Are you referring to sovereign wealth funds? Several countries (Norway, Dubai) have accumulated huge national assets in the form of investments all over the world. The corporations they own are many and large. I have never heard anyone suggest that such corporations are less efficient, less profitable or worse managed because they are owned and controlled by government authorities than they would have been in private hands. The truth is that various nationalised industries are well managed, badly managed, profitable, unprofitable, innovative and antiquated ... much like the privately-owned ones. Sadly there is a school of thought that is opposed to nationalisation for doctrinaire reasons, regardless of the facts or the circumstances.
Why is nhs, police etc in such trouble? Because they try to run as businesses and not service providers. When I was having my problems last year, I was not a customer of the hospital depts, I was a patient. When I had my back fine the year before privately, I was as close to a customer as I could be but still believe I was a patient.
As someone who works for BT/Openreach, and was with them pre privatisation, there have been improvements in the service we provide, but its at a great cost to the workforce and the customers! Before Maggie sold us off, we were very poor at giving our customers what they needed, but we made money for the government! We did need a kick up the backside to improve our service, and we did/still need money to invest in the future, but now we also have to fund the shareholders, and the board etc, who award themselves huge bonuses and pension plans, all off the backs of the ordinary worker, who has not seen a decent pay rise for years! A properly run, nationalised company can be a valuable asset to any government, and my own view is that public utilities, gas, water, electric, telephones should be owned by the state, and then the costs can be kept down for the end user!
Imagine if you cold take the 'work all hours, head down arse up' private sector attitude into a public service environment? No playing the system, all just doing their job. What made Maggie's job easier seemed to be the bone idleness of most of the British nationalised workforces. Strikes, walkouts, work to rule, nothing 'for free' all added up to a public more willing to accept a better way. And now its gone too far. In my world of fairness (that exists somewhere in the back of my tiny brain), a company making a billion pound profit is enough, any more obscene. It should be invested in its people. Why have the workforce struggling to cope (as many are) when you can easily employ more? Because your greedy. Simple.
You're quite right, the coal strikes, Leyland etc have an awful lot to answer for in terms of changing union strength with regard to protecting its workforce. Too many strikes and wanting too much money did an untold amount of harm and will probably never be corrected, and now the unions have virtually no power, and the workforce therefore suffer. A billion profit should be more than enough, and if they did, as you suggest, re-invest the rest in the staff, then there would be more money for everyone to spend, which would help with the current economic climate. It would also encourage the workforce to be more efficient as they actually gained something extra from their hard work!
I've been a civil servant - 24 years. When my department was outsourced, I followed the work into the private sector. That was seven years ago. The difference between the two "businesses"? Vast - I mean, I have received Amazon vouchers as a "Thank you" two years running with the private firm. Never had that as a civil servant. Oh, and I get a Christmas meal paid for by the company. That didn't happen in the 'Service either. Any other changes? Well, no, not so much. The people in my current firm who want to work hard and get on, do so, and the lazy gits continue to be lazy gits. If the customer wants a little extra, well, no - "nothing for free". Since going private, no walkouts and only one instance of a threatened strike, the company quickly backed down then - I guess that is different. This idea that civil servants are lazy - they are no more and no less so than any other employees I've had dealings with. Personal experience simply doesn't support that sweeping generalisation but then, I've only worked in one (very) large government department, for two and a half decades - what would I know?
In every workforce there are good and bad, productive and lazy, private or public owned. The point is not that civil servants are lazy, more than the is a different work and reward ethic imo and my experience.
