The Covid lockdowns were too long and too extreme. I worked with the Mark Harper group of Conservative MPs to challenge the policy and propose less damaging ways of keeping people safe from the virus, with limited success.
I then watched in horror at the extreme volatility of output, employment and incomes that resulted, and at the colossal public sector costs to offset the collapse of many business activities.
It became clear that whilst  many private sector activities rebounded quickly on the ending of lockdowns, public sector productivity did not.  It took a massive 7.5% hit according to ONS figures looking at Labour productivity. I drew Ministers attention to this and persuaded them that they needed to review with their officials how this big loss could rapidly be repaired, The loss was great in the NHS where much non Covid work had been abandoned owing to the decision to put Covid cases into District General hospitals, creating cross infection control difficulties. Not enough use was made of the private sector hospital capacity the taxpayers were paying for and practically  no use of the Nightingale special hospitals.
Ministers were told that the coming of AI did present useful opportunities to raise productivity but it would take substantial investment,and many months t9 draw up the specifications for procurement and to see where AI could go. I countered by pointing out we did not need to wait for any investment in AI to get back up to 2019 levels of productivity, because there was no AI in 2019 and yet the government did hit higher levels of productivity then. Eventually Ministers settled for a possible £20 bn of productivity gains spread over a long period with the need to spend to save. The actual loss on the original ONS figures was more like £30 bn. Official figures were subsequently altered, as we were living through a period of experimentation  and change with all sorts of official figures to make it difficult to see consistent series and to effect comparisons over time. The balance of trade figures were changed substantially as well as productivity numbers.
I suggested a simple device to get the lost productivity back a bit quicker. I proposed a complete staff freeze on external recruitment for non front line staff. Each time someone retired or left employment the post should be reviewed  to see if it was one to abolish , amalgamate or fill from an existing staff member. Ministers ended up agreeing a one in one out approach to stop further rapid expansion of numbers such as we saw across the Covid period, with a few exceptions like Steve  Barclay at DEFRA who did go for a freeze.
The state recruited far too many extra administrators and policy advisers over the last five years. This big bulge in recruitment led to a plunge in productivity. There is also the issue of working from home. Some of us for some of the time can be more productive at home , often giving travel time to the job as well. However it is important to go into the  office regularly and to attend important meetings in person. Staff need to interact, to mentor, assist and socialise their ideas which are all easier in an office environment.Quite a lot of jobs require daily attendance at a workplace to serve the  public, supervise the machinery and train and direct staff.
August 12, 2024
Good morning.
Bureaucracy, whether it be in the Public or Private Sectors will always seek to to grow itself. It is the nature of humans to increase their importance, self worth and value (salaries). The problem for the Private Sector is that it does not have a competitor to contend with. To this end we must look to those who government Public Purse and, if they are of a certain character, ie someone who cares little about his own finances let alone those of the State, we are in big trouble as we have seen. We also suffered from those who, for ambition reasons, sought to spend large amounts of money on things that would benefit them politically.
Taking into account the above, it is high time that we considered formally separating the Executive from the Legislature. With too many Ministers / Departments all being drawn from the Legislature we are seeing a perversion of our so called Parliamentary Democracy and the failure to hold the government to account.
August 12, 2024
The problem with the private sector is that nearly all of the public have very little choice but to use the NHS, state school, universities, police, passport office, state pension… due to a rigged uncompetitive system. With other supplies like food, cars and other goods they can vote every time by buy something. Though now the government are rigging cars too.
JR says “The Covid lockdowns were too long and too extreme.”
Well the lockdowns never made any sense at all, This as, in as much as they may have delayed a tiny few deaths in the vulnerable by a few weeks, they also delayed about 1000 times more young and healthy people getting free, earlier, more effective natural vaccinations. The net effect was obviously likely to be and was negative. The stats clearly also shows that the very unsafe and ineffective vaccines also did significant net harm. Most younger, healthy people and people who had had Covid already had no need of a vaccine – even had they been remotely safe and effective.
Has Sunak looked at the stats yet and corrected his “Unequivocally Safe” claim or lie? Has he explained why he went to the country 6 month early yet? Was it so he could holiday in California more easily?
The cost of the lockdowns also caused many further non Covid deaths and vast economic damage.
