MPs are meant to run the complaints department. Much of the case work is trying to remedy failings in public services. I will be writing a few blogs on some of the reasons there are so many complaints.Many of the Statements and Ā debates are about what to do when things go wrong..
One of the principle causes of complaint is rationing. Key public services have too little capacity, leading to access denied or inadequate service performance Ā or long waits to get the service.
We have fully nationalised roads. All my life we have been kept short of road space by local and national road managers who want to deny or limit access to roads or think it a good idea to allow bad traffic jams. There is still no south coast motorway, the M25 remains too small, the A 303 to the West Country has not been fully dualled, with similar gaps in provision elsewhere in the country. Many Councils now close or limit what roads they do have to make access to towns increasingly difficult.
The NHS dominates healthcare. It has excessively long waiting lists, delays in getting appointments and lets Ā some down who need urgent treatment.
The fully Ā nationalised rail regions have poor records for delays and cancellations to train services. Train travel fails to offer much capacity for freight traffic in ways that could shift loads off the roads.
The heavily regulated and controlled electricity utilities rely more and more on imports as government will not design national security into its over managed system.
The water companies under nationalised ownership and more recently under privatised and regulated ownership have lacked capital and permissions to replace worn out old pipes and put in enough capacity for a rising population.
December 15, 2024
Why do things in the public sector work so badly? Because the Conservatives spent 14 years cutting funding for the public sector and failing to manage the sector competently. And the voters delivered their verdict last July
Reply There was a very large rise in public spending and public sector recruitment in the last four years
December 15, 2024
Lemming. We have recently witnessed the government caving in to the train drivers and doctors for no productivity improvement. Train drivers are so well paid that they no longer work weekends.
As with all monopolies there’s no accountability or sanctions for poor performance.
The government is currently spending 50% of national output very badly and you want to spend even more.
I worked in the power industry. If I worked overtime on Sunday the government took 52% of my earnings, much to pay for people who refuse to work. There isn’t much incentive there.
December 15, 2024
No, the Not-a-Conservative-Party didn’t spend 14 years cutting public spending. Spending increased, but at a slightly slower rate than the profligate Labour Party proposed.
The problem has been caused by the importation of 10 million immigrants since Blair came to power, 6 million of which came during the last 14 years and 3 million in the last two years alone. Our public services are overloaded by people accessing them who have paid nothing, and in many cases never will pay anything, into their provision.
And then, there is the serial incompetence of Public Sector managers and a great many incompetent, lazy and apathetic staff. (Direct experience of both).
Lord Frost wrote an article the other day in the DT saying that if the Government wants the public sector to improve productivity (as the private sector has) then it should recruit Managers from the Private Sector. Hear, hear and precisely what I said the other day … and give them the power to dispense with the services of the freeloaders.
December 15, 2024
No, no, no.
No minister can suddenly be put into office and be expected to manage hundreds of thousands of public sector āworkersā.
Half the people in the public sector consider their job to be a cushy number where low productivity and absenteeism are tolerated. Long holidays, early Fridays and late Mondays are expected – along with a good salary and gray pension.
The public sector is a monkey on our backs.
December 15, 2024
Managers in the Public sector have no skin in it, safest possible employment, best pensions, unquestioned sick days, months of full pay. Why rock the boat and upset the staff, you only make work and find yourself questioned from above with little or no support.
December 15, 2024
Why do things in the public sector work so badly?
Well so few in the state sector actually give a dam whether the “work” they do delivers any or much value for the tax payers. So long as they get paid and get their gold plated pension they are just as happy blocking roads and pushing “renewables” as they are importing wood to burn at Drax, lying about “safe and effective” Covid Vaccines or building pointless bus lanes and train tracks like HS2, or blocking house building at every turn.
December 15, 2024
It rather reminds me of the old cartoon. A chap asks his stock broker if he should sell his shares in ABC Invesments Plc. or buy more. A cartoon balloon for broker says “I do not care, the commission is the same either way”.
December 15, 2024
JR says “One of the principle causes of complaint is rationing. Key public services have too little capacity, leading to access denied or inadequate service performance or long waits to get the service.”
Well you have to match supply and demand one way or another – either by charging and the price mechanism or if the product is “free” or subsidised like the NHS, GPs, pot hole repairs, social housing… by rationing or delay.
December 16, 2024
Dear Ll, There is another reason why rationing is endemic in the public sector. Sir John lists many of the false arguments trotted out by academics in he 1960s and 1970s to justify nationalisations that were actually motivated by ideology. One of the most significant, however, was that competition for custom required spare capacity, which was deemed wasteful. Even today, this is prevalent in management thinking, most obviously in the NHS. So whenever “economies” are needed, which is normal, capacity that is not fully utilised, such as spare beds, is the first to go; hence the annual winter “crisis” at hospitals and ambulance services.
