Public Spending Cuts

I am getting fed up with keep hearing about Government cuts and the Trade Unions telling us how we are all going to suffer.
I don't want cuts, I want savings! I hope that this is what the coalition also want, and if so, why don't they start to refer to them as such.
When we were hard pushed for money (when the children were young and my wife wasn't working), my wife didn't come home from shopping and tell me that she'd made a cut in her spending, she said that she'd made a saving by shopping around. The money from the saving allowed us to reduce our debts.
The government should adopt the same approach; I have absolutely no doubt that many departments could make considerable savings by better management of their budget and reducing unnecessary staff.  I also have doubts as to whether, with good management, it will actually be necessary cut all the things that the Trade Unions are claiming except staff,  and this will probably be achieved by natural wastage.
I am in no doubt that most departments are poorly managed and grossly over staffed. I worked in the Civil Service in the eighties, and at that time staff cuts were made by transferring my area of work to an "Independent Authority". A reduction of some 15,000 civil servants at the stroke of a pen, but of course it wasn't as there were now all the additional liaison and management posts, and we were still being paid by the government.

My daughter has had recent experience of staff reductions. Her small department had thirteen people and was reduced to six. I commented to her that she must be rushed of her feet, and she told me that she had less work than before. Apparently it seemed that the, now retired, boss had effectively been making unnecessary work. Regular written reports were demanded on virtually all aspects of the work in hand; meetings were held at great length invariably involving other departments. All this has stopped, when my daughter needs to talk to someone in another department, she simply phones them and only the two are involved; no meeting of maybe a dozen people, formal minutes and all the rest of the paraphernalia. As she says she gets the job done straight away and not several days later when all those apparently involved have managed to find time to talk about the matter for a couple of hours.

This, I believe is typical of public service as a whole, both central and local government and is largely due to poor management at the top anda n all-round tendency to involve as many people as possible to spread the blame if something goes wrong. No private company would tolerate such waste, and it is time such practices were stopped in government.

I repeat, I don't want cuts, I want savings! My daughter's experience has confirmed that this should be possible without any reduction of service.

General Sir Richard Dannatt

I've just been reading skimming through what General Dannatt has to say in his memoirs, starting in today's Sunday Telegraph.
He categorises Brown a "A Malign Influence" and Blair as having "Lacked Moral Courage". Whilst I would probably agree with both of these statements, surely it is reasonable to ask about the General's own actions.
If he genuinely believes these statements, why on earth didn't he say more when he was in post, and not wait until now? He was Head of the Army, and it is the Army who is bearing the brunt of the present wars.  When ever I get involved in any discussion on Iraq or Afghanistan, even with people who are against the war, they all seem to be very well disposed towards the military. If he had spoken out very publicly, even if he did not have the support of the other Chiefs, he would, in my view, have had overwhelming support of the British public.

But he didn't speak.

Regrettably I have to say that I feel that Tony Blair was not the only one who "Lacked Moral Courage" in this saga.

Police Driving ! ! !

This report in today's Daily Telegraph say it all!

A driver was stopped for suspected drink-driving and arrested. The traffic officers concerned then apparently decided to go for a spin in the Mitsubishi sports car whist awaiting a recovery vehicle to take it to the pound and ended up by crashing and turning it over in a front garden. They have been suspended "from driving duties".

Traffic Officers are supposed to be the elite of the police drivers, trained to use high power cars at high speeds if necessary, yet it seems that these two couldn't even manage a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution on local roads. Perhaps, in fact, for all the hype, they are no better than the rest of us which is probably why they have been discouraged from getting involved in high-speed chases of late.

No one condones drunk driving, but it seems that we would probably have had one accident less if the driver had been allowed to go on his way.

And perhaps the Greater Manchester Police would like to explain why the officers have only been suspended "from driving duties", and not simply suspended from duty (without pay) as they were clearly not only breaking police rules (to use a recover vehicle), but probably acting illegally.

In view of the recent reports about complaints against police officers, I'd be interested to know if there have ever been any made against these two clowns, as surely there will be now.

Primary Schools short of 350,000 places!

Of course, the Labour Party is trying to blame the Coalition spending cuts for this state of affairs, which is much as might be expected. To me it illustrates the total incompetence of the previous government to plan ahead.
There are some things which take governments by surprise (floods, earthquakes, etc), but there is no way an additional 350,000 children can possibly fall within this category. All births have to be registered in this country, and unless these are 350,000 immigrants or asylum seekers who have arrived totally unexpectedly, the government and councils had almost five years to make the necessary provision.
So much for forward planning. If they can't plan for schools when the requirement is reasonably clearly known, no wonder the public services are in such a mess.

Customer Service - 2 - Carphone Warehouse

As I mentioned before, my trusty HP iPAQ personal organiser is getting a bit long in the tooth and needs to be retired. The advice that I have received is that the modern mobile phone can do all that it does and more, so I went into our local Carphone Warehouse to make a few enquiries.
There was an amazing array of phones at a wide range of prices, and after wandering around the shop browsing what was available, I went up to the counter to see the assistant who had been studiously ignoring me whilst doing something on a computer.
He said "I'll be with you in a few moments" whilst continuing to fiddle with the computer. Another assistant came out of the office, made a few adjustment to some of the display phones and disappeared in silence, carefully avoiding making eye contact.
After a few more minutes I walked out; If they can't be bothered to talk to a potential customer, what chance is there of getting help if one has problems?

Biased BBC

According to today's Daily Mail, BBC Director General Mark Thompson has admitted that the corporation was guilty of a 'massive' Left-wing bias in the past.

This is far from correct. The word "was" needs to be replaced by "still is" and "in the past" omitted!

Customer Service - 1 - Comet Style

I was talking to a friend of mine this morning. His ten month old TV, purchased from Comet, had started to "play-up". After ringing the Comet service phone a couple of times and hanging on for about ten minutes on each occasion listening to terrible music, he abandoned the effort and went into the Comet store where he had purchased the set. There were two females behind the Service Desk, one was on the phone and the other deliberately turned around as she saw him approaching and started dealing with some obviously very urgent important matter on a desk with her back turned towards him. After a while, the other female came off the phone and disappeared into the office. Somewhat put out by this attitude, my friend asked in a very loud voice whether it would be possible to see the manager, but was informed by the female, still with her back towards him, that he wasn't available (presumably he too was dealing with some other very important matter). However, in due course another female appeared who introduced herself as the supervisor. Avoiding the temptation of asking why she was not supervising, my friend explained the problem, and requested that she ring the service department on his behalf as he was unwilling to either spend any more on phone calls or continue to listen to the awful music.
Having countered "That's not possible", with "I'll bring in the TV and demand a refund under the sale of goods legislation", an appointment was eventually made for the Service Technician to come to and sort it out.

But why was all this hassle necessary? Do they really think that if they ignore problems that they will go away?