Most governments want higher productivity, or say they do. most grasp that if you get people to produce more goods or services in a working week you collect more revenue and can share that with employees.
Seeing that is not the same as selling it to those who need to deliver. Understanding it does not mean you can do it. Selling it requires explaining to people that the country can only afford more real pay if it produces more for people to buy with it. If you pay more money but there is no increase in goods you get inflation.
You then need to reassure people that you not saying they have to work harder or longer hours to raise their output. You want to help them work smarter. They  may need training to add more value, or need more automation to speed their tasks.
Government Ministers can urge this but they need to show they can do it in those parts of the public sector they directly manage. The truth is the public sector has been particularly disappointing for productivity growth. Ministers now tell us they can slim the civil service. They should have a comprehensive ban on external recruitment to allow natural waste age to cut numbers. This gives employees more promotion opportunities. ministers could authorise external appointment where there was no suitably skilled person in the current civil service.
June 26, 2022
Good morning.
We read what our kind host would most likely do, but what is the government currently planning with regards to this matter ?
Very little it seems.
And the reason for this is simple. There is no incentive to do so. In the Private Sector, if you cannot get someone to do a job there is many more out there are, and all for a reasonable price.
We seemed to not learnt from the former Soviet Union where so much was State controlled, or even our own before the 1980’s and privatisation.
The conclusion I can only draw from this is that the State and its organs must be subject to some sort of competition were such a method can be applied.
But as always I blame the Ministers and the PM and not the Civil Serpents.
June 26, 2022
The problem is simple:
Public sector emplyment system = Socialist system
Private sector emplyment system = capitalist/meritocratic
The majority of MP’s have never worked in a meritocratic real job, and therefore don’t know how to encourage the free enterprise system. We have, essentially, a socialist trained political class, so we get socialist MMT policies. We need Conservative central office to stop selecting SPAD’s and party apparatciks as MP’s. Go into the constiuencies and find people with real life experience.
June 26, 2022
Peter Wood
So very true Peter. Central Office and its selection process is not fit for purpose.
But that applies to all parties.
June 26, 2022
Like my MP. Worked for the local council. Then NHS. Then as a Tory SpAd.
June 26, 2022
How are you going to get higher productivity when you keep flooding the country with immigrants.
The agriculture sector refuses to modernise because they get cheap labour and the hospitality industry is the same.
Considering there was 6 million EU citizens signed up for benefits where are they.
June 26, 2022
The purpose is to drive wages down, as with free movement. Sadly, low wages also increase the benefits burden and there is insufficient tax to cover it (ironically, due to low wages). It’s a complete mess, it changes the UK demographics forever, and it also alienates the majority of voters in the country, especially when whites are made second class citizens via ‘positive discrimination’, which is discrimination in every sense of the word, but legal!
June 26, 2022
Ian – one small point about the EU citizens. A large number had been here for decades and are just part of the general workforce and society. I know that from first hand experience.
June 26, 2022
But we were told there was only 3 million bit 6 million applied for visas. Where are they.
June 26, 2022
Furthermore as for example reported in the Guardian on 21 June 2021 only 820k EU citizens out of the 5.4 m of them with settled status (ons.gov.uk, 02 July 2021 âAre there really 6 m EU citizens living in the EU?â) are actually getting benefits (from childrenâs allowance to income support).
Could it be that the other 4.58 m are actually UK tax-payers and even possibly some paying much more tax than you ever did? e.g., those working in various foreign banks in the City? (just a thought).
You would have to decide: before the referendum in 2016 we were told that these EU citizens were job-pinching Stakhanovites stealing jobs from British people as most were thought to have a better productivity than the run-of-the mill Brits (see âBritannia Unchainedâ, 2012, by Kwarteng, Patel, Raab, Skidmore and Truss) but now they have transformed into benefit-milking scroungers.
So what is it, Ian? Do you have a clue? Or are you just repeating the Express/Mail view?
June 26, 2022
That’s 820,000 too many.
Many are in car washes, cafes etc and are paying no tax or NI. My local car wash owner has 4 kids under 10 years of age and that’s about ÂŁ30k annually in cost. Not to mention nhs costs for maternity etc.
BTW as a senior manager in the power industry I was paying circa ÂŁ20k annually in tax and NI when I retired.
June 26, 2022
Interesting, you start saying there are 6 m EU citizens on benefits, then when shown you are likely to be wrong you change your tune. What about checking before writing? That would prevent you from looking a fool.
June 27, 2022
Ian didn’t say ” there are 6 million EU citizens on benefits” as you claim heffy.
June 26, 2022
You open by quoting the Guardian heffy, then end by denigrating the Express/Mail.
Hilarious
June 27, 2022
+1. As if the Guardian is the fountain of fact. Hilarious.
June 28, 2022
Ian Wragg wrote âConsidering there was 6 million EU citizens signed up for benefits where are theyâ. (At time of writing thatâs 10 comments above).
Except if Ian is working for DWP and has the possibility of checking on their files he cannot make the difference between people âsigned up for benefitsâ and people âon benefitsâ.
Otherwise instead of Ianâs âThatâs 820,000 too manyâ any sensible person would have produce a reference for their statement.
June 28, 2022
He didn’t say “on benefits” which was hefner’s incorrect claim.
June 26, 2022
Much truth in that but this socialist government also flood the country in misguided regulations (which create little but parasitic jobs, very high taxes (that discourage UK investment), a bloated state sector that delivers little of value, the block the roads, force expensive intermittent energy on to businesses, minimum wages, daft employment laws… how are they expected to compete? We also have a benefit system the encourages people not to work wages are falling behind inflation (where benefits or not) and the cost of getting to and from work (petrol, car, parking, fines, ULEZ, congestion charges, road taxes… are not tax allowable and increasing hugely.
Cut the state in half, halve taxes, simplify taxes, have a bonfire of red tape, scrap the insane net zero agenda, take quality only immigration, crap the insane new landlord and tenant lunacy… in short an about turn on almost everything!
June 26, 2022
Danel Hannan today in the Telegraph today – Voters are furious with the Conservative Party because Britain seems to be falling apart
To save themselves and the country, the Tories must return to the policies and principles that put them in office
Indeed but worse still this is clearly due to this governmentâs deliberate and totally misguided socialist policies of – ever larger government, the net zero expensive energy lunacy and Sunakâs tax, borrow, print and piss down the drain agenda.
