Fair enough. So you don't object to the NHS handing out contracts for some private company to run a hip replacement production line say. If that works as a great deal for the people who need hips, and the taxpayer who needs to fund it, then there are no grounds for any dogmatic objection, and it's really just a question of practicalities.

I'm not sure who the fundamentalists that think markets fix *every* problem really are. They don't for instance want to replace national armies with mercenary divisions that invade nations on behalf of the highest bidder, so defence and security are excluded. The average Eurosceptic Tory doesn't seem to want a market solution to their imigration panic, becasue that would be open borders for all. So I think this dogma you complain of doesn't actually exist as you describe it. They may be applying market solutions where you would not, but your enemy, like you, expressly denies that markets solve everything. If this is true, you can't fall back on a claim that their dogma is the problem in itself because they are arguably as flexible in theirs as you are in yours.

Crazy - NEVER .......certifiable however..





I think the main phrase here is “in Idea Conditions”
I have working in both Industry and the public sector so I could put

if we have 100 money
public= 100 money used to pay for 2 x as many staff as needed, new initiatives as your political masters want to a) be seen to do something, b) to buy votes at the next election. Due to “EU Competition Rules” building maintenance and stationary cost 3 x what it really costs. (after all how many £Billions have been waited by all political parties with their NHS / education reforms that they implement as soon as a new lot get into power)

private= 100 money, 5-10 gets taken to pay shareholders (which then pays our pensions), some is used to pay rent/ mortgage on privately owned buildings, rest is used to pay staff.

Have private companies where the government is the main shareholder? Like EDF/ orange are for the French government? they seem to be doing ok.

Generally speaking your want you own government to own the shares, not someone else's .

The share ownership is I'd say a separate issue from the management and the guiding mission of the business. Essentially you sell shares to raise capital to invest to then make more profit. I have no objection to that, provided the government retains the ability to control the utility in question. So if say UKGov wanted to sell 30% of the royal mail to raise money to improve the service, no problem with that at all.

The problem, IMO, is that businesses that are primarily owned by the capital market (where more than say 66% of the shares are held by 'private investors') have motivations which, while perfectly understandable, are at odds with the provision of essential services to a whole society. At the end of the day private businesses are about maximising profit to maximise shareholder benefits. That is, IMO, incompatible with the provision of a service that every member of a society considers essential to the well being of that society as a whole. We all need sanitation, we all need education, we all need medical care at some point. These things should not be governed by the profit motive.

I have no objection to many of the services I use and products I buy being provided by private enterprise. I have no wish, for example, for the government to tell me which car is available for me to buy and i do see the idea that (for example) an internet connection is somehow a 'human right' as farcical. There are many aspects of life where competition and 'the market' are perfectly valid systems to apply to achieve the best result for the majority. What I don't like is when things we all require are run in a way that is not in all our interests and when things that in theory we all 'own' are sold from under us and end up giving us a worse service for a higher price while the majority see little or nothing of the ensuing extra profit. Or when a state run business is privatised and the only effect is that the executives change the title on their door and treble their pay cheque, while making a big chunk of the people who do the day-to-day work redundant and as a result dependant on the state.


Can state run businesses be bad? Yes, absolutely. Can privately run businesses be good? Yes, absolutely. Is the reverse of those two statements also true? Of course it is. Any one who believes that either paradigm is some kind of panacea to all problems is an idiot.

Jon

Unfortunately the incentives still get out of whack. Airbus wanted to merge with BaE last year for instance, the deal fell through because the French government didn't want to dilute its shareholding in the overall company and the German government didn't want to press the issue when they have other, bigger, arguments with the French on the go. So that is an example of a company making its strategic decisions based on the wants and desires of politicians.

Another problem common in the French system is that of private companies suddenly getting new bosses with no industry experience at all. It is routine for high level civil servants to be given large French companies to run for no reason other than rewarding loyalty. Then it is routine for them to both answer to politicians, and to use those political contacts to protect their companies from competition, or to secure them cheap loans.

There can never be a clear dividing line between these companies that the government for whatever reason *must* control, and those which they just can't keep their sticky fingers off for no good reason. In the end you get absurdities like Strategic Yoghurt

That's just bad contract writing by the Government. It is not hard to put enough penalties (and maybe an insurance bond) in to ensure that if a private Company does walk away the government gets enough money. That will push up the price the private Co tenders for to something nearer the real figure

That's not how it works. In a big procurement you are supposed to make sure that all bids are assessed for both their ability to deliver at the given price (by examining their business model for weaknesses such as you describe) and their ability to deliver at all (to weed out those who pitch too cheap and then go bankrupt).

If a government department is awarding large contracts in the way you describe we should probably outsource their activities.

My understanding comes from a little knowledge and a little experience but I could be easily wrong. However the likes of serco and virgin have been struggling with managing out of hours care. It's why my friend clocks £2000 a weekend doing out of hours shifts. A lot of general practice and indeed medicine in the UK is done through goodwill. Example: I used to stay on a ward in hospital until 7pm occasionally despite being only paid to be there until 5pm. Other doctors were the same.

There are more nurse practitioners being used because having doctors are too expensive. Indeed I've just heard they're gonna try and appoint physician's associates (the term was changed because physician's assistants are banned in the uk) because there aren't enough GPs.

Don't get me wrong, I have had experience (blessedly from the sidelines only) of government procurement processes and I know they are useless. Serco and the likes generally win everything because they have the people who know how to fill out the ineptly constructed tender documents. To make matters worse they learn nothng from mistakes because half the people running tenders have been hired for some other purpose, and the ones who do actually work in procurement get shunted from one department to another, working on completely unrelated stuff.

I was doing my thing of being facetious with a serious point, it is the process of awarding contracts that is most broken about the whole thing, and the only way it can get better is if either the government hires expensive but good project managers who can put a complex proposal together, or if they outsource that task ahead of all others. That's the only way to end up with people who can tell if the public will get a good deal by contracting out a service; otherwise we're stuck with idiots making guestimates based on RFPs full of irrelevant questions.

The problem is a lot of commissioning stuff gets hidden away. Things aren't transparent. The commissioners can tweak things so only certain organisations can bid and a lot of the time it means private companies.



There are a lot of idiots in a lot of depts including commissioning (IMO only). You are completely correct in that there's a lot of form-filling and hoop-jumping, and "professional hoop-jumpers" will always win.