Can't argue with that, Paul. There is no reward ethic at all in the Civil Service, below a certain high grade. Consequently and in response, the worth ethic can be somewhat patchy, in that a basic level of effort is common but "going the extra mile" is less so. Human nature. With a nationalised service or industry, you have to trade off the fact that your workforce won't be a highly motivated band of fire-eaters - but the "graft" and "sharp practices" of the private sector are avoided at the same time. I generalise, of course :wink:
I see that this is the generalised view, but I just can't see how this automatically follows. It doesn't matter who owns a company, you can run it effectively - in fact you should be running it effectively. Fire makeweights and reward people who produce genuine results. Why should personnel be managed in an entirely different way just because the government, the state - actually the people - is the employer? It doesn't make any sense at all. In fact, it's just a defeatist attitude. I've often wondered about this with charities. They have a mission and require funds to implement it. They expect people to give to their mission. But a different way would be to own companies and run them for profit, which would then be invested in the charitable mission. The state is no different. If it needs more cash, it should own money-making machines to generate it, instead of just taxing people. There is a Romanian who begs all day near my gym. It looks no fun. But the guy doesn't seem to be that old, and my view is, why doesn't he get off his arse and do something useful, instead of sitting on his stool all day with his paper cup, wasting his life and making people feel uncomfortable? You can see government a little like this. Holding the paper cup is the least imaginative way of getting money.
Nationalised industries are not the same as the Civil Service. When you join up to the Civil Service, you know very well that you are not going to get rich and famous, nor will you get lots of sex drugs and rock'n'roll. But you will be working in the public service not to make somebody a profit, which is quite rewarding in itself. As you rightly say fire-eaters are rarely needed, but it is possible to achieve something and make a difference if you try hard enough. The biggest bonus I ever got was £1,200 taxed and that was for going several extra miles!
Interesting view, Glidd, especially the last two paragraphs. I know a Romanian - she currently works in Switzerland, as it happens. She has worked her tail off for years, studying all the while, but then had to leave the UK when her visa ran out. So now the Swiss get the benefit of her education and work ethic. Anyway, I'll get her to draft a series of questions in Romanian that you can hand to the Romanian beggar so that we can get to the bottom of the mystery :smile:
And of course the flexible working time, allowances for travel and subsistence, top class pension provision....these are the reasons why CS pay less than PS and over time for 90% of people it balances out durimg a lifetime
Some do. The Welcome Trust is a medical charity which owns a huge estate. In its capacity as a landlord it acts to maximise the profits from its investments - it does not treat tenants very charitably, because they are not the objects of the charity. In its capacity as a sponsor of medical research etc. it does behave charitably because that is its purpose. Is that the kind of thing you had in mind?
Civil Service isn't the same as a nationalised industry, true enough, but they usually get lumped in together in discussions about public employees versus private employees. I thought my post relevant in this regard. A £1200 bonus? Was it for a suggestion? The Govt Dept I worked for had a Suggestions Scheme, which actually paid quite handsomely for cost-saving ideas that could be put into practice. Some fellow received over £9000 a while back for an idea that would save many hundreds of thousands of pounds over the course of a few years.
A couple of years ago, the Romanian beggars had the whole area around the gym covered. There was literally one every 100 yards in every direction. They've thinned out now. I am convinced that it's mafia begging and that the guy with the cup doesn't get to keep much of his take. He probably has to stay there or get beaten up. It looks so miserable that I can't imagine he'd want to do it. Still, if you don't want beggars - simples. Don't give them anything; they'll soon go away. So I don't, although I do wish him bonjour as I sail past.
Flexi-time is implemented in many private companies. Allowances for travel and subsistence tends not to be as generous as with many private firms in comparable lines of business. The top class pensions are rapidly becoming quite ordinary, certainly for new employees. And don't worry, the Government is moving heaven & earth to try and renege on the pension scheme that comprised the contract of employment that both sides entered into when the older employees first joined.
Not sure I follow your reference to travel and subsistence. The Civil Service T&S rates are notoriously stingy. I travelled a great deal for the CS and overall I ended up well out of pocket. But that's life, and I liked to travel anyway especially by bike when I could. I'm not complaining, but it is bizarre that anyone could imagine T&S rates are a "benefit" of being in the CS.
