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However, I am sure that the entirely innocent directors will still continue to receive their huge salaries and bonuses and will still travel to the office in chauffeur driven limos.
The private sector works - for greedy "Just About Managers"
- Thread starter stockhausen
- Start date
Everything all around us (with few exceptions) has become a race to the bottom. Which applies to everything barring executive pay. Which, like Bitcoin, is shooting for the moon.
Today is actually a very strange time to be alive. There is such a massive disconnect between what is good for consumers, or good for society, and what is good for shareholders and/or CEOs. And even many situations where what is good for shareholders is fatal for the companies they influence (because, short-term gains rule everything).
Quality of just about everything that is produced is going down, down, down. Corners cut and always looking for "savings". Durability too is tanking - hardly anything is expected to last more than 12 months if they can help it these days. Which is ironic given how we're all supposed to be looking after the environment. But nobody here would deny the trend towards "planned obsolescence" which infects all product design.
If I could sum it up, I'd say that humanity is just an endless contradiction, and short-termism is allowed to run/ruin most things.
My outlook for humanity is actually pretty grim.
Today is actually a very strange time to be alive. There is such a massive disconnect between what is good for consumers, or good for society, and what is good for shareholders and/or CEOs. And even many situations where what is good for shareholders is fatal for the companies they influence (because, short-term gains rule everything).
Quality of just about everything that is produced is going down, down, down. Corners cut and always looking for "savings". Durability too is tanking - hardly anything is expected to last more than 12 months if they can help it these days. Which is ironic given how we're all supposed to be looking after the environment. But nobody here would deny the trend towards "planned obsolescence" which infects all product design.
If I could sum it up, I'd say that humanity is just an endless contradiction, and short-termism is allowed to run/ruin most things.
My outlook for humanity is actually pretty grim.
Not the only one.
They just need to in house the whole lot, get it back to government jobs done in house for the benefit of the populace as opposed to shareholders.
It's a ******* disgrace private companies take money out of public services as it is, this is just another example of the system failing as all they want is profit.
It's a ******* disgrace private companies take money out of public services as it is, this is just another example of the system failing as all they want is profit.
Won't change under a Tory govt, under any circumstances. Whenever there's a massive **** up like this, the first line May trots out is how well public/private partnerships work, how great they are (for them and their future employment prospects - aka the revolving door...)
Tories can't/won't ever acknowledge any failing in this area. Thisisfine.jpg
How have we turned this into a privatisation is bad debate in less than 5 posts?
Interserve do more than just public sector, they have huge private sector operations also.
It’s simple corporate mismanagement. Those companies will bid for any contract (private or public) regardless of if it is profitable for them or not just to get it, often bidding below cost to stop a competitor getting it. Ultimately it’s bad for the long term return for shareholders and led to the company failing.
One problem with public sector procurement is that the size of some of these contracts are huge so the number of companies that can bid for them is small. Meaning too few companies hold too many contracts so when they do fail it causes utter chaos. Same goes for the private sector also, most just want to deal with one supplier to cover the lot rather than lots of smaller suppliers.
Ironically lots of big contracts are often subcontracted and the big supplier just manages a load of smaller ones rather than delivering it themselves.
Interserve do more than just public sector, they have huge private sector operations also.
It’s simple corporate mismanagement. Those companies will bid for any contract (private or public) regardless of if it is profitable for them or not just to get it, often bidding below cost to stop a competitor getting it. Ultimately it’s bad for the long term return for shareholders and led to the company failing.
One problem with public sector procurement is that the size of some of these contracts are huge so the number of companies that can bid for them is small. Meaning too few companies hold too many contracts so when they do fail it causes utter chaos. Same goes for the private sector also, most just want to deal with one supplier to cover the lot rather than lots of smaller suppliers.
Ironically lots of big contracts are often subcontracted and the big supplier just manages a load of smaller ones rather than delivering it themselves.
I agree and it's sad to see, it won't change as they have vested interests in keeping it going but an objective assessment would remove it in a moment.
Instead we'll keep getting shafted so the haves can keep getting more.
Easy shot at the Tories, you are blinkered if you think this would be different under another government. They all want to outsource work, but more importantly, they want to outsource the responsibility and that's where it all goes wrong.
It's the contracts I have most issue with. You outsource to some third party, who in turn sub contract the work out further. Then when things go wrong and you get poor service, everyone in the chain passes the buck as they are all working to different t&cs/SLAs etc. What happened to paying a decent wage for an honest days work?
/rant mode off
Fixed for you on the grounds that we all know how well it all ended up last time everything was state owned and operated!