The NHS is also one of the worst monopolists at suppressing competition wherever it may arise, resulting for instance in the abolition of competing family doctors in favour of merged area primary care practices.
December 15, 2024
Todays guidance disappeared at 06.01 on posting the comment. Typifying all I said.
December 15, 2024
Every single Prime Minister since Tony Blair are listed on the World Economic Forum as being members. They are all deeply indebted to Klaus Schwab and his OpenSociety foundation for their promotions. They all attended Davos together. This is the UniParty:-
– Kier Starmer
– Rishi Sunak
– Liz Truss
– Boris Johnson
– Theresa May
– George Osborne
– David Cameron
-Gordon-Brown
– Tony Blair
December 15, 2024
Indeed and all with degrees in PPE, Law, History or Geography!
Listen to Laura Kuenssberg interviewing the dire fool Emma Pinchbeck CEO of the committee on climate change a Classic graduate interviewed by a language graduate on energy, climate, engineering, scienceā¦ mainly discussions about her thinking about moving to a heat pump and having bought an electric car (they save no CO2) and eating less meat (this does save CO2) but as CO2 is a net good. The interviewer mentioned Ā£5000 for a typical new heat pump system – more like 10 to 20 times this dear. Cost more to run too and created a huge extra winter electricity demand.
If the BBC wants to discuss Russian history or the finer points of Anglo Saxon Literature I am available. I know nothing on these topics being a maths, physics, engineering, and business chap but, unlike the two above, I will try tp mug up a bit.
December 15, 2024
Or classics for Boris that I missed out. Starmer has a rather poor Physics, Maths Music A level and from a posh school too BBC grades but he is perhaps the worst of the lot given all his many disasters so far like Lammy, Reeves, Cooper Balls, Ed Milibandā¦
December 15, 2024
Academic results aren’t everything. Sir Richard Branson was useless at school. But with lots of creative / entrepreneurial / common-sense / practical intelligence. Although I don’t think Starmer has this either.
(And then you have lots of Oxbridge politicians / civil servants who lack the vital type of intelligence of people such as Richard Branson).
December 15, 2024
Indeed academic results clearly not everything but but these types of people do not even understand the very basics of energy, science, electricity generation and distribution, entropy or climate or the history of climate. Often even confusing even power with energy and getting the units wrong (or even saying this generates X megawatts per year or other moronicisms.
They even think that:-
A. Saving CO2 is a good thing and will save the world from a soon to arrive fiery hell. It is generally not and there is no fiery hell likely for some time. Though one will come near the end of the life of the Sun.
B. Electricity can be stored cost effectively. It cannot it costs a fortune to do so and wastes much energy in the process and in making the storage system of batteries.
C. Things like EV vehicles, public transport, heat pumps, cycling/walking (fueled by human food), more public transport, exporting high energy industries, so called “renewables”, burning wood (young coal) at DRAX… are a good things and these save CO2 over all for the World. Properly accounted for they really do nothing or virtually nothing & many just increase CO2 over all.
December 15, 2024
Academically Rachel Reeves has sort of an economic degree (if you count PPE Oxon) then an MA from the LSE in economics. But it is very clear from her “Budget for Growth” that she has not got a clue about what is needed for growth – the total reverse of almost everything she delivered in her budget. The same is true of Ed let us destroy growth Miliband with the insanity of NET ZERO and rip off energy costs.
December 15, 2024
@Lifelogic
I think Climate Change is a mystery to a degree. Although, I think most scientists would agree man-made pollution is playing a significant role.
3 x things are going to be the big enemy of your position though:
1) The young and society overall has gone for more green energy
2) The Green techies (more interested in money than climate change) see this as a new great way of making lots of money)
3) Clean energy goes with sophisticated new tech. Belching fumes into the air doesn’t go with cool-slick new tech (and in particular in cities where fossil-fuel tech does lead to greater physical and noise pollution).
I’m more-a-less agnostic on this issue. Except I see a lot of money to be made form Green Tech. Lastly, I think you’re looking at this too much from a LOGICAL pov! My background is in Branding, Advertising & Digital Marketing (and IT) and EMOTION is just as important in driving the consumer market and the economy in general than just LOGIC. I think you’re missing a big one here!
(Emotion – not just against pollution but also emotion in entrepreneurs wanting to make money out of Green Tech and also emotion in terms of the new, clean tech as opposed to old-fashioned tech belching physical and noise pollution into the air in particular into the cities).
December 15, 2024
@Lifelogic.
