Current Affairs The Labour Party

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Rita_Poon said:
'Accountability' is a very dirty word in the uk.
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While I have some considerable doubts about your figures, the point of accountability and the government lining the pockets of their friends I can nod to.

I've said before on here, one of the UK's biggest issues when it comes to public finances and national projects is the acceptable level of overspend.

We are at best grossly inefficient, and at our worst this level of incompetence allows a level of cronyism where they can skim the projects without checks.

I'm not a project manager... I have no personal experience of large construction projects... but I saw the mammoth £4.8bn projected cost of HS2 Euston.

Nearly £5bn on a station! How much of that is value for money? How much of that is literal wastage due to mismanagement? And how much is going to mates?

Do I think Labour are going to come in and fix this? No, not at all.
 
PhilM said:
While I have some considerable doubts about your figures, the point of accountability and the government lining the pockets of their friends I can nod to.

I've said before on here, one of the UK's biggest issues when it comes to public finances and national projects is the acceptable level of overspend.

We are at best grossly inefficient, and at our worst this level of incompetence allows a level of cronyism where they can skim the projects without checks.

I'm not a project manager... I have no personal experience of large construction projects... but I saw the mammoth £4.8bn projected cost of HS2 Euston.

Nearly £5bn on a station! How much of that is value for money? How much of that is literal wastage due to mismanagement? And how much is going to mates?

Do I think Labour are going to come in and fix this? No, not at all.
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It's because major public projects are put out to private tender, the competition is at the first stage, undercut the opposition. Once contract is secured charge what you can get away with knowing the project has to be completed. Multiply by contractors and sub contractors....
 
magicjuan said:
It's because major public projects are put out to private tender, the competition is at the first stage, undercut the opposition. Once contract is secured charge what you can get away with knowing the project has to be completed. Multiply by contractors and sub contractors....
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Many years ago I attended a course on procurement led by a gentleman with extensive experience of working with and in Government. Without fail, when in Government the first task was to overhaul thinking and capacity to deal with clauses and terms. The MOD were apparently a particular delight for sellers as they knew they'd always fist them with clauses providing the basis to vastly increase prices beyond the tender.

Not hard to imagine similar here.
 
Daveysgingerlovechild said:
Many years ago I attended a course on procurement led by a gentleman with extensive experience of working with and in Government. Without fail, when in Government the first task was to overhaul thinking and capacity to deal with clauses and terms. The MOD were apparently a particular delight for sellers as they knew they'd always fist them with clauses providing the basis to vastly increase prices beyond the tender.

Not hard to imagine similar here.
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I had an involvement when I worked for LCC in a national scheme under last Labour government in making public sector food procurement healthier (schools, hospitals etc). Went on for two years, lots of meetings and expenditure (managed by KPMG so can imagine costs). All agreed, election, tories get in and sack it all off.
Seen so many 'contracts' with inflation and overspend clauses that were a licence to print money, public and private. Ridiculous waste of resources that always 'rises to the top'.
 
magicjuan said:
I had an involvement when I worked for LCC in a national scheme under last Labour government in making public sector food procurement healthier (schools, hospitals etc). Went on for two years, lots of meetings and expenditure (managed by KPMG so can imagine costs). All agreed, election, tories get in and sack it all off.
Seen so many 'contracts' with inflation and overspend clauses that were a licence to print money, public and private. Ridiculous waste of resources that always 'rises to the top'.
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Aye, I think the private finance initiative is another cracking example of bad contracting. Suffered all of the above, but also left schools and hospitals with significant long term liabilities, repair costs, and even restrictions on how spaces are used for the services they are expected to provide.

Sharks.
 
Bruce Wayne said:
Has that really happened though? The FTSE has hugely underperformed compared to other indices (and certainly compared to America), and there has been a lot of concern that the index is mostly populated by "old economy" stocks, with Brexit and the general state of the economy meaning few sexy flotations have happened in recent memory. You could very well argue that planning laws are designed with NIMBYs in mind, but that's a policy rather than a tax thing.
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Has what really happened? State taxes being spent on private companies rather than state owned investment ? Well yeah, since Thatcher made it policy it's only increased since. You're probably just thinking utilities, but for instance 40 billion a year go into private pension contributions -- a direct subsidy and stimulus to the financial sector.
 
I'm sure I've seen some on here discuss a shift toward the right and patriotism and all that jazz. Maybe Labour have spotted it too and factored it into their strategy to win?
 
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