Wednesday, 25 August 2010

Comparing Like With Like

Polly Toynbee gamely sallies forth to lead the charge against the awful, awful coalition government that plans huge cuts in the public sector (unlike the huge cuts in the public sector proposed by Labour? Polly never mentions those..):
Professor Julian Le Grand, Tony Blair's adviser who created the quasi-markets of the NHS, talks of the public sector's "knights and knaves", prescribing competition as an antidote to laziness or absenteeism. Indeed, everyone can cite cases of knavish behaviour – the bloody-minded GP receptionist, a sullen council jobsworth or disobliging clock-watchers shutting down switchboards at 4.55pm, regardless. Bad service is unforgivable in public servants, but it is rarely compared fairly with knavish behaviour in the private sector: what public service would dare tell you to stay in all day to get a washing machine repaired without a fixed appointment? Or deliver goods unannounced so they must be queued for at some distant depot?
The problem being, Polly, that if I find a private sector company offering a service that doesn’t suit me, I can go somewhere else.

Not so with the public sector, eh?

For more detailed critique, see Angry Teen's take on it.
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3 comments:

  1. subrosa25 August 2010 at 11:05

    Aye Julia, time Polly hung up her notebook and pencil and wandered off to Tuscany to bother the wealthy Brits there.

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  2. RAB25 August 2010 at 12:32

    Poor old girl, her memory must be going, either that or nobody sends her mail anymore.

    How many times have the rest of us gone to their front door to find that the postie has slipped a card through the letter box stating...

    "Tried to deliver a package but you were out. It can be collected at your local sorting office in Alpha Centauri between the hours of 4am and 5am"

    You know perfectly well that they are lying, because you have been in all day and nobody has knocked at the door.

    They dont actually bother to bring the parcels with them, just the cards that they filled out back in the depot.

    And I remember when BT was a publicly owned company. If you wanted a phone line put in, they couldn't tell you which year they'd be calling round, leave alone morning or afternoon.

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  3. JuliaM26 August 2010 at 06:04

    "...time Polly hung up her notebook and pencil and wandered off to Tuscany to bother the wealthy Brits there."

    She'll never give it up. She's on a cushy ticket and knows it.

    "You know perfectly well that they are lying, because you have been in all day and nobody has knocked at the door."

    Have watched a few ParcelForce vans from the study window. They stop briefly, walk up the path, shove a card through the door (not carrying a parcel at the time!) then drive off!

    Luckily, my local depot isn't too far away.

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