Also, Steve Jobs was a designer – not a scientist. The success of Apple rests hugely on EMOTION (the cool, slick design of the Apple and the experience of this). Although it’s high quality tech, too.
So you need to be careful at looking at culture and the economy and politics too much from the POV of logic. Logic is important – vital. But emotion is just as important (Blair understood this in politics which is why he had such stella appeal – even though I think his Iraq campaign (and to a degree, Afghan one) was a colossal disaster and scuppered any ‘success’ he had as a PM.
December 15, 2024
In order to be invited you might have to demonstrate your lack, like insisting Russia has always been a good example of democracy, and that the literature was all burned by the monks.
December 16, 2024
The most famous case of monks burning literature was the friar Savonarola who famously burned books and more in Florence around 1500. But he was a fanatic and the poor guy ended up burned himself for sins against the Church. Some now see him as a proto Protestant defying the authority of The Church.
The Church has always supported literature. Look at Dante. Storytelling a key part of the Bible. Charles Dickens is reported to have said that Christ’s parable of The Prodigal Son is the best short story ever composed – not just in religious sense but in sense of creativity too. Dickens used The Prodigal Son (and Christ’s The Good Samaratan) as inspiration for his Christmas Carol – Merry Christmas for the 25th.
December 15, 2024
Yes indeed. How they struggle to understand anything quantitative! Learning the finer points of the Russian Revolution, tundra or Chaucer will never help this country out of the present mess.
We scientists and engineers might struggle to grasp the needs of the so-called desperate Calais-based immigrants, the EU rule-lovers and the home-grown feckless, but we can stitch the numbers and structures together which might help and guide them. But you don’t get to be part of the Establishment via that route.
December 15, 2024
Oh knowledge of the Russian Revolution is critical to every Englishman at this point. Also the Nuremberg Trials, and a bit of our own history so that you know who you are and what you have to live up to.
December 15, 2024
I’d much rather a PM who left school at 16 to sell printers in a shop. And go on to become the CEO of that company with multi million pound revenue. University degrees are soo overated unless Medicine, Engineering or some other good degree from a top university. And then even a good degree doesn’t guarantee success. Sir Richard Branson left school at 16 with no qualifications or something like that. This needs to be reflected in government policy. How to help young entrepreneurs and to help young people not to waste money on daft degrees (and to help the armed forces to attract more talented people).
December 15, 2024
Good morning.
To answer today’s question is simple. Supply and demand. And the fact that we have allowed demand to outstrip supply by not planning for it. Just let millions come and access it and it will “sort itself out” seems to be the current mantra.
December 15, 2024
Why do they run so badly? Well yes the extra demand from millions of migrants who
largely do not pay in is part of it blame. But it is not their money they are wasting and not they who benefit from any value purchased. They care not the cost nor the value received.
Then we have vested interests, corruption and group think lunacy like HS2, diversity, woke lunacy & net zeroā¦
December 15, 2024
Overpopulation is at the centre of causes.
Motorway design is a major cause of road problems.
All fast roads should be treated as one-way only, with a zero mph hard shoulder and 30mph limit on the first driving lane, increasing to 70mph on the faster lanes to their right. Such roads can go wherever planned, using flyovers or underpasses when crossing others.
When fast two roads are destined in completely opposite parallel directions, they can join at their zero mph sides. Then, as the opposite-destined traffic would be at least 3-lanes apart, one of the empty zero lanes would be saved. Normal driving rules would be unchanged, with left-hand-drive vehicles keeping left and overtaking on their right, exactly as now. That then becomes a Safety Fast Motorway.
Those who assess the change rationally will not envision ghosts of perceived risk, but realise the immense advantages.
December 15, 2024
Is it just us who can’t run nationalised industry? I’m trying to put a brave face on it, since we seem to be stuck with a large nationalised/regulated sector.
I can give one example of a very good nationalised service: the Austrian railways. A bit expensive to use, and lord knows how much taxpayers’ money was put into it, but the service was great. Remarkably punctual and clean. Last year my 230 mile, 4.5hr journeys from Vienna to a tiny rural stop in the Tirol cost Ā£25-Ā£50, depending on how far in advance I bought the ticket. Lots of tiny rural stations and a good regular service between them and the local towns (maybe just 2 carriages, but enough always to sit down). They ran come snow or shine. Staff helpful.
December 15, 2024
My German friend was trying to make a point the other day when she sent me details of European nations railway performances and Deutsche Bahn was middle table and listed as “mediocre.” I replied and said that result was pretty good ….. ours is dire and costs twice as much.
December 15, 2024
There’s a different attitude. If there is corruption at the top, it’s at least hidden rather than reported through to the masses. We have the worst of both worlds here, with cronies in the public sector rotating with fatcats in the private sector.
