Boris starts Oliver Letwin's savings list with attack on ID cards, national child register and public sector advertisements in The Guardian

London's Mayor has written a barnstorming article for today's Telegraph, complaining at the inflated cost of wine that will greet him and his diminished pounds on his forthcoming skiing holiday in France:

"I will be forced to sip that drink miserably, nursing it in a corner, while all around me hearty red-faced skiers from euroland will be singing shanties and calling for more, slapping their relatively un-devalued banknotes on the counter."

Defending George Osborne, Boris lays the blame for sterling's slide at Gordon Brown's door:

"Why is the pound at a 12-year low against a basket of other OECD currencies? Who is to blame for the cost of my vin chaud? I tell you who: it's you, Gordon. You did it, by running the largest budget deficit in the world, now hanging round all our necks at more than £100 billion. You wasted all that money in the good times, water-cannoning our dosh with so little thought or restraint that only Hungary, Pakistan and Egypt are suffering from comparable indebtedness, and Hungary and Pakistan are already in the hands of the IMF. You weakened the pound, Gordon, because you expanded the public sector without reforming it. You weakened the pound because you bloated the state pay-roll, and then you added the private finance initiative and the nationalisation of the Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock, and all the time you somehow believed your own lunatic propaganda that you had personally defied the laws of economic gravity."

And in words which, we hope, will reach the party's new Chief Waste Finder, Oliver Letwin, Boris - who has frozen the Mayor's share of council tax since coming to office - highlights public sector profligacy:

"Why are we still spending hundreds of millions on a new register of every child in the country? Why are we squandering billions on ID cards? Why does the Government still spend £800 million on advertising public sector appointments - very often in the Guardian - when they could be conveniently displayed online?"

Ending public sector advertising in The Guardian should be at the top of the Letwin-Osborne list of public sector economies.

Comments

[John France]

Absolutely brill!!!!

Well said Boris...1000% agree with you...

[Stop_Common_Purpose]

Good ideas. I don't know why public sector jobs aren't put on a government website. A lot cheaper than paying the Grauniad.

[City Hall]

Boris may like to look in his own backyard.
Why is he still employing at over 100k a man called Bob Pitt,who's time at City Hall seems to be spent slandering non Islamist muslims and attacking anyone who opposes Islamic extremism.

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/11/17/bob-pitt-still-slandering-iranian-dissidents/

[Rupert Matthews]

Well said, Boris. But the ID scheme is so useful to government in so many ways that we can be certain the civil servants will seek to persuade any incoming Conservative government to keep it. I hope that our team will remain firm on this.

[Dorian not a public servant]

Cracking return to form for the big lad. Boris was showing signs of going native with the Islingtonians for a while there but now he’s back on song.

Here’s another one. If houses are no longer being built and the construction industry is being decimated why do we still need fully staffed planning and building control departments? In every district and county? What, exactly, are they doing with nothing to do? Building houses out of Lego and then demolishing them because they used a blue brick instead of a yellow brick on a load bearing wall?

[Rog]

A couple of other ideas, spoken about before individually but they should all be put together to create the massive savings that are needed at the moment.

Scrap ID cards

Abolish the ridiculous tax credit schem and replace with a simplified tax structure (this doesn't need to be specified prior to the GE campaign)

Utilise the internet more effectively for government job advertising.

Abolish a few dozen (hundred?) quangos.

Get rid of regional assemblies. Just another layer of ineffective state spongers.

Wind up all of the wasteful 'inquiries' set up by the Labour Government that never seem to report, or if report are never acted upon.

On the costs side, reintroduce the pension fund tax rebate. This would, at a stroke increase investment in the stock market, improving confodence, and improve the return for all private pensions - £6 Billion, a chicken scratch compared with the waste of the last few weeks.

There's loads more, come on Dave put the boot in.

Come on Dave start putting the boot in.

