Many moons later and Purple is still at it - having a good dig at the civil service no matter what the thread. For a guy who runs his own successful exporting business you sure seem to be able to spend a lot of time posting in AAM!!!
Dermot Desmond jeered in Dublin airport?
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Many moons later and Purple is still at it - having a good dig at the civil service no matter what the thread. For a guy who runs his own successful exporting business you sure seem to be able to spend a lot of time posting in AAM!!!
Can't speak for Purple of course but speaking personally I actually think the Civil Service is relatively well run (emphasis on relatively). There is much room for improvement of course and more labour flexibility is a necessity but by and large it's not a major drain on the exchequer.
The public sector on the other hand ...
I agree. I would add that people work within the organisational they find. Just because the structure is bad/outmoded/inefficient it doesn’t mean that the people in it are lazy or are not conscientious. In any large organisation there will be inefficiencies. State bodies do not have to respond to market forces to the same extent as commercial organisations and are subject to political interference so change is slower. That said there have been major changes all over the public and civil service over the last few years, most of them for the good. Let’s hope it continues and accelerates.
In an attempt to draw together the separate strands that have emerged within this thread, maybe the people booing Dermot Desmond in Dublin airport were doing in protest at the effect his tax avoidence strategies were having on the disparities between the rates of GDP and GNP?
Or maybe they were just in bad form (they were at the airport, after all) and would have booed Santa himself.
Or maybe they were just in bad form (they were at the airport, after all) and would have booed Santa himself.
DublinTexas
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In an attempt to draw together the separate strands that have emerged within this thread, maybe the people booing Dermot Desmond in Dublin airport were doing in protest at the effect his tax avoidence strategies were having on the disparities between the rates of GDP and GNP?
Or maybe they were just in bad form (they were at the airport, after all) and would have booed Santa himself.
Nice try Staples to bring this together but giving that loads of people pay for overprized tickets to see other tax avoidance kings (previously known as U2) I don't think that logic works.
Its a bit vague, and doesn't seem to have been picked up generally by the media at the time. I suspect the Examiner are blowing something out of proportion here.
But the Senior Civil Servants didn't axe anything from the report. The OECD simply didn't include something offered unsolicited by a group of civil servants who had contacted them by phone but who were not part of the review group. The vetting of the report, which is quite normal to ensure accuracy, just asked for changes in language to ensure things couldn't be misconstrued. Anytime I've taken part in a review I would be asked to read over the bit pertaining to my area in order to ensure things were stated accurately and nothing had been misunderstood.
WarrenBuffet
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Ah the champions of the private sector!
Where never a lazy, incompetent idiot did work. Nope - all sharp, efficient entrepreneurs put upon by the greedy, fat slobs of the public service....... I have worked in the private and public sector - where i worked (which was on the trading floor of an investment bank!) there was a similar level of wasters doing as little as possible for as much as they could get.
All this praise of the private sector and vilification of the public sector!!!! It 90% of the way to discrimination - do you honestly think the public sector is even half full of lazy, incompetent, unmotivated idiots? Honestly? Because if you do have a look in a mirror, maybe give a wink and say hello to a proper one.
By far and away the biggest and most trumpeted facets of our private sector over the last ten years has been shown to be a shambles - namely banking and building. So give up public sector bashing for a minute and perhaps concentrate on what we as a country are going to do with the ever growing amounts of unemployed architects, electricians, plumbers, solicitors, engineers, accountants and on and on and on............ Christ would you prefer if EVERYONE was unemployed.......
Finally to all the private sector champions - if you work so hard where on earth do you get the time to post on this website so regularly? I work in the public sector and never have the time............
Where never a lazy, incompetent idiot did work. Nope - all sharp, efficient entrepreneurs put upon by the greedy, fat slobs of the public service....... I have worked in the private and public sector - where i worked (which was on the trading floor of an investment bank!) there was a similar level of wasters doing as little as possible for as much as they could get.
All this praise of the private sector and vilification of the public sector!!!! It 90% of the way to discrimination - do you honestly think the public sector is even half full of lazy, incompetent, unmotivated idiots? Honestly? Because if you do have a look in a mirror, maybe give a wink and say hello to a proper one.
By far and away the biggest and most trumpeted facets of our private sector over the last ten years has been shown to be a shambles - namely banking and building. So give up public sector bashing for a minute and perhaps concentrate on what we as a country are going to do with the ever growing amounts of unemployed architects, electricians, plumbers, solicitors, engineers, accountants and on and on and on............ Christ would you prefer if EVERYONE was unemployed.......
