Oh there's "waste" alright... I've just got back from a two day meeting (in what is called a Hybrid Sector institution) about how much we're shelling out to Microsoft, Cisco, various other suppliers and tech companies... But we NEED digital ID, and that £1.2M piece of software (offshore registered company naturally) that allows you to trace who is accessing kiddie/donkey pron and bomb making sites and suicide chatrooms because we must as part of PREVENT, and the Online Safety Act, the HSE, the Higher Education (insert noble cause here) Act etc etc. Except we're not paying that because if they're determined enough they'll be using Tor browsers and anonymous VPNs, and we can't inspect that traffic anyway, but at least we can tick the checkbox of "all reasonable measures". £1.2M that could be spent on say a second trauma simulation suite for training paramedics, or more of the actual new kit that will be in use on wards next year that trainees can be let loose on.
All the time we are under the watchful gaze of various other (definitely private sector) vultures that are eyeing up not only the fat of the land but the pound of flesh as well.
Bear dear chap, I started my first proper job in the late 1970s, in the public sector where I remained in different organisations for most of my working life.
What you have written is essentially the narrative for much of that time. Starting with Thatcher, who came to power just over a year later, and her economically ignorant mindset that an economy is akin to a household budget, unjustified parsimony has been the rule at least for ordinary people.
I could write endlessly about my experiences but that would be boring and frankly your erudite and passionate piece does that job far better.
When they cut, cut, cut they avoid dealing with the real issue that you describe. Lack of growth.
There is a two pronged way to turn things around.
The first is to tax wealth.
The second is to rejoin the EU. No referendum and Farage can go do one. Start negotiations to rejoin straight away with a sense of urgency and drive. They would be the turning point.
Then renationalising utilities like power and water and running them for the benefit of the public.
I too started work in the 1970s, in the public sector, teaching, and agree with everything you say. We have never recovered from the Thatcher years, and we'll never really be able to until we rejoin the EU.
And renationalising them without compensation to the vultures who have been living on the profits instead of investing them into the infrastructure. I favour fining the companies in shares, which then pass to the government, along with the divvies the shareholders like to pay themselves. Not my idea but it sounds good to me. Nationalisation by stealth.
Like you, I joined the workforce in the mid 70's albeit in the private sector and my experiences reflect your own. I heartily endorse your sentiments on:
1) Introducing a fairer tax system forcing the wealthy to pay their fair share.
2) Applying to rejoin the EU. No referendum. No ifs. No buts. No maybes.
3) Renationalising the essential parts of our national infrastructure (which should never have been privatised in the first place!) e.g., power, water and national rail services.
4) What Farage and his cohorts can do about it!
And thank you, Bear, for your customary, superbly written, summation on why further cuts and austerity is a really, REALLY, bad idea!
Brilliant. Another absolutely accurate statement of reality from Bear.
Should be required reading for all politicians and bean-counters who keep telling everyone that we need to be more efficient.
There are undoubtedly some small backwaters where ‘Doris’ still works the way she did 20/30 years ago but in the main, achieving cost-savings through staff turnover where experience = cost so cheaper replacements are ‘good’ for the financials, has delivered hollowed out organisations where very few people know what actually needs to be done and how/who can do it.
That’s why so much feels broken or is fast heading that way.
You’ve nailed the sound of it, that ceaseless snip-snip-snip echoing through every service, every office, every council chamber that’s been told to “do more with less” for so long it’s now doing less with nothing.
The sheer absurdity of politicians still promising “efficiencies” when the cupboards, the shelves, and the builders who made them have all been sold off, it’s the kind of national self-delusion only Britain could rebrand as fiscal responsibility.
And of course, in drifts Nigel Mirage, that spectral figure who materialises whenever there’s a pint glass and a camera, then evaporates the moment facts or moral question enters the room. A man who can spot “waste” in a nurse’s payslip but not in his own campaign tab.
Thank you for writing something that cuts through the noise and actually says it, the scissors aren’t fixing anything, they’re just getting sharper.
There is waste, however it’s the politicians that do the wasting. PPE, HS2, ‘bright ideas’ from ministers that have rarely lived in the real world. Billions have been and continue to be wasted by the people who think that services are the problem.
And the company at the centre of the PPE scandal missed the deadline to pay. Where did that money go now? I'm sure someone must know but they're not telling.