June 26, 2022
You can’t run a country like a company!
(And if you cut taxes by half there would be a Revolution. Nor can you rely on ‘strong men’ to get things done as power goes to their head and they screw up everything even worse – look at the Fascists. And over-relying on politics or economic policy just screws things up in the long-run).
Everyone wants a quick, easy solution to big problems. But it doesn’t work like that.
You can only resolve these big problems by a cultural shift throughout the culture. And that means returning the culture to Conservative values such as: 1) Sense of Personal Responsibility 2) Work Ethic 3) Family Values 4) Patriotic Values and so on. And we need to return to our Judaeo-Christian / best of our Judaeo Christian past – and with all these values percolating through Education / The Arts / The Media / Church etc ..
Hard work, I know. But there’s no other way.
June 26, 2022
And once everyone is living by the values of 1) Personal Responsibility 2) Work Ethic 3) Family Values 4) Patriotism etc then taxes would collapse down to 20% maybe even 15%. But you can’t engineer that through politics or economic policy alone (only a smallish bit) but through the culture overall.
A good start would be to re-introduce national service (instead of 2 years, maybe 6 months). That would give a lot of young men a sense of personality responsibility, patriotic values and to a degree work ethic as well.
June 26, 2022
You seem confused, Ed. National service, whilst primarily for defence, is also about killing the enemy and I guess with “personal responsibility and work ethic” you would mean the more the “merrier”.
June 26, 2022
?
June 27, 2022
Young men, why not women?
June 26, 2022
How many of the EU citizens signed up for benefits actually exist? We know, because of paying benefits up front without proper checks, that billions of pounds in benefits have been and continue to be claimed fraudulently. We are also bound by the withdrawal agreement to continue paying benefits to EU citizens who donât even live in our country. This oven-ready deal foisted upon us by Boris seems to have no advantage for the UK only for the EU.
June 26, 2022
Yes, necessity is the mother of invention , by flooding our labour market with cheap immigrant labour we have killed off invention , and that is going to have a long term cost to our country. Robotics are there or there abouts and could revolutionise our agricultural sector, like it did in the past, giving us the lead in the next industrial revolution, a revolution we are now going to miss because our politicians find it easier to concede to the short termist thinking and hand out 1,000,000 visas in a year.
Same goes for baggage handling at airports, a boss saying British people don’t want to be baggage handlers, well invest in automation then, the Ocado warehouse that burnt down the other year gave us a glimpse at what could be achieved with automation .
Unfortunately the British establishment has no ambition for our country, that went in the 1960’s when they decided to manage our decline , and now when business sectors starts whingeing , rather than tell them to go away and invest in productivity, our politicians capitulate and hand them another wedge of visas, for who cares if the country is being sunk under the weight of humanity they are bringing here.
June 26, 2022
THE GOLDEN MEAN (Ancient Greek philosophy of everything in balance).
So much now is short-term thinking. Not just politics but business as well.
In the old days, business meant more than just money (and in the short term). It meant work ethic. Job satisfaction. And so on. Work wasn’t just about money but also a way of living. But being overly-focused on making money and in the short-term has detrimental effects on people’s relationships with others, including marriages and families. Leads to all kinds of addiction from drink to drugs. And all kinds of other problems including depression, anxiety—-and far more.
Everything in BALANCE which the ancient Greeks called the GOLDEN MEAN.
(But if you talk about sensible things like that now so often people think one is just quaint or nuts – but it’s our modern world that has become nuts – BONKERS – from one degree to another.
June 26, 2022
Ian Wragg
Well said mate, it ain’t going to happen.
Every man and his dog knows it but it is a re-enactment of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
June 26, 2022
It’s come to a sorry pass when MPs have to cloak their criticisms of the privileged unions in an article about productivity.
Labour’s unions now control many areas of the State apparatus including what is taught to children in school, how the police actually police and how NHS services are delivered.
I have no doubt that this weak Tory government and its even weaker party pander to and collude with this power
June 26, 2022
Dom,
Itâs come to a sorry pass when you have to cloak every response into a dramatic comment about privileged unions and âreds under the bedâ.
You are surely aware of the huge fall in union membership over the decades.
June 26, 2022
Except in the cosseted public sector.
June 26, 2022
Possibly because the âredsâ took over the unions a long time ago?
Unions used to be facilitators of productivity until they were infiltrated by those who wanted to destroy industry.
June 26, 2022
Peter, what is âdramaticâ about Donâs post?
He is just stating his beliefs: Labour unions (I would add and their socialist âlook after their own gravy trainâ members who donât seem to think they have customers to serve just people who annoy and challenge what they want to do) control what is taught to children in school, how the police police and how the NHS services are delivered. The NHS workers pushed for 3 -12 hour days then the staff moan about long days but donât want to go back to five 7.5 hour days. The 12 hours arenât all work there are paid breaks in there and we often openly see and listen to all of the gossiping in the workplace when we go in for treatment.
June 26, 2022
@Dom
The unions fear automation and AI. There are probably many altruistic reasons for this fear as well as the fear that (so far as I am aware), robots don’t pay union subscriptions.
https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/2021/09/automation-and-the-trade-unions
June 26, 2022
We know what is paramount for the Tories.
It is to prevent anyone else from holding office.
Literally everything else comes a long way behind that.
June 26, 2022
The same applies to Labour, but since we got rid of Blair they’ve not been much good at it. The problem we have is the Blair politicised every supposedly impartial Public Institution so although we have a so-called Conservative Government, we have Socialist-Green policies which we didn’t vote for.
June 26, 2022
Donna – big question is why did the Conservatives not undo the politicalisation of those institutions? Theyâve had plenty of time!
June 26, 2022
Because they accepted the Blair settlement. That’s why Cameron got the Leadership, not David Davis.
Cummings wanted to start rolling it back but Johnson didn’t have the guts to carry it through and Nut Nuts got rid of him.
