I'd like to pose a question directly to Brompt, who always manages to stick up for every piece of Governmental gerrymandering.

In 2013-14, the Government will spend £720billion. Do you honestly believe all of it is completely necessary?

Discuss

Of course some of it is of arguable necessity. Asa start, do we need to replace Trident

But once you examine the detail of anything, inluding the sub £1m/yr advisory quangos, there are cases both ways. Within their specific remits they actually do good and productive work. The network of sinecures is a myth perpreated by the Mail etc.

You mentioned 'Climate Change Oficers'. Another title is 'Sustainabilty Managers'. They're job is to identify and manage waste. That arranging means things like getting best deals for recycling and making sure staf use them, sorting lights that turn off when zones of the office ar unnocupied or systems that log off and power down idle workstations.

What's bad about that?

A few posts back you accused me of refusing to discuss 'things that really matter'.

And you've just done it again by only responding to the most irrelevant part of what I said.

For what it's worth, it was a bit of pedantic semantics thrown in to wind people like you up.

It's Sunday by the way. I like reading. Not much of a clubbing sort.

You should write for the Mail

Typical response. Meaningless guff.

You hit just the right tone of outraged ignorance at the real world

No my friend it is you who has never stepped foot in reality. In the real world we manage to comply with anti discrimination law without the need for a specialist officer on the subject.

My Operations Manager is the boffin on all of that, he probably does the work of 7 Civil Service bureaucrats all by himself - and for less money and a worse pension. In the real world of business, what matters is selling stuff for more than you buy it for. Only the public sector has the time to worry about diversity training.

The country cannot afford all these one-trick-ponies.

echo of some rose tinted age where we didn't need this stuff.

We don't need this stuff now. The Government themselves say the amount of quangos has doubled since 2005. I seem to remember 2004 being pretty much alright.

Good whack but not a King's ransom.

Whether all of the £500,000 goes to the employees themselves is none of my concern. The point is if you cut all these jobs from every council, you eventually end up saving a very significant number while hurting nobody.

I see councils & Government going after the needy and disabled to 'save money' while protecting these bureaucrats, non-jobs and needless spending. I'd rather cut Diversity Officers than disability benefits if that's okay with you.

Diversity is not some sop to minorities. It's about compliance with the law and about actually getting the best from your staff.

The law is the law and we have a justice system to enforce it. Councils don't need to pay out for a gold-plating busybody.

I spent a chunk of my career in a similar body

Why am I not surprised?

If the PSA didn't exist its job would be done by Civil Servants in the Department of Health.

Good idea, first one you've come up with. We already pay for the Dept of Health, let's use it! Sensible people in the real world assume regulating healthcare is already the Department of Healths job, as healthcare in the UK is centrally managed and centrally funded.

The salary of £90k is more than twice the salary I was on when I left the Civil Service but it's not a lot for a Chief Exec.

It's alot when I'm paying for it and the very organisation they run is needless. Barclays can pay their CEO whatever they like, taxpayer funded organisations can't.

I suspect £6m is not running cost but includes grants that the organisation administers.

It's the total amount they receive from the Government - ie all of us.

Classic example of why the NHS needs managers etc.

Of course it does, but it doesn't need as many as it's got. The French get far better value for money out of their socialised medicine system than we do. It can be done without the sky falling in.

Or would you rather Doctors waste their time trying to be media professionals?

No and you knew that was a very weak strawman when you wrote it.

I'd rather cut management in the NHS to pay for more doctors and nurses. It can be re-organised, made simpler, cheaper and better. It can be done, other countries have shown it can be done. People like you will never accept that because a cut in bureaucracy cuts down your own employment chances, which is the insidious disease I mentioned earlier.

It is impossible to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it - Upton Sinclair, 1935

Edited by jamie745 on 02/12/2013 at 16:42

There are good reasons for providing services like PSA at arm's length....ensures the real experts get a voice that's heard publicly and in parliamnt.

I'd never heard of the PSA until I began looking at useless, expensive organisations and your comments on Lansley proves it doesn't help any expert get heard in Parliament either.

