Response to Polly Toynbee
Feb 2009 10

Response to Polly Toynbee37

Polly Toynbee’s article in today’s Guardian starts out with a lot of rhetoric about “rottweilers” and “insidious poison”.  She writes as if we’re Britain’s only political campaign.  In reality, there are a multitude of groups campaigning on every issue under the sun.  While we are proud of our work, the reason our campaign is so politically salient is probably that it strikes a chord with the public.  I’ve set out why in an article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free website this morning.

After that, Toynbee accuses us of being a Tory front.  Really?  Ask George Osborne or Derek Conway.  If only we could put the writers at the Guardian in touch with some of the commenters on ConservativeHome who accuse us of being out to bash the Conservative Party unreasonably when we criticise Conservative councils and policy announcements we disagree with.  We frequently criticise the Conservatives when we think they’re getting something wrong, for example we criticised (PDF) the Quality of Life Policy Group’s report in very strong terms.

Toynbee then accuses us of distorting the statistics, with this gem:

“Except it’s not true. The facts are accurate, but…”

Her first example is public sector wages.  The numbers that we quote on this aren’t our own estimates but come from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.  The relevant file can be found here (XLS).  Toynbee argues that:

“The private sector now has most of the unskilled work: most cleaners, carers, caterers, security guards, dinner ladies, porters and labourers. They once worked in the public sector, but are now outsourced – and so there are now five times more “elementary” jobs in the private sector. Those remaining as public employees are heavily weighted towards the most highly skilled and super-qualified.”

Basically, she is arguing that the average public sector worker is a lot smarter and better qualified than the average private sector worker, so comparing average compensation isn’t fair.  Her evidence that public sector workers are, in fact, modestly compensated is a comparison (not linked even in the online version of her article, unfortunately) of the wages of “[m]anagers, professionals and skilled trades”.  The problem is that those definitions are far from robust.  We can test Toynbee’s theory by looking at the distribution of earnings for staff in the public and private sectors, though:

If Toynbee’s view that the average is distorted by a large number of extremely low paid, low skilled workers in the private sector were correct then you would expect the gradient of the Private sector line to be steeper than that of the public sector.  By comparison, you would expect the public sector line to be flatter as the lower deciles would not include the same rump of low skilled workers that similarly (or better) paid workers in the private sector average out.  That isn’t the case.  To the contrary, the public and private sectors have a remarkably similar distribution of earnings apart from the private sector catching up among the very highest ten per cent of earners.  In every decile public sector staff earn more except at the very highest where compensation is roughly the same.

Toynbee then goes on to argue that the pensions apartheid is overstated.  She doesn’t provide much of a case to rebut.  If you want more on the scale of the divide you can read our report (PDF) on public sector pensions or the Institute of Directors’ recent report (PDF).  As our report (PDF) makes clear, the Government’s actions so far have undermined, not beefed up, private pensions.  The only empirical argument is that we somehow distort the figures by citing a percentage of council tax, not council spending.  That misses the point.  The TPA’s work is focussed on how it might be possible to reduce council tax if certain items of expenditure were reduced.  As such, the amount of council tax is exactly the right comparison to the amount spent on council pensions, even if councils do also pay for council pensions in other ways.

Finally, Toynbee attacks our non-job report for including Moray Council’s Street Football Co-ordinator, quoting from a story in the Sunday Herald.

“The Sunday Herald investigated and hit back. The paper discovered that the real salary was half that, as it was part-time – and the council only paid £3,000 of it, with the police, fire brigade and local businesses paying the rest.”

Of course, whether taxpayers fund the job through the council, police or fire budgets is really neither here nor there – it’s all taxpayers’ money.  The police are certainly capable of spending taxpayers’ money on some very dodgy ideas.  I’d expect the contribution from business is relatively small, although even if it was large that wouldn’t be evidence that the scheme offers good value for taxpayers’ money.

“Over 70 young people attend the games, with “a marked reduction in instances of antisocial behaviour, vandalism, teenage alcohol abuse and graffiti”.”

