Cuts, cuts, cuts and cuts

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Read more! Welcome 2011. My trip to drop the sprog2 off today (300+ miles so she can become a Uni candidate) cost me a fiver more than last month in fuel. Why? Because we are all now funding public sector and civil service pensions. From our own pockets. Oh, yippee. Stuff austerity measures- this is bloody lunacy.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Sprog2 came home for Xmas. Discovers her peers, at the Grammar School where she spent the last 5 years, now go to school 2-3 days a week "for a couple of hours at a time, and only for lessons". There is no community, no sport, no ambition, no Uni or career choices being made; in fact, sweet FA to support them through Sixth Form. My relief at her leaving that school is seriously tinged with sadness - for those left, and this county of Cumbria in the future.

I am a tad astounded at the local school's attendance news in 6th form, as I can barely get hold of sprog at boarding school. For weeks on end. Because her timetable is full on. (And what a relief that is as it's costing the family a bloody fortune, even with her scholarship.)

Then, you start looking round at the Cumbrian kids here. WTF are we giving them??? The schools are facing major deficits, no-one seems to care about the future (somewhere, recently, I read that more Cumbrian schools are now facing deficits, and those in debt face a bigger deficit - I'm bored of searching the Herald etc for the appropriate article), and the kids are uninspired, lacking in community and social involvement, and basically, without being too harsh, abandoned.

Our future? Yep, we must be looking after them in this time of cuts.

The problem is - we aren't. We aren't looking after the next generation, the health service, the private sector, the tourism industry, the roads, the farmers, the small business community etc etc. Who the hell are we looking after, out of interest?????

Here's my take on the issue, with a huge thanks to my father for causing insomnia here in Cumbria. As a private business, I and thousands of others appear to pay around 18% contribution towards public sector pensions. For firemen, nurses, police etc, it appears to be around 30%. For the Armed Forces, it is unknown, but potentially 100% of their pension contributions comes, not from their wages, but from thee and me - the taxpayers.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Please.

A back of the envelope calculation would imply that the £18Bn cuts which are being made are PURELY to fund the public sector pension issue. Is this a totally deluded calculation? I need to know if it is as it is causing sleepless nights at this end.

If this calculation is even close, what we are doing is a) unfathomable b) fing pointless, c) totally detrimental to the economic future of UK Plc, and d) preventing 101 other vital and economically productive investments - add your own below in the comments.

For less money than we are *potentially* paying into the pensions contribution fund for public sector, we could a) FTTH the whole of the UK in 1 year b) create untold new jobs in the private sector, including the manufacturing and industry base (which we have decimated in favour of imports, for no good reason) c) fund the educational establishment so the next generation are *educated*.

What we appear to be doing is ....um, nothing. A real big fat Sweet FA. Just to keep a trenchload of public sector workers sweet in their old age. Meanwhile, we are selling out the youngsters. Forcing them to face phenomenal educational fees and bills and debts, and undoubtedly pushing them to take jobs outside of this country so the debts are never repaid.

Bloody genius. NOT.

If the State Pension is enough to survive on for you and me, then surely, every single public sector 'pensioner', whose pension we are currently topping up from the public pot (more so now with the austerity measures), can also live on it? And if so, every single pound over the base rate pension can be put back into the economy, from tomorrow onwards.

The public sector has become gluttonous, bloated, ineffectual, wasteful and in many instances complex beyond belief purely to solve the problems that the system has created. There are untold people within public sector who create complexity purely to protect their jobs, careers, pensions and job benefits. They do NOWT.

There are also marvellous, fantastic, admirable people in public sector whose wages and pensions are being 'stolen' by the above; sadly, and nearly always, the average tax payer in the economic sectors who could rescue this country from third world status are paying for the great people too - to lose out. We pay, not just the muppets in overpaid and pointless career paths who can't clear a road or collect rubbish, fix a broadband connection, promote tourism or agriculture, or make their own community a better place to live, but also for those with public sector pensions that are way beyond their 'deserving status' at the end of the career.

At what cost? Our next generation. Our small business economy who *can* create jobs when public sector can't justify any more. Our innovative, inventive and ingenious industries. Our TOMORROW.

We are depriving the great and good in Uk Plc, the community-minded folk, the kids, the small businesses, and all of those who can turn this country around. Just to keep a few fat pigs (and I say that with all the provisos and acknowledgements listed above in recognition of those in public sector who contribute) in their dotage.

Get on. Welcome to 2011. That'll be FTTH off the menu for YEARS to come............