Look, let's boil this down to something incredibly simple; The Government borrowed £120billion last year to maintain spending. It's probably not going to be much lower this year or next. The national debt is increasing by 10% per year, it will have increased by 50% when Cameron leaves office.

That is not unsubstantiated. It's not left wing or right wing. It's not socialist or free market. It's not Daily Mail or Guardian. It's just undeniable, mathematical fact.

Our debt to GDP ratio is worse than Greece (or it was the last I looked). This is incredibly serious. Much more serious than whether Quangos have officers dedicated to interpreting equality law or not. This is so serious that if it goes on much longer, frankly the subject of our disageement will become incredibly small fry.

The Government is now over 50% of the British economy. Even Gordon Brown said his 'golden rule' of fiscal prudcence was for the State to not exceed 40% of the economy. This has gone beyond old fashioned left-right philosophy into pure madness.

We need to reduce public spending by £120billion per year. What do you believe should be cut to achieve that figure? I'm actually quite curious as to what you believe we could and should do without.

Your response to my 'ramblings' was utterly pathetic. There's no point discussing it further because you are so fanatically signed up to the Big Government, massive bureaucracy agenda.

Is your Greece remark your way of saying spending £120billion more than we've got every year is absolutely fine and nothing worth worrying about? I asked you to identify cuts and that was your response. Typical public sector 'oh who cares, it grows on trees anyway' response.

We may not be paying as high interest as Greece, but we still spent £45billion on debt interest last year. More than we spent on our Schools. More than on Defence. Are you telling m that is absolutely fine? I ask because it seems to be your opinion. Do you honestly believe public sector cuts are 100 percent nastyness and not even slightly necessary?

Do you not see that a 'we don't need to ever pay it back' attitude will eventually lead to us paying far more than Greece? Are you seriously that stupid?

You cannot be that stupid. Seriously.

Edited by jamie745 on 02/12/2013 at 21:39

Why do you think I'm unconcerened and think £120B a year is just fine?

Because you have still not outlined even £1 of Government spending you would cut. You do your very best to defend every pound of the overspend. You desperately hunt for reasons why not a single public official can be sacked. It's pathetic.

Greece is in terminal decline, with riots on the streets and the rich investing in Kalashnikovs. They're living with elected politicians being removed, the nation controlled by 3 outside officials and an openly Nazi party getting 20% of the vote as they're so indebted there's nothing their Government can do anymore.

Are you telling me it has to get that bad here before you let go of Climate Change advisors & Equalities Officers?

My point was simply that the markets don't seem over concerned which gives us a breathing space.

They're not 'over' concerned because they see a political attempt to reduce spending. The second Ed Balls comes in and advocates borrowing more, you'll see our interest levels spike hugely.

Of course we all know the Coalition hasn't made any cuts at all, they've merely slowed the rate of spending increases.

As you don't seem to want understand the complexity of real life government

I dont care how complex they've made it for themselves. They'll never sort it out until we take their money away, they're like children in that regard. Government will naturally overcomplicate things because it gives it an excuse to expand and spend more money, that's just a natural phenomenon.

while a Mailesque kill the quangos and sack NHS managers agenda is fantasy is obviously a waste of time.

Why do you have an obsession with the Daily Mail? You must read it far more than I do. I've never bought a copy in my life.

I have worked in the public sector. I've met these people. I know their attitude. They build little empires for themselves and really do believe the money will never run out. When I turned up, they were paying £8 for a pack of pens and £4.50 for a ball of string. When I questioned this, I was told by a frizzy haired vegetarian....'so what? it's not our money.'

I'm going to ask you again - for the third time. Where would Prime Minister Bromptonaut cut £120billion from? I am honestly curious.

It appears that your remedy would be to employ fewer civil servants.

Civil servants themselves - ones employed directly by the State - are very hard and expensive to get rid of. I agree. Even Council officials are difficult to get rid of. The problem is Councils would rather cut libraries than cut one or two of their own staff. Personally I'd rather lose the odd 'Diversity Officer' and keep libraries open.