I'm about to retire as a lead administrator in mental health team (and, dammit too late, just received an option to take MARS, where they would have paid me to resign). This option is open to admin staff and many are considering it. As I have just spent nearly 4 hours on the phone trying to get hold of someone to get social care for my mother... it strikes me as utterly ridiculous to snip away at the lowest-paid staff, which will inevitably increase the burden on doctors and clinicians, frustrate patients and lead to chaos and a poor service. AI cannot answer the phone with empathy and understanding, and triage the call appropriately. You need a human for that. Seems to me that the NHS is running on goodwill alone. And believe me, that will run out.
Yvonne -yes the NHS has been running on goodwill since the 80’s and then slowly but steadily running out since, bc of the relentless snip snip snip Bear talks about.
So many staff are burnt out with ensuing long term physical & MH issues, the long term sickness rate is horrendous and puts an added strain on the remaining staff. There are still some areas that are well run & staff valued as part of the team but many are not.
This is an excellent piece. Thank you. I'm now going to have a small rant about cuts. I've now been a carer for husband with vascular dementia and prostate cancer for two years. I'm 67 and I could have worked longer quite happily, but my job has had to go because of his advancing dementia. I really can't see what else there is to be cut with regard to care. I keep being told that before the pandemic there was this and that available, but now there is nothing. There is no respite care available. There are lovely well intentioned people around, but everything has been cut, so they cannot offer help. I'd like one of these people who are manic about more cuts to be in my situation and see what it is like. Basically the cupboards are empty and there's nothing more that they can cut. Adding to this that I am a Waspi woman, which makes me a very pissed-off and worn down disillusioned old bat.
Why oh why aren't there more people like you in our government! Common sense, honesty and decency. Probably the answer is, too many are there to line their own pockets, possibly not as much as the last tory government did, but more concerned with their own wealth than the state of the country or the people they say they represent.
The mandarins of austerity(1) coupled with the brexiteers (2), hid behind the constant blame game of waste, whilst feathering their own nests and off shore deposits.
The UK has been asset stripped by private equity funds (3), owned overseas, that have sucked the money out of the country, at the expense of local authority needs, societal needs, national needs, under the eyes of a government system that makes bold promises, then follows the same path despite a party change (4).
So who is actually ‘running’ or ‘ruining’ the country and in whose interests?
“ We have to start, as the Americans did, by mapping the invisible forces that strip jobs, value and hope out of communities; make them visible; trace their dependencies and then use direct action to kick them in the corporate goolies until they desist.” 2016 Paul Mason (5).
On a slightly positive note, our council has ‘u-turned’ on a plan to close a waste recycling site, after a ‘public consultation’ made it realise the public knows best😉
The Bear does hit the nail on the head (again). What I have observed over my career is that where we had the 'do the right thing' we have developed in to a nation of grad what you can. Whether the private sector (vets) or Private Equity "investing" in care homes - what it amounts to is a deliberate effort by Thatcher and her successors to create opportunity for the "money men". These people are generally American and whilst they talk about all the risks they take to deserve their rewards - scratch the surface you will find the rest of us are paying - look at Musk and his businesses. Where this was totally laid bare is the 2008 GFC where we bailed out bankers - none jailed or homeless - the rest of us poorer. This was followed by QE - so printing money (BoE buying Govt debt back ) so that they could capitalise the banks. Also BoE making money worthless with ludicrously low interest rates (o.25%) - what has all of this done - made some people fantastically wealthy, drive house prices and rents so that no ordinary person can afford these. Labour with their majority could have made in roads - however we have a Chancellor that is immersed in the same old economic model - snip, snip, snip and everything is for sale. Its not looking good.
“Hard choices for whom?” Not the comfortably-off middle aged white men who make them.
Reform people seem to think that the things that don’t interest them: equity, inclusion, justice don’t need to exist. They don’t care if they don’t exist because they don’t consider that they affect them.
Oh, Bear. In my long life the best things that happened - well, mainly - I'm not counting love et cetera - came about because of political courage. Why is this government so sodding timid?
A couple of days ago I was at a charity (small, well established) AGM and got talking with a colleague who is a Labour councillor, defo not blue Labour, after I said I'd just rejoined the Green Party.
He had some years ago had a career in the civil service in part in Whitehall.
When I gently asked what the f*ck is going on he replied interestingly that 'Starmer and Reeves have both been civil servants and think everything is OK, which it isn't'.