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Friday Thought - Big Society gets (k)IT

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As some may know, my region, Eden in Cumbria, was recently chosen as one of the four vanguard communities for the Big Society. Quite what this will mean is, as yet, unclear, particularly in a community where JFDI has been going on for centuries because of our remoteness from Westminster, both geographically and emotionally.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com

However, one thing that has become clear is that in order to deliver many of this community's dreams and aspirations, we need decent comms infrastructure to overcome our remote location, distance from services, distance from each other etc. It also means that the meagre budgets that we have at a regional level may well be better spent by the communities themselves through use of technology to reduce costs, increase efficiency and so on.

So, here's my thought for the day. This country is about to lay off hundreds of thousands of people in the public sector. Having been into public sector offices far too many times, I think I can safely say that the vast proportion of these people sit at desks and use computers. Some, although a far smaller proportion, may well also have laptops and smart phones.

There are community projects throughout the UK who could benefit from these items. We can use flat screen monitors for digital noticeboards on our community wireless networks, we can use old computers to bring the digitally reluctant into the 21st century, we can use routers, servers and so on to connect the disconnected. We can use smartphones to create exciting new community apps and demonstrate them to communities, Parish Councils etc, and also (where the mobile network permits) demonstrate mobile apps for community use. Laptops are often beyond the pocket of many of the rurally deprived and these can be used in so many ways - I would only bore you if I began to create a list of their potential uses.

If this IT equipment goes anywhere, it should be into our deprived and rural communities first and foremost. I have this awful feeling that some well-meaning charity will blag a contract to clear public sector offices of unneeded IT kit and start shipping this essential equipment abroad. We must not allow that to happen. These are UK assets, paid for with UK public money, and we need them here. In particular because the Big Society is expecting everyone to solve major issues as volunteers but we cannot do it without the required equipment which can normally only be acquired with hard cash.

I'm sure completely honourable and trustworthy people can be found to reformat hard drives, smart phones, etc for nothing if it means that we then have access to equipment that will permit community projects to succeed without having to operate on broken shoestrings and without the right tools for the job.

We'll work on sorting out the infrastructure too - oh, we already are!



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UK broadband, ID cards and why I can't sleep

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Read more! “However, we are concerned that the Government’s intention to create state-owned ‘business service companies’ could actually backfire by preventing commercial companies from competing for contracts. It would be better to create a level playing field to encourage competition and efficiency.” CBI, Samknows



This blog post can be read at http://5tth.blogspot.com

I knew someone, somewhere must have put it succinctly. The more I have heard this week, the less I have slept. That quote sums it up for me on a specific issue:

Why is the Government trying to create services that the private sector SHOULD be best placed to assess, research, develop and deliver?

Is it suddenly their job? Just because the UK now has more employees in the public sector than the private sector, should we actively encourage that huge disparity and illogicality? My economics skills are pretty basic because it wasn't taught in schools (is it now? - Sadly, I know the answer, it is a resounding State Education "No") but even I can see the lunacy of pursuing this path.

Dear Govt., Your job is to protect and promote the community well-being of your electorate. Please do not force me to write yet another letter about the Destruction of Trade and Industry based in Victoria St, London. You can change your name as often as you wish, but we will see through it. DTI, Berr, BIS - you are all trying to muscle in on the few remaining industries that can attract external investment and encourage internal investment and growth.

You should not be nicking all of our ideas and implementing them, but be fostering them, enabling communication within industry, introducing industry people in a 'social network' capacity, funding trips abroad for industry people who 'Do', not politicians etc on a career path to nowhere. Some of the most recent quangos exhibit all of this hidden entrepreneurial/career-driven desire; it can only go very badly wrong for the country if it continues.

Yours etc

Let me put one issue into two sentences:

1. It is not the government's job to decide what we want and force it upon us, viz personal websites - hide it behind this week's fluff, but it is online ID cards by the back door.

2. It is certainly not your job to spec and procure it, whatever the ELECTORATE choose, and definitely, absolutely, not something you should even consider in-house with your appalling record for IT projects.

If I could draw, the following would be a cartoon. (I am counting on the skills of the 5tth blog audience to render it).

For those who don't know the UK, we don't need to carry ID cards. Yet.

2010: Policeman pulls me up in the street.
Name? Josephiah Judas Smith.
Address? 94 Azure Acacia Avenue. (You get the idea.....)
Seems the privilege of anonymity may be about to removed.....
2012: Policeman pulls you up in the street: URL?


I think it's referendum time..................stuff the election. Can you be trusted any more with the well-being of this country?

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