June 26, 2022
So many of the problems we have now are due to Blair’s ten years of disaster – his ECHR act. the idiotic wars on on a lie, the botched devolution, the economic insanity, the burying us further into the EU policy, the on sided EU/US extradition treaty, the open door immigration regardless of quality, the all shall go to university and have large debts for it policy… did he or Brown do anything positive?
June 26, 2022
So why do they make themselves increasingly unpopular?
June 26, 2022
They live in a bubble. Our kind host is somewhat spared this fate due to the contact he has with those on this site.
June 26, 2022
+1
Yes..I meant the actual governmentâŠis that the cabinet/policy makers and their hangers on? The ones who come up with the craziness anyway.
If JR had anything to do with it i.e. the arrogant morons had the sense to listen to him or even make him PM thenâŠ.
We would not be in this fix!
June 26, 2022
Well if so they are going about that in a totally misguided way. The voters do not want ever more taxes, expensive intermittent energy, every more regulation, damaging lockdowns, fairly ineffective and often actually dangerous vaccines coerced in to them and generally piss poor public services do they?
That is what Boris and Sunak have largely delivered.
June 26, 2022
Manifesto ratting on both the triple lock and the vast tax and NI increases is hardly a vote winner either it also means people will quite rightly all Tory promises and the next manifesto as probably a pack of new lies.
June 26, 2022
Well, they arenât doing a good job of that, are they? This Government could stay in power for decades if they just delivered on their manifesto promises. They havenât delivered on what the majority care about which is stemming ever-increasing immigration, getting Brexit done, and securing our borders.
If they donât turn things around quickly then they will be sitting on the opposition benches after the next election and we will have to suffer a coalition Government with the SNP tail wagging the dog.
We are governed by fools of the highest order.
June 26, 2022
@NLH
We know what is paramount for Labour.
It is to prevent anyone but the Tories from holding office.
Labour needs credible policies (particularly financial and fiscal policies) and an inspiring leader …… and then things might change.
June 26, 2022
I reckon that to solve all these problems the govt. should root out Marxism ( and itâs little bro communism).
Mind youâŠthat might be a bit on the awkward side now given the lack of real conservatives.
Not to mention Marxists in high places.
HoweverâŠit was done beforeâŠI remember itâŠso it can be done again.
Successive govts have destroyed the right and the right certainly wasnât hurting commerce!
June 26, 2022
I do hope this unspoken rule applies to politicians too. Do we really need 650 MP’s and even greater numbers of Lords? Do we need what seems like hundreds of quangos and thousands of spads? Do we ever hold them to account? Any of them? When you retain and pay incompetent people with good salaries and very generous benefits, and even reward them for failure, as happens in politics, then there is NO incentive to do well. Just chuck any old rubbish in and it will still come out smelling of roses. It’s a recipe that would put any business out of business, forever, but taxpayer money is so easy to come by and so easy to chuck down the chute.
June 26, 2022
MPs will not vote to reduce their number – they protect their jobs with their lives.
Red Wall Conservatives talking about defecting to Labour? If they were truly idealist enough to mutiny then they would defect to independent but then they wouldn’t get re-elected at he next general election. But yes, we need fewer of them passing proportionately fewer laws.
June 26, 2022
@Shirley M +999
June 26, 2022
Shirley M
Agreed. Very well said.
June 26, 2022
Often producing more goods in a working week raises production yet might be worth less.
Wonky EU incentives or diktats caused oversupply. They caused market gluts with prices going so low that farmers were wasting even more money to pay for destroying what they had just produced. Wine lakes and grain mountains were an added nuisance. Inflation was there: in wastefulness.
Working smarter is efficient. Consumers dictate what they need, buy, consider worth paying for; or reject as worthless. Businesses need to attract high value consumer demand by finding and reaching them with the highest competitive value themselves to be most worthy.
Merely working hard and long is not enough. Doing the right things is smarter, even if it consumes only one day a week. SJRâs way is much brighter for our nation.
June 26, 2022
All those mountains and lakes where due to the CAP which benefited the French Farmers.
June 26, 2022
We who frequent this blog, over the last fifteen years, have often heard about ‘productivity’ but we’ve rarely heard about an MPs productivity.
How would you measure Parliament’s productivity?
It seems to be a bottomless pit, a bottomless swamp for tax payers money.
Suppose you were to measure Parliament’s productivity by the prosperity of the country. Without doubt there should be some cutbacks and layoffs, no?
GDP stagnant or falling. Population rising but employable, literate population falling.
Recently Parliamentarians paid themselves a ÂŁ2,100 pay increment. I wonder how many of the commentariat here, think the UK is getting either efficiency or value for money from Parliament?
Reply I support fewer MPs but have lost that argument again.
June 26, 2022
JR: “I support fewer MPs …”
So, you agree that Parliament is inefficient?
JR: “.. but have lost that argument again.”
Make a better argument!
June 26, 2022
Reply to reply
That’s no surprise. Offer turkeys a vote on Christmas and what do you think you are going to get? MP’s marking their own homework and awarding themselves big pay rises (under the cover of an ‘independent’
panel)’, ÂŁ40 quid a week increase to the already well paid and underworked whilst pensioners got less than a fiver. Then complaints against pensioners getting 10 percent next year having been fiddled this year when our pensions are the lowest in the civilised world. Some levelling up required, methinks.
June 26, 2022
Perhaps instead of using SPADs they should use their backbench MPs to make them more productive and save money. If MPs donât have any special advice or skills to offer in a speciality then are they really suitable candidates to be MPs in the first place?
June 26, 2022
a-tracy: “Perhaps instead of using SPADs they should use their backbench MPs to make them more productive and save money.”
We’ve already a huge problem with the payroll vote in Parliament. It’s probably why Johnson survived his no confidence vote. There is about 100 MPs beholden to the executive through this or that job or sinecure.
So, I respectfully suggest we need less of that, rather than more.
June 27, 2022
Here’s a thought – aren’t the Electorate actually the best SPADs?
June 26, 2022
You can only really measure productivity if you have a direct comparison. Yes you can compare year on year, but to what ?
The only measure one can give this Parliament and government is the number of manifesto promises kept. So on that basis, how well, out of 10, would you give the production of this parliament ?
