Let's scrap more stuff
Poll: Let's scrap more stuff
Total Members Polled: 327
Discussion
Right following on from yesterday's brilliant victory for me, where I saved the country £7bn by scrapping DCMS, these departments all seem pretty unessential to me. That's over £62 billion worth of savings right there. Half of our budget deficit. So what do you reckon? Put a tick next to each one you would be happy to scrap.
How many people either directly (civil servants, contractors, service providers) or indirectly (food, home services, etc) earn their living from these departments? How would they earn a living if the departments didn't exist? What would be the benefits cost of throwing these people out of work?
There's a (very) senior civil servant lives fairly close to me. To my certain knowledge he employs a nanny, a gardener/general factotum/odd job man, and a housekeeper, all pretty much full time (they alway seem to be around, anyway). He uses a local taxi service to take him to and pick him up from the station every day. How would you explain to these people that chucking him out of work is a good idea?
There's a (very) senior civil servant lives fairly close to me. To my certain knowledge he employs a nanny, a gardener/general factotum/odd job man, and a housekeeper, all pretty much full time (they alway seem to be around, anyway). He uses a local taxi service to take him to and pick him up from the station every day. How would you explain to these people that chucking him out of work is a good idea?
Gaspode said:
How many people either directly (civil servants, contractors, service providers) or indirectly (food, home services, etc) earn their living from these departments? How would they earn a living if the departments didn't exist? What would be the benefits cost of throwing these people out of work?
There's a (very) senior civil servant lives fairly close to me. To my certain knowledge he employs a nanny, a gardener/general factotum/odd job man, and a housekeeper, all pretty much full time (they alway seem to be around, anyway). He uses a local taxi service to take him to and pick him up from the station every day. How would you explain to these people that chucking him out of work is a good idea?
I understand the sentiment, but are you really suggesting we maintain a bloated public sector... forever... simply because we don't want people to lose their jobs? (which aren't needed)There's a (very) senior civil servant lives fairly close to me. To my certain knowledge he employs a nanny, a gardener/general factotum/odd job man, and a housekeeper, all pretty much full time (they alway seem to be around, anyway). He uses a local taxi service to take him to and pick him up from the station every day. How would you explain to these people that chucking him out of work is a good idea?
Gaspode said:
How many people either directly (civil servants, contractors, service providers) or indirectly (food, home services, etc) earn their living from these departments? How would they earn a living if the departments didn't exist? What would be the benefits cost of throwing these people out of work?
There's a (very) senior civil servant lives fairly close to me. To my certain knowledge he employs a nanny, a gardener/general factotum/odd job man, and a housekeeper, all pretty much full time (they alway seem to be around, anyway). He uses a local taxi service to take him to and pick him up from the station every day. How would you explain to these people that chucking him out of work is a good idea?
We could set up a Ministry of Silly Walks that would employ thousands of people at £100K per year and they can spend their money in the economy and solve all our problems.There's a (very) senior civil servant lives fairly close to me. To my certain knowledge he employs a nanny, a gardener/general factotum/odd job man, and a housekeeper, all pretty much full time (they alway seem to be around, anyway). He uses a local taxi service to take him to and pick him up from the station every day. How would you explain to these people that chucking him out of work is a good idea?
If he's that good he could be more productively employed in the private sector, possibly running his own business.
Gaspode said:
How would you explain to these people that chucking him out of work is a good idea?
Is the explain not more along the lines of how a country is bankrolled? They need to understand where the money is going to come from, i.e. taxation. If the income dries up, then the expenditure goes with it. miniman said:
I voted for the last four, but the reality is that ALL of them need significant cutting back - perhaps a target of 50% would be a good start.
My thinking is that as long as they exist they will keep lobbying for more money and more powers, and even a temporary cut of 50% will soon be reversed. Remember that these civil servants and special interest groups are experts first and foremost at lobbying the government for money. Whatever good they do comes a distant second. By the way, the figures in brackets are their budget in billions, the last two in millions.
miniman said:
I voted for the last four, but the reality is that ALL of them need significant cutting back - perhaps a target of 50% would be a good start.
There's also my own moral and ideological argument in there, which is that I believe the state should do significantly less. That's why I picked DCMS yesterday - it's not that I don't think it's full of sincere and competent people who believe in what they're doing and do as good a job as they can. Rather I believe that the state is not the best guardian of these aspects of our national life, and that it is not right for the state to position itself as their champion.At the moment my ideology is well aligned with the practicality of cutting back massive amounts of government spending, and going by whole departments rather than budget reduction seems to be the best way to achieve it.
Fittster said:
Trident. Scraping replacement saves £30ish billion.
Edited by Fittster on Wednesday 10th October 12:52
and let's face it, the sort of people we end up at war with these days aren't specific countries that can be nuked these days, they're more organisations operating within countries usually surrounded by millions of innocent civilians. Nuclear weapons are a relic that barely made sense 30 years ago, let alone today. Leave them to the Yanks.On the list though, the only one I think that we don't need at all is Equalities. Equality can be a policy, it doesn't need a specific office to enforce it.
Everything else can be reduced, but it'd be idiotic to cut them completely.
Fittster said:
Trident. Scraping replacement saves £30ish billion.
Per year or over it's lifetime? No objetion from me. Too late to add to the poll though. It would skew my results and be an unscientific way of gauging the opinions of a group of grouchy right wing guys from the internet. Sorry. AJS- said:
Twincam16 said:
Everything else can be reduced, but it'd be idiotic to cut them completely.
Why?Also, once the sector is scrapped and privatised, it's gone. No going back, left to the whims of the market.
I'm not sure what kind of a country you're wanting to create TBH. Everything loaded onto private enterprise, no governmental control, everything commercialised, cheapened and thrown away if it has the effrontery to cost you a few pence. We'd also end up with millions of people unemployed, in a country where the private enterprise model would emphasise minimising staff numbers, with a state newly reconfigured to ensure there was nothing to do to help them.
If you were PM you'd be lynched within weeks.
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