The workers, at least in Switzerland, work to routine. Not so much flexi-this that and the other, though that is changing. People expect a job for life in something like the railways but in return they follow the rules.
December 15, 2024
SJR, you say water was privatised ‘more recently’. It was 35 years ago. You suggest that they have failed to replace leaking water pipes because of a lack of capital. But in 2022-2023, England’s water firms made Ā£1.7bn in pre-tax profits, up 82% since 2018/2019. Those firms have chosen to pay vast sums in dividends rather than invest sufficient money in upgrading infrastructure. At that same time they have imposed large billing increases on the public. By all means criticise waste in state-run businesses, but I do not see the point of trying to assimilate private sector price-gouging and under-investment to an incompetently run public sector.
Reply The privatised monopolies were subject to price controls by the state. I lost the argument to have competition to control behaviours. If you turn to private capital you need yo allow dividends and interest payments. If they had stayed nationalised taxpayers would have yet bigger bills for interest on extra state debt.
December 15, 2024
The way they were set up and were poorly regulated resulted in the problems we have now. The government cannot run thing directly, are dire at subcontracting things like HS2, road maintenanceā¦ and dire at regulating things too.
December 15, 2024
reply to reply. but private investments which include available share trading, should not expect dividends on badly run loss making activities which antagonise its customers. Nor should investors be burdened with unrealistic loan interest payments. Both ripe for manipulation.
December 15, 2024
Reply to reply
1. A state run monopoly was swapped to, effectively, a private monopoly, where the public HAS TO PAY. The investment houses couldn’t believe their luck!
2. Good management is available in both private and public sectors, it is not selective.
3. Under public ownership there’d be no cash drain to shareholders, management being equally competent, either services should be better or costs lower.
December 15, 2024
Ah, but here is the rub.
Nationalised services by their very nature are not as competent as the private sector, they are less innovative, and they certainly do not generate a decent return on investment.
So costs are higher and taxpayer subsidies the order of the day.
December 15, 2024
I simply don’t accept that only good managers can be found in the private sector, and that all public sector ‘enterprises’ only get bad managers. Is it by selection? Or genetics?
Good managers will come if you compensate them properly and don’t let politicians interfere, or require political objectives be given priority over business objectives.
December 15, 2024
I agree and I think you’ve listed 3 reasons why the public sector might struggle to recruit and retain good managers.
December 15, 2024
The evidence is all around that the public sector simply cannot manage effectively what it has under its control
December 15, 2024
Reply to reply. I’m frankly not suprised you lost the argument for competition in water supply. We can switch internet or cable TV providers, but we can’t do that with water. The only form of genuine competition the water companies could’ve offered with the existing infrastructure in place would’ve been on price ā i.e. a race to the bottom, meaning little capital available for investment in upgrading. Water is an essential public good which should have stayed in the state sector, and the state should have provided the necessary funding for upgrading. That is where the fault lay, with successive governments that had the wrong priorities for this country.
Reply You can use the pipes as a common carrier with competing companies supplying water, just as we use the gas pipes and electricity cables to allow competing suppliers. You can also allow competitor companies to supply new areas with new pipes they put in.
December 15, 2024
Anything goes, doesnāt it. Youāre wrong about water Sir John but you will never admit it. You even bragged about it bbc.co.uk 19/04/2013 āTory privatisations: Redwood on convincing Thatcherā.
But Iāll give your idea a try: a new development of, say, 100-500 houses is built in the Wokingham area, a new company is formed that supply the new area. Where will it get its water from, where will the wastewater go and be treated? Will that new company have to create a new reservoir to catch rain water, will it have to rely on one of the 474 sources of surface water in England or get its water from one of the 2,259 underground sources of EW, will it have to create from scratch a new wastewater recycling scheme and a new water treatment plant. If the answer is positive thatās a lot of investment for a new company, if not it will have to rely (and pay) a bigger existing water company owning the extraction and treatment of water, surely a bigger water company that has been providing the facilities for the bigger area. Whatever the solution I cannot see the water from this new water company to be cheaper than that provided by the previous one. But I can see it failing like all the Ā“brilliantā electricity companies a few years ago.
Would you accept that your comment is simply unrealistic and simply coming from a ideologically starting point without much actual thinking.
Fortunately you decided not to represent yourself at the last GE (I guess the personal polls you had paid showed you likely to be losing and your immensurate sense of self-importance could not face a failure) and both the constituencies you were representing as one went elsewhere.
Reply I did not buy any polls. The published polls when I decided not to run again said I would narrowly win. I explained my reasons for standing down. Do not make lies about what I did and why.
