Wednesday 9th October

We have long been witness to a merry-go-round in the boardrooms of large companies.  Where non-exec directors hold multiple directorships, and slip from industry to industry, and lucrative sinecure to well-paid remuneration.  And now this insidious practice has sneaked into almost every walk of life.

It used to just be senior civil servants, but now hospital administrators, the various Of’s, ofcom, ofsted, etc: and all the more senior public and private sector jobs seem to be occupied by a similar rotation of faces.  And in the public sector it is even worse, as there are usually huge pay-offs, redundancies and early retirements.  Central government is forcing councils to downsize, so these posts have to go.  But on the other side of the coin the schools, the hospitals, all need specialist help, especially with the pressure put on them by Ofsted and the Care and Quality Commission.   The solution is that these very same people who were once employed by the local authorities and left with large redundancy packages are re-employed in the ‘private’ sector as consultants, but effectively doing the same job.

Everyone wins – the Government has reduced local government costs, the councils have met their reduced budgets, the schools and hospitals get the specialist help they still need (directly funded from central government with the pupil premium, or as free schools), the private sector can boast the creation of more jobs and the individuals trouser large sums too.  The only losers are the tax-payers and the kids and the patients, as more and more resources are spent on private consultants.

It will be interesting to discover exactly how much public expenditure has actually been reduced in the wonderfully exalted austerity package announced three years ago.  I suspect that far less has been saved than they claimed would have been.  The real savings are in nurses being denied a promised pay rise, in closing hospitals and failing schools.  But of course we are all in it together.  What is IT?  Sh….(the name cannot be mentioned)