taking from the poor and giving to the rich

[amateur51]

Maybe, in times of cuts, it's easier for some to feel good about themselves if charities replacing welfare state provisions have displays in supermarkets, in front of which one can make a show of one's generosity being more important than considering the volunteer/paid work dilemma, than by quietly voting for higher taxes?

Oh I think it's possible to be clamouring for higher taxation at the same time as supporting charities working with poor individuals and poor communities, S_A :winkeye:

[Serial_Apologist]

Oh I think it's possible to be clamouring for higher taxation at the same time as supporting charities working with poor individuals and poor communities, S_A :winkeye:

Yeah you're right, really. :nod:

[teamsaint]

Maybe, in times of cuts, it's easier for some to feel good about themselves if charities replacing welfare state provisions have displays in supermarkets, in front of which one can make a show of one's generosity being more important than considering the volunteer/paid work dilemma, than by quietly voting for higher taxes?

talking of which, I really have strongly antagonistic feelings about those little green discs that you get in Waitrose and ASDA( eclectic, me) to choose between various charities.
Does that make me as bad a person ?

[amateur51]

talking of which, I really have strongly antagonistic feelings about those little green discs that you get in Waitrose and ASDA( eclectic, me) to choose between various charities.
Does that make me as bad a person ?

ALWAYS give to the elderly people's luncheon club - they know if you don't! :yikes::winkeye:

[Serial_Apologist]

ALWAYS give to the elderly people's luncheon club - they know if you don't! :yikes::winkeye:

Bingo!!!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

no we did not go to the bingo, but swmbo and selfie [to coin a term eh] were having luncheon in an asda cafe today [Kettering and very nice too] and remarked that it was only yesterday we were treating our aged parents to such delights, and now here we were having aged persons cheap and very nice grub, and buying seasonal plants for their graves .... it comes home with ever increasing emotional force just how poor my parents were and how they, along with millions, struggled not to make their kids feel at all poor, but free alive and joyful ....

my ma and pa hated the Tories and their rich friends, and i must say so do i, especially what they are now doing to the poor

[ahinton]

no we did not go to the bingo, but swmbo and selfie [to coin a term eh] were having luncheon in an asda cafe today [Kettering and very nice too] and remarked that it was only yesterday we were treating our aged parents to such delights, and now here we were having aged persons cheap and very nice grub, and buying seasonal plants for their graves .... it comes home with ever increasing emotional force just how poor my parents were and how they, along with millions, struggled not to make their kids feel at all poor, but free alive and joyful ....

my ma and pa hated the Tories and their rich friends, and i must say so do i, especially what they are now doing to the poor

Thanks for this; it's a very powerful article indeed and, if nothing else, it should serve as a salutary and eloquent defence against those who only ever utter the name of the newspaper in which it's published as a feeble excuse to express contempt for it.

OK, I'm not even wholly closed in principle to the idea of private industry running all or part of certain services, but the issue at stake is how they run them - by which I don't just mean how efficiently. If the government of the day that hands such firms contrcts to run all or part of what had previously been state-run operations, much depends upon the nature of the government's agenda in how it phrases the contract; it is this that raises in my mind the gravest misgivings as to the fact that the present government has demonstrably far less idea about how best to do this than any others in living memory - the problems arising from the actions of G4S, Serco, Atos and others cannot, I believe, all be put down to their failures to operate efficiently. A government that not merely ignores but displays contempt for the disadvantaged members of society is a danger not only to society as a whole but to itself; it might be wise for this one to bear that in mind.

For the efficient and duly caring operation of state run industries one has to depend upon the government of the day; what price this one for running industries, given its increasingly deplorable record in trying to pass the buck?

[amateur51]

Thanks for this; it's a very powerful article indeed and, if nothing else, it should serve as a salutary and eloquent defence against those who only ever utter the name of the newspaper in which it's published as a feeble excuse to express contempt for it.

OK, I'm not even wholly closed in principle to the idea of private industry running all or part of certain services, but the issue at stake is how they run them - by which I don't just mean how efficiently. If the government of the day that hands such firms contrcts to run all or part of what had previously been state-run operations, much depends upon the nature of the government's agenda in how it phrases the contract; it is this that raises in my mind the gravest misgivings as to the fact that the present government has demonstrably far less idea about how best to do this than any others in living memory - the problems arising from the actions of G4S, Serco, Atos and others cannot, I believe, all be put down to their failures to operate efficiently. A government that not merely ignores but displays contempt for the disadvantaged members of society is a danger not only to society as a whole but to itself; it might be wise for this one to bear that in mind.

For the efficient and duly caring operation of state run industries one has to depend upon the government of the day; what price this one for running industries, given its increasingly deplorable record in trying to pass the buck?

Great stuff ahinton and very good to see Jeremy Seabrook banging his independently-minded drum once more.

Yes it is important how the private sector runs these services but more important still is the why they run them. And the answer has to be 'because they can see a profit in it'. Customers' needs will never come first - and there's another rub - who is the customer here? Is the the end-user (you & me) or is it the council's Social Services department? Or the commissioning body? Or the County? Or the government department where the budget lies? The further it gets away from us, the less likely our needs are to be given priority.