You correctly identify numerous potential sources of water for a challenger company. If they cannot get water then allowing competition doesnāt harm!
December 15, 2024
Reply to Reply :
Wouldn’t this require a water pipe grid and be even more expensive to build, use and maintain than an electricity grid? Water requires a lot of energy to move around.
Reply There are pipe networks already
December 15, 2024
The privatised monopolies may have prices controlled but that does not mean they are good value. We have over paid for water for years and currently electricity through ‘controlled maximum prices’. The water companies have taken billions out in dividends often sent overseas and the power companies have been making excess profits especially since the competition has been eliminated.. Dividends are of course required for investors, but they should be proportionate and not at the cost of bankrupting the business and not investing. Water companies are now asking big price increases to replace the pipes which we have already paid for. I don’t like paying twice for the same thing. The regulators act not in the public interest, but act like trade associations and are mostly useless. Every time one of them is interviewed on radio, they show complete incompetence.
December 15, 2024
Notice the report Fred Kite has established his committee inside Head Office, to work out the plan to return to the Socialist Republic of Europe. Will the Tory PCP make any objection — do they even care?
December 15, 2024
” Ahh, Russia – all them cornfields and ballet in the evening” (Fred Kite) – but there won’t be any cornfields under Starmer, just the men in tights…
December 15, 2024
šBrilliant āwell I was not going as fast as I couldā – every Trades Union official should have such a lodger!
Look out for posters on the London Underground of dancing and singing Britons bringing in the harvest – coming soon.
December 15, 2024
Bet we won’t be allowed to carry a hammer and sickle to work!
December 15, 2024
Could they do anything even if they did care? They squandered their 14 years and their reputation with their serial lying in four manifestos.
December 15, 2024
The word ‘manifesto’ has taken on new relevance…Comrade…
December 15, 2024
Starmer’s 5 Year Plan, he hopes will become a 10 Year one!
December 15, 2024
Letās see if he can see out a year ā¦
December 15, 2024
The reason the Public service is so incapable pf satisfying the public’s demand for ‘good’ services, is because there is no incentive in the system, for them to do so.
Equally there is no disincentive in the system either. When was a Public servant last fired for overseeing a poor department service?
Too many useless service performances are rewarded with early full paid pensions, or a Knighthood, or Peerage.
Why do they need to be any good at their jbs when they know the payoffs are guaranteed?
December 15, 2024
Rationing is partly to blame for the public sector crisis. We simply need to drastically reduce iummigration.
However, there is also the failure to replace poor management and lazy people.
All of the above is the fault of all governments throughout the 21st century.
December 15, 2024
Kwarteng said the other evening that āthere may be 80 million in the UKā.
December 15, 2024
was that the UK population, or just the growing CS?
December 15, 2024
Probably half are paid by the State, one way or another.
December 15, 2024
It is more than half that pay in less then they get back directly in direct benefits and direct services like school places, GPs, prescriptions etc, The other thinks like defence, roads, police all paid for by the other rather less than 50% and huge government borrowing.
December 15, 2024
Many of the failings of public services are a direct result of EU Regulations (now imported into UK law); UK Legislation and the growth of the Independent Regulators/Quangocracy.
We are still subject to EU Environmental Regulations, which were gold-plated by our Civil Service or are over-interpreted by the Quangocracy. That delays or prevents a great deal of infrastructure improvements and loads massive costs onto any schemes which do go ahead.
Over-interpretation of Environmental Regs by the Environment Agency (captured by Eco nutters) is why the water courses and drainage channels in the Somerset Levels were not maintained …. leading to massive flooding a few years ago.
Natural England can, effectively, block any infrastructure project which will impact a site they control (ie A303/ Stonehenge). The mere indication that dormice MAY be present in an area can stop a project. The presence of bats, newts, some birds (and certainly during bird-nesting season) will, at the very least, impact, a scheme.
If the proposed development is in a National Park (or somewhere like the New Forest) then the Park Authority must approve it which is one reason why there isn’t a south coast motorway because it would traverse the South Downs National Park.
As with so much else, the problem has been caused by the EU and a succession of British Governments who have given too much power to the unaccountable Quangocracy. We need a Government which will Take Back Control.
December 15, 2024
So Sir John, where does the blame for the short comings lie?
Is it incompetence by the minister, the civil servants, or the local management? Could it be an untrained or unskilled workforce or perhaps the unionisation that’s the problem?
Perhaps the organisation has forgotten about the concept of public service?
Too many public sector organisations seem unable to prioritise their core goals or to work to budgets… Why is this? Could we bring in new professional business teams from successful private companies to look at the state of the public organisations? Would anyone be brave enough, to take on the unions and today, the MSM in the way Mrs Thatcher did? I doubt it personally. It must be nice to have your own money printing machine when one is skint.
