r/tories • u/dirty_centrist Centrist • 12d ago
All the Big Government Reforms the Media Hasn’t Been Telling You About
https://bylinetimes.com/2024/12/20/labour-government-annoucements-explained/27
u/ThisSiteIsHell Majorite 12d ago
The renationalisation of military accommodation is very sane. It's a natural monopoly and soldiers live where they are told - that's no place for private ownership.
Go look up armed forces pay. Warrant officers and senior commisioned officers actually make a shit ton, but even then the most surefire way to improve your standard of living is to leave the military. That's absurd.
There's a lot of pointless spending, yes, but there is some genuinely good stuff in here that I hope gets bipartisan support.
4
u/BlackJackKetchum Josephite 12d ago
I have a friend, a forces lifer and very, very near to the apex of the pyramid, who makes a nice living from it.
What said person would make in commerce would involve an extra zero on each month’s pay slip.
3
u/ThisSiteIsHell Majorite 12d ago
Well, I suppose that depends on what branch they're in. Engineering or logistics I can see that being true.
Even so, we're talking about people on good money living in slum-like conditions. There is absolutely waste there
2
u/BlackJackKetchum Josephite 12d ago
I’ve been very circumspect for obvious reasons, as you have surmised.
It is unacceptable that our military are not housed to a decent standard.
2
u/mcdowellag Verified Conservative 12d ago
I know that contracting to private firms hasn't made anybody happy, but one of the reasons for that is that the civil servants managing the contracts have not worked out how to monitor and control the private firms. It remains to be seen whether they will turn out to have the expertise to respond to repair requests promptly and manage the stock of housing sensibly. Last time I heard, if you knew how to organise building and estate management efficiently, you could earn a bit more as a real estate speculator than as a civil servant.
As I have noted before, Keir Starmer has the opportunity to revolutionise government in the UK and worldwide by showing that - under new new Labour - they can use economies of scale and the brainpower of assorted left wing academics to make public organisations run not only more efficiently than before, but also more efficiently than organisations motivated only by private gain. If they did so I would have to change my opinions, but pretty much the entire history of public services suggests that they will fail to do this - and most of this history was accumulated before the public sector was additionally hampered by DEI and affirmative action.
5
u/ThisSiteIsHell Majorite 12d ago
The benefit of private sector efficiency collapses in cases where the civil service has to hold the private contractors hand. I don't have much faith inthe civil service to be competent either, but at the very least they aren't in a position where they are actively incentivised to be as useless as legally possible.
If there were genuine competition it would be fine because the shit barracks owners would go out of business, but soldiers don't get a choice where they live.
1
u/dirty_centrist Centrist 10d ago
civil servants managing the contracts have not worked out how to monitor and control the private firms
We have weak institutions in the UK which means we can't have many nice things (like private healthcare) and have to structure our public services accordingly.
1
u/mcdowellag Verified Conservative 10d ago
I don't see how anybody expects this change is going to go well. We no longer have civil servants used to managing the maintenance of these buildings, or plumbers and tradesmen used to working on civil service contracts. Most companies dealing with the government have created special areas skilled at filling in government forms, and padded their bills to cope with the overhead and delay of supplying anything to the government. I don't see either side being satisfied with the contracts that will eventually be let to individual tradesmen and small firms, if that is how it is done. The other option would be to let to similar firms as before, but add an additional layer of civil service micromanagement and pretend that the the maintenance has now been nationalised. Just to make sure that everything goes smoothly, we have an additional constraint - https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/defence-officials-slash-civil-servants-spending-powers-97-3219469 "Ministers must now approve all spending by senior officials above £50,000 - a drastic cut from the previous £2m limit" How far does £50K when you are trying to renovate the defence estates?
1
u/dirty_centrist Centrist 10d ago
Is "government directly employing tradesman" not an option anymore?
1
u/dirty_centrist Centrist 10d ago
It's a natural monopoly and soldiers live where they are told
I would argue that the privatisation of a natural monopoly is simply creating a vehicle for legalised corruption.
If this were Africa, people would assume the conditions the soldiers were living in was the result of this corruption.
3
u/reuben_iv 12d ago
Usually the cost of mortgages over the price of eggs that seems to topple uk governments, but with Labour particularly I think they have to hope people forget all the shit they pulled within the first 100 days; the budget, chagos islands, the donor scandals
2
13
u/dirty_centrist Centrist 12d ago
Mods please delete if this is a repost.
I'm posting this here because I never heard of most of this stuff and it seems like we're all living in our own little bubbles. Where people believe opposite things to be true.
More importantly: will the electorate notice any of this stuff in five years, or will they vote against the "price of eggs"?