Way more ancient than you, Dambrosi!
Looks like we are bound disagree in principle on the regional wage thing, but just to clarify a few points:
...I'm sorry, but I have yet to see any evidence that this is really true, or that it is necessarily a Bad Thing, except from an ideological standpoint. After all, this has presumably been the situation for many years, but nobody's piped up about it until Our Glorious Coalition arbitrarily decided that the budget had to be balanced, even if it kills us?
No, it's been a recognised problem for a long time. 1980's at least. Sure maybe nobody's actually proposed
doing anything about it until times are as tight as they are now.
And it isn't unique to the public sector either. Same thing happened with single dominant local employers in the 20th century (like Clarks in Street, Unilever on the Wirrall and so on). A single dominant and even slightly benevolent employer tends to dissuade other businesses from entering owing to (a) relatively high wages for skilled staff (b) relatively low availability of skilled staff because they are tied up with the dominant employer.
That's old-fashioned economics and it isn't fair to blame the Coalition for it.
Now, just to preempt you, I'm not saying that the Civil Service is in monetary terms universally a benevolent employer, but that given national wage schemes it becomes so in poorer areas of the country.
Think about the vital work that public servants do - not just nursing, policing and other emergenc6y services, but also binmen, benefits admin, social workers, the necessary bureaucracy to run councils across the country, and tons more - all overworked and underappreciated, all absolutely vital to our way of life. They've already seen their work outsourced, their pensions (however you might want to pretend they don't deserve them just because private pensions have been slashed over 30 years) frozen and threatened, and their work ridiculed - this bullshit is the last thing they need, phased in or not.
This line of argument doesn't carry any weight with me. I've seen and worked alongside plenty of
underworked public servants as well (and yes, I've seen the other sort as too - but "all overworked and underappreciated" is just useless hyperbole). And it is not at all reasonable or fair to protect the public sector from the tribulations of the market at the expense of the already burdened private sector.
And the private sector is equally absolutely vital to our way of life, as without it there could be no public sector.
Plus, it isn't just about public v private. There's the whole voluntary and charitable sectors to consider as well.
More to the point, I want the Welfare State to still be there for them, in public hands, free at the point of entry - just like it was for their parents. I don't think dogma-driven back-door privatization and corruption of their underlying values in the name of the Almighty Invisible Hand Of The Market is going to safeguard that. You might be able to trust the free market with public services, I don't trust them with their private services!
There's room, I think, for some more reasoned analysis and discussion of what can sensibly be supplied how out of the Welfare State, as all the political argument at present seems to split along idealogical party lines. But I don't, for example, see why total public ownership is a necessary precondition to a free-at-the-point-of-entry NHS for example.
If we cut out some of the hyperbole (probably on both sides) we can maybe have a constructive discussion about it.
Phi's claim at least makes sense. But civil service jobs are already outsourced to regions. The ONS, for instance.
Omigod. Blast from the past. That was my second job (after the biscuit factory). One of the few things that I remember about it was the security pass you needed to get in the door had the same design as the Naval signal for "man overboard".
