Private sector = corruption. (?)

[andrewwillans49]

I work in the private sector. Self employed since 1977. No holiday pay,sick pay, pension. I do have a lot of personal freedom. Sweeping statements pretty unhelpful.

[Stradageek]

Probation service - back in public hands, millions wasted, enough said

[pliptrot]

To get this back in the fray: PPE procurement, test and trace, ........

[mjr]

That is a fair point and one I did consider. I just groan inwardly when people talk about British Rail as some wonderful entity when I remember how bad it was to use trains in those days, the discontent with underfunding and very rude staff, and the dirty carriages.

The problem with that summary is it depended very much which sector or region ran the trains you were using. Some were pretty great trains with excellent staff, such as the East Coast Main Line InterCity 225s. Others were dirty ramshackle wooden carriages on rusting frames, overcrowded and run by minimal harassed staff.

It's much like your experience today depends on which operator is running your trains and which route you use: maybe you get a shiny new fleet of speedy electrics or bi-modes, or refurbished 40ish-year-old diesel units, or even a certain small modern fleet which are notorious for catching fire and now on their third or fourth lease...

Public ownership is not an automatic way of improving things. It might be part of a package of changes that could improve things, but on its own it doesn't excite me.

Agreed but it is difficult to see how private ownership of ways, whether railways or roadways or waterways, can really work. There has to be some public ownership and ideally some common ownership, probably as well as some private ownership. The questions are where the boundaries are drawn and what rules govern each part.

[Mike Sales]

The Grenfell Fire Inquiry is revealing some very nasty private sector lying, along with Council penny-pinching.

[Tangled Metal]

Isn't PPE procurement and the test and trace examples of public sector corruption since it was public sector in the form of the government (possibly with civil service compliance) who did the corrupt act of buying from friends, etc? It's one thing to take advantage of corruption when it lands in your favour and another to cause the corruption even look for it.

My view is corruption is unfortunately part of human nature. We are rarely an ethical species and when we do act ethically there's usually still an advantage in doing so. As such it's not really possible to assign corruption as the sole preserve of one type or division of society and ignore it in others. Many forms of public sector corruption heavily involve union activity imho. Not exclusively as the civil service has always had its own form of corruption.

This is, imho, just another them and us discussion. Divisive and inconclusive in any output. The side "winning" the argument is completely dependent on who's present and making the running. On this forum it's usually the politically left which means private sector gets the bashing. It's also a lot easier since its a bigger sector than public sector overall. Privatisation had a role in that.

[Tangled Metal]

Private sector issues with fire protection is with the public sector incompetence over building control. It's pathetic and has been so for awhile. It's easy to Billy BS your easy through passive fire protection standards. Having said that there's many honest brokers in the industry. I used to work in one even provided technical advise to architects, builders, etc. I've been involved in many fire tests and assessments. Also product development and also importantly the installation instruction development. We never gave advice that wasn't 100% backed up by fire tests or independent assessments. Warrington or BRE IIRC.

IMHO Grenfell was as much an issue with state and public sector as it was private sector. Although I doubt it'll be an honest review with public sector issues being highlighted as strongly as private sector.

I'm not in the sector but I met a guy I used to work with recently and he's only just getting out. I used his vast knowledge and experience to learn a lot back in the day. I wish I could have had time to get his view on Grenfell. It would have been a doozy! He's a gruff Scot probably Glasgow too. Straight talking and takes no shoot!

[Oldjohnw]

It isn’t really that public sector good and private sector bad but rather in the UK currently we have had governments giving contracts to their mates without the proper process. Even the court has agreed and ordered the government to open up the contracts but they have still failed to do this. Where they have published them they have been so redacted as to be meaningless.

There is, of course, an inherent danger in public contracts going to private sector organisations without the due process which is there to protect the public purse and that is the profit motive. Shareholder and boards have to be rewarded. People say “but civil servants are also greedy” . The maximum public sector salary is normally about £150k (I believe the head of the NHS exceptionally £250k - he runs the world’s largest health sector in a democratic country: the CEO of BUPA who runs a handful of hospitals gets several millions). Footsie 100 directors earn more than that in pension contribution alone let alone multi million salaries.