The real scope for cutting is these 'non departmental public bodies' or Quango in English. They cost £35billion a year, they've doubled in number in only a decade and the vast majority do absolutely nothing of any value - for the public anyway. I'm sure other parts of the public sector oily machine find them useful to their own empire.

Some of these bodies are the dead hand of heavy regulation on business and are therefore actively harmful to private sector job creation. Too often we forget that private sector business is the ONLY generator of taxation which goes to pay for all of these people.

Maybe the sums suggest that making several thousand redundant would cost as much in severance and pension or dole money?

Severance is a one off payment which is worth it in the long term. I'm pretty sure a £35k bureaucrat working for the council would not receive the same on benefits. That probably is a media myth.

And the unemployment figures would certainly not look good.

Keeping people employed with borrowed money is a false economy in itself. I don't want to bring doom, but we may need to pursue the policy of Thatchers early days when 3 million unemployed was 'a price worth paying.' Eventually it was.

I am more positive and believe an independent Britain outside the EU, freed from much of the Quango enforced regulation would be better placed to benefit from the growing parts of the World and generate the jobs needed to actually pay for themselves. That wouldn't happen overnight obviously.

I doubt that nationwide buying of cheaper pens and string would make a big difference, so give us more details of your proposed solution.

Well you'd be surprised. If every single Quango & state department did it, it'd soon mount up. It was merely one example of the overspending culture within the public sector. It goes beyond pens and stringballs obviously. In business we now have the phenomenon of the 'Council quote.'

Every company will quote more for a public sector body than for a private business, because they know the public sector body will pay it. The blase attitude of the public sector to overpay is a goldmine for many businesses, they love it. We see it in everything from procurement & services to maintenance work and everything inbetween.

As for the £120billion? Well the obvious and easy start is EU contributions & Foreign Aid. That's £20billion right there. Next is the £35billion Quangocracy, at least £20billion of it can go.

Already we're down to £80billion deficit. Personally I'd abolish Child Benefit, cutting another £14billion and bringing us down to £66billion deficit. Obviously that's politically dangerous and would have to be 'phased out' with 5 years of it still being available to those on Income Support.

That's just a start, we haven't even looked at the NHS or Councils yet.

Oh, and scrap HS2.

I think you should make your own decisions right from the start.

Problem is, people swop partners and start again.

Exactly, so the only solution is to just scrap the payment.

Hear, hear. But nothing to do with smoking.

Oh monumental thread drift I admit.

Can you quote a source for the £350m spend on Quangos?

I said £35billion. If it was a mere £350m we wouldn't have a problem.

I actually rounded it down, according to the UK Parliament official website it's £38.4billion.

www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/k.../

I said from the start that I'm sure a few of them are useful - Ofcom would be a good example. I didn't even say to cut the entire £35billion. Even my ambitious cutting plans left £15billion to fund the ones we actually need.

We're not discussing whether there should be any or not, we're discussing how many of them we should get rid of.

Too many of them just do the same jobs other bodies are already doing, resulting in needless gold plating and double costs. Others serve no purpose other than to appease a political conscience somewhere - Diversity Officers are a prime example of a job created so as officialdom 'looks busy.' Others - like that regulator of regulators - are just a farce.

Most of them are job creation schemes for the public sector, there to comply with laws we don't need or to carry out rubber stamping which doesn't matter. Some are actively harmful in goldplating needless regulations which harm the private sector.

There's around 700 of these, they can't all be necessary.

Have you ever heaerd of the public sector equality duty?

No. So I'm sure it's not important. The private sector manages without it - except for massive multinationals who are almost political institutions themselves.

A fair number of the 700 cost nothing.

A fair number cost quite alot. £38.4billion to be precise. But I'm bored of arguing about that, because I've finally noticed your post last night (quoting the UK Parliament website) has something incredibly sinister buried within it. I had to read it a few times and even go to bed in between, but it's hit me.

whyarm's length bodies have a role in a democratic society or constitution:

I glossed over this last night. Usually when people talk fluffy language about democratic societies, they're usually celebrating the democratic principle. I've finally realised you're doing anything but.

