5 ms·

This article is highly misleading. Shoddy reporting from the Guardian there. She's not on a £2k/day salary, that's just the rate paid to Capita, a consulting c

• keithpeter 13y ago
  It does mention that the £2k is the charge paid by MoD further down the page, although I admit it could be clearer. Good luck with the messaging on this one when the wider press get hold of it.
• joosters 13y ago
  But the point of the article is that the MOD is trying to cut costs. The takehome wage of Ms Ferguson is irrelevant, she is still costing the MOD £2k/day. IMO there is a reasonable story here: is the ministry really saving much money by laying off staff and then, as a result, being forced to bring in contractors at much higher costs?
  • theknown99 13y ago
    The Guardian has an agenda, and they routinely misinterpret things to sell news. They're the "daily mail" of the left. Happily, judging by their circulation figures, they won't be around too much longer.
    • eterm 13y ago
      The Guardian is funded by a trust. It is losing money but the circulation figures mean little: Print is dead.
      • theknown99 13y ago
        It's funded by sales from some other profitable less biased papers/magazines. Losses after losses... at some point, something's gotta give. "Funded by a trust" isn't some magic get out of jail free card. Circulation figures for other newspapers are doing pretty well actually. Print still has a long life ahead.
    • matthewmacleod 13y ago
      I wouldn't quite go that far. While The Guardian drives me nuts sometimes, especially regarding UK politics, it's markedly less nakedly evil than the Daily Mail. See the recent NSA revelations for good, high-quality, pushing-the-boundaries journalism, which we'd all miss were it gone.
      • d0 13y ago
        Everything is less evil than the Daily Mail so that's not much of a comparison. I've given up reading the news in the UK. It's either biased towards the agenda of the paper or terribly depressing. Both unfortunately sell very well. I've even got rid of my television. Life is good.
        • matthewmacleod 13y ago
          I guess. Though I'd argue that the UK's media outlets are actually among the least consistently unusable. At least for bare-bones here-are-the-facts reporting, the BBC is pretty useful. In any case, I don't know how feasible it is to have a "non-biased" newspaper that pushes actual journalism.
          • d0 13y ago
            The BBC however have very selective reporting. It probably isn't. I was hoping WikiNews would end up being that to be honest.
          • theknown99 13y ago
            The BBC is pretty left leaning. I expect the vast majority of BBC workers read the Guardian.
            • matthewmacleod 13y ago
              The BBC is accused of being left-leaning by right-wingers, and right-leaning by left-wingers. I suspect you're right, and it's slightly left-leaning in practice, and I'd argue that this reflects reality.
    • iamwithnail 13y ago
      Just a touch more evidence based than the DM, but anyone who is in the business of selling news a) has an agenda and b) need to sell their stories, so quelle surprise.
      • theknown99 13y ago
        I think the reason The Guardian is interesting is because they don't really need to sell their stories. They happily make millions of pounds of losses each year, and are bankrolled by people who seem to not mind. They are not driven by profit, they're driven by a moral crusade (A mistaken one IMHO, but still).
  • yummyfajitas 13y ago
    If they bring in permanent staff to fill a short term role and lay them off as soon as they find the right person, that will cost a lot of money. Layoffs aren't cheap in the UK, even in the private sector. When you pay a lot of money for a contractor, part of what you are paying for is the right to get rid of them easily.
  • FireBeyond 13y ago
    Not really. Only tangentially. Unless the claim is that the Ministry of Defense laid off their CIO - which is the role she’s playing. They’re just in the process of looking for a new one, which doesn’t happen overnight.
• masklinn 13y ago
  > She's not on a £2k/day salary, that's just the rate paid to Capita, a consulting company. The point is that the state foots a £2000/day bill to replace a civil servant who'd be paid what, 10% of that? For a total cost of 20% including charges and the like? Which is an odd move if the goal is to reduce costs.