Competence is another matter and is different to corruption. I imagine most of us would have been happy enough had the private sector done a good job of recent privatisations.It wasn’t so much things going to the private sector but doing so and avoiding proper processes and simply going to incompetent and inexperienced mates. But they have made an almost unbelievable mess: probation, prisons and probably everything to do with the pandemic. At least the vaccination programme was properly handled.

[francovendee]

It isn’t really that public sector good and private sector bad but rather in the UK currently we have had governments giving contracts to their mates without the proper process. Even the court has agreed and ordered the government to open up the contracts but they have still failed to do this. Where they have published them they have been so redacted as to be meaningless.

There is, of course, an inherent danger in public contracts going to private sector organisations without the due process which is there to protect the public purse and that is the profit motive. Shareholder and boards have to be rewarded. People say “but civil servants are also greedy” . The maximum public sector salary is normally about £150k (I believe the head of the NHS exceptionally £250k - he runs the world’s largest health sector in a democratic country: the CEO of BUPA who runs a handful of hospitals gets several millions). Footsie 100 directors earn more than that in pension contribution alone let alone multi million salaries.

Competence is another matter and is different to corruption. I imagine most of us would have been happy enough had the private sector done a good job of recent privatisations.It wasn’t so much things going to the private sector but doing so and avoiding proper processes and simply going to incompetent and inexperienced mates. But they have made an almost unbelievable mess: probation, prisons and probably everything to do with the pandemic. At least the vaccination programme was properly handled.

Well said, couldn't have put it better.

[Jdsk]

It isn’t really that public sector good and private sector bad but rather in the UK currently we have had governments giving contracts to their mates without the proper process. Even the court has agreed and ordered the government to open up the contracts but they have still failed to do this. Where they have published them they have been so redacted as to be meaningless.

Yes. It's taken judicial review, and there's more to come. And at least one Minister is still lying about it in Parliament.

Please consider supporting the Good Law Project.

https://goodlawproject.org/update/johnson-misled-parliament/
https://goodlawproject.org/news/mislead-parliament/
https://goodlawproject.org/update/failure-to-publish/

Jonathan

[Oldjohnw]

And so it continues:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... SApp_Other

[djnotts]

As to the Question - yes.

[[XAP]Bob]

Btw I used to be into canoeing. As such I've paddled rivers from extremely rural to near urban. I've seen the rivers that ran different colours depending on what the local dye works were producing day by day. I've paddled rivers and seen the colour of boats bleached out of them. I've seen the wildlife come back to rivers indeed into urban rivers too. I've seen otters and even water voles on British waterways that once were polluted beyond life. That's the best legacy of private sector ownership of water utilities.

Would public ownership have made that impressive change over the same timescale we'll never know. The only thing we can say is that they never showed any sign of doing so. Public sector has always been a fund governments could raid for the funds to carry out their agendas i reckon.

If you accuse me of assuming that they wouldn't have made the changes then I'll accuse your of wearing rose tinted glasses over the idea of public ownership. I see public sector as having problems but I see the same with private sector. The real question is not which one if those we need but isn't there a better option.?????

So you're trying to imply that cleaning up the waterways was something the water companies did out of public duty and not because legislation (both ours and the EU) was forced upon them? (And fairly recently at that).

I doubt either private or public would have made that much difference in this case.
However I've seen enough private companies squeal when stuff has been forced upon them and more than a few that have used their political clout to get things changed in their favour.

Not wanting to completely derail this topic but the phrase "So you're trying to imply that cleaning up the waterways was something the water companies did out of public duty and not because legislation (both ours and the EU) was forced upon them? " is deliberately misleading - the EU legislation was (and is) *our* legislation, we wrote it.

[philg]

And so it continues:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... SApp_Other

Headline is
<UK tutoring scheme uses under-18s in Sri Lanka paid as little as £1.57 an hour>

The average wage 2021 in Sri Lanka is 1,080,000 LKR or £3962 which works out at £2.20 per hour for a 40hr 45week year.
The 'lowest average' is less than £1000 p.a.or 56p per hour

So what does that prove exactly? (for 17 year old workers)