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In Britain we've had over a decade of political leaders questioning "Hmm is this political institution / job role / arm of government / publicly funded service
by kristianc 3y ago
In Britain we've had over a decade of political leaders questioning "Hmm is this political institution / job role / arm of government / publicly funded service really necessary" and most here are of the consensus that it's essentially gutted the place.
Easy to be the one in the ivory tower declaring other people's jobs to be worthless...
- Retric 3y agoUnpleasant as it is for those who lost their jobs, the country seems better off now. The sheer overwhelming bureaucracy that built up over hundreds of years really did need to be trimmed.
- bandrami 3y agoIsn't the UK now poorer than Croatia?
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoExactly. I got to uk 12 years ago and it’s been cool at the time, but a steady decline the whole way. The place I left was developing and has now evened or surpassed UK by many quality of life metrics. The trend will probably continue. Now I am wondering why I moved, at great cost to myself. When I tell locals about this, I’d hope they would be as annoyed about decline in living standards as I am, but they sometimes get offended. Apparently comparing Britain to ‘inferior’ countries is offensive.
- kristianc 3y agoI'm curious what metric you're assessing 'better off' there - by many conventional economic measures such as real wage growth, productivity, GDP, the British economy has either flatlined or gone backwards over the last decade. Under the previous 'bloated' administration there were 40 consecutive quarters of economic growth at one point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Retric 3y agoComplexity, it’s not always about economic growth. Though it’s also clear the UK has been in relative decline compared to the rest of the world long before these reforms started.
- kristianc 3y agoSure, not everything’s economic growth. But without some concrete examples of where things have actually improved in tangible terms over the last decade you leave yourself open to the claim that what this is _actually_ about is seeing people and institutions you dislike taking a decline in status regardless of the objective consequences.
- Jochim 3y agoPrivatisation has only introduced complexity and inefficiency into a system that simply needed appropriate funding. The result being rapidly deteriorating services that are more expensive and poorer quality than our comparable neighbours.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- foldr 3y agoThis is a curious comment in multiple respects. First, Britain has never been a particularly bureaucratic country in comparison to its European neighbors or even the USA. For example, it is very easy to start a small business, file taxes, etc. etc. Second, as the sibling points out, the country is in a pretty bad situation economically at the moment. Many people would happily wind the clock back 10-15 years in that respect.
- Retric 3y agoIt’s not always about business. Read up on the history of Greater London Council/Greater London Authority, its one attempt deal with the 32 boroughs and City of London Corporation. Compare it with say NYC, or similarly large city’s around the world and it’s clear London/UK could benefit from streamlining things.
- foldr 3y agoWhat does that have to do with the actions of the current government over the past decade? You were talking about things that have allegedly already improved, not possible future improvements. By the way, I live in London and am reasonably familiar with its history. Asking people to 'read up' on things that haven't previously been a topic of the discussion is a bit presumptuous. I might know more about it than you!
- Retric 3y agoI was supporting my argument for hundreds of years of bureaucracy built up. Reducing support for local councils has been deeply unpopular, but pointing out 32 + 1 local councils for London is overly bureaucratic and long agreed to be inefficient doesn’t connect to that in any way? The actual solution is to get rid of most of them, but a stopgap is to reduce their funding and thus waste.
- foldr 3y ago>I was supporting my argument for hundreds of years of bureaucracy built up. I don't really understand what this means. Any country that's existed for hundreds of years has bureaucracy that's built up over hundreds of years. Britain isn't an unusually bureaucratic country – quite the opposite in many respects. >Reducing support for local councils has been deeply unpopular And yet you seem to think that it's had various unspecified benefits. If so, why is it so unpopular with the general public? And what are these benefits? It's easy to cut 'waste' by cutting funding. Cut funding to zero and you'll have zero waste! Magic!
- louistsi 3y agoI can tell you haven't worked for the British Government! The bullshitters tend to be better at keeping their jobs than the people actually doing the work. They've had the practice - years of justifying their existence to the people controlling headcount numbers.
- ninjin 3y ago“Seems”? Having spent nearly a decade working for a British entity I can not think of a single case where the bureaucracy has improved. In fact, it has universally in my own (obviously narrow) experience gotten worse! In no other country have I experienced so many layers of people eager to get in the way of you carrying out your core work duties or coming knocking on your door asking you to fulfil their “essential” requirements that just happen to be exactly what motivates their role in the first place.
- pydry 3y agoIt's the institutions like the NHS which everybody agrees are the most necessary which have been gutted the most - usually as stage 2 in the privatization playbook.
- bombolo 3y agoThat was completely intentional, just presented to the citizens in that way.