Endless austerity is the logical endpoint of neoliberalism. The ideology says that state spending must be minimised because it "crowds out" private investment, private profit creates wealth, and wealth trickles down, making everyone better off. None of this is true, and can be demonstrably proven false, but the ideologues are deaf and blind. They simply demonstrate insanity by repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
All the party leaders appear to subscribe to the same broken economic orthodoxy, despite their other political leanings - with one exception. Zack Polanski hasn't said much specifically on economics, but he has dropped a few hints that he understands it's time for some new economic thinking.
Bear, you’re at a major disadvantage working in the NHS because you’re a sentient being who cares. I’ve been retired from the cliff face of the NHS since 2021. You give up pointing out to managers the blithering obvious lack of equipment and staff preventing you from doing your job. You can only bash your head against a brick wall for so long. Have you come across the phenomenon of managers who actively dislike their staff and hate patients?
Oh my god Bear, this is so good! Absolutely spot on. Our government, infact all our politicians, should read this and take heed! Not Reform however, they’re just out for themselves and the accuracy and common sense of this piece would be lost on them!!
Prevention is better than cure.
Pay the workforce a decent wage then they don’t need extra benefits to actually eat, pay bills, have a decent standard of living. Re-nationalise power, water etc etc. It’s not rocket science.
We cannot lose our NHS. I work in the NHS, not on the medical side, but the wastage I see is ridiculous. I’d say 98% of the time, in our department, we are short staffed. Overtime a plenty. Most of the staff work so hard but any concerns just fall on deaf ears. It’s so frustrating at times 😞
Oh there's "waste" alright... I've just got back from a two day meeting (in what is called a Hybrid Sector institution) about how much we're shelling out to Microsoft, Cisco, various other suppliers and tech companies... But we NEED digital ID, and that £1.2M piece of software (offshore registered company naturally) that allows you to trace who is accessing kiddie/donkey pron and bomb making sites and suicide chatrooms because we must as part of PREVENT, and the Online Safety Act, the HSE, the Higher Education (insert noble cause here) Act etc etc. Except we're not paying that because if they're determined enough they'll be using Tor browsers and anonymous VPNs, and we can't inspect that traffic anyway, but at least we can tick the checkbox of "all reasonable measures". £1.2M that could be spent on say a second trauma simulation suite for training paramedics, or more of the actual new kit that will be in use on wards next year that trainees can be let loose on.
All the time we are under the watchful gaze of various other (definitely private sector) vultures that are eyeing up not only the fat of the land but the pound of flesh as well.
Bear dear chap, I started my first proper job in the late 1970s, in the public sector where I remained in different organisations for most of my working life.
What you have written is essentially the narrative for much of that time. Starting with Thatcher, who came to power just over a year later, and her economically ignorant mindset that an economy is akin to a household budget, unjustified parsimony has been the rule at least for ordinary people.
I could write endlessly about my experiences but that would be boring and frankly your erudite and passionate piece does that job far better.
When they cut, cut, cut they avoid dealing with the real issue that you describe. Lack of growth.
There is a two pronged way to turn things around.
The first is to tax wealth.
The second is to rejoin the EU. No referendum and Farage can go do one. Start negotiations to rejoin straight away with a sense of urgency and drive. They would be the turning point.
Then renationalising utilities like power and water and running them for the benefit of the public.
I too started work in the 1970s, in the public sector, teaching, and agree with everything you say. We have never recovered from the Thatcher years, and we'll never really be able to until we rejoin the EU.
And renationalising them without compensation to the vultures who have been living on the profits instead of investing them into the infrastructure. I favour fining the companies in shares, which then pass to the government, along with the divvies the shareholders like to pay themselves. Not my idea but it sounds good to me. Nationalisation by stealth.
Well said 👏👏👏
Like you, I joined the workforce in the mid 70's albeit in the private sector and my experiences reflect your own. I heartily endorse your sentiments on:
1) Introducing a fairer tax system forcing the wealthy to pay their fair share.
2) Applying to rejoin the EU. No referendum. No ifs. No buts. No maybes.
3) Renationalising the essential parts of our national infrastructure (which should never have been privatised in the first place!) e.g., power, water and national rail services.
4) What Farage and his cohorts can do about it!
And thank you, Bear, for your customary, superbly written, summation on why further cuts and austerity is a really, REALLY, bad idea!
Brilliant. Another absolutely accurate statement of reality from Bear.