August 12, 2024
“we considered formally separating the Executive from the Legislature”
Wouldn’t this have precisely the opposite effect of that intended – of making the executive more linked to the admin class and less likely to be pressured by the electorate through their MPs.
August 12, 2024
@Mark B – so very true, we see it everywhere in the public sector, create DEI departments and the first thing they do is grow to protect themselves. Just think how insulting and patronising the DEI ideology is, 99.9% of the World treats all humans as equals, so to be told someone has to dictate what your thoughts should be according to their personal interpretation…. The 0.1% who travel a different route cant hear either way.
August 12, 2024
The executive MUST be drawn from the Legislature so that it can be held to account on a daily basis. They must ALL fear being sacked. However is is monstrous that the Government has created so many âgovernment jobsâ in order to control so many of the votes of the legislature.
I understand that the Cabinet has no constitutional standing. It is created to help the PM, who is the First Lord of the Treasury, because government is now so extensive and complex. It is the PM who demands that they assume joint responsibility and must resign if they canât tow the line on every point.
It is possible that a PM does require a Cabinet in the modern world, but the number in Government should be limited either by number or by proportion of the ruling parties majority. The number should be small, less than 20. That would contain the number of Departments too – no capacity for a Divergency and Equality Department and all the rest of the rubbish.
Reply Secretary of State jobs are often specified in legislation as holders of important powers so a PM has to appoint to vacancies. There would be strong pressure to remove or change a PM who though5 he or she could govern without Cabinet.
August 12, 2024
Reply to reply:
Do you agree that appointing 70% (or so) of the government benches to âgovernment jobsâ is excessive? All those fake government âjobsâ mean that the vote is controlled.
August 12, 2024
Sorry amendment.
Should read – “Public Sector”
August 12, 2024
Public sector productivity will not even be looked under Starmer.
One of his first actions was huge pay rises across the board for the public sector.
August 12, 2024
And Labour are about to hammer private pensions yet again but of course gold plated taxpayer funded public sector pensions, including their own, will remain untouched.
August 12, 2024
I see the Filing of a Confirmation Statement to Companies House has doubled (From ÂŁ17.00 To Now ÂŁ34.00) since last year, even when completed on line.
Companies House Website was inoperable today, and rejected all attempts to log in, so I had to contact their Customer Services who led me in through another completely different route, it would seem they have problems (yet to be resolved) within the automatic filing system.
So now paying double the price for a system that does not work, just about sums Government departments up really.
The Customer Services employee was thankfully very helpful.
August 12, 2024
Some private sector businesses have needed to do more than freeze hiring, they had to cut the number they employed to stay in business as the cash ran out. Many already implement AI enhanced activities to improve efficiency. When asked in an interview about the scope for AI at JP Morgan, its CEO reeled off over 20 areas of the business where it’s application was being actively explored if not already applied. Can any Permanent Secretary of a UK government department do the same? Or a Minister? It seems a very large number of civil servants still work from home. My interaction with large commercial organisations that relied on home workers dealing with customers like me was poor – very slow responses, bad or wrong information supplied. I understand that many government departments are notoriously slow to respond – such as HMRC. Several billions of the state’s spending black hole is down to worse productivity. Will the new government get a grip? I doubt it.
August 12, 2024
@David Andrews – that’s called management, something we thought we were empowering and paying our MP’s and Government to do. How wrong we where ego, self-gratifications is the default over-ride.
August 12, 2024
Can the CEO of Morgan Stanley, or you, tell me the difference between âAIâ and âComputerisationâ please?
August 12, 2024
AI is where the computer programme trawls your devices and search and posting record for answers, rather than allowing you to input I formation yourself.
August 12, 2024
No that is not true. AI specifies and programs itself. It achieves an initial objective.
Collecting data automatically is bog standard computerisation. I wrote production and process control systems 30 years ago which collected data from all sorts of electronic devises. Scales, freezers, packing machines etc.
The industry is now discussing the situation where the computers snooker themselves, having programmed themselves to do opposite things to achieve different objectives. I think they are calling it electronic madness. You donât suffer âelectronic madnessâ from data collection.
August 12, 2024
Having farming friends I tend to think AI is something else entirely, which can come with lack of success. Oh. just a sec they have something in common.
