Viewing 7 posts - 41 through 47 (of 47 total)
  • Virgin on the rediculous, failure to to do the sums properley(trains content)
  • ononeorange
    Full Member

    Couldn’t agree more, Binners. On both counts. Start paying a civil servant well and all the envy-hackles will go up in the media.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    Though, thinking about it…. I reckon you could probably write the Daily Mail headlines about that now. a ‘Civil Servant’ being paid a serious salary

    That’s exactly it.

    Think about it this way…the average equity partner in a good London law firm will earn around £1m a year. Is he/she really going to ditch their career to work in the public sector for 5 years on one deal for £100k a year?

    Similarly, as you pointed out, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to pay them their market value!

    What’s amusing though, is that you’d be cheaper paying them £1m a year in salary, rather than £600+ per hour for external advice! You lose the safety net of PI cover though, plus you’d still face the difficulties of picking someone up for one deal (and persuading the media that its good value)

    However, it’s worth considering this: I acted for the ODA on various Olympic stuff over the years. Its in house teams (e.g. lawyers and technical advisors) was made up of some extremely talented professionals at the top of their fields who had joined the ODA due to the significance of the Olympics and what it could offer them (both personally and from a career perspective). I can honestly say that it was the most professional team imaginable – these people were straight out some of the top firms in the world.

    Considering the tight timetable, scale and complextity of the task, how did the Olympics go from a “get the thing built on time” perspective?

    Just saying. You often get what you pay for 😉

    MSP
    Full Member

    Given that the evidence suggests that Governments couldn’t run a bang in a cathouse, isn’t it about time that the rail network was FULLY privatised and left to the likes of the successful Branson to get it sorted?

    It does seem that if privatisation is to benefit the taxpayer customers in any way, then it certainly seems that Whitehall needs a few more seriously hard-nosed people to let go and leave it to the professionals to actually make appropriate decisions.

    They tried that, it was actually not that long ago, I seem to recall the body count was quite high, not that the business owners gave a **** about the lives lost, they still tried to sue the government for taking the hard nosed but appropriate decision to take control back.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    As a side point, the issue of the public sector not being able to attract the brightest sparks isn’t confined to the world of business.

    An immensely talented QC (regarded as one of the best in the country) is constantly being put forward for judicial positions. I once asked him why he kept declining what I thought were “career defining” opportunities.

    His response was simply that the salary wouldn’t even cover his four kid’s tution fees. He was smiling but he wasn’t joking.

    I’m not saying that there aren’t any talented people in civil service, it’s just that the disparity in pay/opportunities at the top of the professions is too large to warrant consideration.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    Err he didn’t buy the bad debt though, that got hived off into NRAM (which then became UKAR after they combined it with B&B’s bad debt) so not exactly doing the taxpayer a favour, he got a decent bank network cheaply.

    No one was ever going to buy the bad debt, well not at a price the government would sell.

    He paid the best price, so in that sense he did do the tax payer a favour.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    ononeorange – Member
    Couldn’t agree more, Binners. On both counts. Start paying a civil servant well and all the envy-hackles will go up in the media.

    If you factor in the value of the pension benefits then top ranking civil servants are paid extremely well. (I know we are not talking about local government but the head of your local authority is probably making £200k+ in salary/benefits alone).

    You then have to think about the commercial value of the very cushy working environment they enjoy.

    noteeth
    Free Member

    What worries me most is this public procurement of private providers sounds remarkably like what they’ve got in mind for the NHS. Which is frankly terrifying!!

    Indeed. Branson can’t wait to get in on the act – Virgin Care is set to run children’s services in Devon, as well as greatly expanding their GP empire (see their takeover of Assura). New service providers will profit via both the value of projected (taxpayer-funded) contracts & cutting back on services (e.g. using nurses instead of docs) – all the while being careful to palm off the tricky (read: expensive, messy) stuff to overstretched NHS acute care. Beardy is taking the pish, IMO.

    Still, with that idjut Hunt as Health Sec and David Bennett (ex-McKinsey & Bliar advisor) as chairman of NHS regulator Monitor, I imagine the prognosis for Virgin Care is very good indeed. 👿

Viewing 7 posts - 41 through 47 (of 47 total)

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