December 15, 2024
I think one reason the public sector is inefficient is that there are no incentives for them to perform better and no penalties if they underperform. In the private sector, despite restrictive employment laws, under-performers get moved out.
December 15, 2024
Indeed and if they try to improve efficiency they will damage other workers who might well get replaced by automation or closures of pointless departments and made redundant. So they have negative incentives to do anything on the efficiency front.
December 15, 2024
Look at how the country boomed during the Victorian era when state intervention was so much less, and innovation ruled.
Yes, indeed. It is clear that state run services are an abomination in terms of effective management. Roads in particular, but also Water and power, rail and farming.
It’s not all about incompetence – it is much more basic. Those in charge of supplying our needs just cannot be bothered to do their job properly. Those that should be looking ahead, planning and increasing capacity in whatever service they are employed to manage just shrug their sloping shoulder and tell us to use less.
That is not doing the job!
We can’t expect improved services now that netzero is in full swing, but that shouldn’t stop us complaining about and highlighting those manager that are failing in their useless nationalised roles.
December 15, 2024
The civil courts have all but ground to a halt. Despite the fact that a cornerstone function of a civilised state is to provide an accessible and affordable system to enable citizens to resolve their disputes, the courts charge ludicrous stealth tax fees at the point of entry, take ages to have an action properly timetabled for trial, and leave the resolution of those disputes largely in the hands of judges who have to show more experience of and commitment to DEI than aptitude for legal decision making. At least there is a private sector option available, in the form of ADR/mediation, but that is not suitable for every litigant.
December 15, 2024
Our host mentioned the lack of a South Coast motorway.
I live in Dorset, 4 miles west of Ringwood. Dorset is the only County in England with no motorway!
In my working life I had to go to Exeter regularly for 30 years and that route is torturous : the 80 mile journey never takes less than 100 minutes, and it often takes over two hours. By motorway it would take just 75 minutes.
Go by train, Lord Adonis would say, but there is no train line West of Dorchester !
With the enforced move to EVs, the Green lobby can no longer use climate change as a reason to object to new roads. We should not be wasting many billions on the railways, including HS2, we should spend a fraction of that amount on improving our motorway network. Look across the Channel where France is expanding its superb autoroute system. Yes, there are tolls, but road tax is much cheape, as is diesel.
December 15, 2024
The fact there is no motorway in Dorset is one of the reasons I moved there š
December 15, 2024
It doesn’t help when you need to go somewhere by car !!!
December 15, 2024
Chris the Great North Road (A1) is single lane for huge stretches. The Roman Military Road is a better route. š¤Æ
December 15, 2024
7.5 years ago our health centre (a simple building) burnt down. No rebuild has yet started. 5.5 years ago Notre Dame burnt down requiring a major and complicated restoration. It has just reopened. That says it all!!
December 15, 2024
Prayers before health – the way it has always been.
December 15, 2024
And still the socialists continue to argue that state provision is best!
December 15, 2024
āThe water companies under nationalised ownership and more recently under privatised and regulated ownership have lacked capital and permissions to replace worn out old pipes and put in enough capacity for a rising population.ā
āFlawed privatisationā the companies involved and seemingly in perpetuity never had/have the money to buy and run the Companies/Water Boards. The purchases are highly leverages, the first thing done once the operation is acquired is to sell and mortgage the infrastructure leaving them cash strapped virtually unable to pay the interest rates on the debts involved in the purchase.
Thatās not Privatisation, that is not someone going to invest and grow. That is simply organisations paying interest of debt and funding shareholders.
December 15, 2024
Thames Water debt Ā£15bn. Covalis Capital, wants in on the action with their takeover, they plan to provide about Ā£1bn of the funds upfront and then raise a further Ā£4bn from sales of the struggling water companyās assets. I doubt the Ā£1 b is their money, but money where interest and capital will have to full on the Customer ā so even more debt.
So, the debts pile up and the interestsā payments increase, Thames Water goes backwards. That, as is now not an outfit interested in the Customer – someone improving the service. As with now the offer even predicates on them raising prices by 53% by 2030 and of course getting Taxpayer (Not Government) Funding to rectify on going management faults.
In selling off the infrastructure then effectively renting it back etc is someone thinking of the Customer. its just securing a poison challis for those that might want to follow.
Like Sir John I believe in āPrivatisationā, but we have yet to see one of these outfits being concerned with service or the customer. The analysis therefore is that the take-over arrangements organised by Government and the Blob is deeply, even corruptly flawed. I would now prefer where no direct Competition can act as pressure, that these infrastructure projects were run by competitive tender so the physical structures remain and are not mortgaged, rented back or just sold. Then when companies screw up there is something of a full back for the Customer.
