Maximising the benefit of public spend

The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) has set out ten considerations to ensure greater effectiveness from the goods and services procured by the public sector. CLES also calls on central government to recognise the potential of public procurement in the future vibrancy of our economy and in enabling local economic, social and environmental benefit:
http://www.cles.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/CLES-10-Maximising-the-benefit-of-procurement.pdf

Unions are good for public finances - new research

It may seem to be blindingly obvious to those of us in all levels of the public sector that we generally do an efficient job with a view to minimising costs and keeping the service as good as possible. But this reality has been body slammed by a mantra from Pickles and others before him that we are overpaid, over compensated and that our unions are costing the tax payer a fortune in times of austerity. If only we were like the private sector the austerity high priests claim.

PSI must fight for quality public services - Dave Prentis

#PSICongress2012 Introducing the PSI Programme of Action for 2013-2017 yesterday, Dave Prentis said: 'Our goal is to achieve Social Justice through Trade Union Rights and Quality Public Services. It is a plan for us to work together – smarter, faster and more effectively – to achieve a more just, more equal and more civil society in every nation. Our job as trade unionists is to lead – to give inspiration and hope that by working together we can create just, equitable and civil societies'
http://congress.world-psi.org/blog/psi-president-dave-prentis-be-bold-be-brave-together-we-can-be-brilliant

Public Services are fundamental to community well-being

A recent conference organised by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) and the European Federation of Public Services Unions (EPSU) examined how public services – which constitute 26% of the European Union’s GDP and 30% of its workforce - play a fundamental role in promoting well-being:

Who is Stella Creasey? Where has she been hiding?

“Labour should demand value for money from the state sector argues party’s ‘rising star’” http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/aug/14/labour-focus-value-for-money. Stella Creasey, Labour MP for Walthamstow made headlines yesterday in what must have been a “back to the future moment” for those of us involved in the public sector, or to quote the great Yogi Berra, déjà-vu all over again.

The Open Public Services agenda is a massive drive to privatisation

Matt Dykes, writing on the TUC's Stronger Unons blog, provides a comprehensive critique of privatisation and calls on unions to promote in house service delivery, to build a rigorous evidence base on the benefits of public service delivery as well as form alliances with community groups and service users to derail the privatisation juggernaught:
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2012/07/is-the-tide-turning-on-public-sector-outsourcing/

Lets truly open the public services debate

The long awaited 'Opening Public Services' white paper is a thinly veiled attempt to reinvent Thatcherite and Ridleyesque style enforced competition on public sector providers: http://www.info4local.gov.uk/documents/related-links/1942894

UNISON NEC Elections - What we stand for

THE CHALLENGES THAT WE FACE
This union and this country are seeing the worst devastation in public services since Thatcher’s reign when communities were shattered - such is the sustained assault by the Con Dems. As UNISON members we face the most unrelenting attack we have ever experienced, bringing unprecedented challenges to workplaces and communities, say Kenny Bell and Jane Carolan.

UNISONActive Analysis: Public Services - In defence of the state

A much anticipated white paper on public sector reform has been trailed by Cameron as a necessary means to break down what he describes as ‘state monopoly’.

Myths rally to attack national bargaining

Attacks on national bargaining are not new. Neither are myth-peddling and selective statistics to whip up hysteria against public service workers. But to see both so transparently together in a self-contradicting liberal think tank paper would be entertaining if it were not so dangerously dressed up as academic analysis.

UK Bankers Cash in Yet Again - Government Humiliated‏

For bankers plunder is a way of life for a group, almost exclusively of of men, living together in society who have created for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. Take away their power to create money as debt out of thin air and you take away their power to plunder and their ability to control our democracy.

Con Dem job cuts don't add up‏

Writing on the Public Finance blog, Heather Wakefield, UNISON national secretary for local government, deplores the rising number of job losses in Councils and points out the economic folly of making public service workers redundant: 'UNISON has worked out, for example, that depriving a £21,000-a-year council worker and single mother of her livelihood would cost the government around £19,000 in lost tax and National Insurance income and in benefits outlay. Meanwhile, the local economy will suffer the loss of her and others’ purchasing power, making it even more of a struggle to pull itself out of the mire';
http://opinion.publicfinance.co.uk/2010/12/economics-of-madness-by-heather-wakefield/?

Public service workers at their best

As extreme snow conditions hit hard, public service workers across the country have as usual responded above and beyond the call. Here are just a few examples from Edinburgh of the human faces behind the numbers of jobs facing the axe or being sold off.

CCT or Treasury dictat - which will it be?‏

According to a Cabinet Office news release the ‘Government is united in its drive to open up public services so the best providers get the job’ and Decentralisation Minister Greg Clark has said that he wants ‘local voluntary groups to have the right to deliver more services locally so that the sector are not confined to a walled-off part of councils' budgets’. http://www.communities.gov.uk/newsstories/communities/1759026

Return to Babylon

Neal Ascherson's scathing analysis in the Herald of the rolling back of public service state is well worth a read - 'Sometimes a train rolls backwards.... Those shrieking, guffawing Tory cheers, after Chancellor George Osborne proclaimed his spending cuts! Out of their train window, they could see approaching the dim old vaults of Babylon Central, where taxes were low, scroungers ate bread and marge, and a working-class mother told her son: “Don’t get ideas. Folk like us are just here to make up the numbers.” http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/guest-commentary/return-to-babylon-1.1064858

IoD mad axemen call for cuts in NHS and overseas aid‏

A platitude which rolls easily off the lips of politicians is the ‘national interest’. Scratch the surface and usually you’ll find a commercial or some other vested interest.