Private sector is more efficient than the public sector

I can't believe how much we pay for things in the public sector.

I remember receiving new IT, they were just bog standard PC's that were available online for £400 if you wanted to buy them yourselves. But we had paid a little over £2200 each and there were hundreds of them.

Why is it that I as an individual could get a better price than a massive government department.

It's not a one off either, I don't think anyone in procurement has any idea of how much things cost.
 
Having worked in both I can safely say there is inefficiency in both. Which sector is best to run a particular purpose is not consistent for all things and directly influenced by what the purpose of the job is.
 
they are both as inefficient as each other. the same problems happen in the private sector as they do in the public sector. the old boys club in the public sector is just "networking" in the private sector.
 
Theophany said:
That doesn't refute my point that just a single political party is guilty of it.
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Never said they were.

Why is it if you talk about the Tory scum people think you're a Labour supporter? Truth be told I think all of the political parties in this country are undemocratic morons with too many selfish agendas.

Thompson_NCL said:
Thatcher was the daughter of a grocer, why would she care about the aristocracy? And what on earth gives you the idea that the aristocracy are the problem? Far from it, its the capital class which have profited the most from the last two decades.
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It's not about aristocracy, it's about greed.

She did everything to boost her figures and gain short term furthering her political career. It had nothing to do with the people of the country - if it had she wouldn't have privatised everything, she wouldn't have let all the mines and factories close and she would have supported the hardworking people up and down the country.

Not just the few ***** in the city making big bucks off the back of it all.

Deregulating the financial industry? Well we all saw how that ended.

That woman ruined this country, put thousands out of work, she's behind the suicide of every poor ******* who lost his job and threw himself off a tower block - all they wanted was a job and all she wanted was more money.
 
pitchfork said:
Never said they were.

Why is it if you talk about the Tory scum people think you're a Labour supporter? Truth be told I think all of the political parties in this country are undemocratic morons with too many selfish agendas.
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I didn't imply you were a Labour supporter, you inferred that to feed your own need to be aggressive all the time. The fact that you repeatedly use the word 'scum' and feel the need to use expletives merely highlight this fount of misplaced rage that you seem to be.
 
Theophany said:
I didn't imply you were a Labour supporter, you inferred that to feed your own need to be aggressive all the time. The fact that you repeatedly use the word 'scum' and feel the need to use expletives merely highlight this fount of misplaced rage that you seem to be.
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Please, the tories are greedy scum would need to be brought out into the street and put down like the dogs they are.
 
Another factor that differentiates public and private sector is consequence and risk. If the council wastes £1 million on some failed project they just try again with another £1 million. If that happens in the private sector, the company could go bankrupt and people will certainly lose their jobs. You probably couldn't find me an example of someone in the public sector losing their job due to spending money in a wasteful manner. Obviously this consequence adds the risk that forces people spending money to get good value for money, without this important economic mechanism, the result is wasteful spending.
 
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I once had a similar debate with a resident (I work in the Public Sector for the waste collection industry).

He accused us of poor customer service (because we told him we wouldn't come back for the bin he forgot to put out). He said he ran a business and would never treat 'customers' like we did.

I politely made the point that private business only has a duty to it's customers, which are often a group of similar people whereas the Public Sector has a duty to the collective (as opposed to the individual). It costs a lot to send a truck to someone's house for a one off collection, meaning in his case everyone's tax money was being spent on his request which is good for him but bad for everyone else.

Business may 'bend the rules' for a high paying client, but only to keep their business. The Public Sector has to impose rules that apply to everyone. By giving one person special treatment, you are by definition, using money that would otherwise go toward providing a good service to everyone else.

Now in a profit making business this is fine. If losing a small amount of money in the short term ultimately sustains a greater amount of money in the long run then it is worth it for the business. However, in the public sector where someone's business is guaranteed and cannot be increased/decreased then the motivation has to be doing what is best for the group, even if it means annoying a person or two in that group.
 
Amp34 said:
Since railways were invented they have been nationalised for about 20% of their life. Mostly due to the second world war...
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Only in the sense that most of them were losing money hand over fist and were likely to go bankrupt. That would have been disastrous at that point. So the government took over. They have been losing money ever since. The government now pays private companies to run them, with company being selected to be the one taking the smallest subsidy. The line being run most efficiently by any measure just happens to be the only government-run one. Which is all very embarrassing, so the Tories want to sell it off again.
 
I work in the public sector and have done for 12+ years, the frustrating thing for me is I work close with a private sector company and they are as bad as us in making decisions.

The one thing I cant understand is that we seem to work in a constant state of crises management, we don't invest any money in trying to stop things happening at all and only act when its "worse case scenario" take public toilets in the past 10 years I have had a budget of £34,000 a year to repair and maintain 24 toilets, its a joke I cant do anything with that at all that will improve or even keep the status quo.

Litter and dog bins are something people constantly ask for, my budget £10,000 a year to repair and replace 1200 bins, its just not possible to deliver quality with them figures.

I have explored different ways of getting income such as paying to use toilets but if your paying you would want to walk into a decent, clean building.

I feel I spend most of my time bashing my head against a wall. I have now been asked to write a report to improve the toilets, this will be the 5th report in the past 15 years, the past 4 which were completely ignored!
 
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