical focus is entirely on that to the complete exclusion of the needs and desires of the general public who must foot the bill.
I want to know what Cameron intends to do about allowing me to reap the benefits of my hard work. Its just as important (if not more so) than what he intends to spend my money on once the government have heled themselves.
All we have heard so far is details of how much it is going to cost us. Is anybody going to tell me why I should bother? For the greater good? Because it will give me a warm glow inside when I got to bed at night?
I've heard jackfookinshit about whats in it for me, just whats in it for everyone else.
I don't flog my pan in for the financial benefit of bankers, politicians and the Svens of this world, or do I?

Yeah - your numbers leave massive gaps in the understanding of aggregate demand. The 5.8 million of the government employees are also consumers who therefore support the private sector. So that bit simply doesn't add up (as I think you know really and were being tongue in cheek).

It also seems a bit of an unfair equation i.e.

24million (really 30 million) earning = 60 million require supporting

Well, we can get more people working, either by getting lazy twunts off the dole, or making people work longer( i.e. get rid of the pension system) or making people work earlier (i.e. leave school at 14 and work). Only one part of that actually resonates with the majority of people as a good thing to do.

The alternate is to reduce the 60ish million. Well, unless you are advocating either involuntary euthanasia on the base of economic necessity there is bob all we can do (I don't think it is an idea that has had its time yet, but it will do).

Originally Posted by Bazzinho1977

Originally Posted by rickshaw-major

Originally Posted by Oil_Slick

[

Classic NHS non-job

http://www.jobs.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/vacde...tion=912352530

Oh I don't know.

"Experience working with education/training providers including HEIs"

That's me in then - High Explosive Incendiaries normally have Zirconium as the Incendiary part. I can tell you all about.

Good drills on the NHS - that what I call Dual Use application!

However lets be serious - what a non-job FFS. How many nurses for 37K per annum?

You are sh1tting me now. We don't want people to improve the level of leadership skills of clinicians? What happened to having clinicians running hospitals instead of "faceless NHS managers" (repeat ad nauseum).

Oh and one, possibly two nurses. Two nurses who would get limited clinical training and never amount to anything other than nurses without a career path and help to achieve it.

And you are sh1tting me!

Job Title Clinical Leadership Development Manager

Experience
Extensive experience of designing, delivering and the operational management of educational programmes

Experience of building effective working networks and cross-organisation and sector relationships.

Experience working with education/training providers including HEIs.

Setting up systems and processes to manage own/others workload

Significant project management experience

Skills, Abilities and Knowledge:

Innovative, self-starter.

Highly organised and methodical approach to work

Understanding of NHS roles and services
Knowledge of key research papers pertaining to leadership programmes

Able to influence across all levels of the organisation.

Able to work through other individuals across an organisation to ensure key actions are achieved.

Excellent analytical skills but able to see the “big picture”

Able to set up and use spreadsheets, databases to organise work

Project management skills and held budgetary responsibilities for the projects

Presentation skills

Able to provide advice and guidance without reference to others, using own judgement and skills to arrive at decisions

Able to lead meetings in absence of the Associate Director of Leadership and OD

Can you see anything in there about being a leader? Or can you teach being a leader without ever having been one? If so the Ammunition Technical trade is going to get fecking interesting in the next couple of years.

I'll opt for the nurses TVM.