Through the looking glass
Imagine if the fat-cat-funded researchers at the TaxPayers' Allliance turned their guns from the public to the private sector. What if, day after day, they aimed to spread cynicism and disenchantment by highlighting only the worst cases of corporate excess and market failure – to the exclusion of all else?
Their website might start to look like this. The following items appeared in the Times, Guardian and Observer during the last 10 days. The only thing missing from each is a quote from Matthew Elliott, expressing his disgust at such greed, corruption or dismal customer service.
- Fed-up customers turn the tables on Barclays
- It was FTSE's worst year ever – but not for executive pay
- Sports goods price fixing that may have cost shoppers millions
- How Rover was driven into the ground
- Energy bills may rise despite wholesale price drop
- Heartless charge for critical service – Bupa
- Ryanair reaps more than £500m from extra charges
- Halifax devalues property prices
- Perks come as standard for boardroom bosses
- Stress and worker suicides mean the future's not bright at Orange
- Watch out for traps on the high street
- How UK oil company Trafigura tried to cover up African pollution disaster
- Halifax let me down when it was time to make a claim
- Holidaymakers sue First Choice over stomach bugs at Turkish resort
- Shares plummet as JJB and Sports Direct face scrutiny by fraud police
- Survey finds huge deficit in funding pensions of Britain's top bosses
- How quickly National Express went off the rails
- Aviva policyholders must settle for £500m payout
- C&G failed to keep home loan promise
- Complaints data tells the real truth
- Hounded over loan cover I didn’t want
- Private schools reel as fee-paying firm goes bust
- Merged superbanks ‘smothering rivals’
- PayPal is far from customer friendly
- How to gain redress from high street bullies
- Unacceptable delays with Aviva payout
- Drugs fuel the City's high
- Was this a wheeze by AIG to deny medical claim?
- Train fares take passengers for a ride
- Europcar's lack of staff makes the cost of a hire car even higher
- Irish taxpayers pay billions to write off high-risk speculators' debts
- Jet2 bags no prizes over lost luggage
- MG Rover: How Phoenix Four planned to turn £10 outlay into £75m profit
- Pay gap widens between executives and their staff
- Asda chicken licker investigated after secret footage handed to police
- Phoenix partners may receive further £11.6m from collapsed MG Rover
- Rail companies accused of parking charges hike
- There's no point naming and shaming the banks. They have no shame
- Serco and Capita expect to profit from government woes
Posted by Clifford Singer at 12:49pm on 21 September 2009
Tags: Not yet assigned
Comments
Yes but the TPA consistently focus on flaws in the public sector - both real and imagined - in order to show the superiority of the private sector. But the things it blames on the public sector - bad customer service, inefficiency, etc - infect the private sector too, not least the privatised utilities.
Posted by Clifford Singer at 05:15pm on 21 September 2009
No one denies there are examples of waste and inefficiency in the private sector, however we have a choice about funding the private sector - if I don’t like a company I don’t buy its products.
However I only get a choice about the Public sector every four years, and always the same old LibLabCon party gets in, and public sector waste carries on as usual, and I have no choice about paying the taxes imposed on us
Posted by Jonathan Lloyd at 11:05pm on 21 September 2009
The real issue is obtaining value for money in the public sector, this is compounded by each individual department, (say defence) only looking after its own budget, but the actions it takes (say through redundancies) may have an impact on the welfare budget for example, we should always remember that any government spend comes from the same taxpayers pot.
We have a legitimate right to expect the public sector to be as efficient as possible, but the waste that I have seen, stem from interfering government targets, I feel that we currently have the balance wrong between privatisation and nationalisation; privatisation is not always best but is often seen as the only alternative, instead of letting the people employed to do the job (many of them highly trained) get on with delivering change.
We should not be afraid to increase the amount of workers employed in the public sector (if it reduces the welfare costs, better that people are encouraged to attend work, produce something and contribute to society than basically become low pay, stay at home, produce nothing civil servants) but the money found to employ these people should come through departmental efficiencies (Operation Apex Essex police is a very good example).
Posted by David Mavin at 10:54pm on 22 September 2009
Would the name be The Customers Alliance? Could it be funded by the State in an accountably transparent way to pump media products with quotes about insufficient competition and non-existent value for money? The State is after all the very biggest customer and should get its way on behalf of the second largest customers The City and the Canary Wharf Group and all the other mugged up private sector customers. Then the ‘free market’ effects us all and individuals lacking any power other than to not bother or buy poor quality and overpriced goods and services need there interests protected from the opaque funders of the Tax Payers’ Alliance.
Posted by Jed Keenan at 02:13pm on 29 September 2009
Oh Jonathan Lloyd, how innocent you are, if only life were as simple as you portray it. I suspect you do not have the advantage of either age or experience.
I worked for a clearing bank for almost forty years during which we screwed the customers ever tighter. The internal motto was “Squeeze them again and again and if they still don’t actually riot, squeeze them again. If you imagine that all the other banks weren’t doing the same, you’re very deluded indeed. What options did that leave the customer? We made billions out of pretty worthless endowment mortgages and ripped people off left right and centre. There is no genuine competition in the private sector, it’s all an illusion and we all pay for it all the time. Get real do.
Posted by David Jamesson at 07:08pm on 16 October 2009
So what?
The TPA don’t claim to investigate the private sector. They’re concerned with waste in the public sector.
Posted by Norm at 04:57pm on 21 September 2009