June 26, 2022
Well MPs often think they âproduceâ when they make vacuous speeches, rig markets (energy, health, education, housing, transportâŠ) or worse still churn out ever more daft laws, tax rules and idiotic regulations – this generates endless parasitic jobs in regulation and compliance, exports industries and vastly decreases overall efficiency, productivity and real productive jobs. It is the exact opposite of what the country actually needs.
June 26, 2022
With many civil service buildings nearly empty of their usual occupants, working from home, is it not high time for government ministers to take a leaf out of Elon Musk’s book and tell them to get back into the office or collect their P45’s. Ending that scam will make an immediate difference to productivity.
I am starting to quite like that man.
June 26, 2022
BOF
My son and his partner are both Accountants in a large accountancy firm. Their remit is that either youâre at a clientâs, in the office or under special circumstances- at home.
June 26, 2022
If working form home is truly more productive then we will need fewer civil servants in the future with their current outlook.
June 26, 2022
We certainly need fewer civil servants – given what many do does positive damage the last thing we want is even more of them doing this and doing so âmore efficientlyâ.
June 26, 2022
Good argument there NS. If civil servants claim they are, say, 10% more efficient working at home, then logically we need 10% fewer of them.
June 26, 2022
Government intervention during the pandemic has made many people lazy and entitled. Too many now expect something for nothing. I personally know of several people supposedly working from home who only work a few hours a day as they juggle childcare, housework, sitting in their hot tub, and going out for lunch around their working day. I might add that this isnât just in the public sector but is happening across the private sector as well. The only people who seem to work hard are the self-employed.
June 26, 2022
Christine, if passports were being processed faster, probate actioned in a timely fashion not taking a year, driving licences printed and sent back within a week no one would mind people working from home. Who is going to want to go back to the office when there is an hours less commute per day especially with the price of fuel and unreliability of public transport, a reduction in their childcare costs and an ability to get the children home from school themselves, washing and even ironing done in work time!
There are quite a lot of conscientious people that work from home, my niece for one who turns her mobile phone off in working hours and gets all her work complete in time although she works for a private accountancy practice and has strict targets. Although I know another who is planning to spend all summer in a caravan, getting a tan and looking after their children whilst they âworkâ their 7.5 hour day in office opening hours.
June 26, 2022
Once a home worker realises that much of the day in the office is interacting with fellow workers and gaining knowledge and they can actually do the meat of their work in 60-75% of their day then the temptation to coast becomes overwhelming and compelling.
The additional productivity form the office is in gaining knowledge, knowing what makes others tick and ad hoc immediate communication which is distracting but worthwhile.
Working form home is reducing the country’s l0ng term development. There is a time and a place for it (two – three days per week maybe) but there is a reason why offices exist.
June 26, 2022
Yep. Went to my local council offices last week and the car park was almost empty, whereas prior to Covid you could not get a fag paper between the cars parked there. Doubt they have all been made redundant or are walking (no sign of any bikes).
June 26, 2022
Another day, another left-wing gesture policy, which will do nothing for the long-term prosperity of this Country. Today itâs tariffs on steel, which will apparently convince red wall voters to keep voting Conservative. The govt seems to think itâs impossible people in the North actually want lower taxes, public sector reform, free trade etc, which is what – in theory – they voted for in 2019.
Feels like 1995 to me. No change no chance.
June 26, 2022
+1
June 26, 2022
I can see the need for tariffs on steel when our Government is penalising our companies with ruinously high energy prices with their green zealotry. If the Government wants to pursue that climate change religion, then at least our companies shouldn’t be under cut by imports from nations not suffering those costs.
June 26, 2022
That logic could be applied throughout the economy and will of course result in retaliation in other areas assuming it isnât blocked on legal grounds. A good argument on the remain side (which they didnât make as they were so consumed with communicating project fear) is EU membership stops governments doing stupid stuff like this.
June 26, 2022
Re: To remove or lower Steel quotas?
How stupid can you get?
To suggest the world market for steel, let alone all other commodities, are free, and certainly not fair!?
But, steel is a foundation resource; If you want to produce home goods, and the services they require, you will need to support it, over time, as it has a longer lead time line for investment, but to suggest we can expose this country to manipulation, global shocks, and poverty for many Blue collar workers, is nonsense.
In joining the Customs Union, and allowing the lefties to create Universal Credit, has been used to press down wages! All because we won’t support high valued manufacturing! We have more under-employed Blue Collar workers, on UC supporting their wages, then unemployed!
UC = State Dependency = Low wages, no home own ship, extreme cost of living!
Why bother working or paying Taxes ?
And, now we have Net-Zero, more regulation then our competitors, and no cheap energy strategy with high taxes, so,…
And there is more; We in S Wales can’t even get an electrified rail line because all steel has been force onto rail freight (includes subsidies), not good when you only have one line! Delivering too the Netherlands, in bulk, and then distributing via a truck, so exporting Own Driver work (High Value Work) to EU drivers.
Selfish nonsense!
We need to move to a production base Income, and not consumption base debt or a low Productivity Public sector! Self reliance on energy, exporting and over time import substitution, and a free internal market!
Move the Tax burden onto, or even scrap the Finance Sector; there is nothing free or fair about the so called global finance market, especially if this country thinks it does not need nothing else!
Well, the country, as a whole, does need to produce more, and that is including steel production!
Steel Quotas; Higher please! And, support for Owner Drivers, especially the ones that operated carrying steel back in 1980 and 1990, before the Customs Union was brought in, and forced us to close down! And, then, a productivity boosting increase in allowed net weight that can be carried, so increasing the value the owner drivers can charge!
Regards,
RDM
June 26, 2022
How about the Government demonstrates a commitment to higher productivity by cutting the size of the House of Frauds in half. Make the remaining 400 actually do something for their daily stipend.
And then turn their attention to the House of Commons and cut that as well. With devolved Parliaments in Scotland, Wales and NI (when it’s operating) we really don’t need the same number of MPs as we had prior to devolution.
The problem with natural wastage of older Civil Servants is that you lose knowledge, experience and impartiality since most of them would have been recruited before Blair politicised it. And if Sir John thinks the Civil Service recruitment systems are designed and intended to attract “the brightest and best” I have a bridge to sell him. What they are intended to do is enforce the policies of diversity and all the rest of the “woke” claptrap we constantly get shoved down our throats by the Lefty Establishment. The Senior Civil Service really don’t want people who are going to challenge their orthodoxy.