[ACT]

Here's another public sector saving: anyone elected to a public sector position, who secretly intended (ie who didn't put this jolly wheeze before the voters, so that they might presume to express an opinion) to all the while *also* take, from a private employer (with significant commercial interests directly affected by his public sector job), a far larger payment on top of his public sector salary, shouldn't get the latter.

As far as this hoary Guardian cr*p goes: is there anyone left around here who actually believes in the free market? The reason the sordid Guardian attracts these government ads is because it is the private sector actor which has competed most successfully for them. And what do the anti-Thatcherites of Dave's Party want to do? Replace successful private sector outsourcing of a government function with, er, a gummint website. Yeah, that'll work.

But what a marvelous principle to establish: if a political party doesn't like the way private sector outsourcing of government spending works, because it doesn't like the private politics of the people who win those contracts, rip those contracts up! Only give government contracts to chaps who personally share our views, not those tykes who technically can do the job better, more cost-effectively and cheaper than our mates. But who, woe betide them, *aren't* our mates. Truly Dave's vision of Heaven: crony government-capitalism, with more than a whiff of Venezuela circa 1933, or Putin's Russia pretty much now. The next thing we know Dave's mob will be lolling about with oligarchs. Oh wait . . .

Still, I'm glad Mayor Boris has no personal axe to grind when it comes to attempting to hit a revenue stream of one of the commercial competitors of his principal paymaster. That really would be sleazy.

[Tony Makara]

Just imagine, for a moment, how much greater access a terrorist could gain by a well faked ID card? If anything ID cards will make the job of the terrorist much easier.

[The Bishops wife]

Why are we still spending hundreds of millions on a new register of every child in the country? Why are we squandering billions on ID cards?"

ID cards, what a waste of money and why?
These sinister Labour policys scare many normal law abiding folk.

Well said Boris.

[Another Councillor]

Dorian 09.31
The planning officers are revising all the local plans (now local development frameworks) to accomodate the regional spatial strategies being forced on us by the Government.
They are also searching out 5 years supply of building land (at rates described in the spatial strategies, but which now no longer bear any resemblance to reality).
So I would suggest we start by abolishhing regional spatial strategies ( as well as the regional assemblies and regional development agencies) as part of the push for localism

[James]

ACT

So, tell me when this open tender was won by the Guardian, and how often the contract (presumably open to all daily newspapers to bid for) comes up for renewal?

[ACT]

James, there isn't a 'tender' (ie a mandate covering *all* government spending in a given area) because, Thank God (and the fact that the Roons don't have their hands on anything other than Boris' office), we're not yet a command economy. Departmental and local government spend on these ads is devolved habitually to the lowest management level going. Which is to say, the tier of management closest to being likely to know where such ads might best be targeted. They're certainly the coves who will know a damn site better than a recycled Policy Exchanger sitting in a Whitehall office after the next election.

[resident leftie]

Tories really can't cope with criticism from the media whether partisan (The Guardian) or non-partisan (the BBC). Maybe if Boris decided to work full time as mayor rather than churning out articles for a rival he'd have a leg to stand on.

I'm pleased that Boris admires the fiscal policies of the Eurozone, and no doubt will support us joining the zone at this advantageous level. In fact, the pound has been overvalued historically, and I'm looking forward to it reaching its natural level of about $1.60.

As of last year, we are spending no more on the state pay roll as we were under the last government.

The Guardian is used to advertise government jobs (most are advertised online, too) because most natural Tories hate the public sector and wouldn't want to work for it. Therefore, potential applicants are more likely to read the Guardian. How many social workers do you think read The Daily Mail?

[Cleethorpes Rock]

Education Maintenance Allowance.

Regional Assemblies.

Public Sector Pensions.

MPs' expenses (lead by example)

Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Overseas Aid Budget

Merge DfID with Foreign Office

Scrap ID cards

Withdraw from Iraq

Withdraw from EU

Full privatisation of Channel 4.

Scrap the licence fee.

Scrap tax credits.