We don’t have any evidence for that assertion.  £10,000 a year to take just seventy youngsters off the street for just a couple of hours twice a week hardly sounds like good value unless their criminal productivity is truly astonishing.  In the end, this is the kind of job that has always been done by volunteers, and still is up and down the country.  While endless regulation may have made that more difficult, paying someone half of the average British private sector worker’s earnings to organise a few games of football a week isn’t the way to address that problem.

If that’s the best Polly Toynbee can do, from the hundreds of press comments and dozens of reports we put out each year, then it looks like we don’t have too much to worry about.

There is huge inefficiency in the public sector.  I set out some of the evidence in my article this morning but our website contains innumerable other examples, as I said:

“The first step in trying to deliver more efficient public services is greater transparency – so that the public knows how its money is being spent – and proper criticism of those who waste taxpayers’ money. The only people who don’t have an interest in that happening are those who have made a tidy living, with little accountability, in public sector organisations and those who place their ideological commitments to old-fashioned ways of delivering public services above getting good value for taxpayers’ money.”

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  • Liam

    She really has lost the plot. She is only worried because she is frightened of more councils withdrawing expensive job ads in the Guardian.

  • Democracy is not cheap, nor should it be

    “Basically, she is arguing that the average public sector worker is a lot smarter and better qualified than the average private sector worker”
    This is totally unfair and the use of ‘smarter’ is positively Palin-esque. What she’s saying is that there are five times less unskilled jobs in the public sector so averaging out the two sectors produces warped results. Unless you want your child’s teacher to earn the same as a cleaner…?

  • Corin

    Nice one Matt. I think the Left are really running scared – her article is pretty hysterical really.

  • Hardeep Singh

    Don’t concern yourself with the stroppy rants coming from Polly’s mouth. This is after all the person who on a late night BBC programme (about a year ago) concluded that the murmurs of the forthcoming economic storm wouldn’t be anything like the scale commenators were warning about.
    Out of touch I’m afraid and reading between the lines unfortunately the biggest offence is committed … only Polly can have a say and no one else. If anything freedom of speech is one of the lines I would never retreat from … cup of tea being the other! :) -

  • Steve Robson

    Another excellent article by Polly who has more integrity in her little finger than your whole organisation and who chooses suggests that we use facts to evaluate performance rather than the sensationalism you prefer.
    How is your organisation funded by the way. Funny how you can offer free membership!

  • Mimi Fontaine

    Polly states in her article “the reason why public pensions were traditionally more generous [than private pensions] was because public servants were worse paid”. Which is very interesting because now that unskilled workers have been outsourced to the private sector (Polly’s explanation for public sector pay overtaking private sector pay) such comparisons are no longer valid. I wonder why?

  • Mimi Fontaine

    Oh and Steve Robson, it’s funded by people like me who want to change the fact that, after having a marginal rate of tax of 50% docked from their pay (unlike MPs, I had to take out a student loan to fund myself through university), don’t have much money left over to do things like save for the future, support my mother…. Interesting that it took a Labour government to axe the widow’s pension! And to think they call the Tories the “nasty party”!
    And if you’re hoping to uncover some shady funding arrangement between political parties and lobby groups, I suggest your first stop should be the Smith Institute.
    Finally, my apologies if you were being ironic, but Polly Toynbee having integrity??!! The left really must be loony. There used to be a good blog called Fact Checking Pollyanna that occasionally exposed some of her more blatant lies.

  • Peter Phillips

    As someone who is always defending the indefensible in public expenditure on this forum, is Steve Robson the same Steve Robson who was a Treasury mandarin, who became an RBS non-executive director when he retired (no doubt on a handsome pension) and was on its board, and remained silent, throughout the ABN Abro purchase fiasco? Probably not, but it would be nice for him to tell us.

  • http://labourandcapital.blogspot.com Tom P

    “If you want more on the scale of the divide you can read our report (PDF) on public sector pensions or the Institute of Directors’ recent report (PDF).”
    can you just clarify – weren’t the TPA report and the IoD report written by the same person?

