-
Read The Book
Before the welfare state
-
The Greycoat Hospital
The Greycoat Hospital was once a workhouse. It has since been a hospital and a school. It has a very long welfare history. It has now been taken over by the state.
-
The Greycoat Hospital
-
Education and State
Licence
Stats
The disabled, fraud and the alleged Thatcher conspiracy
Several people in comments on the previous post have asserted that the rate of fraud in claiming incapacity benefit is only o.5pc according to the government itself. I guess there are different ways of measuring and defining fraud. In the … Continue reading
Spend, spend, spend
Martin Durkin’s programme on Channel 4 last night certainly did not hold back. It was dramatic and powerful. It had some clever footage at the beginning with politicians repeatedly saying they were going to “spend”, “spend” and “spend”. This was … Continue reading
Posted by James Bartholomew
Indexed in Waste in public services
A classic of waste in public services
Here is a remarkable story of waste of resources in a publicly run service: Just one in ten police officers is free to tackle crime at any given time because the vast majority are either off work or tied up … Continue reading
Posted by James Bartholomew
Indexed in Waste in public services
Waste of resources in the NHS
The study of 400 NHS operating theatres found that last year, less than 50 per cent of time scheduled for operations was actually spent performing surgery. In orthopaedics, the biggest specialty, just 45 per cent of “operating time” was spent … Continue reading
One reason why state schools tend to fail their students
Only 18 useless teachers axed in 40 years despite ’17,000 failing staff’ in our schools. From the Mail. An organisation that does not sack some of it members has fallen under the control of the ‘producer interest’. It serves its … Continue reading
What Labour did to the benefits system
Whatever else Labour did, they certainly made benefits more complicated. The Child Poverty Action Group annually publishes the Welfare benefits and tax credits handbook. How many pages do you need to read to get the picture? Well, I just bought … Continue reading
Stunning figures to demonstrate causes of low productivity in state services
Policy Exchange has dug out some remarkable statistics in looking at how public services have developed in recent years. It is a story of the ‘producer interest’ writ large. Public services have a greater tendency than companies to indulge the … Continue reading
Posted by James Bartholomew
Indexed in Waste in public services
The fallacy in the ‘front line services’ idea
One of the key reasons that state-run bodies tend to provide less in the way of service at a greater cost is the waste that tends to build up in them over the years. People are usually aware, though they … Continue reading
NHS managers up 84%
NHS total staff 1.43 million – up 30% compared to 1999. Managers 44,600 up 84% Administrative and technical support staff up 40% Nurses 375,500 up by ‘a quarter’ Junior doctors up by ‘two thirds’ GPs up by ‘nearly a third’ … Continue reading
Civil servants don’t sack themselves, they sack cleaners
All the main parties claim they will cut public spending. But whose jobs will go? It ought to be those of the civil servants doing work which may be desirable but is not absolutely necessary. But it is the civil … Continue reading
Posted by James Bartholomew
Indexed in Waste in public services