The Politics Thread

Thank you.I live in the USA,old fruit.

 

They're a tiny, fringe party over here, anyway. Most people haven't heard of them. The USA has an equivalent party of similar size.

 

I take your point but there are plenty of companies and individuals who are taking money from government and councils, paying minimum wage to their employees and giving poor returns to the people they serve , ie care homes , landlords OH assist, cleaning services ect

 

Like the Nazsty party. Hidden away in a bar somewhere.

 

As are the Socialist Workers Party, Respect and Galloway's Workers Party of Britain. Respect made some headway until the seemingly inevitable schism and breakup.

 

A lot of that can be avoided by having a better procurement system and managing contractors properly. The reality is it’s often people who are clueless about the services making the decisions on both counts.

If better people were employed within the public sector to deal with the services contracts there would be better outcomes.

Similarly if the criteria was weighted better within procurement you’d get higher quality contractors.

 

I think you've put your finger on the inherent contradiction in outsourcing government services. You get rooked if you have inferior staff to the private contractors. Of course if you have superior staff to the private contractors then by definition you could provide a more efficient outcome by employing the contractor's staff directly. So outsourcing always loses!

 

I'd no history of employment in local government but in the fallout of 2008, I found myself working for a London Council and I ran a number of tenders. I found the Procurement section to be next to ****ing useless and Finance didn't honestly give a ****, if you could just get the cost down and avoid any challenges. I was told that the financial crisis hadn't changed that much.

It's all about keeping the thing turning over and staying out of the press at any cost. I had a couple of particularly unpleasant experiences of being asked to make things 'go away' and resigned. I found the whole experience very depressing.

 

Not posting this as a Biden supporter, but this video encapsulates the Orange Idiot and his inept, ridiculous management of the crisis in the US.

 

I think all sensible people are in the Anyone But Trump side of the argument. I worry Biden will not even live till November such is his decline, but frankly I'd be routing for a monkey if it was standing against Trump.

 

Dominic Cummings has tested positive for Covid-19

I do believe that's the perfect example of irony

 

The state sector is fertile ground for a certain type of worker mindset that would
get brutally slaughtered in the commercial sector, from the low to the 'Chief X' .
The enabler of course being that tis always somebody elses' money, and not yours.


" I had a couple of particularly unpleasant experiences of being asked to make things 'go away' and resigned.
I found the whole experience very depressing."

Always better to walk if you financially/professionally can.
Do not poison yourself with it, no aid/abet its further propagation.
I always walk at the first amenable moment after I detect such antics in any client I work for.

 

In state sector IT system tenders, there is often professional deceit.

Usually a bidder B will send their brightest and greatest to secure the contract,
then inside the "black box" company facade B will send the work to some
much-lower cost overseas operation, where the average worker quality is less
than the UK peer set.

And of course B attempts to prevent the system tender from using quality
freelance personnel, by "lobbying" govt to impose contemptible tax regimes
such as IR35.

 

So I was reading this article about the government's approach to Covid-19...

"The directive remained the same: 'Don't Panic! The government commission will be here soon. It will investigate and then measures will be taken!'" (M)anagers and bureaucrats tended to do what years of party rule had trained them to do - avoid responsibility. Everyone was afraid of being accused of spreading panic, and everyone was glad to defer to the highest authorities to make a decision.

...oh wait, that's from Serhii Plokhy's Chernobyl book, with the word "Soviet" removed from the start of the second sentence

 

It always ends up being covered with the dabs of someone in middle management. Nothing at Chief Executive or Director level is in writing on this ****. You get called to un-minuted meetings and 'little chats' with their minions, who tell you what's expected of you.

Now, I work for myself. I'm poorer but much happier.

 

A quick "acid test" is to ask to see the org chart, and how many levels up
there is from the person who is hiring you (and you will report to) , and
those at the very top.

The greater the level count, the more likely you will be regularly engrossed
in such things.

One of my early freelance gigs was at BT in the early 1990s.
So 5-10 years after privatisation of the GPO.
You would not believe the depth of the org charts.

BT spent quite a bit of effort and resource in the immediate years trying to
purge themselves of many of those "middle management" layers.

 

My experience is that the enabler is the opposite. Namely that it is "taxpayers' money" so the only important criterion in deciding how to spend it is what happens if the Daily Mail finds out. So expenditure on anything that improves staff morale is forbidden.

 

The man was born a prick and continues to act like one. A story in a magazine says that Trump's mother told his wife number 1....."what have I done?"

 

Definitely agree with all that. The more levels the worse.....however the armed forces and the police seem to have loads of levels and this is never challenged.