Abolish a few hundred quangos.

I think it would be a miracle if any of the above were axed or reformed. Instead, I expect to see more paperclip savings and scraps, cobbled together to come up with a headline figure which will be applied to a complex and obscure tax cut.

[Malcolm Dunn]

No idea Resident Leftie and neither do you.Or the Independant or the Times or the Telegraph. If we can find a way of saving money on job ads I would have thought even you would support it. It's merely an added bonus that it would hurt the Guardian.

[Peter W Watson]

LET US NOT FORGET THE COST OF COMMON PURPOSE - 95000 "GRADUATES" AT 4500 POUNDS A POP ALL TO CREATE AN INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT OF USELESS BLOATOCRATS. OR ARE THE TORIES SCARED OF EXPOSING IT?

http://www.tpuc.org/node/107

[James]

ACT

And you have perfectly hit the nail on the head.

Bias and partisanship can often be subtle and unconscious.

Take the BBC for example. I don't think anyone at the BBC consciously thinks "I know, we'll make sure that the corporation remains an unrepresentative liberal minded organisation with built in left wing views."

No, what happens is that the BBC mindset thinks a certain way, and believes that their way of thinking is correct and mainstream. Then they need to advertise for new programme controllers, managers etc. They want other people who share what they unconcsiously believe to be the right attitude. So when placing the ad where do they place it...the Guardian - thus reinforcing that mindset through the new hirelings.

The same is happening throughout many layer of Government. You say you don't want a command economy - and god knows neither do I. But your description of all those unaccountable junior managers making personal decisions on where to spend tax payers money with no hint of a tendering process is EXACTLY the problem!

Ask yourself this (and your reaction - your honest initial reaction - to it will be very telling about what you consider to be an acceptable, mainstream view of the world):

What do you think most of those civil service managers, or even BBC executives, would say to the HR director who said in a meeting "I think we should move all of our job adverts to the Daily Mail because it's cheaper"?

Can you imagine their horror!

[James]

(cont...)

And to reply by saying, as resident leftie has above, that the ads are in the Guardian because that's where the suitable people can be found is no answer at all. It is circular:

'we advertise in the guardian because it's where the suitable people are - and those of us deciding who is suitable are people who were recruited through the Guardian...'

Don't you see the problem?

[Cleethorpes Rock]

Without the government ads, the Guardian would shut down, as it has a circulation of about 12.

[Matt Wright]

Simple phrase and our policy - "Scrap ID Cards. A waste of money and they don't work. Bit like Labour really".

[David Bean]

I fail to see how the government setting up a web site to advertise public sector appointments is going to usher in a command economy. Leaving ideology aside, people who want a job in the public sector buy the Guardian because that's where the ads are: if the ads were on a web site, they'd go there instead, assuming, of course, that hiring people who are so inflexible as to be unable to move from one information source to another is not a good idea.

If the web site can be run more cheaply than the cost of the ads in the Guardian - which it fairly obviously can - then unless you think outsourcing to private contractors to be somehow intrinsically better than the government doing something for itself irrespective of the merits of either option, it's clearly a better idea.

[Jonathan]

A senior Conservative showing a bit of combative spirit.

Who said the age of miracles is dead?

[ACT]

While, James, I think you're slightly missing my point, I accept yours. Middling government employees are *loaded* with prejudices, self-acknowledged, self-denied, plain to see, hard to detect, and everything else in between. But that's not the point. The point is: if public sector jobs are to to be advertised, as part of a competitive, open-entry recruitment system (as opposed, say, to distributing them on the basis of hereditary fief, or because you are a 'sound' cove, or agree with the political opinions of the Minister ultimately, remotely responsible for your job), then that advertising should be done in: a.) the most cost-effective fashion way possible, in order to b.) secure the widest range of suitable applicants. If a private sector provider (in this instance, The Guardian) has established itself as the dominant market leader for this particular outsourced function, then all, or rather, most of what that says is about its other private sector competitors for such work. Ask yourself this James: if you didn't dislike the editorial opinions of The Guardian, would you care one way or the other that it has a successful ad-led supplement? Do you seriously think that simply because one applies for a job on the basis of having seen it advertised, one automatically agrees with whatever opinions can be attributed to the place where it was advertised? Does that mean that CEO/Director-level appointments made off the back of ads placed in The Economist, or Sunday Telegraph, or FT automatically ensure that those directors bring with them the opinions of The Economist, Sun Tel or FT? I suspect you don't think that.