June 26, 2022
It is all very well to demand more productivity in the civil service though there is little sign of that happening. We also know there are vast swathes of people paid by the taxpayer in roles that have no useful function at all. If they disappeared they would not be missed.
The police could be employed to prevent crime and bring criminals to justice. The woke stuff and virtue signalling could go.
Donât forget there are huge numbers paid by the taxpayer but employed by private companies. Many of these are useless – the prison service, the firms who organised the Olympics etc. Failure seems to be no hindrance. These firms are getting more work in the public sector. That also needs to stop.
June 27, 2022
‘productivity in the civil service’ an oxymoron.
June 26, 2022
Sir,
G7 and NATO Summits and the head lines Booris Johnson to commit MORE financial aid to Ukraine .
No point in Brits increasing productivity as the spendthrift will throw it away and we will not benefit from our labour!
June 26, 2022
MFD Iâd noticed that too. I understand Ukraine needs help and support, but it does sometimes seem that Boris has positioned the UK as their benefactor. He keeps throwing ÂŁ billion there way. Weâre not in a great position to do this, are we?
June 26, 2022
We are in an excellent position to help Ukraine, Sharon. Johnson has Zelensky’s confidence and can gently tell him sorry, but it’s over. His army’s collapsing and while he can still get out, the best thing for him might be to take up British residence and come and live in Britain. (Like a third of a million others will be doing this year, on past form. We’ll fly him in, he won’t need a dinghy.)
Then the pointless slaughter ends, and at least some of Ukraine is left, with neutral status, but guaranteed aginst further Russian action. This is the outlook that more and more American strategists are accepting as the outcome, and writing about in influential journals. Johnson might want to add ending the Ukraine war to his achievements as Prime Minister. After all, there haven’t been all that many others.
June 27, 2022
Rather an unfortunate way to ‘gently’ destroy Russian military stockpile, lay waste to a non-European non-EU country, test Western munitions and technologies in live theatre while looking like good guys.
June 26, 2022
Good point, MFD. No cost-benefit analysis on lockdowns, no cost-benefit analysis on millions for arming Ukraine. It looks like a pattern. Money’s no object as long as the media can make the policy look good – for a while.
June 26, 2022
External employment into the civil service sounds a great idea, in theory! But in practice, it probably wonât work because the mentality and work ethic is too different. Anyone who has come into either the NHS or the civil service from outside canât stand the waste and inefficiencies and donât stay.
A friends daughter lasted a week in the CS⊠âit was so dull!â
June 26, 2022
Sharon
Good post.
Waste and inefficiency
The elephant in the room and it has been there for decades.
Always plenty of talk with no action.
So the band plays on.
June 26, 2022
Frightening that you need to make this point but you are wedded to cheap labour by ignoring inward migration. Actually the real way to achieve headcount reduction is to cut budgets and force efficiencies but as a socialist party you will never do that.
And in another move to socialist policies in comes more protectionist legislation re the steel industry. More rubbish from Sunak who says he is instinctively free market just like he is low tax. Why do politicians make meaningless and unmeasurable comments?
June 26, 2022
Quite – an interesting question to the cabinet office would be how many EU citizens or “refugees” are employed directly and indirectly by the civil service ?Sir John.
June 26, 2022
One can only work in the public service if one is a British citizen. If one has double nationality, one of them must be British (gov.uk âCivil Service Recruitment: Nationality Rulesâ, 09/05/2014).
June 26, 2022
The private sector sinks swims and profits from its productivity. Competition will deal with the unproductive elements.
The public sector has no such motivation. The keymay be to work out how the public sector might be incentivised. The incentives that exist tend to come up with the rations, Ks for those few that keep their noses clean but little for the mass. Talk to Toyota as to how it is done in japanese industry and apply. It is the mass on the front line who know where all the bodies are buried.
June 26, 2022
‘The public sector has no such motivation’
– How about work ethic?
I’ve worked in the private sector and there are people who know how to play the game to get as much out of it with putting in as little effort as possible. In particular, in large organisations. Obviously this never happens in successful starts up because the CEO is normally brilliant at what he does and knows exactly what’s going on. But not so much in a large multinational corp. I.e. Globalisation.
People are idealising the private sector (again, I worked in it, I know it). Not forgetting those in certain sectors who go for short-term financial gain which can seriously screw things up for the company long-term and the economy.
We need both the private and public sector. The public sector works great for example for people who might want to work in a less stressful environment (they could be mothers with kids etc). The key here though is NOT to over pay public sector workers. In fact, if we had the right attitude towards the public sector we could get more people relying on the state to work in the public sector instead, thus being more productive.
But at end of day, it all stems down to cultural values in general (1. Work Ethic 2. Sense of Personal Responsibility 3. Family Values 4. Patriotism). And as Conservatives we can only really hope for a deep change here by trying to get our country back to its Judaeo-Christian / best of its Greco-Roman past (through focusing on Education, The Arts, Media and Church – not just politics or economic policy important as these are). Its the demise of Western Culture that’s the real problem.
June 26, 2022
‘ It’s the demise of Western Culture / Values thatâs the real problem’
– and until people really focus on this, then we’re just going to be facing the same problems again and again and again – like Groundhog Day whether Boris is in charge or some other Tory.
June 26, 2022
Maybe I don’t want to work smarter. Perhaps I would like to ponder a bit and reflect now and then. Perhaps I just want to do a fair job with a reasonable return, without feeling I have to be driven in a rat race.
I know why the government wants more productivity – they want more tax for them to spend and fix their economic mis-management. They have no interest in my well-being.
June 26, 2022
Why donât you go self-employed and do what you want Dave? Live and die by your own beliefs.
June 26, 2022
DA, reminds me of a colleague who when challenged replied “although I may be gazing out of the window, I am actually working and pondering my next move”.
June 26, 2022
Most people want this Dave , but the market and dirty competition wont allow it .There is very little healthy competition around ;it is naive to think that society is made better by competition .What is the true derivation from the nasty comments on here for example?
June 26, 2022
And your government encouraging the right to “flexible” working is really helping.