August 12, 2024
So-called investment banks do not need customers as they exist purely to enrich themselves by trading in markets. If they did not exist no one would care apart from those who want to enrich themselves without performing any useful function in society.
August 12, 2024
They need two things: capital to fund their trading positions, and counterparties mug enough to take the other side of their trades.
August 12, 2024
Labour has cancelled the reduction if snivel Serpents by 60,000 which were recruited during the pandemic
They have also entrenched the shirk from home policy which no private organisations could afford.
Together with their unaffordable gold plated pensions, state employees are a charmed species.
Hopefully they will bankrupt this administration so it goes the same way as the tory party.
August 12, 2024
The Covid lockdowns were completely unnecessary. Five days BEFORE the first lockdown, it was officially downgraded from a High Consequence Infectious Disease because they had more data and they knew it wasn’t likely to be serious for the vast majority.
It had an estimated 1% mortality rate (in fact it was 0.2%) and the most likely victims were the very elderly/frail and those who already had serious co-morbidities and life-limiting conditions.
The Diamond Princess cruise ship was a real life demonstration of the likely impact. Of the thousands of passengers (mostly fairly elderly and some in the highly vulnerable category) and younger crew, only 8 elderly people died.
Five days after downgrading Covid, Johnson, Handcock, Whitty and Vallance started blatantly lying to the population about the severity of the disease and they blew up the economy.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
August 12, 2024
Exactly – plus what can a lockdown do? It just delays a few deaths at best – but for the thousands more of the health population it delays free vaccinations. The net effect is a large negative as should have been obvious to our government “experts”. The Barrington Declaration was always the sensible way to go. Yet the Boris government used government money to trash the people pointing this out!
August 12, 2024
The amateur presentation of statistics started there and there was no way back.
This model of government is so dangerous; fear and ignorance led to misleading information being screened day after day.
The evidence was all around us. Nobody collapsing on the streets of Wokingham or anywhere else. Yes, chaos in the care sector and NHS through lack of proper direction and waste in Nightingale hospitals, but the demographic of deaths was quickly apparent.
Then the Sunak waste of money. Students take out loans to see them through a financially tight few years. Sunak just threw cash at people who didn’t need it to see them through a few weeks/months!
The futility, misdirection and waste clearly present in government at that time gave birth to our current predicament.
August 12, 2024
Easy with hindsight from your armchair and no burden of potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths on your conscience.
August 12, 2024
Have you read the post? There was no need for hindsight, the evidence was already clearly there. No need to pontificate from an armchair or put the canard of ‘hundreds of thousands of deaths’ out there, unless, of course, you might be a (moral) cowardly politician who is unable to make a coherent, rational decision not to destroy your country and is therefore unfit for office.
zorro
August 12, 2024
There were many highly qualified medics and scientists pointing out the folly of the official narrative at the time, but they were dismissed as cranks. conspiracists and misinformers. All science, all hypothesese and whatever your own doctor tells you, must be questioned. That is how science progresses. We were deemed to have given “informed consent” for the covid jabs, but it turned out that much of the information was hidden. Now, inevitably, there is a deep distrust of the medical authorities. The only reliable factor is the profitability of big Pharma.
August 12, 2024
No, it was easy at the time. The Diamond Princess pre-dated the lockdowns and the downgrading of Covid was done BEFORE the lockdowns were announced.
Since the downgrade was implemented 5 days beforehand, the Scientists and Civil Servants would have had the data about 3 weeks earlier because that’s how long it takes to get it checked; up the CS “foodchain” to the Minister; the Minister (one would hope) to ask questions; get them answered; get it back down the CS “foodchain;” for the Comms to be prepared; agreed and implemented/on the website.
Ergo they knew at the end of Feb / v early March that Covid wasn’t particularly dangerous.
I found out about the downgrading at about the time the lockdowns were announced. I did not “work with hindsight.”
August 12, 2024
No hindsight was needed. Why on earth were they giving new tech, dangerous Covid âvaccinesâ to young people (and people who had already had Covid) who were never at any real risk from Covid?
August 12, 2024
YesDonna correct.
August 12, 2024
What do you think their motive was?