Should be required reading for all politicians and bean-counters who keep telling everyone that we need to be more efficient.
There are undoubtedly some small backwaters where ‘Doris’ still works the way she did 20/30 years ago but in the main, achieving cost-savings through staff turnover where experience = cost so cheaper replacements are ‘good’ for the financials, has delivered hollowed out organisations where very few people know what actually needs to be done and how/who can do it.
That’s why so much feels broken or is fast heading that way.
Brilliant piece!
You’ve nailed the sound of it, that ceaseless snip-snip-snip echoing through every service, every office, every council chamber that’s been told to “do more with less” for so long it’s now doing less with nothing.
The sheer absurdity of politicians still promising “efficiencies” when the cupboards, the shelves, and the builders who made them have all been sold off, it’s the kind of national self-delusion only Britain could rebrand as fiscal responsibility.
And of course, in drifts Nigel Mirage, that spectral figure who materialises whenever there’s a pint glass and a camera, then evaporates the moment facts or moral question enters the room. A man who can spot “waste” in a nurse’s payslip but not in his own campaign tab.
Thank you for writing something that cuts through the noise and actually says it, the scissors aren’t fixing anything, they’re just getting sharper.
Nigel Mirage 👏🏼👏🏼
Nigel Mirage < Let’s make it stick!
There is waste, however it’s the politicians that do the wasting. PPE, HS2, ‘bright ideas’ from ministers that have rarely lived in the real world. Billions have been and continue to be wasted by the people who think that services are the problem.
And the company at the centre of the PPE scandal missed the deadline to pay. Where did that money go now? I'm sure someone must know but they're not telling.
Hear hear!! 👍👏👏👏
I'm about to retire as a lead administrator in mental health team (and, dammit too late, just received an option to take MARS, where they would have paid me to resign). This option is open to admin staff and many are considering it. As I have just spent nearly 4 hours on the phone trying to get hold of someone to get social care for my mother... it strikes me as utterly ridiculous to snip away at the lowest-paid staff, which will inevitably increase the burden on doctors and clinicians, frustrate patients and lead to chaos and a poor service. AI cannot answer the phone with empathy and understanding, and triage the call appropriately. You need a human for that. Seems to me that the NHS is running on goodwill alone. And believe me, that will run out.
Yvonne -yes the NHS has been running on goodwill since the 80’s and then slowly but steadily running out since, bc of the relentless snip snip snip Bear talks about.
So many staff are burnt out with ensuing long term physical & MH issues, the long term sickness rate is horrendous and puts an added strain on the remaining staff. There are still some areas that are well run & staff valued as part of the team but many are not.
It’s heartbreaking.
This is an excellent piece. Thank you. I'm now going to have a small rant about cuts. I've now been a carer for husband with vascular dementia and prostate cancer for two years. I'm 67 and I could have worked longer quite happily, but my job has had to go because of his advancing dementia. I really can't see what else there is to be cut with regard to care. I keep being told that before the pandemic there was this and that available, but now there is nothing. There is no respite care available. There are lovely well intentioned people around, but everything has been cut, so they cannot offer help. I'd like one of these people who are manic about more cuts to be in my situation and see what it is like. Basically the cupboards are empty and there's nothing more that they can cut. Adding to this that I am a Waspi woman, which makes me a very pissed-off and worn down disillusioned old bat.
So sorry you’ve been so left in the lurch 😢
Unpaid carers deserve so very much more.
I’m so sorry you have been let down by the very system that should be your safety net. Also a WASPI woman-!
Take care x
Why oh why aren't there more people like you in our government! Common sense, honesty and decency. Probably the answer is, too many are there to line their own pockets, possibly not as much as the last tory government did, but more concerned with their own wealth than the state of the country or the people they say they represent.
Yet another great piece 🐻
The mandarins of austerity(1) coupled with the brexiteers (2), hid behind the constant blame game of waste, whilst feathering their own nests and off shore deposits.
The UK has been asset stripped by private equity funds (3), owned overseas, that have sucked the money out of the country, at the expense of local authority needs, societal needs, national needs, under the eyes of a government system that makes bold promises, then follows the same path despite a party change (4).
So who is actually ‘running’ or ‘ruining’ the country and in whose interests?
“ We have to start, as the Americans did, by mapping the invisible forces that strip jobs, value and hope out of communities; make them visible; trace their dependencies and then use direct action to kick them in the corporate goolies until they desist.” 2016 Paul Mason (5).
1. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/jun/28/how-the-unforced-error-of-tory-austerity-wrecked-britain
2. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/09/brexiters-put-money-offshore-tax-haven
3. https://www.chpi.org.uk/blog/investors-are-making-a-fortune-from-uk-healthcare-why-is-nobody-holding-private-equity-to-account
4. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/31/how-private-equity-convinced-labour-to-go-easy-on-its-multimillion-pound-tax-perk
5. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/22/follow-the-money-how-left-behind-cities-corporate-bullies-hedge-clippers
On a slightly positive note, our council has ‘u-turned’ on a plan to close a waste recycling site, after a ‘public consultation’ made it realise the public knows best😉
The Bear does hit the nail on the head (again). What I have observed over my career is that where we had the 'do the right thing' we have developed in to a nation of grad what you can. Whether the private sector (vets) or Private Equity "investing" in care homes - what it amounts to is a deliberate effort by Thatcher and her successors to create opportunity for the "money men". These people are generally American and whilst they talk about all the risks they take to deserve their rewards - scratch the surface you will find the rest of us are paying - look at Musk and his businesses. Where this was totally laid bare is the 2008 GFC where we bailed out bankers - none jailed or homeless - the rest of us poorer. This was followed by QE - so printing money (BoE buying Govt debt back ) so that they could capitalise the banks. Also BoE making money worthless with ludicrously low interest rates (o.25%) - what has all of this done - made some people fantastically wealthy, drive house prices and rents so that no ordinary person can afford these. Labour with their majority could have made in roads - however we have a Chancellor that is immersed in the same old economic model - snip, snip, snip and everything is for sale. Its not looking good.
“Hard choices for whom?” Not the comfortably-off middle aged white men who make them.
Reform people seem to think that the things that don’t interest them: equity, inclusion, justice don’t need to exist. They don’t care if they don’t exist because they don’t consider that they affect them.
If politics weren't such a mess, I would suggest you considered a career in it. Maybe that way we could start hearing someone say something sensible.
Anyway, let's not forget the coackroaches on TfL buses, the latest sign of staff attrition and doing a lot more with a lot less.
Oh, Bear. In my long life the best things that happened - well, mainly - I'm not counting love et cetera - came about because of political courage. Why is this government so sodding timid?
A couple of days ago I was at a charity (small, well established) AGM and got talking with a colleague who is a Labour councillor, defo not blue Labour, after I said I'd just rejoined the Green Party.
He had some years ago had a career in the civil service in part in Whitehall.
When I gently asked what the f*ck is going on he replied interestingly that 'Starmer and Reeves have both been civil servants and think everything is OK, which it isn't'.
FFS.
Endless austerity is the logical endpoint of neoliberalism. The ideology says that state spending must be minimised because it "crowds out" private investment, private profit creates wealth, and wealth trickles down, making everyone better off. None of this is true, and can be demonstrably proven false, but the ideologues are deaf and blind. They simply demonstrate insanity by repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
All the party leaders appear to subscribe to the same broken economic orthodoxy, despite their other political leanings - with one exception. Zack Polanski hasn't said much specifically on economics, but he has dropped a few hints that he understands it's time for some new economic thinking.
THAT was a dissertation worth the read. Absolutely brilliant.
Bear, you’re at a major disadvantage working in the NHS because you’re a sentient being who cares. I’ve been retired from the cliff face of the NHS since 2021. You give up pointing out to managers the blithering obvious lack of equipment and staff preventing you from doing your job. You can only bash your head against a brick wall for so long. Have you come across the phenomenon of managers who actively dislike their staff and hate patients?
Good luck Bear! You need it!
Oh my god Bear, this is so good! Absolutely spot on. Our government, infact all our politicians, should read this and take heed! Not Reform however, they’re just out for themselves and the accuracy and common sense of this piece would be lost on them!!
Prevention is better than cure.
Pay the workforce a decent wage then they don’t need extra benefits to actually eat, pay bills, have a decent standard of living. Re-nationalise power, water etc etc. It’s not rocket science.
We cannot lose our NHS. I work in the NHS, not on the medical side, but the wastage I see is ridiculous. I’d say 98% of the time, in our department, we are short staffed. Overtime a plenty. Most of the staff work so hard but any concerns just fall on deaf ears. It’s so frustrating at times 😞