  • rjtavares 13y ago
    > The point is that the state foots a £2000/day bill to replace a civil servant who'd be paid what, 10% of that? 30% (according to the article - 500k pa vs. 150k pa). In any case, it's a new role that didn't exist before, so there's naturally a lot of set-up effort. It makes sense to get a more experienced person before hiring someone definitively.
    • jblok 13y ago
      For a permanent employee, don't forget the employer NI contributions, pension, paid holiday, possibly maternity pay, expenses, etc. So maybe the total cost for a permanent employee would be 40-50% of the contracter
    • radicalbyte 13y ago
      You can't compare 500k pa on a short term contract with 150k pa on a permanent civil service contract. That 150k comes with a fantastic pension (final salary!), they have to pay employer taxes, insurances etc. Not to mention that they're almost impossible to fire. It's closer to a 300k vs 500k pa comparision.
      • tekp2 13y ago
        It won't come with a final salary pension since that was reformed, but the contributions are still around the 20-25% mark, vs 6% in the real world.
        • timthorn 13y ago
          It will if it ends up being an internal transfer.
• tekp2 13y ago
  £2k a day is a loss-leader for Capita who are in it for the contacts.
  • swombat 13y ago
    Dunno why you're being downvoted. That could well be the case. Back in my Accenture days, I recall senior managers going for over £2k a day, and that was 10 years ago. This is a very high-level executive, who can jump into the CIO role like this... they could well be paid more than £2k a day of net pay! (by Capita, not by the government)
• retube 13y ago
  > This article is highly misleading. Shoddy reporting from the Guardian there. Like most of their journalism.
• gnu8 13y ago
  Why does anyone allow their labor to be resold at such a high profit to someone else? If someone will pay £400/day for your services then you ought to receive the bulk of that yourself.
  • rmcastil 13y ago
    True. But for a lot of people they don't want to manage the additional overhead. Sure at £400/day could roughly equate to £100,000/yr but that's as optimistic as you can get (assuming you work 5 days a week and only take two weeks off a year). The reality could be much less if you take into account sick days and days you just were not able to sell. Some people would rather just have a sure bet even if its much less than they could potentially take home if they were on their own.
  • timthorn 13y ago
    Job security? Don't want to do sales? Comfort?
  • swombat 13y ago
    Because nobody would have hired me for £400/day at the time, since I had no experience. The cachet of "Accenture" was what allowed them to sell me at that price. Without Accenture, I would not even have been considered for that role. It's more true than it seems. The client I first worked at was UBS. While I was in Switzerland, I actually applied for a role at UBS - they rejected me outright. Accenture hired me, and then sold me to UBS for probably 5x what UBS would have paid if they'd hired me. Whilst I felt a bit used in this, I do recognise that most of that 5x premium was due to Accenture's brand, nothing to do with my skills or experience.
    • Silhouette 13y ago
      Of course, this is an excellent example of why the British government should do more of what it keeps saying it will, and what the contractors' and small businesses' representative bodies keep arguing for: use smaller businesses or individual contractors for jobs that can readily be done on those scales, and consequently have far less red tape, pay far less money, and probably get results at least as good as anything you'll get from a professional government sponge-soaker like the big consultancies. It's about time governments stopped using big name consultancies primarily because of their name rather than any measurable benefit, and paying (apparently) a 400% premium for the privilege. That money comes from taxpayers and doesn't even go to the skilled people actually doing the useful work. This probably ranks alongside laughing at anyone who defends excessive compensation and bonuses for for senior management, investment banking staff, and the like, on the basis that they need to pay competitive salaries, all while those staff are actually making decisions that result in huge losses to their employers. It is never necessary to pay the market rate for incompetence.
• stefek99 13y ago
  Another silly article to my collection: http://linkbaiters.tumblr.com/post/77169841950/it-consultant-paid-2-000-a-day-to-cover-civil http://linkbaiters.tumblr.com/post/77169841950/it-consultant... Civil Servant? (I'm wasting my time here)
• Nursie 13y ago
  >> She's not on a £2k/day salary, that's just the rate paid to Capita So it's alright because there's a middle-man taking a cut too?