Re: Is There An Alternative To The Current Economic Order? : Sun Jan 25, 2015 7:07 pm  

the cal train wrote:

Coming from a family with multiple NHS workers I can also vouch for this, based on 2nd hand info of course. The one complaint I hear about admin is the number of management types who do square root of feck all in the way of actual admin, that allows patients to get sorted faster etc, and just go to meetings about why they aren't getting through enough admin.

Yep. As a for instance, I worked primarily with the Health Records dept and the majority of records were placed with a private storage company but there was next to no storage available on-site at the hospital and that was now full. So we developed our own off-site storage centre. It was significantly cheaper than at the private storage company. But because the trust wasn't prepared to fund the establishment of a proper centre (one that could store all records, free up space at the hospital and be cheaper in the long run) those records remained with the private company and we just dealt with the overflow.
I've heard it's since been closed down due to it needing some more investment that they weren't prepared to pay.

So because they weren't prepared to pay the initial set-up costs (and no senior manager was prepared to take responsibility for the problem) they now have higher on-going costs.
I worked out at the time it would cost roughly 3p per item/record per year including setup costs. At the private company it costed (this was around 2007 if memory serves) 37p.

[DaveO]

Re: Is There An Alternative To The Current Economic Order? : Thu Jan 29, 2015 12:32 pm  

Dally wrote:

It's not people on benefits that cost money. What costs money is the ridiculous number of people employed in public sector office jobs who are unproductive, spend their time in meetings and get good pension provision. That and the number of ultra-high paid "executives" who have had their packages justified by comparison with the private sector when in fact they could never command such salaries in the private sector. All public sector staff earning more than, say, £35,000 should be dismissed and asked to reapply for their jobs with lower salaries on offer. Let's see what their "market rate" is then!

That may be true but that really isn't the way the debate is being framed is it? It is all about benefit cheats when we face losses in tax income exponentially greater than that.

You may have a point about over inflated salaries in the public sector but I'd suggest even that issue pales into insignificance compared to banking bailouts and tax avoidance.

It is just another distraction to get angry about that is overall, much less of a problem when you look at the actual amounts involved.

If it is not benefits cheats, it is public sector salaries. Both ought to be far down the pecking order of issues to address.

Re: Is There An Alternative To The Current Economic Order? : Thu Jan 29, 2015 12:55 pm  

Dally wrote:

It's not people on benefits that cost money. What costs money is the ridiculous number of people employed in public sector office jobs who are unproductive, spend their time in meetings and get good pension provision. That and the number of ultra-high paid "executives" who have had their packages justified by comparison with the private sector when in fact they could never command such salaries in the private sector. All public sector staff earning more than, say, £35,000 should be dismissed and asked to reapply for their jobs with lower salaries on offer. Let's see what their "market rate" is then!

That is complete tosh, as you probably know, you just like to push the myth. If Universities can still be classed as public sector the vast majority of staff earning over £35k would earn more in the private sector.