Now -read the book!

Here is a link to my memoirs which, if you are a glutton for punishment, you can purchase online at https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/an-obscure-footnote-in-trade-union-history.
Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name. (William Morris - A Dream of John Ball)

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Public sector getting ripped off...

The latest news from the Department for stating the obvious is that the National Audit Office have spotted that the public sector is getting fleeced by private contractors (obviously further reports on the Catholicism of the Pope and the toilet habits of bears are in the pipeline…)

This is something that those of us who work in public services know all too well. Private contractors are not our “partners” and they don’t exist, as public sector bodies do, in order to provide services – they exist to maximise shareholder value, which means you have to watch them like hawks.

It is all very well the NAO and the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee berating the public sector managers who are “allowing themselves” to be ripped off. The problem is not about competency. It is a structural problem.

We should be bringing as many services back in-house as we can, and funding the development of public services with public money in the public sector. Public-private partnerships are simply a device to siphon taxpayers money into the pockets of shareholders.

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