The Annual Royal Financial Report

[Robert_Hall]

At least Kensington is being converted to museum use as the apartments are vacated. Thank the gods that the US did not get it for an embassy! As it is,  they are building a whole new complex South Bank, near Battersea, vacating Grovesnor Square. About time, that place looks like a fortress.
 Buck. House is also a workplace for many people, not just a royal residence, so safety alone warrants the cost of repairs and updates. Remember the roof fire at the last Jubilee?

[joan_d]

I hadn't realised that a new US Embassy was being built on the South Bank.   Thank goodness.  The Grosvenor Square building has been an eye sore for decades.   Dread to think what the new building will be like.  It can join all the other monstrosities on the South Bank.

[CHRISinUSA]

Hi Joan, yes, as Robert indicated, I pulled my data on Britain's Civil Service right from the Civil Sevice's own website, and the American comparison from theirs. 

You asked about France?  Theirs is a little more complicated, but they are MUCH WORSE than Britain.  The summary (as of 1999) was:

Civil Servants 1,964,026.  However, this includes 12,000 young people on limited time contracts, so 1,952,026 full time equivelent. 

Based on the French population of 65 million, this equals 1 Civil Servant for every 33 citizens.

[Robert_Hall]

Yet, with all these civil servants, US, UK, France, try and get a live person to talk to or resolve issues!
 joan_d, the new US embassy complex is, if I recall the article correctly, west of Battersea and in a former industrial estate. Supposedly much easier to secure and much larger, instead of having various office spread all over London. Of course, by the time it is built, the area will be surrounded by high-rise mega-condos,.

[Janet Ashton]

  There is no doubt that the public sector is bloated in the UK -

Plenty of people doubt it, actually.

[joan_d]

  There is no doubt that the public sector is bloated in the UK -

Plenty of people doubt it, actually.

Such as ??    Only today we have a report that along with MPs at Westminster, we have numerous local councillors and town councillors making a total of 26,000 costing the GBP £500Million.   Makes the Royal Family look like value for money.

[Robert_Hall]

I do not mind paying taxes in  England- I actually share 2 homes there. but I am really frosted when I see our local MP has a second home in London, when she actually lives in Luton! That is an easy commute.  I know, I do it  frequently. And Beds. is way overloaded with councils.  Can't even get decent bus service we but we pay for council cars.

[Janet Ashton]

 There is no doubt that the public sector is bloated in the UK -

Plenty of people doubt it, actually.

Such as ??    Only today we have a report that along with MPs at Westminster, we have numerous local councillors and town councillors making a total of 26,000 costing the GBP £500Million.  

Yes, I am sure you can cite some report or other (published where, by the way? who commissioned this? who can vouch for its veracity and objectivity?), claiming that x,y,z is abusing this that or the other, but surely you are quite missing the point. My point is that I consider our research, our health, our history, our safety, our fire service, our education, our transport and the plethora of other public services you quoted in your original post as "bloated" irrelevancies to be worth paying for through taxation. I also consider that professional staff - far better qualified than people paid the equivalent rates and considerably more in the private sector - deserve as a bare minimum salaries that keep abreast of inflation. I do not want to be sitting at home one day asking myself if I dare visit the doctor or dentist for a minor ailment because I cannot afford to pay £1,000s up front for the treatment I receive. Nor do I want my house to burn down because I had the wrong insurers. When I feel like doing so, perhaps I too will start to see public services as"bloated". Until then, I beg to differ and I trust I do so without recourse to offending people.

[TampaBay]

Can't even get decent bus service we but we pay for council cars.

What are "council cars"?

TampaBay

[joan_d]

Janet, I don't think this is the messageboard to debate the rights and wrongs of the British Public Sector - let's agree to differ.

[Janet Ashton]

Janet, I don't think this is the messageboard to debate the rights and wrongs of the British Public Sector - let's agree to differ.

Ok - cool! :-) We're off topic - but you were quite vehement, so so was I!

[Janet Ashton]

I do not mind paying taxes in  England- I actually share 2 homes there. but I am really frosted when I see our local MP has a second home in London, when she actually lives in Luton! That is an easy commute.  I know, I do it  frequently. And Beds. is way overloaded with councils.  Can't even get decent bus service we but we pay for council cars.

THis is still off topic - but if you don't mind I will take this one up. MPs - quite agree; plenty of public or private sector workers on very small salaries commute this distance. I know public sector workers who commute to London from - well - close to the Scottish borders. On privately run trains that charge what they charge.

But as to Beds and its bus service - I imagine there probably is a reason why you pay for council cars and can't get a bus - and that's because in answer to clamours for the public sector to be reduced in size the bus service - along with most of Britain's - was contracted out to Stagecoach, a private sector organization that has presumably axed all the routes it considers non-profitable. Stagecoach is run by a person named Brian Souter, who uses the national media as a vehicle for his homophobic rants. Any public sector director doing such a thing would be disciplined and possibly dismissed under the organization's diversity policy, but since Souter owns his it seems he he has free reign to do as he likes. HOWVER, councils arent quite public sector organizations as such - I'd class them as legislative staff, who place themselves in the public eye and can respond as they see fit. Which public sector employees are usually contractually prevented for doing.

As for the Civil Service - it is not quite right to say that it is "immune to change and reform". Over the past fifteen to twenty years the Civil Service has seen wholesale reforms of its pension system, its grading system, its retirement age and many other things. It is subject to continual reviews and scrutiny. Sometimes governments cannot go as far as they and the right-wing press seem to wish - but this is usually because public sector staff are (still) tolerably well unionized and won't take things lying down. When things look good in the private sector, people ridicule this: "Why should I join a union? If I don't like my employer, I'll find a new job!" But when things get tough, they start to attack: "These public sector workers: why should THEY have final salary pensions [they don't, necessarily, by the way] when MY pension has been embezzled by the person I bought it from?!" [whose accounts, salaries, etc are certainly not subject by the media scrutiny that attends the public sector - largely of course because people have this notion that in some they "don't pay" for the private sector from whom they buy their pensions, their food, often their health care - and so forth.....]