The productive workers do not need help form you but the idle and malingerers take full advantage.
June 26, 2022
Here is Johnsons perspective on his Prime ministership.
He doesn’t care about raging inflation.
He doesn’t care about energy prices ‘exploding’.
He doesn’t care about destruction in the small business sector.
He doesn’t care about mass immigration ( One village in the Yorkshire may have 1500 immigrants housed on an empty Airforce base ) doubling the population of the nearby village).
He doesn’t care about the lousy health-service. Trying to get a face to face consult with your GP is like finding rocking horse faeces.
None of those things matter to Boris Johnson.
The thing that really matters to Boris Johnson is that the UK spends its blood and treasure in support of Ukraine.
June 26, 2022
If you are going to fly immigrants elsewhere, then it seems quite a good idea to house them on an MoD airbase.
July 1, 2022
miami.mode: “If you are going to fly immigrants elsewhere, ”
A reasonable point. But, …
It it’s a matter of convenience, then perhaps they should be interdicted while attempting to cross the channel, and turned back. After all, we’ve already paid for the Royal Navy, perhaps we should get our money’s worth?
June 26, 2022
Again the ingrained obsession with âmoreâ and âgrowthâ. Why not: âHey employees, if we can raise productivity you can have a shorter working week and more leisure.â
But a better quality of life cannot be the aim. It has to be more goods.
June 26, 2022
Mike, why not create a company with your ideal operating methods and you will have queues of people like you lining up to work for you win, win. Take a loan out and go for it.
June 27, 2022
and the inferior but dirt cheap rubbish arriving from China shows no sign of slowing !
June 26, 2022
Productivity, especially in the public sector, has fallen drastically through people working from home where they have no onsite supervision and get into the habit of doing less and less work and allowing backlogs to grow.
A necessary preliminary to improving public sector and much other productivity is to force people back into their offices.
June 26, 2022
Geoffrey donât the work at home people have targets to achieve? If you think about the people that process asylum applications I wonder how many people there are employed to do that as there are so many arriving each year plus those applying from abroad, how many people do they have to process each seven hour day? Do the people doing this task work from home I wonder, what protects the private information from other household visitors or relatives?
June 26, 2022
Targets even if set (which is seldom done for those working from home not on piece work) are useless unless they are 1)realistic and 2)have adverse consequences upon those not meeting them.
As I live in the real world of running my own business (unlike many commenting here) I can tell you the public sector is falling apart from ‘working’ from home. People know about the Passport Office because ordinary people’s holidays are involved but most don’t know about the Stamp Duty office, the Land Registry and local Councils’ Planning Applications (which in theory do have a target for resolution within 8 weeks). All those and much, much more in the public sector (and a good bit of the private sector)have fallen into a morass of ‘working from home’ inefficiency and almost endless delay.
June 26, 2022
Completely off topic
For the first time in my lifetime Iâm genuinely fearful for the future and precisely why do I fear the future?
I and I suspect the majority of the population feel that the government doesnât have our best interests at heart to put it mildly, yesterday I heard Anne Widdecombe defending Fataturk and at that point I realised that weâve passed the point of no return.
Is there no one in the government who is prepared to speak up for the people of this country, sooner or later even the dimmest people are going to wake up and realise what is happening?
The State
June 26, 2022
The invasion on the south coast and the certainty that the government will not stop it is terrifying and horrifying. People know about this and mass legal immigration and are appalled, so much so that they try to put the matter out of their minds. That’s the present situation.
June 27, 2022
IAGO – All part of the Globalist Plan. There is no intention of stopping it.
Until the whole system of our government is changed, NOTHING will happen. Unfortunately we do not have a constitution like the USA which states “We the people…….. However I feel change is coming.
June 26, 2022
“Speaking from Rwanda, the prime minister insisted the public wanted to hear about his policies â not what he is âalleged to have done wrongâ â saying: âI want to get on with changing and reforming our systems and economy.â”
This member of the Public doesn’t want to hear about Johnson’s policies, we’re living them, and they’ve made us all poorer, for no good reason. ( except MPs who’ve just bunged themselves another ÂŁ2,100 of tax payers money).
Hear about his policies, to be honest, listening to Johnson now giving me the same vomit reflex that I still get whenever the BBC rolls out Tony Blair.
June 26, 2022
The MPs were awarded 2.7% same as other public servants and they didnât take an increase the previous year. There are lots of things to moan about our MPs and Lords but I donât feel pay is one, we should however expect a certain level of competence and an amount of productive work for the time they are paid. They shouldnât need so many SPADs and consultants there should be the skills within the houses.
June 26, 2022
Pay certainly is a concern with MP’s when they can get an 80 grand plus job, plus expenses plus pensions for no qualifications, no experience, just an ability to waffle and persuade some people you care about them and are going to make their lives better. Can you name any other job like that?
June 27, 2022
A priest – but without the pay?
June 26, 2022
a-tracy: “The MPs were awarded 2.7% same as other public servants and they didnât take an increase the previous year.”
Nether did the RMT members take a pay rise prior two years, so far as I know.
I suppose we could just resolve the dispute, by giving RMT members the right to vote their own pay rise. So long as it was approved by an ‘independent’ review board, that’d be good, yea?
June 27, 2022
The independent review board would agree the 2.7% the same as it is did the MPs, no?
June 26, 2022
“Speaking from Rwanda, the prime minister insisted the public wanted to hear about his policies â not what he is âalleged to have done wrongâ â saying: âI want to get on with changing and reforming our systems and economy.â”
This member of the Public doesn’t want to hear about Johnson’s policies, we’re living them, and they’ve made us all poorer, for no good reason. ( except MPs who’ve just bunged themselves another ÂŁ2,100 of tax payers money).
Hear about his policies, to be honest, listening to Johnson now, gives me the same vomit reflex that I experience whenever the BBC disinters Tony Blair.
June 26, 2022
Same here. I never thought I could loathe a Prime Minister as much as Blair. At least I never voted for him …… sadly I did vote CON in 2019 when my BP candidate was withdrawn.
Even if Nigel/Tice tell us to vote CONservative, I won’t be holding my nose and doing it next time. At best I’ll spoil my ballot.
