Month: Dec 2006

Categories
Communications disease Public sector waste

Newspaper job ads under threat

Online media news source BrandRepublic is today covering an idea from Conservative Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne:

Shadow chancellor George Osborne has vowed to move all public sector job ads from newspapers to a new official website if his party comes to power after the next general election.

This plan could result in newspapers, particularly The Guardian’s Wednesday Society section, losing around £790m spent by local and central government on job ads each year. The dedicated public sector website would only cost an estimated £5m.

This is a great idea as state bodies are typically not run by people who understand value for money. In the private sector you think very hard before spending out on job ads in the Sunday Times and the Guardian. You almost always go to the much cheaper and better targeted trade press first.

In local authorities, which are relatively small organisations with very standard needs, they place very expensive ads in the ST and Guardian without engaging brains.

It is the same for schools where the Times Educational Supplement is something like a £250 million business whose entire revenue is taken straight out of the education budget. The school at which I am a governor is just about to place its second ad in TES for a headteacher.

Not only would this measure stop the Guardian living off the state but Murdoch also. Double whammy!

Categories
Public sector waste

MPs and Parliament out of control

MPs asking for itAll the papers are full of the MPs want £100K story. Most people think that they are taking the Mickey. They may be worth larger salaries but they can’t have those AND large pensions AND generous allowances AND plush offices in Portcullis House (one of the most expensive offices ever built) AND long recesses AND free airport parking AND SO ON.

One way of controlling them would be to set a fixed budget, linked to inflation, for all of Parliament and its activities. MPs could then decide to have lower pensions or less support staff if they wanted to have higher salaries. They might decide to have less MPs or to relocate to a cheaper location. Everyone who manages a business or a part of the public sector has to submit to this kind of discipline. So should our MPs.

If you agree with me that MPs and Parliament as a whole should have to contain their spending within limits rather than just being able to vote themselves any salary and perks that they like, you might like to sign the petition that I have started at the Number 10 e-petitions site.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to fix the budget for Parliament and link it to inflation such that MP’s salaries can only increase if they save money elsewhere.

Follow link.

Categories
Communications disease Policing Public sector waste

Wasteful copper – vain too

NYP GazeeboDella Cannings is the Chief Constable of North Yorkshire. Clearly they have too much money to spend. She was the one who spent £28K on her private shower, see BBC story.

The latest is that her force have just spent £7,500 on an outdoor meeting area, a kite anchored over a bit of decking to you and me. See lovely picture left.

Apart from being wasteful this woman seems to be typical of modern public sector management types who want to get their picture all over the place. They are not very good looking on the whole which makes their vanity doubly tiresome. The worst thing is that these twerps even employ PR types to write stories about them into the bargain, see stupid press release.

Like a bunch of African chiefs the nomenklatura of British public life all want their own praise-giver paid for from the public purse.

Categories
Ex-Mayor Livingstone

Road pricing will lead to waste

Treasury logoSir Rod Eddington’s transport report is published today, follow link.

It is a joint veture between the Treasury and the DoT. Beware the Treasury’s involvement. Eddington gives the thumbs up to road pricing although not as wholeheartedly as you might expect. He does give a wholehearted endorsement of economically sensible investments in transport so hurray for that. But back to road pricing.

Contrary to the Mayor’s spin the London Congestion Charge has a £60 million deficit after three full years of operation. Follow link for details.

Transport for London, the shower responsible for the Congestion Charge, are also taking the lead in London-wide congestion charging. They reckon to be able to collect £3 billion in charges. This would be OK too if some other tax was reduced by £3 billion but read a quote from Michele Dix, director of congestion charging at TfL: “It would generate £3 billion gross and net revenue of between £1 billion and £2 billion.” It is a shame that she can’t refine her cost estimates more accurately than to the nearest £1 billion. Why does she think that it is acceptable to tax people to this extent and then lose anywhere from a third to two thirds of the money in collection costs?

It is all very well moving to road pricing if it is an effective and cheap to collect tax like fuel duty that allows us to lower direct taxation. But if its costs go barmy it just adds up to terrific waste.

If TfL is capable of wasting every penny of CC income then the same thing is likely to happen with a London-wide or national road pricing scheme.