August 12, 2024
Go on Mike, give us the benefit of your wisdom. What do YOU think their motive was?
zorro
August 12, 2024
Fear of a backlash if anything went sideways.
The actions they took were recommended by WHO and demanded by media so their backs were covered
August 12, 2024
I didnât make the extraordinary claim that there was blatant lying. After all, why would any politician deliberately trounce the economy? At the time I assumed they were being cautious as they didnât want to preside over an epidemic that might have caused millions of deaths. And that they wanted their arse covered if it all went wrong.
August 13, 2024
How did Sherlock Holmes phrase it in the novels…?
zorro
August 12, 2024
Simply to ingratiate themselves for Honours to come. Simple.
August 12, 2024
Then they and the MHRA (funded by big Pharma) pushed their net harm largely untested and largely ineffective vaccines even at young people, children and people who had already had covid without issue. Why was this – crony capitalism, corruption, gross incompetence, stupidity, criminal negligence… ?
August 12, 2024
A finely mixed soup of all of these in a secret recipe
zorro
August 12, 2024
+1
August 12, 2024
+1
August 12, 2024
People where still running/participating in the Paris 2023 Olympics with covid âŠand no isolation, no lockdown, no fear
August 12, 2024
Poor productivity is all down to the propensity in the public services, QUANGO’s and the civil service for office empire building. Building office empires shows that you must be important, the bigger the empire the more important you must be – and the higher the grade
This is particularly obvious in the NHS. The government regularly gives them vast sums in extra money for more doctors, consultants, nurses, lab people, specialists such as radiographers etc. Do we get more clinical staff? We do not. We get layer upon layer of middle management, more department heads on humungous salaries, more wokery specialists etc. And not forgetting the QUANGO NHS England
The NHS is one of the largest employers in the world, employing ~1.45 million staff members. However, this number only includes ~130,000 doctors and ~300,000 nurses. About 30%. Labour should cut into the dead wood admin headcount, build more hospitals and give the junior doctors and the nurses a decent payrise
August 12, 2024
Labour *should* do those things but they have cancelled the hospital
building programme the Conservatives introduced (I think contrary to their own manifesto) and have given the junior doctors a idiotically massive pay rise which will result in the GPs and nurses going on strike, and the junior doctors again too probably.
August 12, 2024
You explain the reaction to Covid well. With hindsight much of what was done was unnecessory and in many cases over reaction, but in fairness to politicians they had no idea of the level of danger they were confronting. Boris thought he did, having just recovered from a Covid near death experience. To his credit what energy he had was put behind the vaccine creation and rollout project which, despite the usual carping from the circle, was on balance a success.
There was much that went on that proved symbolic and opportunist. Restriction of movement, association and masking that were of doubtful value. The clearing of Covid cases to care homes that proved a death sentence to too many.
The CS working from home might have seemed logical in the circumstances, but was totally unsuited to their mindset. I did it for thirty years with great success, but for me it was work and succeed or there was no income. For the CS, and many within it, WFH was a jolly and productivity plunged. It has remained at the bottom because politicians lack the ability or the inclination to put in systems that regain control and boost productivity. Contract of employment and hire and fire are a basic start. Politicians have a preference for magic bullets like AI , while having no idea of how to apply it. Like atomic energy or the bow and arrow, it contains as many dangers as pluses if those that apply it do not fully understand it.
I cannot see the present incumbents tackling the CS and Unite so I have no optimism for a CS that is what the name might suggest on the tin.
August 12, 2024
+1
August 12, 2024
Agricola, you’re saying government politicians ‘had no idea’ of the danger of Covid, yet on 19th March 2020 the government downgraded it to an infectious disease at the same level of danger as flu. How come, if they had ‘no idea’? A few days earlier, I read online the medical report by the doctors who went on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship. They published precise figures: a handful of deaths, 20 people needing to be hospitalised, and all the remaining 2,700 people on board, many quite old, walked off the ship with nothing wrong with them. If I could read that report, Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and other politicians could too.
August 13, 2024
Hat man
Yes hindsight is wonderful.
Most Countries in the World were acting in a similar manner, as no one had the answer at the time, because no one knew the answer as we did not even have a workable testing system at the time. Medical experts and scientists even differed in their views and advice.