As for the barking mad idea that, rather than open, private sector competition for such work, a government monopoly website will be an improvement, in terms of delivery, cost and efficiency, on recruiting public sector employees, why does even *one* Tory manage to believe such nonsense? Jobs.gov.uk will be the most leftwing thing on the internet since the BBC; it will be bloated; it will be horrendously costly; and it, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, won't work.

[Norm Brainer]

Jobs.gov.uk will be the most leftwing thing on the internet since the BBC; it will be bloated; it will be horrendously costly; and it, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, won't work.

If it only advertises jobs how can it be left wing? - and would that matter?

The current situation gives too much support to any one organisation with a political opinion - if they were all in a paper with a conservative view that might not be able to survive without it then I'd still see it as a problem.

There are lots of Jobs only websites that already have the software and even hosting for jobs.gov.uk so could be done for pennies.

[Carbon fibre hammer of Thor]

As the Government Offices of the Regions, the Regional Assemblies and the Regional Development Agencies are accountable to the ODPM, it is evident the real plan has been to set up a parallel EU government structure within UK. Set up by deceit and deception. By making sure that these bodies have the ability to use massive amounts of funding and staff, they can now start to run amok over our traditional democratic structure of local government.

The EU grants and funding keeps pouring in. Take the £320m of Objective One in Cornwall. Nobody really knows where that money was spent, except that it was frittered away in remarkably small sums £500,00 and £150,000 here, £60,000 there etc etc. By this means, and particularly with minimal proper accounting and probity checks, the money reaches back pockets, favoured consultants and the dishonest. The breeding ground for fraud and corruption has been created, and not surprisingly fraud and corruption begin to run rife. With it comes the added nastiness of threats, intimidation and bullying of those who hold up their hand and say look this is illegal.

If you suspect Common Purpose is active in your organization, or see a pattern of incredibly bad decisions, money being wasted, notice bullying, fraud, or threats, note the names of those involved (we've tracked down over a thousand) and please contact us. And publish the truth about Common Purpose as widely as you can.

[resident leftie]

Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | November 18, 2008 at 10:43

No idea Resident Leftie and neither do you.Or the Independant or the Times or the Telegraph. If we can find a way of saving money on job ads I would have thought even you would support it. It's merely an added bonus that it would hurt the Guardian.

I think a unified government portal for job ads is a very good idea. As for your other point, well, yes I do have an idea.

There is no government mandate to advertise jobs in the Guardian. Government departments and local authorities (including Tory ones use it for good financial reasons) decide where they want to advertise, and frequently chose it. It simply has the best public sector coverage, and the largest public sector readership (even amongst people not looking for jobs) in absolute terms, with The Times coming in second. It provides the best value for money per advert and per job filled. It also provides, on average, the best candidates.

Don't you love market forces?

[Nizhinsky]

Such a shame that Boris is so frequently underestimated as a gaffe-prone buffoon!

Boris you are a deeply insightful politician with a stunning and devestating mastery of the English language.

If only these abilities were applied in public speaking to the same extent!

[narcissa]

The point is, ACT, a website is now by far the most cost-effective and accessible form of advertising. The Guardian is expensive and inefficient. The fact that it is still the main conduit of public sector job adverts is a hangover from the days (not all that long ago) when internet access was the exception rather than the norm.