Time & again private companies are to be found either cherry-picking the easy fruit to meet targets or they cut corners to maintain the profit margin. In a sense I don't blame them - that's what privatre companies do - and therefore they should never be let anywhere near any form of 'social'service' imgo.

So where next? Well of course Charities are being encouraged to take on these contracts - locally- based, not profit-driven, cuddly workers prepared to be exploited, voluntary management committees who don't understand the terms & conditions of the contract, etc etc. A different sort of bomb waiting to go off. and so many will be run by religiously-inspired organisations, with which I have not problem in principle as long as they keep their 'values' out of my life. I'm the customer who counts ..,. after all!

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for this; it's a very powerful article indeed and, if nothing else, it should serve as a salutary and eloquent defence against those who only ever utter the name of the newspaper in which it's published as a feeble excuse to express contempt for it.

OK, I'm not even wholly closed in principle to the idea of private industry running all or part of certain services, but the issue at stake is how they run them - by which I don't just mean how efficiently. If the government of the day that hands such firms contrcts to run all or part of what had previously been state-run operations, much depends upon the nature of the government's agenda in how it phrases the contract; it is this that raises in my mind the gravest misgivings as to the fact that the present government has demonstrably far less idea about how best to do this than any others in living memory - the problems arising from the actions of G4S, Serco, Atos and others cannot, I believe, all be put down to their failures to operate efficiently.

But that belief in itself has to be dependent on faith, in part at least, because of requirements of "commercial confidentiality" - which, if there was ever a catch-all get-out clause, this was it.

A government that not merely ignores but displays contempt for the disadvantaged members of society is a danger not only to society as a whole but to itself; it might be wise for this one to bear that in mind. For the efficient and duly caring operation of state run industries one has to depend upon the government of the day; what price this one for running industries, given its increasingly deplorable record in trying to pass the buck?

Another general get-out clause is the diminishment of central or local governmental accountability by low voter turnouts: once upon a time one could argue that at least government control was answerable to electorability, today that is less the case, and those in authority can be let off the hook whether or not services are kept in-house or contracted out. The problem then threatens to become off-topic, in raising issues of the near-indistinguishability of policies enacted whichever party is in power.

[Serial_Apologist]

Great stuff ahinton and very good to see Jeremy Seabrook banging his independently-minded drum once more.

Yes it is important how the private sector runs these services but more important still is the why they run them. And the answer has to be 'because they can see a profit in it'. Customers' needs will never come first - and there's another rub - who is the customer here? Is the the end-user (you & me) or is it the council's Social Services department? Or the commissioning body? Or the County? Or the government department where the budget lies? The further it gets away from us, the less likely our needs are to be given priority.

Time & again private companies are to be found either cherry-picking the easy fruit to meet targets or they cut corners to maintain the profit margin. In a sense I don't blame them - that's what privatre companies do - and therefore they should never be let anywhere near any form of 'social'service' imgo.

So where next? Well of course Charities are being encouraged to take on these contracts - locally- based, not profit-driven, cuddly workers prepared to be exploited, voluntary management committees who don't understand the terms & conditions of the contract, etc etc. A different sort of bomb waiting to go off. and so many will be run by religiously-inspired organisations, with which I have not problem in principle as long as they keep their 'values' out of my life. I'm the customer who counts ..,. after all!

Very well summed up, ams.

[ahinton]

Yes it is important how the private sector runs these services but more important still is the why they run them. And the answer has to be 'because they can see a profit in it'. Customers' needs will never come first - and there's another rub - who is the customer here? Is the the end-user (you & me) or is it the council's Social Services department? Or the commissioning body? Or the County? Or the government department where the budget lies? The further it gets away from us, the less likely our needs are to be given priority.

I take your point, of course, but the problem to which I sought to draw attention was the somewhat different one that is predicated upon the particular governmental agendas in the running of these services; by this I mean that if the kind of things that governments might expect of the Sercos of this world are flawed to the point of being careless of the resultant treatment of already disadvantaged people, it would make little if any material difference to those people if the government itself ran the services concerned in the same ways rather than farming that responsibility out to private companies.

Any such service provider, be it an arm of government or not, should be fully accountable for its conduct and subject at all times to proper policing of that accountability, but this is often far from the case in both the public and private sectors; part of the reason for that in the public sector is the determination by certain of those who can and do take unfair advantage of their positions within it to cover up its poor practice while seizing advantages for individuals who function within it.

Time & again private companies are to be found either cherry-picking the easy fruit to meet targets or they cut corners to maintain the profit margin. In a sense I don't blame them - that's what privatre companies do - and therefore they should never be let anywhere near any form of 'social'service' imgo.