You say a handful of deaths and 20 in hospital out of 3,000 over a couple of weeks is not a problem, but do the maths and multiply that to cover 60,000,000 people over months, and the figures become rather more alarming.
Just imagine if the politicians had done absolutely nothing , just said it was a type of flu, and thousands ended up dying each day, or with long term medical problems, they would have been crucified and vilified by everyone.
No one called it right, and certainly mistakes were made, especially at the outset.
August 14, 2024
I was replying to Agricola’s absurd claim that the authorities didn’t know about the degree to which Covid posed a threat. Of course they did. Re your point: Sweden, which didn’t lock down, is the control case for what you claim. ‘Total excess deaths were smaller in Sweden than in any other European country during the three pandemic years 2020â2022’ (Cato Institute). Lockdowns were an unnecessary, destructive and hyper-expensive option that should never have been taken.
August 12, 2024
Spot on Donna. Sweden & Florida showed how Covid should have been managed. The UK could have done much better and would have avoided a host of issues currently affecting us.
August 12, 2024
You paint the picture of a bureaucratic monster that is getting fat on our money and crushing us while it grows. It was allowed to happen under 14 years of Tory rule, and is now on steroids under the Labour branch of the Uniparty.
It looks as if we are on an Argentinian economic trajectory, with uncontrolled immigration fuelling societal breakdown as an added extra. Well done, Westminster and the MSM!
August 12, 2024
All that economic and productivity harm, and all for nothing!
Covid19, a low consequence infectious diseasethat could easily have been treated with repurposed drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquin as was later proven. But of course that would never have allowed the poorly tested gene therapy jabs to be rolled out. Jabs that have caused immense harm and millions of deaths (as now shown by a detailed worldwide Canadian study).
Never mind, the pharmaceutical companies made ÂŁ billions while this country and many others slid into massive and unsustainably debt!
August 13, 2024
âEffect of early treatment with ivermectin on patients with Covid-19â, G.Reis et al., N.Engl.J.Medic., 386, 18, 2022, 1721-1731.
First paper based on 3515 patients shows no impact of invermectin.
âUpdates on hydroxychloroquine in prevention and treatment of Covid-19â, Ann.J.Med., 2022, 135(1), 7-9.
Second paper based on more than 12,000 cases, whether used as post-exposure prophylaxis or with hospitalised patients, the result was the same: Hydroxychloroquine had either no effect or was slightly detrimental.
August 12, 2024
The thing that worries me most is that the Covid Enquiry appears to be doubling down on the established narrative.
Are lawyers really the right people to decide these matters?
August 12, 2024
Perhaps it matters who’s paying those lawyers.
August 12, 2024
The Covid enquiry has not considered the loss of productivity of civil servants due to lockdowns and working form home when contemplating recommendations for future responses to pandemics. That is a worry.
The enquiry also has not considered the hysterical media’s clamour for lockdowns and ICU porn out the start of the outbreak. The narrative set by the media meant that the Prime Minister risked being labelled a murderer if he did not lock down.
Civil servants’ productivity has been affected by working from home too regularly but also from the attitude to being told to progress a policy initiative that they do not like. I suspect that productivity will improve under Labour as the Civil service will move in lock step with the hard left administration to remove all advantages from the advantaged (except themselves in the manner of Sir Two Tier’s pension arrangements).
August 12, 2024
Much media reports have focused on the number of diversity managers employed, especially in the civil service. Though the numbers probably aren’t large in the scheme of things, it does demonstrate one aspect of excess employees.
Why do we have all these diversity managers? It’s because of the Equality Act, and how it treats the organisation as responsible for the acts of its employees, not the employees themselves. Absurd discussions in the media have attracted legal force, so the managers can’t be sure their decisions will be upheld at tribunal. So they employ diversity managers to expand the nonsense to the ridiculous.
August 12, 2024
âOfficial figures were subsequently alteredâŠâŠâŠ.The balance of trade figures were changed substantially as well as productivity numbers.â
Are we already in the Soviet era?
This is certainly the case for the Governmentâs Met Office data as the vast majority of Met Office Weather Stations are in very inaccurate CIMO Class 4 (2 degrees celsius inaccuracy) and Class 5 (up to 5 degrees inaccuracy) classes. Some weather stations do not even exist, their data is invented by extrapolating data from other weather stations.