  • http://labourandcapital.blogspot.com Tom P

    “As our report (PDF) makes clear, the Government’s actions so far have undermined, not beefed up, private pensions.”
    actually your report is a bit all over the place in terms of what sort of saving system you think people should have. it mentions Chile and Australia, but also suggests that ISAs might be better than pensions, and maybe people shouldn’t save at all in their 20s. by implication you seem to be suggesting a 401k type plan but this isn’t made explicit, nor are the problems of allowing people early access to retirements savings highlighted. so I’m not even sure that the authors of your report are sure that private sector pensions (as opposed to general savings) need boosting.
    in any case as your report states the government is bringing in Personal Accounts which are expected to boost private sector pension saving by several billion pounds a year. this system will not be very different to Chile or Australia, except that the expectation is that the costs will be much lower. so the not boosting private sector saving argument is rubbish as far as I can see.

  • peter wilson

    Another excellent article by Polly who has more integrity in her little finger than your whole organisation
    Posted by: Steve Robson
    from the logic of her argument thats the location of her brain as well mr robson !
    typical of guardian types like Toynbee once their arguments are scrutinized they fall apart.
    keep up the goodwork TPA

  • Graham

    According to the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings file, 1.6 million (10%) private sector workers earn £5.77 per hour or less. Adult minimum wage is £5.73 per hour.
    Yes, I’d say that’s evidence a large number of private sector workers are extremely low paid.

  • Steve Robson

    Peter Wilson – what you say is just assertion and abuse not logic. Actually what Polly applied was logic. I guess the difference between logic and assertion is hard to fathom for the TPA, but in the former the conclusions follow from the facts whereas in the latter the “facts” flow from the conclusions. This is how creationists and holocaust deniers work and the TPA apply a similar approach. They start from their conclusion that the public sector is crap and wastes money and then selectively present “facts” to back it up. What is wrong with Polly’s point about pensions? It is clearly ludicrous to compare any element of a Council’s spend to one element of income rather than overall spend. Spending on salaries is about 200% of Council tax, so the comparison becomes meaningless. SOME OF THE PENSIONS ARE FUNDED BY OTHER SOURCES. You may think the figure is too high, but it ain’t 25%. People paying £1600 pa council tax are NOT paying £400 for pensions.
    To the other Peter, I am not the Steve Robson you decry; I don’t know whether that’s good or bad; if he worked for RBS I suspect he is genuinely rich rather than appearing on a rich list, but not actually being rich. I know you are the Peter who proves that educated people can be stupid, not learn the lessons of history and believe that the answer to our troubles is hatred and prejudice as espoused by the nazis in the BNP. I expect that’s why you run a hate campaign against public servants and presumably also approve of the methodology of holocaust denial.

  • Chris Bartter

    Ha ha, caught out again, and by a little council up in the north-east too! Usual lack of research and excess of bias from the dusty old Thatcherites in the Tax-Evaders Alliance. Must go to prove your own assertion that public sector workers are much smarter and better qualified than you lot!!

  • Mimi Fontaine

    Chris Bartter – evidently public sector workers aren’t smart enough to make a living in the real world, that’s why they are wholly funded by the productive elements of society.
    And how are old are you, did a grown up person ever explain the difference between avoidance and evasion to you?

  • Steve Robson

    Mimi
    Surely you can’t really have a student loan because that would mean you had a degree, which no-one who makes a comment that stupid could have. it’s almost as stupid as your previous claim to be the only person in Britain with a 50% A thriving economy requires an effective private and public sectors, therefore both contribute to productivity. Who do you think provides the infrastructure, educates the workforce and keeps the workforce healthy. And if your going to come back with all that usual TPA shit about these services are no good, all you will be saying is that the private sector workforce is not educated, not healthy and that there is no infrastructure (roads, railways, ports, legal system etc) to support enterprise, which clearly there is.
    How “productive” do you think for example Virgin would be without the schools, health services, police, fire services, legal, roads, etc provided by the “non-productive” public sector. Even the so-called non jobs often have benefits like getting people off drug dependency. Without them, there may be more crime, which would further reduce the “productivity” of the private sector.
    Of course we don’t actually have a thriving economy because of the failure of the private sector to deliver its side of the bargain.
    You people live in a dream world. Thank goodness only other fantasists listen to you. Even the Tories will never implement anything you propose because they know it would spell disaster for us all.