Finally to all the private sector champions - if you work so hard where on earth do you get the time to post on this website so regularly? I work in the public sector and never have the time............
I can’t argue with what you are saying but you are leaving out the bit about the shrinkage of the building and banking sectors as a result of their malpractice. The cold reality is that the public sector is paid for by tax receipts and wealth generated by the private sector (yes, I know it’s more complex than that and there is a significant interdependence but in macro terms it’s true). Fairness doesn’t come into it; we cannot afford the cost of our public sector. Therefore we need to reduce the cost to a level we can afford. That’s all there is to it. Pay cuts are the best option from a national perspective and to be honest if 80% of the country took a 10% cut then prices for many good and services would also drop significantly, maybe not be 10% but close to it.
Monitory basics 101: increasing the amount of money in a country doesn’t make it richer, it just reduces the real value of that money. The inverse is also true.
Most Civil Servants have taken a pay cut of between 7 and 10%. However, according to the Sunday Tribune only about 10% of employees have taken a pay cut while about 29% have taken reduced pay for reduced hours. Therefore, there must be large numbers of Private Sector workers who, apart from the income levy, have not been forced to take a cut.
Companies who cannot afford their wage bill reduce staff numbers (about half the companies in Ireland have done this over the last few months) and/or cut wages. The government, as an employer, needs to do the same. The pension levy is a pay cut in real terms but an actual pay cut would be better as that would reduce pension costs as well.
If costs are still too high then wages will have to be reduced further.
DublinTexas
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I don’t think that we should compare pay cuts between public and private sector.
What we need is an honest assessment if we really need all of the people employed in the public sector. That is not different than from what companies in the private sector are doing. They are evaluating if they have enough staff to do what they need to do and their either hire, restructure or let them go.
Exactly that is needed in our public service. People need to be put where they are needed (like dealing with 25% unemployed we are going to see sooner or later) and where they are not (like bin inspectors, several layers of useless management in the HSE).
Once the public sector than is doing what is their core responsibility than we can see how much money they need for it and accordingly set our tax bands.
I’m not anti-public service, I think that the government should concentrate on the core service, hire the best people for that job and pay them accordingly (and when I say pay I also mean take their benefits into consideration).
That way we have a public service that is needed, well paid and can do their job. That way we have a reduced tax burden which is good for everyone.
We are having a too large pool of public service and we need to cut that down. That is the same exercise we companies do in the private sector.
What we need is an honest assessment if we really need all of the people employed in the public sector. That is not different than from what companies in the private sector are doing. They are evaluating if they have enough staff to do what they need to do and their either hire, restructure or let them go.
Exactly that is needed in our public service. People need to be put where they are needed (like dealing with 25% unemployed we are going to see sooner or later) and where they are not (like bin inspectors, several layers of useless management in the HSE).
Once the public sector than is doing what is their core responsibility than we can see how much money they need for it and accordingly set our tax bands.
I’m not anti-public service, I think that the government should concentrate on the core service, hire the best people for that job and pay them accordingly (and when I say pay I also mean take their benefits into consideration).
That way we have a public service that is needed, well paid and can do their job. That way we have a reduced tax burden which is good for everyone.
We are having a too large pool of public service and we need to cut that down. That is the same exercise we companies do in the private sector.
I agree that numbers need to be cut in the Public Service and a start has been made with the early retirement and incentivised career breaks schemes. However, while very senior Civil Servants are extremely well paid I really don't think the average civil servant can take much more in the way of cuts any more than any other worker who has already seen their salary drop significantly. A lot of people I work with are really finding it a struggle to pay their bills, many have partners in the private sector who have lost their jobs or have had to take reduced hours, loads of us are in negative equity. Its not as simple as saying 'oh, just make all public servants take another 10% cut'. Going down that road could end up seriously deflating the economy.
I think that's exactly what we should be trying to do.
Dude this is something that has struck me too. Some of the most frequent daily posters in this forum claim to be business owners! I really wonder how they ever find time to run their businesses? Somewhat suspect me thinks!
Not really. Back when I worked for myself from home I posted here far more than I do now that I work in the public sector. It doesn't mean I was less productive then than I am now. For one thing, I worked longer hours back then.