August 12, 2024
I hope that before writing you had read âWeather observation site classificationâ on metoffice.gov.uk and understood what these classes are all about.
August 13, 2024
Surely these classes, introduced in 2014, are what on that web page the Met Office says they’re about: conformity with the WMO, a specialized agency of the United Nations. The Met Office’s statements can then be harmonised with the UN’s climate agenda. Accuracy appears to be a secondary consideration.
August 13, 2024
Maybe the MetOff and BBC etc should report for example – 32degrees recorded at Cambridge weather station number xxx, category xxx with an error of xxx%, as at Monday at 00:00hrs
…..and not ‘its 32 degrees the hottest ever recorded this week and we might all die – stay in doors’
August 12, 2024
True ….we should stop funding the quango MetOffice
August 12, 2024
Sir John
I would guess from what you are intimating is the last UniParty administration hadn’t a clue on how to manage anything, not even themselves. Now we have the continuity UniParty at the helm, still the same reckless ethos but with added vindictiveness and venom.
Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Sunak and now Starmer all hell bent on destruction of society, law and order and a our future.
‘To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.’ – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – the only direction all the above followed
August 12, 2024
It is quite clear that Parliament either does not want to be in control of the Civil Service or is in collusion with the Civil Service.
The only way to overcome this and bring back some element of democracy to our country before it is too late is to vote for a party that calls for referendums on important issues such as immigration and Net Zero. Otherwise weâre on the path to be another one party authoritarian state all of which are of the âLeftâ and lack any freedom of speech or prosperity.
August 12, 2024
Who will do the counting? Do you trust them because I donât.
August 12, 2024
I agree completely with Donna. On Covid Boris made the wrong call and it became his Nemesis.
On the Civil Service more generally – I write as a retired HMRC civil servant – I never understood why ministers could not insist that there was a 100% return to the office. The pandering to home working with an improved work/life balance lies behind most of the inefficiency.
Regrettably, the Labour Government has now abandoned the cuts in civil service numbers, although even they must believe in some form of efficiency. I can only assume it is response to their union paymasters.
August 12, 2024
There is a basic law of marginal gain. So making the civil service one unit bigger will add less than one unit of productivity. The civil service got a lot bigger over covid so expect it to get less productive.
There is a book called the Mythical Man Month that backs this up with figures.
Same with the Olympic racing bikes. Where a lot of money now goes into a 0.5% efficiency gain.
August 12, 2024
Most competitive cyclists would rather like a metre advantage for every 200m raced!
August 12, 2024
You never tell us why sound well proven productivity suggestions are ignored. I guess you do not want to criticise colleagues but they deserve to be named and shamed. They have failed/let us down, as I said yesterday the code of silence enables poor performers, fragile egos.
One of your leadership candidates said too many (sounds like almost all) Ministers avoided anything difficult.
No doubt we will hear the new Tory leader bleating about Labour giving in to the unions. From what you say, the Tories were well versed in that already.
Reply Successive Chancellors and Chief Secretaries were talked out of insisting on obvious savings by the officials, or were told it would happen but it was delayed
August 12, 2024
‘The officials’ – always hidden behind the convention of anonymity. When it comes to writing up the history of these times, historians will know what MPs said, what Ministers said, even some of what diplomats said. But they won’t know which civil servants said what, even though our good host tells us they play a critical role in decision-making.
August 12, 2024
Afraid there is no reward for staff or government to drive up productivity or lower cost in the Public sector, whilst they can still tax the population by as much as they like.
I absolutely despair at the lack of drive, common-sense, or ambition to lower costs and increase productivity by all Governments, who do not seem to have a clue what to do, or how to tackle the waste and inefficiency which can be seen by all those who have ever worked in a commercial environment.
August 12, 2024
Reducing the VAT threshold to ÂŁ30k will go a long way to cutting tax receipts, employment and adding to the benefits budget. Hunt approves of same. Iâm sure Reeves will do it. Add an âabove inflationâ increase to the minimum wage and most small businesses are no longer viable.
August 12, 2024
Lynn
Simply do not understand why Governments of all colours over the years seem to hate the self employed and small business, I guess it is because they cannot control them.
Covid highlighted that fact, with very little help for them at all.