Quangos can provide specialist expertise and have a longer-term focus than is afforded in a highly politicised environment.

Forget bureaucrats. That is the exact same rationale behind Technocracy. The idea that an expert, impartial third party will make better decisions than either the elected representatives or the public themselves. The reality obviously is they're no more or less likely to get their sums or judgement right than anybody else.

They can also benefit from the heightened authority resulting from their relative freedom from political considerations.

Translation into English; these unelected officials, funded by the taxpayer can have the authority to make decisions regarding public policy while being immune to voter opinion and the ballot box.

That is incredibly dangerous. Thanks Bromptonaut, you've only strengthened my dislike of these people.

In the name of both educating you and further winding you up details are here

I think we can add the....Equalities & Human Rights Commission (wtf?) to the list of bodies we can do without. How much does this organisation set us back every year?

Seriously, what a complete load of fluffy guff. Do these people really think everybody will be violently racist if they don't exist?

You'll probably tell me this is absolutely vital despite humankind making it to 2011 without it.

Typically, and your 'regulators regulator' is a case in point, these bodies have an obligation to report annually to parliament.

A regulator of regulators reminds me of the whole thing about how Space is just turtles all the way down.

In a nation without a formal constitution they're a powerful tool in holding government to account.

We have the most comprehensive constitution of any country in the world. It's so comprehensive it's all over the f***ing place - literally.

About four days ago I asked you a question. I've asked it about four times, I'll try again because I'm ever optimistic that you might answer.

Where would you cut £120billion per year from Government spending? Or £111billion, or whatever figure the Governments decided it is today.

Well I'd start with the Trident missile system

Don't you think we've run down defence enough already? Trident is not a day to day cost though is it. Once it's spent, it's spent.

Tilting at windmills, which is pretty much what you're doing would get us nowhere.

Well if you support the poor subsidising rich landowners and believe helping the low paid with energy bills is 'nowhere' then that's up to you. I outlined over £50billion of cuts in an earlier post without even mentioning windmills.

On the EHRC point of course it doesn't stop violent racists. It does though keep everyone on their toes about the sort of casual racist, sexist etc mindsets

Well I'd never heard of it until today, so I'm guessing casual sexists haven't either.

Nowadays the whistle would be blown long and loud on anyone trying that sort of thing or making assumptions that race or gender made people 'unsuitable' for paticular posts.

Sort of proving they didn't need to invent this Quango in 2011 then.

. Look at the constant stream of gender and race cases form the financial services industry

To be frank I don't think I've ever heard of a single one.

And we know those mindsets are still present in the private sector

I can't say I've noticed them. Unless of course you're one of them who takes the BBC approach to employing staff - one employee to fit every census box.

Hardly a day goes by without a TV crew outside the Central London Employment Tribunal filming the day's claimant.

Again, you must pay a lot more attention than myself to this. Aside from that bint trying to sue Alan Sugar I can't remember ever seeing a TV crew outside the Employment Tribunal, let alone every day.

But even if you're right and this stuff is coming before Tribunal all the time, that proves the law works and that we don't need a new 2011 established Quango to do it. My guess is everybody in it is doing the same job other people are already doing.

Some of the savings could be applied to conventional defence. No more foreign wars in supoprt of the Yanks though.

Defence is pretty much the Governments home insurance policy though isn't it, and we spent more last year on debt interest repayments than on Defence. We've run our defences down over the last 20 years while asking them to do more and more.

Gender discrim cases in FS companies seem to be reported very frequently in the Evening Standard.

I don't read the Evening Standard.

Some are ordinary workers but alot are at big money trading floor level. Of course the press focus on ths salacious angles about 'get your t*is our for the lads' type behaviour

I'm not particularly surprised by that. The Trading Floor is deliberately designed to stir primal senses in the style of a Roman battle - unnecessary really, they could do it all silently with a laptop, but it wouldn't be as much fun.

Being City banking these cases are concentrated in London and I rode past the ET building in Kingsway daily for years on my commute so I probably saw more than the average person.