What I donāt believe is that Government or the State should be allowed near anything required to deliver!
December 15, 2024
“long waits to get the service” etc
Experienced A&E at the brand new Ā£30m extra wing on a PFI hospital sitting all Friday night at reading the high tech expectation management screens with average waiting times leaping by the hour from 2.5 hours @ midnight to 9 hours by 7 AM to see a Doctor / Practitioner. You can’t hit a moving target…
The Ambulance had to wait for over an hour before with patients outside as the crew mentioned who didn’t think to get the processes and people in place to avoid this (ineffective, inefficiency, nonsense).
My wife noted the chairs had half-backs unsuitable for any long wait and more likely to add back problems esp at night.
Even before new projects are started things are moving too fast in the real world for our out of touch bureaucracy that dates back to at least the WW2 era of top down supply factories with just one or two main aims.
There needs to be a modern demand-led reality approach today to totally recognise this otherwise we have useless waste of scarce economic resources big-time like HS2 etc.
There are far too many silly, crazy wasted endeavours by government s and we cannot afford any of this nonsense anymore. It is just plain wrong.
December 15, 2024
Everything you said, Sir John, applies. However, let’s add two more obvious ingredients to the pot. (Here I go again!..Nothing changes if everything stays the same. Oo..). a) ‘Skin in the Game’…There has to be some incentive for doing a good job. (The risk of being sacked is one of them). b) Working 4 days..from home: If they are working at all..with no oversight..is hardly contributive to excellent performance. (It’s a Sunday here…Me brain has seized up…) Can anyone else add to my measly contribution?…
December 15, 2024
I worked in and with the public sector for over 35 years. During this time productivity just got worse when it should have vastly improved due to the introduction of computer systems. Iāve seen the civil service go in constant circles at the behest of a myriad of politicians with their change of direction. Changing anything is like turning a super tanker and takes time but the politicians want an instant result so if they donāt see a result we get another change in direction. I would put most of the problems in this country down to politicians. It is they that allowed unchecked immigration. It is they that introduced over-taxation. It is they that introduced over-regulation. They are the ones who arenāt fit for purpose and nothing will improve until we change our political system. Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems need replacing with parties with a business mindset who have created successful companies. Until this happens there is no hope for the UK.
December 15, 2024
yep, we see policy change or inaction after just a week.
Where are the mid to long term decisions that business and individuals can organise to their benefit?
Everything is avoiding fixing policies where criticism might follow from small affected groups, yet often what is needed will not be popular with majority. Instead we get idiotic ideas from harebrained advisors who know little and the Ministers might know zero.
December 16, 2024
Correct. All our problems are a consequence of our system of government – they have all been created by generations of politicians and Senior Civil Servants, particularly since they handed control to the EU.
December 15, 2024
There is only reward and no risk in the public sector.
Civil servants can justify not having to earn a profit because they are not revenue earners.
But they are cost centres and as such should be sackable or made redundant like any other cost centre employee in the private sector.
They should be made redundant like any employee when their employer decides to change direction.
They should be sackable if they make a mistake.
December 15, 2024
The blobs pensions/wages need to be calibrated to GDP/Capita.
In which case i doubt MP’s would have got any pay rises.
Breaking manifesto’s pledges should depend reduce the time to the next election by a 1 year for each breach. Major strategic changes to a country should be forbidden unless a referendum is held. I cite the mass immigration policy as evidenced.
December 15, 2024
Simples, the public sector, including politicians, do not have the requisite commercial or technical ability to run anything. Blatantly obvious when applied to the current cabinet.
The real current danger to the UK is Starmer’s reset to return the UK to the busom of the EU. This needs to be stopped by any and every means possible. It is a traiterous act, nothing less.
December 15, 2024
Why? Because it is a wolf in sheepās clothing ā the symbol of the Communist leaning Fabian Society ā and as such wishes to screw up our key public services to make the transformation they desire.
The purpose of Net Zero, the proposed āsolutionā to CAGW (shown by Shula and Ott, both theoretically and experimentally, to be totally false because there is no greenhouse heating effect at the Earthās surface) is designed to destroy our economy and bring the rationing of food, energy and transport.
If the climate alarmists really believe our weather will become more extreme and unpredictable why are they forcing upon us chaotically intermittent weather dependent renewables for our energy? Wouldnāt more affordable, more reliable, weather independent nuclear be a better option?
December 15, 2024
Why do do things in the public sector work so badly?