August 12, 2024
We have ample evidence that the NHS is incapable of implementing large-scale IT projects and they often involve massive overspends, delays, and termination with far less than their original scope implemented. The suggestion that implementing AI could increase NHS productivity is therefore a total non-starter – best leave AI to the private sector.
August 12, 2024
The last Government presided over a long period of doom and gloom, some self caused.
The give-away money to anybody that could be inventive on a from has cost the State ÂŁbillions. The inadequate, non-updated, non-existent Risk register for NHS caused a panic spending spree and those with friends could use a shell medical company to buy Chinese (old and rubbish) protective items the staff screamed for with little result.
The shore up food and drink businesses were at risk of going to the wall, so further daft ideas of subsidy by getting infected people to rub shoulders with the rest at a table took place in droves.
The don’t travel, stay at home for safety and to ‘protect the NHS’ got people enthusiastically banging suacepans in the street to order.
Working from home was brilliant, get up in PJs, logon, feed and walk the dog, pay the bills, dream through holiday brochures, catch up with domestic issues, watch daytime tv…..marvellous.
Now we have a workforce resenting actually working, some have to work to earn, plenty don’t and continue to enjoy the holiday-like fully paid life style.
A major redundancy and rules enforced shake up must be used to shock restart the economy.
August 12, 2024
Charlie Munger quote:
âShow me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.â
This is why communism doesnât work and why this Labour government will fail.
People have been conditioned through the Covid years that hard work barely pays and they can have a better life even if they earn slightly less money.
You only need to compare the sick leave between the self-employed and the NHS to see something is badly wrong with our society.
August 13, 2024
On top of this I would wager that most self employed have better mental health and overall health than NHS workers because they need to.
Psychosomatic outcomes are real
August 12, 2024
Tons of evidence that the Government canât manage what Heseltine called âU.K. plcâ – the State business.
If they were not in a monopoly situation with money creating powers, they would be bankrupt.
What makes them think they can run the railways or any other business.
Woodenheadedness that puts Philip II of Spain to shame. No matter what evidence of their failure is generated, they are incapable of considering a different idea.
August 12, 2024
I think Sir Johns comment about people who canât manage their own financial affairs being put in charge of the nations financial affairs is critical.
In addition to disbarring anybody who has ever been on drugs from office, I believe that all members of the Cabinet and especially the PM, should be unpaid. If they have failed the test of managing their own finances then they MUST be disqualified from assuming control of ours. If they are 18 and canât afford to take the job, they need to come back when they are 50 and know something.
The PM and Chancellor should once again pay rent for the accommodation in Downing Street. Market rent. If the apartment has been extended to the point that it is bigger than a house, whit a massive rent attached, then so be it.
August 12, 2024
LA :
I have read that Phillip II of Spain, when he was married to Queen Mary 1 between 1554 and 1558, did much to improve the English navy!
August 12, 2024
The necessity of countering his Armada probably caused us to improve the English navy. As our navy proved superior to his navy, I canât think that he could have made any other contribution.
He is one of the most obdurate figures in history. Infamous for it.
August 12, 2024
Our navy was not superior but took advantage of mixed idiotic messages reaching the fools in command of the Spanish fleet. They missed the chance to attack the southern heart of England north of Isle of Wight. Were hesitant in chasing our retreating ships moving east towards the channel, and the small battle lost to poor decisions not naval power. In disarray many then fled west and somehow managed to head northwest round Ireland and foundered on rocks.
A management horror, badly led shambles.
August 12, 2024
Sorry, the comment I was referring to and agreeing with regarding people who canât manage their own finances being âpriced outâ of high office by the withdrawal of salary, was made by Mark B and not JR as I stated.
August 12, 2024
âPublic Sectorâ and âProductivityâ, I canât think of two more incompatible terms! The Private Sector has to make a profit to survive, the Public Sector just hand the bill to us.
August 12, 2024
Having worked in the private sector, I can tell you the problem with the public sector. There are too many people, and you will not get a productivity increase until that is tackled. We have 530,000 Civil Servants, which is ridiculous.
We need a government that is prepared to make really tough decisions. We should cut the number of CSs to 120,000 and the number of departments to twelve with 10,000 CSs in each one. Where a department needs fewer people, the Treasury, for example, needs 500. The other 9500 can be used in other departments, but the overall total must not exceed 120,000. Let’s face it: At current staffing levels, do we have a world-class civil service?