Yes, that's almost certainly as true as it's inevitable but I don't believe that the kind of attitudes of mind that lead to such practice are necessarily and/or by definition confined at all times to the private sector. One could, for example, take the industry regulation sector as an example of this; some regulatory organisations are arms of government and others private companies and there have very occasionally been changes from one side to the other. It seems inconceivable that the conduct of some industries is supposedly policed by government while said government farms out such responsibility for other industries to private companies and it's clear that the example of what happense in the latter cases sets examples for the conduct of the former.

So where next? Well of course Charities are being encouraged to take on these contracts - locally- based, not profit-driven, cuddly workers prepared to be exploited, voluntary management committees who don't understand the terms & conditions of the contract, etc etc. A different sort of bomb waiting to go off. and so many will be run by religiously-inspired organisations, with which I have not problem in principle as long as they keep their 'values' out of my life. I'm the customer who counts ..,. after all!

Again, point taken, but I've never seen evidence to convince me that state run services always, or even more often, care more for their customers than do privately run ones; state run service providers will, for starters, have less interest in the risk of losing customers than will private ones will (except, of course, in the case of monopolies on either side).

The principal issue at stake here, however, is that if a government is determined to make matters worse - or have insufficient care to make them better - for already disadvantaged people, it will matter not a jot to those people whether the service providers that do the governemnt's work for it are state run or privately run.

[ahinton]

But that belief in itself has to be dependent on faith, in part at least, because of requirements of "commercial confidentiality" - which, if there was ever a catch-all get-out clause, this was it.

That might be the case if such commercial confidentiality were the exclusive privilege of the private sector but, as we've noted when some of the woeful inadequacies in the conduct state run industries take months if not years to uncover and bring to public attention (and even more so when they don't get uncovered and put on public display at all), this is patently not the case.

[Serial_Apologist]

That might be the case if such commercial confidentiality were the exclusive privilege of the private sector but, as we've noted when some of the woeful inadequacies in the conduct state run industries take months if not years to uncover and bring to public attention (and even more so when they don't get uncovered and put on public display at all), this is patently not the case.

Which, given commercial secrecy, is of course why whistle-blowers are of such potential importance to the reputation of the public sector. Whether the government gives them the protection they claim that they deserve or not awaits to be seen.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

excellent piece and subsequent discussion in the Graun on the Banks

[ahinton]

excellent piece and subsequent discussion in the Graun on the Banks

Hmmm. It's an interesting piece, to be sure, but the five-point plan is quite simply unworkable.

Point 1, addressing (at least on the surface) the dangers of derivatives is fair enough as far as it goes and it is not wrong in citing Buffett on these, but what's George Osborne suppoed to do about international trade in them? H'e just one little Chancellor in one little country; the problems associated with these admittedly very risk financial instruments will remain with us whatever he does or does not do and we will all continue to be exposed to the risks associated with them unless and until there is international agreement to put them out to grass. That said, these were not in any case the cause of the failures of the banks mentioned by the author, as one of the respondents has correctly observed.

Point 2. is fatuous, however well-intentioned it might be. How in practice can one hold banks responsible for losses when they'll likely have no means of addressing such responsibility if they get themselves into sufficient financial trouble? I'd have thought that, in UK, the very fact of the bail-outs of Lloyds TSB and the now about to be even more discredited (than in Fred the Shred's day) RBS illustrates this as well as anything.

Point 3. is sound insofar as it goes, but how will who force the banks to do this? The financial services regulators, who have notably stood by for years and let the UK end of the financial crisis happen without trying to do anything about it? The grilling of Barclays' Bob Diamond by the TSC put that regultor in as bad a light as the bank itself. The recent report of the Parliamentary Commission of Banking Standards into banking failures in UK hasn't even been accepted by that regulator yet and, even if it ultimately gets to be so, it will be at least six years after the financial crisis began to bite; stable doors and horses, anyone?

Point 4. sounds fine but how could it be brought about in a free market economy? That the temporary nationalising of banks won't achieve this goal ought once again to be obvious from what's happened in recent times to Lloyds TSB and RBS. There's also a fine line to be drawn between "risk taking" and stealing; how could one trust bankers not to resort more to the latter than to the former if put under such pressures by a single government?

Point 5. makes sense until one realises that merely nationalising the auditors will make no difference to the current situation as long as the banks continue to cook the books and hide the results of such cooking from the auditors whoever they may be. The provision of legal sanction of auditors' total unhindered access to banks' data for the purpose of trying to uncover situations when banks do indeed cook the books might well presume the need first to abolish the Data Protection Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the Human Rights Act, any or all of which might well be invoked by the banks were government to try this one on; from the fact that this would be something from which we'd all ultimately suffer illustrates well the legal stranglehold and the power to hold us all to ransom that the banks have and will continue to have over all of us, including governments, financial regulators and official auditors.

I somehow suspect that, if all the detail of the latest RBS débâcle enters the public domain, the problems of trying to achieve the recommendations in any of these five points will become all too painfully apparent. The warning figures in the article are undoubtedly plausible and the author has a point on those grounds alone, but I do not see how any Chancellor could alone solve these issues, not least because he/she would have no jurisdiction over most of it as it is a global problem, not a pecularily British one with the possibility of a British-only solution.