Because a large proportion of the people who get jobs anywhere paid for by the public purse, regard it as a safe job for life and make no effort to improve what they deliver or make cost savings. After all, they all know that the taxpayer will always pay up.
They regard it as a free ride with more sick leave, more holiday, working for home, and better pension benefits.
It all needs to change. Put private sector managers in charge and demand high standards and more bangs for our bucks.
December 15, 2024
The public sector performs badly because there is so often little worth in what they are doing. Much of what they do is just to satisfy government’s demand for ever more legislation. Do it well, or do it badly, what does it matter? Don’t blame civil servants for being normal human beings, who don’t respond well to futile tasks.
What is needed is for the public sector to be engaged in work they can see is of worth. They can go home in the evening in the knowledge that what they do is appreciated by the general public because of its value.
We need government to chuck out the layers of bureaucracy they have successively created and get back to the essentials. Once you have done that, ensure there’s good management to progress the work.
December 15, 2024
“Train travel fails to offer much capacity for freight traffic in ways that could shift loads off the roads.”
To do this requires freeing up of capacity by separating the fast, long distance trains from the local trains and freight services. There was supposed to be a solution that would deliver this – HS2 – but the last Conservative government cancelled the project where it was most needed (north of Birmingham) and made a mess of the rest of it by constantly messing around with it (Going to Heathrow – yes/no?, Going to Euston – yes/no? etc.).
December 16, 2024
If you want to move freight around you don’t need a High Speed line. And the justification for moving more people around was completely flawed: a) most people don’t just want to go from A, to B … and they don’t start their journey in central London. b) the DfT’s cost/benefit “analysis” calculated the journey time as unproductive, ignoring the fact that WiFi is provided c) Following the Covid Tyranny and the growth in zoom, there is far less justification for people meeting face to face d) if HS2 was viable, the private sector would have funded it.
December 16, 2024
“If you want to move freight around you donāt need a High Speed line.”
Correct, you don’t but if you want to increase the capacity to do so, you need to separate freight trains and local, stopping passenger services from the high speed passenger trains and run them on different lines. On most of the current UK rail network, all those services use the same lines and that causes capacity issues and prevents offering a better passenger service to many towns on the network.
The whole point of HS2 was to free up the capacity on the existing network to allow more freight services and more frequent local passenger services
The town where I grew up is still stuck with the same once an hour service that it had back in the 60s, 70s and 80s because high speed trains run through it (without stopping) on the same lines, and the frequency can’t be increased to 2 per hour (let alone 4 per hour, as on the Elizabeth line) because that would impact on the fast trains that don’t stop there anyway. HS2 was going to be the solution that meant that towns like the one I grew up in got the sort of service that people who live in the south east take for granted and expect.
December 15, 2024
An illustration of the situation, ego over reality. SpaceX now valued at $350 bn working well in profit and well ahead of so-called State/Government endeavours. They have launched 7,000 communication satellites and now with 5million subscribers.
Boris Johnson chucked millions of Taxpayers hard earned pounds at āOneWebā, then gave it to the French. The Surrey Satellite Technology company attached to the University was a master at building satellites becoming a leader in its field with potential to earn as a stand-alone entity ā just given away the French Government by the Conservatives.
Dare we mention ARM, or all those UK Defence companies now given away. The much talked about AUKUS deal that appeared to upset the French, it shouldnāt have done as with all UK Submarines they the āboatsā canāt put to see without the French Government say so, they now own all the electronics and systems required for them to work – the UK Government unable to manage gave it ALL away.
The rot is in those not just in this Government but Parliament itself they cant mange themselves then they want us to believe they can managed the delivery of the services and infrastructure to keep the UK going.
December 15, 2024
160 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday from the safe country of France ā¦
December 15, 2024
Why are we giving Ā£11million+Ā£50million to an undemocratic religious dictatorship HTS in Syria? ā¦.that financial black hole just gets bigger and bigger
December 15, 2024
I live near the A27 (with the M27 the nearest we have to a South Coast motorway). The snail’s pace at which is “improved” is disgraceful, under all governments. The Coalition government added a one mile stretch of 3 lanes to the dual carriageway instead of dualling it and then built a magnificent 5 mile stretch of cycleway alongside the congested two-way road from Lewes to Polegate. Very few cyclists use it. The current government have just cancelled the Arundel Bypass and. as for Worthing, where a 2-lane road crawls through the town, the necessary housing to widen it were all compulsorily purchased and then because there was no money they were all sold back. A classic lack of any strategic thinking going back 60 years. As a country we are pathetic.
December 16, 2024
Over the decades, the Government has spent more money scoping various possible schemes for the A303/Stonehenge which have never gone ahead, than it would have cost to build the tunnel …. now cancelled.