June 26, 2022
And I’ll save my shoe leather for the first time in 58 years. If voting changed anything they’d ban it.
June 27, 2022
Why bother to go to the booth?
June 26, 2022
Sensible comments, but the socialist mind comes into play here – Why work harder, smarter or with more efficiency., when a little power exerted in the right places can produce all that is required.
The problem with unions has always been that their leaders acquire too much power, and every so often have chosen to exert that power to show they are doing a job worthy of their huge salaries.
June 26, 2022
Productivity first needs real economic incentives that drive a real
economic virtuous circles and not the intangible hot air political babble we have been bequeathed since New Labour.
Killing off the aspirations of self employment with IR35 started under Gordon Brown and not recognised by the Conservatives is even more telling that they don’t understand ordinary people nor practical economics.
O/T Boris is not only in denial but selling the idea he will survive until 2030! A leader shows humility and self sacrifice before himself but not Boris who appears as very well fed by African countries so cannot expect us to be tightening our belts. From gold wallpaper to bullet proof tree house his imagination is unaffordable as is his green dream for us – EVs with no electricity.
June 26, 2022
We are headed for a summer of discontent as unions persuade their members to take strike action as workers have grown used to being paid to sit at home and rather enjoy it. I never liked the furlough scheme which will cost this country for decades to come having made many workers lazy and entitled.
June 26, 2022
The new Elizabeth Line trains are equipped to run without drivers, but they have drivers. Increasing productivity would involve not employing drivers. But the RMT wonât allow it and the government is too weak to challenge them. Productivity gains through automation can be difficult to achieve even in the private sector if cheap labour is available.
June 26, 2022
You just made that up, Roy.
You do realise that the Elizabeth line trains run over mainlines and that is why they have drivers, don’t you ? It has nothing to do with the RMT and everything to do with the ORR. It is the law.
So tell me – how, exactly, can unions prevent fully automated systems from being fully automated on a new line with new trains ?
June 27, 2022
but drivers will get on board before the train moves on to mainlines?
June 26, 2022
The more we can produce and get it to market at a competitive price the more business expands and creates more jobs.
One thing that the present military support to the Ukraine highlights is on top of the previous you need totally reliable and cheap energy especially in getting equipment to the front line when it is needed. Praying for just the right speed of wind and clear skies and full sunshine just don’t cut the mustard.
If you want real productivity and cost effectiveness it is about the whole package not just renewable and cheap labour..
June 26, 2022
Money is too cheap leading to malinvestment and other unproductive uses like share buy-back schemes. Money is too cheap because the price of money is centrally planned by a dependant central bank who set it too low to avoid their political masters the pain of shaking out the previous effects of cheap money.âThus zombie companies continue and those who make poor judgements don’t go to the wall and those who make good investments aren’t sufficiently rewarded for their risk.
Money’s price doesn’t have to be centrally planned, and wasn’t for a long time. The USA’s founding fathers had seen the problems caused by meddling with money’s price and made an effort to prevent a central bank being created; the Fed is a workaround to their rules.
This is all well understood in the Austrian School of Economics; Mises, Hayek, and the rest of the gang. MPs get it, like Steve Baker, now chairman of Conservative Way Forward which is relaunching on 11th July, https://www.conservativewayforward.com.âEx-MPs are also well aware, e.g. Douglas Carswell, now CEO at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy think-tank, brings up central banks as central planners at the end of this recent five-minute video on interest rates: https://youtu.be/11s4qOx_MGM
Unfortunately, Rishi Sunak is too much part of the system to ever want to fix it and Boris Johnson appears to have little interest in the mechanics of anything, just the veneer.
June 26, 2022
Companies set off with all good intentions to be productive but external factors can often throw a spanner in the works, e.g. a motorway section closed for seven hours and the resultant chaos on other roads, a sudden road closure for roadworks without contra flow planning telling all vehicles to get in the third lane so those that do get held up hardly moving for an hour unless an HGV driver blocks lane 2 and starts to drive slowly matching the speed of a lane 3 driver to perform the correct zip, it wouldnât take a genius for roadwork crews to provide that lane control vehicle on a loop especially on sections where two motorways merge. There are also insufficient warnings 3 junctions back so people could take alternative routes sooner. I still donât know the governments measure of productivity for a ÂŁ10 working hour? How much turnover should that ÂŁ12 per hour worker produce in turnover to be considered productive by whoever creates the measure?
June 26, 2022
Low tax motivates.
High tax with great public services motivates, so long as responsibility and effort is required of all.
High tax with shit public services demotivates. Mortgages for welfare dependants closes the gap between the working poor even further.
What doesn’t Sunak get about this ? Cut the VAT on fuel now. What’s going on at the moment is plain theft from those who make the effort.
We are NOT ‘motorists’ (hobby drivers) – most of us would prefer not to have to run a car but society hasn’t been structured in a way that we cannot do without.
June 26, 2022
The first necessary step is to increase the efficiency of the economy is to severely deprecate
the teaching of ‘Arts’ subjects at the secondary and tertiary levels so that there are just enough to service education.
While the country produces an over-abundance of Arts graduates, most will inevitable join the civil service where they will invent largely unnecessary jobs for themselves as ‘administrators’ because they lack useful skills of any sort. Some join the financial industry but this does not add value so much as transfer value, usually out of the country and they themselves are highly dependent on mathematicians.
The teaching of STEM subjects leads to added value in the economy as well as a class of people who can apply scientific principles to the delivery of public services rather than being hidebound by the latest ‘-ism’ whilst they flush vast fortunes down the pan through a total lack of organisational skills.
Perhaps if politicians themselves weren’t such ignoramuses about science they would not have nodded through the Japanese takeover of ARM Holdings whilst blathering about ‘inward investment’. Leading edge technology, not City spivery creates added value and most advanced economies recognise this and protect their own productive industries.
Of course, it hardly helps the productivity of our farming and fishing industries when the Arts graduates of the Environment department pay our farmers for saving the planet by not growing our food and prevent our fishermen from fishing in our own Exclusive Economic Zone whilst inviting in foreign trawlers to steal our fish.
To be an advanced economy, there should never be a need to import skilled people to supplement those produced by our own tertiary system because it is churning out people who are unable to service it.
