“Spending Challenge” Ideas Muster Here
The Treasury has just launched a website yesterday (how’s that Government website culling going? Not so well, apparently) where civil servants can submit ideas about how to save cash. The plan is that the site will be opened up to the general public on 8th July.
The Spending Challenge is your chance to shape the way government works, and help us get more for less as we try to bring down the deficit. It’s open initially to people who work in our public sector.
This week’s Budget set out a 25 per cent cut in spending for most departments over four years. Now, we want you to help us find those savings so we can cut public spending in a way that is fair and responsible. You work on the frontline of public services. You know where things are working well, where the waste is, and where we can re-think things so that we get better services for less money.
The action list is robust and impressive:
- All ideas considered by cross-government team
- Serious ideas go to ‘champions’ team in Cabinet Office/Treasury
- Most promising ideas sent to departments and Treasury spending teams to be worked up
- Selected ideas reviewed by Ministers
- Spending Review announced October 20th
This means that your perfectly sensible idea to stop giving money to African dictators or countries with their own space program will get ditched at (1) but suggestions to power the UK using carbon-free unicorn farts are guaranteed at least stage (4).
To get an idea of the drivel on there, consider today’s “update”:
Day two i
n the Big Brother houseof Spending Challenge and your ideas are still coming in thick and fast, which is fantastic. One of the themes that’s been developing from the many comments we’ve received so far is how we can best use recycling techniques to save money and help to save the environment as well.
Oh, good grief. TheEye only skimmed the rest of it…an idea to make notes on waste paper rather than notepads was typical…before giving up and sobbing quietly. Turning off monitors is all very well, but TheEye wants two new aircraft carriers and that just won’t cut the financial mustard.
So TheEye has just claimed to be working at a senior level for Business Secretary St Vince and suggested that the department is a pointless self serving ego-trip, and forget the cuts already announced – close us down.
If it happens, the conspiracy began here.
“It’s open initially to people who work in our public sector.” – In which case it’s unlikely to get many hits, if the following account by a “Whistleblower” is anything to go by.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1289702/Public-sector-inertia-council-office-employees-month-sickies.html
“Untouchables”, consecutive six month sickies, can’t work due to being under a spell, etc etc.
As the guy says, the new administration are going to have their work cut out…
Saw that article and banged my head on the table. If you tried that working for me I’d find a way to get you out of the door sharpish no matter what ‘protection’ you thought you had from the real world.
It’s certainly a well entrenched problem. Over 35 years ago I started work for a major public sector employer (now private). While things were nowhere near as bad as this article paints, the union convener held more power than the area manager.
I remember one winter (when we actually HAD winters) being told to stay in the yard until someone could organise us into gangs – too much snow, apparently! Me being me, I just got in the van and went out as normal. I managed a good days work despite getting stuck a few times.
I wasn’t very popular when I got back at the end of the day….
I bet you weren’t, especially in those days when crossing some unions could get you more than just nasty looks in the staff canteen.
About that time here if the TGWU went out on strike the whole city closed. Their chief rabblerouser then remains the leader of the local Socialist Labour Party today (at the ripe old age of 71). He still remembers the names of people who crossed picket lines 50 years ago and blanks their families to this day.
One area that needs looking at is private companies whose sole contract is with the Government.
My own favorite are Training Providers, announced by Labour to up-skill the workforce. Well I got “up-skilled” to NVQ2 in my trade of twenty years (at the insistance of my ‘sponsor’), by a bunch of spivs and chancers; cost me nothing but it cost the Dept. Of Education £1,500.
My last contact with them was to fraudulantly sign off some blank forms which purported to outline my action plans in the event of various scenarios. No doubt their secretary bird filled them out on my behalf. I still got my certificate, eventually.
About 200 of my associates in my small city went through that process =£300,000 x ‘X’ number of trades, lets be generous and say just ten =£3m, x goodness knows how many similar cities duly weighted, let’s say 100
= £300m, per annum. You could build quite a few 6th form college extensions for that.
Cllr Harry Phibbs has written a list of quangos to cut, and it’s pretty impressive but you still get the feeling it’s only scratching the surface.
The problem is that politicians just don’t see these things (including your example) until someone brings it to their attention, because most of them have never worked in the real world. And it’s not in civil servants’ interests to do so.
They could do worse than watch a dozen blogs which write about bureaucratic madness for a week and then go back to their staff asking “does this sort of abuse really happen? how soon can we stop it?”
Needless to say, the Cultural Marxists are all howling with outrage at the “hate-filled”, “racist” and “disablist” suggestions made by members of the public (just google “spending challenge” to get a flavour), and demanding that the Government close the website down.
Funny how they all seem to come from groups with a vested interested in the continuance of StasiLiebour’s Client State.
Maybe more of that soon as a post. A wealth of material to be had there, most of it depressing but occasionally unintentionally hilarious.