When I was responsible for placing such advertisements less than ten years ago, the Guardian and Times were almost the only options available for reaching the greatest number of likely applicants, not necessarily because they all read them but because the classified sections of those papers were market leaders in the fields of public appointments and law respectively. That is no longer relevant. Spending public money on the dead tree press for recruitment purposes is ridiculous, wasteful and should be stopped.

[snegchui]

On the advertising of Public Sector jobs, its is Triple A stupid to advertise in hardcopy of any description. To be politically neutral, you shopuld advertise across all hardcopy, - by their PC necks hang them. Who the deuce are you to say Management types wonn't read The Sun, and who the deuce are you to dictate worker-types won't read The FT (best unbiased source of information out and worth every penny in this distorting media world of ours).
Job Advertising in selected papers for public sector jobs is a taxpayers subsidy to those papers, nothing more, nothing less.
A properly-designed website run on a service-demand would pay for itself within 2 -3 years. The shrinkage of the Public Sector day edition of The Guardian would be paid for by less pressure on sustainable forestry.

[Peter W Watson]

Resident leftie - how many social workers let children die because the social workers can't do their job properly because they are so brainwashed in political correctness they can't see evil when it is right in front of their eyes? This country is a sick joke due to socialists and leftists.

[resident leftie]

Posted by: Peter W Wats>on | November 18, 2008 at 16:19
Resident leftie - how many social workers let children die because the social workers can't do their job properly because they are so brainwashed in political correctness they can't see evil when it is right in front of their eyes? This country is a sick joke due to socialists and leftists.

You really are a sick puppy, aren't you, making political capital out of the death of a baby? And for God's sake blaming it on so-called political correctness!

Social workers devote their lives to helping people in difficult circumstances, where they have to tread the fine line between taking children away from their parents, and leaving them in danger. When it goes wrong, which it very rarely does, you damn well hear about it on the front page of the paper.

Some jobs entail risks. The armed forces have killed hundreds, if not thousands of civilians (including children) doing their best to do their jobs. Is this because "they can't see evil when it is right in front of their eyes"? No - it's because they have to make judgement calls and sometimes they are wrong. It's the nature of the job.

[Warhawk]

Leftie - sorry too many mistakes in your Animal Farm. Mostly due to a culture where decision making is discouraged along with excellence. Climbier case comes to mind - also the child abuse in Islington and the massive evidence of organized pederasty among the political classes in the UK - (Dunblane - Kincorra Boys Home - Jersey) - yet the thought police can arrest a man for slapping the leg of his son (Cornwall Social Services thios week) - the Soham Murders also caused by incompetent State Employees. Your State sucks and your government sucks. Sadly Cameron and his leftist sheep suck too.

ISLINGTON - linked to
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/08/30/do3007.xml

http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2008/03/jason-swift-islington-childrens-home.html

http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2008/07/zandvoort-network-jersey-dutroux.html

[resident leftie]

the massive evidence of organized pederasty among the political classes in the UK

By all means bring forth your massive evidence of organised pederasty among the political classes, and bring down the government.

Or, go and swivel your eyes at Peter W Watson up-thread. I'm sure you the two of you would be very happy together.

[Warhawk]

HERE IS ONE OTHER PARASITIC JUNK SHOP THE TAXPAYERS ARE BEING ROBBED TO FUND - SEE NEWSNIGHT TONIGHT - SHUT IT DOWN DAVEY BOY

LIBERATA
Tonight Newsnight hears from a whistle-blower who tells us the inside
story of Liberata - the huge outsourcing company which has today been
sacked by the government after it failed to provide grants for
sixth-formers. He tells us that the company was told a year in advance
that "they couldn't deliver the service" but they didn't tell the
government or the Learning and Skills Council. College principals are
outraged and tell us the Liberata team should be "shot at dawn". What's
more the whistle-blower tells us Liberata also had problems with local
council work. He says they failed to produce council tax bills in time
for the deadline so sent out thousands of empty envelopes to taxpayers
in the hope the council would never find out.