June 26, 2022
Off topic, JR, please can you provide a link to the ERG report about the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill?
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/northern-ireland-protocol-bill-reinforces-union-say-erg-law-experts-3745382
Because while it is no doubt true that the Bill “allows for the protection of the EUâs single market against the movement across the Irish land border of goods on which the correct EU tariffs have not been paid or which do not comply with EU regulatory law” I don’t see it written on the face of the Bill that such protection will definitely be put in place and that seems a weak counter to the well-worn objection, repeated this morning by the EU ambassador to the UK, that “it does not provide a real alternative to the protocol”:
https://youtu.be/uJ4YY5Yxhj0?t=2442
If such legislative protection could be put in place now, through this Bill, why was that not done previously, in particular immediately after the possibility was raised in the Command Paper last July? By now we could have had eleven months of experience of running an export control system to protect the EU Single Market and so render redundant the EU checks on imports into the province.
Was that because if Boris Johnson had gone down that path then the EU would have taken away his pathetic little trade deal, which the Germans are now threatening to do anyway?
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-uk-tough-brexit-johnson-scholz-merkel/
“With Merkel gone, Germany gets tough on Brexit”
June 26, 2022
Sir John, while I completely agree that the civil service is bloated and needs shrinking, this is not a particularly good benchmark for productivity measurement as none of the work is prone to automation. It is a bit like some sectors of the service economy, where if you reduce the number of staff you just get a worse service. It is the manufacturing and agricultural sectors – and the railways – which the government should be focusing on.
Why doesn’t the government insist on moving IMMEDIATELY to driverless trains, both on national rail and the underground?
Why doesn’t the government invest MASSIVELY in an EMERGENCY development programme for robotic fruit and vegetable harvesters?
And why doesn’t the government a ‘carrot and stick’ approach of tax incentives AND PENALTIES for companies whose productivity is below the average for their sector?
Higher productivity allows higher wages without stimulating inflation. Instead, the government allows HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of immigrants into the country, both legally and illegally, cutting wage costs and discouraging productivity investment and improvement. Yesterday the PM said the country was fed of of hearing about where he had “stuffed up”. Actually, no, we are fed up of him ‘stuffing up’ in the first place! What a pity there isn’t a single Tory MP who is willing to tell him this.
reply A lot of admin tasks can be expedited bY digital technology
June 26, 2022
Why not driverless trains on the national rail network and the underground ?
Because it would need a complete and utter rebuild of the whole network and there is no such thing as a driverless train anywhere other than on a closed and limited network.
You fail to understand that a driver doesn’t simply drive the train. They are the frontline fitter, the frontline decision maker for when things go wrong with the train (typically 5 different types at a depot) or the infrastructure, they are there to sign off trains as fit for service or not. They must be able to get out and use sandsticks to get a train up a greasy bank. They are trained to rescue other trains with their own, deal with fires on trains, evacuations, and on-train emergencies, they must be able to undertake irregular working such as wrong direction movements around engineering works and be able to apply rules and regs with regard to degraded signalling or on train equipment.
But you think an intercity train carrying a thousand passengers is OK to go driverless when any of the above could happen 30 miles from the nearest engineer in his van.
June 26, 2022
There are over a 100,000 pieces of UK primary and secondary legislation. This currently requires 500,000 civil servants to implement the continual flow of new pieces; and, operate and maintain previous pieces that get constantly modified by new secondary legislation. Frequently, old and new pieces of legislation crash into each other unexpectedly, rendering both inoperable, particularly at local government level.
Don’t expect to much from the Rees-Mogg “dashboard” of EU law repeal this decade. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/governmentreporting/viz/UKGovernment-RetainedEULawDashboard/Guidance
Also, Boris’s infamous Cabinet Office (Parties R Us) employs circa 11,000 persons in one guise or another. Have a look at Table 8 in the following. https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/datasets/publicsectoremploymentreferencetable/march2022/datasets.xlsx
June 26, 2022
Third term for BorisâŠ. SirJ I understand that the Reform Party is recruiting real Tory MPs
June 26, 2022
The ordinary person sees no benefit from “productivity”.
There are queues in huge supermarkets with one checkout open.
The supermarkets have saved a lot of jobs by having us do self-checkout, but I am not seeing any reduced prices as a result.
June 27, 2022
The Government preaches productivity yet red tape, rules for this and that, standards, training courses, diversity, taxes on all but breathing, making health just for the comfortably off, skewing education to ensure that unis stay open earning mega fees from foreign students(spies), keeping transport in turmoil -oil, gas, nuclear a mess – they allow foreign purchase of essential services and developing technologies….
I’ll stop there it is just too depressing.
Monster Raving Loony policies without the Party name.
June 26, 2022
Our PM and his entourage are attending the unproductive G7
Thatâs the same G7 that doesnât include the two most polluting countries in the world that have nuclear weapons and control vast amounts of the world resources and its economyâŠ.our PM needs to be more productive at home and stop attending these world bodies
June 26, 2022
China & Russia
June 26, 2022
“More productivity higher pay” should read more productivity more revenue perhaps so more for the shareholders, more for management to waste, more for government to waste.
Just what is Boris cosying up to Zelensky of Ukraine for? This is nuts – Zelensky has made it clear to all that Ukraines future lies with the EU – so then whats this latest Boris nonsense about? Anyone?
June 27, 2022
Our military commanders unfortunately want our future to lie in antagonising Russia, Jason. Because that’s NATO’s plan: not so much supporting Ukraine, but ‘weakening Russia’. Johnson is just acting as a NATO ambassador, doing the legwork between here and Kiev.
Yes, we thought he was the British Prime minister, but it’s often at moments of crisis that the truth comes out.
June 26, 2022
Err yes Sir John.
‘they need to show they can do it’.
Well they have not done it have they?
June 27, 2022
Nothing will change until we change the whole of our governmental system. We do not have a Constitution. We do not have an individual similar to Donald Trump who will fight for the people.
Regardless of what the majority of the people may think, we have nobody.
650 MPs and 700+ in the HoL and ask yourselves what they achieve???
At present we are ALL subjects and change has to come to free the people.
I somehow have a feeling change IS coming.