  • Dave Kerry

    What a silly and unconstructive debate this is!
    I read Toynbee’s piece in The Guardian. I didn’t agree with everything she said and, given more space, I’d have preferred a better presentation of detailed argument. But, to be fair, in my view she made some valid points.
    Equally, I have sympathy with some of the specific issues raised by TPA, but the generalisation of its case appears to me to be extremely problematic.
    As Steve Robson says, we need both a public and a private sector. And we need both to thrive and to operate efficiently.
    The suggestion that “public sector workers aren’t smart enough to make a living in the real world, that’s why they are wholly funded by the productive elements of society” is the sort of absurd generalisation that is both insulting and valueless.
    I have worked in both the public and the private sectors. I have seen good and bad in both. In current circumstances, I see much which is atrocious in some particular areas of the private sector, but I am not so foolish as to generalise that specific example to cover the entire sector.

  • Michael Van Clarke

    I’m new to this blog but wonder whether this Steve Robson is doing a wind up or can really be that thick. The last 12 years of this appalling government have severly damaged our society. I won’t go into the broken economy save to say Gordon Brown has left our economy in a worse state than after WWII. The Broken Society – what are some of the direct results and the unintended consequences of our Big Government policies? Disempowered individuals, broken families, weak communities, powerless – rubber stamping local authorities. The hopelessness that pervades great swathes of the country expresses itself in negative ways. Forget what the politicians say. Lying comes naturally to them. Just look around to what is happening.
    Record binge drinking and alcohol disease particularly amongst the young.
    Record one parent families
    Record violent crime especially gun and knife crime amongst the young
    Record prison population
    Record gambling (up 900% since 1997)
    Record debt (tripled since 1997)
    Record illegal drug use
    Record legal drug use (5 million on antidepressants)
    Record Obesity and Malnutrition –A health time-bomb particularly amongst children)
    Record childhood depression
    The worst country in the first world for a child to grow up (OECD)
    Etc etc etc
    This is Labour’s record and anyone that voted for them should hang their head in shame.

  • paul

    Steve Robson how abtuse do you have to be to support a political point? I haven’t seen anywhere the TPA state that they wish to dispense with the public sector. They appear to be campaigning against waste and inefficiency. Having just left the NHS and seen the utter and total waste of £5 billion on a failed computer system I think they may have a point.

  • Chris Thompson

    Steve Robson
    Who do you think provides the infrastructure, educates the workforce and keeps the workforce healthy?
    Given the huge amounts of money we spend on them we have a right to expect a great deal better from our education and health services. What makes private sector workers angry is funding a sea of clip-board carrying nonentities with no discernible talent or purpose.

  • Dave Kerry

    I entirely agree that “we have a right to expect a great deal better from our education and health services”.
    I also agree that we appear to be wasting a great deal of public money on computer systems that fail to deliver. Others have commented on the cost of consultancy (and IT consultancy is perhaps particularly significant here), and I agree with that too.
    However, I despair when I read comments like: “What makes private sector workers angry is funding a sea of clip-board carrying nonentities with no discernible talent or purpose.” Yes, I too can identify roles in all sectors that, in my view, add little value. But the generalised characterisation of people as “nonentities with no discernible talent” displays the sort of attitude that is a barrier to sensible progress.
    And as for Michael Van Clarke’s extensive list of issues, I’d be the first to agree that there are legitimate concerns here. I’d also agree that the current government’s record is very much less than perfect. I’m not a supporter! But I recall some of “New Labour’s” predecessors with at least equal distaste. I’d be more interested to know how “small government” will resolve these issues.