I guarantee you that the 120,000 would adjust and cope with the workload. That would save around 17 billion in salaries and expenses, plus saving on pensions, so if the Conservative Government had done it, they could have reduced taxes and, especially, not frozen allowances. The chances of the Labour Government doing it are nil!!!!!!
August 12, 2024
+1. And 12 Secretaries of State, and a couple of Ministers each.
August 12, 2024
It’s ironic that, under a Conservative Government, Downing Street elected to not merely take on more public sector workers but centre those additions to the administration side rather than target the necessary extra front-line staff urgently required.
Now we’re back with the real socialists I cannot see any change from that terrible waste of resources.
True conservatism is about small government and low taxes but big on economic growth and defence. The Sunak Government did not follow true conservatism and paid the penalty.
However, it’s proving a case of ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ now, with Starmer reinforcing the debilitating ways of Labour with his own brand of socialism.
What’s next, “The sick man of Europe”, deja vu?
August 12, 2024
The problem is that insufficient numbers working on the public payroll get sacked for laziness, negligence, incompetence, malfeasance, corruption, misbehaviour, insubordination or even treachery.
In fact, those at the very top are rewarded with golden goodbyes and another similar job with a golden hello.
August 12, 2024
703 illegal economic /criminals arrived in the UK yesterday from the safe country of France âŠ.that should keep our public servants busy for a while
August 12, 2024
The 700 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel in 11 boats on Sunday – the highest since Labour came to power. A great success about sorting out the immigrant issue!
August 12, 2024
MT
Just add them to the amnesty list !
It’s probably the quickest way to get them on Benefits and harass the Councils for accommodation.
I see a report today suggests that more people are now sleeping on the streets than ever before, well I wonder what the reason is ?
August 12, 2024
they would be citizens, fallen on various hard times, not day trippers on the water heading for all-found bed, board and pocket money (for life)?
August 12, 2024
All men. Somebody observed that when you flee a war, you take the women and children. When you go to war, you leave them behind.
August 12, 2024
True Lynn. It has started. It will get bigger very soon.
Those running the country will let them have what they want. It is what they want. They have sought and got their support in recent years and the other naive politicians have been unable to believe it.
August 12, 2024
We complain about lack of leadership in politics in general, but Zelensky has demonstrated brilliant war-time leadership in Ukraine.
Putin is a troll that needs to put in his place. He is not a strong leader but a bully.
If Zelensky hadn’t attacked Russia, then gradually Russia would have ground Ukraine to defeat – this year or next.
Invading Russia buys Zelensky time and potential support. It’s a risk alright. But the risk of not doing anything, but carrying on with the status quo, is far greater.
Let’s just hope the UK is clearly on the right side in this war – Ukraine (Boris’ support of Zelensky was spot on). And not that of Putin. And the sooner Putin and his mafia-like cronies go, the better for Russia – its people and long-term economy, prosperity and security.
August 12, 2024
Re: “I then watched in horror at the extreme volatility of output, employment and incomes that resulted, and at the colossal public sector costs to offset the collapse of many business activities.”
Can you remember that there were a large number of Contractors and SME’s, that recieved no support what so ever!
Ended up sleeping rough, and still did not qualifiy for anything!
You then combine the effects of IR35, and the continued attack on Contractors, and does any one wonder why we have such a large inactivity rate?
And, then you listen to Conservative members talking about how “politics is local”, without any strategic understanding of the solutions this country needs! They have completely lost the plot, it’s as if they don’t want to discuss the real issues, and what would be best for this country, being within the ‘British Interest’. They all tend to be wets, on the left, or One Nation Tory’s? We need to move back to a Free/Flexible Market! By all means allow the Members to select thier MP’s, but it can’t be a tool by which the Left, again, dominate the Party!
All possible Leaders need to express, and then discuss, their Economic Model, and how it fits with a Social structure! i.e Family! How an Individual can generate wealth, for themselves, and their family’s! This must serve as a the context for their specific suggestions, for policy! Not, just populist sound bites!
How is retirement, the family, and business?
Wishing you well!
Regards,
RDM.