OP makes it sound like public finance is being used to refinance the business. It isn't.
How sure are you? Are you one of the new shareholders who've agreed to exchange debt for equity and given a vote of confidence to the existing management team? Or is this just another RSS feed post.
How sure are you? Are you one of the new shareholders who've agreed to exchange debt for equity and given a vote of confidence to the existing management team? Or is this just another RSS feed post.
What about other countries where state-operated institutions don't suck ass?Fixed for you on the grounds that we all know how well it all ended up last time everything was state owned and operated!
Like Germany, Japan, France...
That's not a failing of state ownership, it's a failing of this country.
To be fair, I actually think that "State Ownership" of utilities/infrastructure is a good idea.
I would be quite supportive of a "Re-nationalization" program, but only if I could be reassured that the whole thing didn't descend into a unions plaything like it did in the 1970's
The Unions were a major factor in the holding back and eventual collapse of British heavy manufacturing industry (Particularly ship building)
items from memory (Cant provide links)
Item; Coal mining
I recall reading that as far back as the 1960's, the NCB (National Coal Board for the younglings ) was interested in developing the concept of introducing robotic operation of the facework in longwall coal mining.
The miners in the Mine where they wanted to try this out were quite enthusiastic at the idea, but the NUM stomped on it.
Item; BL
People both then and now regarded BL as a bit of a joke but, In its day, BL was one of the largest vehicle manufacturers in the world. It was inovative too. Much of what we today take for granted in vehicle design was initially develloped within the BL group pf companies.
The thing that made it a joke was the bloody unions again!
The build quality was terrible, and They were always on strike. And over utter trivia too mostly. (EG I recall a massive strike over the fact that a painter had been asked to empty a waste paper basket! ( "Not my job mate" "Demarcation" etc)
Now, I here you say "What about the Management?". Well, Fair question, but again the problem here was the utterly moronic taxation policies of the Labour government at that time.
The marginal rates of tax for higher earners were so high it effectively set a maximum income. The problem with this, is that once anybody reaches that income, there is no real incentive to do any better. actually trying to improve the industrial situation in the nationalized industries would have involved a whole lot of hard work and political agro, (And you might even lose your job) and if you were not going to see any additional personal benefit from all this risk and effort. What is the point of making it. So the managers in the nationalized industries just put up with it and marked time till retirement.
By 1979 the general public was heartily sick of it.
Thatcher won her election on the ticket of removing the unions grip on the national infrastructure and nationalized industries.
Thatcher delivered, but the way in which she delivered was less satisfactory. even at the time, as a Thatcher supporter, I was unhappy with the privatizations and the "Right to buy" (Right to buy was all about making union members less inclined to strike in the future because they would now have mortgages to pay off each month)
But that is a subject for a different thread.
Fixed for you on the grounds that we all know how well it all ended up last time everything was state owned and operated!
No worse than now, but significantly cheaper.
Private companies running utilities never want to invest in them, just cream off more and more profit for the fatcats.
Just look at the trains. Often late or cancelled, routes closed due to not being profitable enough, mega expensive, dirty and uncomfortable, overcrowded, don't run the second a leaf falls on the line. They are no longer a "service" really.
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Soldato
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They also bought loads of competitor companies at inflated costs, Im assuming to get the contracts they held. A number of years ago they also started buying loads of small cleaning companies if memory serves me right.
It is as your say mismanagement, but it is planned mismanagement (for the bonuses I think) and those same managers will end up in another company and then probably do the same thing again and again.
Yep it's a big circus. A lot of the **** ups with things like the NHS's IT system is down to outsourced companies doing a half-arsed job for loads of money. Civil servants are usually left to clean up the mess (or the military in the case of G4S and the 2012 Olympics).
Soldato
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Ah you mean like all the fat cat labour councillors making more than the PM. And then there was the lovely mr "two jags" himself John Prescott, the fat git who overruled the council, town planning and everyone else who didn't want the amex stadium built where it was and with one stroke of the pen rode roughshod through everything and signed it off. That bloody place jams the roads every saturday afternoon theres a match on.
Just another Corbynista pot stirring thread I imagine.
Yes, nationalised British Rail really were the epitome of utter crap back then.
This is one thing that does frustrate me - see it quite a bit - these exec level types that run one company into the ground yet soon after are at the helm of another with the internal newsletter all full of what a coup it is this person joining, etc. - despite a simple google search showing just what a track record they have, etc. cue all their mates moving over with them over a few months, rinse the company, move on repeat leaving a mess of inflated numbers on the books, cut corners and other dodgy practises so as to get bonuses and so on that can take years to fix.