  • http://www.gavpolitics.co.uk/blog/ Cllr Gavin Ayling

    As a low tax advocate I don’t disagree with the gist or almost anything you say. The only thing I would comment upon is this:
    “As such, the amount of council tax is exactly the right comparison to the amount spent on council pensions, even if councils do also pay for council pensions in other ways.”
    Would that it were so. Unfortunately Council spending and fund raising is (deliberately?) difficult to analyse easily with Councils up and down England getting settlements from central government disproportionate to need, population and wealth.
    In truth the amount that Councils raise through Council tax is a relatively arbitrary way of comparing pensions to Council income.
    That said, it is still taxpayers money and it is still wasted massively by Councils of all colours. I wish Councillors who genuinely wanted to reduce taxes didn’t have to micro-manage in order for it to be achieved.
    I learnt today, for example, that members of the public in my Council must fill in a ‘complaint form’ if they wish to make a complaint even if they have written a perfectly cogent letter or email. Rightly the FSA would not allow that in a private-sector financial services company…

  • Steve Robson

    It seems to me I make a balanced point about needing the public and private sector, supported eloquently by Dave Kerry and all I get is three one sided responses, including being called thick by a pot!
    Clearly we see different things. I’d even agree that some of the problems that Thick Van Clarke lists do exist, though how there all down to this government, I don’t fully get. Thatcher created welfare dependency remember as part of her industrial restructuring. I am saddened that this government that I voted for have failed to address it, but I still think its been a better government than the previous one.
    You people, possibly because of your own failure in life only see the bad, but there is good too; massively better lives for people with social care needs, reduced waiting times in hospitals, new drugs and treatments available, improved cancer survival rates, new schools, new university buildings, better education, peace in Northern Ireland, a minimum wage, less racism, smoke free public places, more freedom for gay people to live as they wish and marry who they want, more overseas aid, massive new early years schemes and children’s centres.
    Yes there is waste; two wars, ID cards in particular. And there are tremendous challenges that you people just seem to not understand; an ageing population, family breakdown, people living longer with learning disabilities and chronic conditions (which is a good thing), globalisation. Unfortunately you just don’t want to pay, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost.
    Try to understand what is happening, rather than making fatuous comments about “a sea of clip-board carrying nonentities with no discernible talent or purpose”. I have never seen such a person, have no idea what you are taking about and suspect you don’t either; presumably you just read that they existed in the Daily Mail and parroted it. Otherwise how come you have seen these people and I never have? Its because they don’t exist, but you have fun making up strawmen to support an argument because the facts just don’t quite suit.

  • Hope

    Doesnt Peter Gilroy also write for the Guardian on occasions, as well as being teh highest paid chief executive in the country
    in Kent a Tory run council , who has received plenty of stick and rightly so from the Tax Payers Alliance

  • Michael Van Clarke

    Steve Robson assumes that the people who disagree with him are failures in their lives which is odd. I don’t think the previous Government was perfect. I think it sad that we have to choose between appalling and not quite so appalling. My argument is against big and intrusive central government which in deliberately creating dependency for votes, insidiously destroys personal responsibility, family and community relationships. These are the building blocks in a society in the same way that individuals, teams, and departments are the building blocks in a corporation. If all the power is sucked out to the top tiers then the whole group doesn’t function well.
    Yes there have been some welcome successes – the ban on smoking in public places being one of the few. The growth of children’s centres encouraging mothers to dump their children at 6 months and go to work was designed to increase the working population and tax base, at the expense of children’s development as much evidence shows. Is that really good for society?
    On education – I have been employing school leavers for more than 30 years. Standards have noticeably declined despite the enormous extra sums thrown at the problem. Teaching reading, writing, and basic numeracy to 18 year olds has been dumped on employers. The numerous direct taxes I pay mean the Government takes almost 70% of my income after expenses. Yet I still have to pay again for private education, healthcare, and pension provision because what the state offers me in return for my taxes is little choice and very low quality.

  • Steve Robson

    Your obviously not doing quite so badly as everyone who claims to be overtaxed if you can afford private education and healthcare. I also don’t believe you pay 70% direct taxes unless you have an extremely poor accountant. I can’t see how you can pay that even without legitimate avoidance and all the self employed people I know, pay much less tax than they should through a combination of the tax system being beneficial to them and dubious practices I’d rather not know about.
    I’m reasonably satisfied with my children’s state education and its definitely better than mine was. My observation is that it seems to depend how you look at it; lefty/Guardian readers I know think education has improved but the more right wing Daily Mail or Telegraph types seem to think its gone downhill Perception is all. I think a lot of private education is over-rated and more a reaction to the above view rather than because its always better. My son’s school gets 80% with five proper GCSE’s despite being a comprehensive, averae private chools get 90/93%, but they partially select and have interested parents by definition. I would agree that there are still too many poor schools, but less.
    The early years programme may have some of the features you note, but it also deals with poor parenting, which is a fact of life and the real cause of many of the problems you listed. I too wish that wasn’t the case and do blame benefit dependency, but if its a fact, the government does have to act. The biggest shame is that the government, like the last one, wimped out on addressing benefit dependency and the cycle of poverty when they had the chance. Labour has traditionally been a party of work, with a big focus on full employment, so to not address this problem is perhaps unforgivable, and the worse consequences are not just for the taxpayer, but for the people born into this underclass created by the last 30 years of government. They should have listened to Frank Field.
    Of course I don’t believe your view that they are “deliberately creating dependency for votes”. Far too conspiratorial. There just trying to address real challenges and it costs money, which has to come from the taxpayer. The laughable thing to me is that this website is dedicated to opposing waste, identifies the odd unnecessary job, teachers being paid £50K pa and a junket every now and again, when the real waste is not addressed. That is the size of the benefits bill for one, the wars for two and to cap it all the biggest waste of resources in the history of public expenditure, paying for the failure of the supposedly superior private sector in the bank bailout!

  • Call me Dave

    http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Polly_Toynbee
    Author’s note: The above is 99.98% true. Polly is such a natural comic creation that little exaggeration is needed to turn her into a joke.
    This article pretty much sums things up.

  • Call me Dave
  • William of Occam

    I actually work in the not-for-profit sector (not the actual public sector but pretty close) and I agree 100% with the TPA about the waste, overstaffing, and folly. What makes me angry is the way the public sector does not understand that it is consuming the country’s wealth, not making it. People like Steve Robson would argue that the public sector makes a major contribution to this country, but I would not – it’s a case of the tail trying to wag the dog. Public employees are public servants, and as such are answerable to all members of the public, not vice versa. Unfortunately few of them seem to understand anything about service.
    Steve Robson lists the improvements in society since 1997. I would challenge his list. Racism has not disappeared, it has just gone underground. The new drugs and treatments would have happened anyway, the NHS is stuffed with money. My local hospital has hardly any patients so any waiting lists must be for the parasites’ convenience. Some people with social care needs may have better lives but most of them have just learned to stop complaining. The new schools, early years schemes/ children’s centres, and university buildings were all planned and budgeted for under the Conservatives. The minimum wage has just drawn in hundreds of people from overseas. I don’t think anyone sane can think we have better education, all you have to do is listen to people on the bus, they speak English as if it were a foreign language; ask them about almost anything and you can tell that the life of the mind is a totally closed book to them, in many ways all those years they spent at school were a complete waste of time. I miss the smoke in the public places, it was better than the smell of the traffic not to mention the people. Do all gay people really have more freedom since 1997? Well I’ll give you that one Steve, but as a member of a similarly-sized minority (unmarried and childless heterosexual)which is just treated as a cah cow by this government I very much doubt it.
    That leaves the only real advance as the peace in Northern Ireland. A very expensive peace in my view.
    So….As a not very well-paid taxpayer, whose civil liberties have been eroded and treated as disposable luxuries and whose disposable income now makes up the shortfall in my 85-year-old mother’s pension, all I can do is avoid tax whenever possible, pay cash to all workmen, and refer to public employees as parasites at every opportunity.

  • Roy Tallis

    In my experience there is a feeling of guilt (paid from taxes)in the public sector which, when combined with the very clear victim mentality (underpaid, under-appreciated, overqualified, making sacrifice for the community) which creates a bunker mentality among public sector employees. This is endorsed by high profile supporters like Polly Toynbee.
    It is support which is counter to the interests of the individuals themselves. Many are institutionalised and would love to find an escape route. The more they are attacked, the less likely are they to have the confidence to take control of their own lives and the more they will seek support of colleagues.
    It may be worth praising rather than criticising. By this means you may give confidence of those withing the system to criticise its expense and inefficiency. Some of the more capable know better than any outsiders what a waste of their lives a career in the public sector represents.
    Set them free rather than hunt them down.

  • Call me Dave

    Roy, agree with all of your post apart from the idea we should start praising them. The public sector mentality you refer to will not change by praising them. Only exposing them will gradually change behaviours and it has to take the form of both a dripping tap and a big stick. Going soft will change nothing. It will merely reaffirm the belief that the world (tax payer) owes them a living.

  • Steve Robson

    I’m now at the point that I’d genuinely like to either see the whole public sector abolished. It would mean that people making inane comments like the last three would get their way. Of course it would be a complete disaster, but sometimes that is the only way to teach people like you a lesson and in some ways it would be a price worth paying. Of course many excellent and, you’re right, underappreciated people (would any of you really be social workers? care workers? policemen?)would lose their jobs, but as everyone would suffer equally as society completely broke down, disease spread and the economy completely collapsed (and I mean completely), it wouldn’t really matter.
    Alternatively, you may succeeed in only driving out the good people from the sector, but in many ways that is a worse option for me.
    I mean, really, do Right wing people ever listen to themselves. Does Roy Tallis really think that a life in the public sector providing housing for people, saving people’s lives in the NHS, educating children, providing leisure opportunities, mantaining the road network, preventing rat infested cafes from trading or improving public health is a wasted life compared to selling timeshares or double glazing to people who don’t want it or selling personalised number plates. What does he do that’s so worthwhile? How many people has he housed? How many leisure centres are open because of his working life? How many lives has he saved?
    Get a life!

  • Call me Dave

    Steve, I agree that abolishing the whole public sector would be a great start. We could then start to build a new one based on delivering services efficiently. We could rid the public sector of waste, poor processes and dead wood at one stroke. However we have to be realistic and endeavour to change what we already have – nice thought though Steve.

  • Steve Robson

    we could build a new one as efficient as the banks were or NTL!

  • Harry

    Steve Robson is playing the left-wing game of dscrying those who he disagrees with, if he cannot batter their arguments, as mad, stupid retarded, ignorant etc. Typical Frankfurt School/ Rand Corp./ Delphi Technique/ Trotskyist methodology. Chairman Mao would be proud.
    Polly Toynbee is the inherited mega-wealthy dead-beat who, if not jotting for the Guardian, would no doubt be – nothing but a spoil, irritating, ignorant scion of a past glories ‘great’ family.
    Gold/ Bi-metallic Standard Now! Slash all taxes! Flat Tax! ! Ring-fenced transparent government expenditure! Smash public service superannuation ! Sell all Council Houses and Housing Association homes to the highest bidder – remove rent controls! 20% pay cut for all public service ‘workers on more than £20,000 pa!
    There Peter – now run away and tell Polly all about the nasty people.

  • Brian Smith

    Of course we need both private and public sectors.
    Of course there is waste in both.
    The difference lies in the self-correcting nature of waste in the private sector. Inefficient companies go out of business and their wastefulness naturally comes to an end.
    Inefficient public sector organisations simply demand – and receive – more taxpayers’ support.
    This is why I support the tpa. If a Conservative government is elected next time round I hope the tpa will be just as active during their time in ofice. My support for the tpa has nothing to do with party politics.
    I am afraid that Polly Toynbee is an under-educated loudmouth who unfailingly expresses unthinking, hopeless support for a socialist system that most of us long ago abandoned.

  • Brian Smith

    Steve Robson makes the point that the biggest waste of all is the banks bail-out. There has been enormous wealth destruction, and mainly by bank leaders and regulators; so no argument there.
    However, the cost of supporting them has only been undertaken on our behalf by the government because the cost of not supporting them would be so much higher.
    This doesn’t make it OK and we cannot go on with a system where banks are too big to fail and enjoy all the benefits – when there are some to be had – while as soon as things go pear shaped, all the risks and costs fall to the taxpayer.
    We will have to wait and see as far as systems are developed to change this state of affairs for the future.