"From railways to nurseries and children’s homes, investors are taking advantage of chances to siphon taxpayer funds offshore. Sector by sector, private equity is making deep inroads into UK public services"
Over 20% of people between 16-64 are not actively looking for work; this includes students & the (early) retired; there has also been considerable coverage of the long-term sick in recent months.
The group who are not working due to care responsibilities are also important.
I posted recently on grandparents & childcare, and its now clear that the crisis in #socialcare is keeping some #workers at home!
This is why better social & #publicservices make economic sense!
Seems like Finnish government want to kill YLE (public TV broadcaster) by not forcing the building companies to ensure that YLE can be watched https://valtioneuvosto.fi/hanke?tunnus=LVM002:00/2024 The excuse seems very bad, that this "limits the development of cable broadband services" when most people is not using even a 10% of current network capacity at home, how many download at 100Mbps when fibre optic can transfer up to 10.000Mbps easily #YLE#Finland#PublicServices#PublicBroadcast#News
Although prepared for last Autumn's budget, this briefing from the Women's Budget Group on #gender & #taxation remains apposite as the #Tories contemplate more destruction & hobbling of #publicservices:
'Because of structural gender inequalities in the labour market and society – and because women are more likely to be unpaid carers - women rely particularly on public services. Cuts in public services therefore have a disproportionately detrimental impact on women'!
Zero fares is a direct way to put cash in the pockets of those who need it most. Most of those who use ABQ RIDE are people of color, 74 percent are low income, and 73 percent don’t have access to a car.
#UK#PublicServices#NHS#AI#GenerativeAI#Chatbots: "Public services will not recover until the 2030s even under a Labour government, and it will take a decade to clear the backlog in the NHS and the courts, a report says.
The study from the Institute for Public Policy Research, a progressive thinktank, outlines the challenges an incoming Labour government would face, with voters impatient for change within a first term.
“The next government will inherit one of the most challenging contexts in terms of public services of any new government since the second world war,” said Harry Quilter-Pinner, an IPPR director, warning that reform and higher spending would be necessary.
Some of the IPPR’s ideas include rolling out AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to the public sector to save an estimated £24bn a year, with a “right to retrain” for workers whose jobs are affected."
My father-in-law is a farmer, and has always supplied his crops to farmer cooperatives. Year after year, the cooperatives' financials improve, but the margins for farmers shrink. Reading the financial statements (which are public but well hidden, of course), it's discovered that each year the executives' salaries, the president's, and the employees' increase, and bonuses are awarded to them when the harvests or profits are better than previous years. In practice, the farmer doesn't benefit, except marginally, from a particularly good year for the cooperative. He's been a board member for years and, when he tried to raise this issue, he was gradually and 'elegantly' dismissed from his position, replaced by figures less agricultural and more bureaucratic.
Many Italian public entities own private but publicly owned companies. These entities are obliged to use these companies, often with lower service quality and higher prices than the free market. In theory, this should be an advantage for the community, but in practice, it leads to a decrease in the competitiveness of service prices and lower revenues for local companies, made non-competitive by the obligation. The result is that, year after year, the costs of services increase and we hear about 'record budgets', but, in fact, the only ones earning more are the presidents, board members, officials, and employees. The citizen, however, sees the cost of the service increasing year after year.
I read everywhere about controversies related to the CEO of Mozilla's compensation, and I'm not surprised. It doesn't matter whether it's about distributing 'sugared water (quote)', hardware, public services, agricultural products, or anything else: when there's a lot of money involved, the figures 'at the top' are very, very far from what really happens below. It's pure business.
Regarding this, I will tell an experience related to the BSD Cafe - but I will have to phrase it well as I don't want to be misunderstood or generate controversy and/or bad feelings.
Much of Italian entrepreneurship (especially post-war, but not only) has been tied to people passionate about a product, who have built empires (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Del Vecchio with LuxOttica, Ferrero, and many others). When the boss is actually a Leader with vision and passion, things can work. And it's not a matter of money. Money may come, but as a consequence, not as a target.
When, instead, a 'generic' entrepreneur is put in charge, the product loses its importance - like when a computer company was led by someone who, until the day before, sold 'sugared water', precisely.
The defining problem of UK #politics right now is how we have both relatively high levels of #taxation (see chart below for historic comparison) and yet have failing #publicservices, an #NHS crisis & a general failure to manage the economy.
Some regard it as a problem of a lack of growth & failures in #productivity, others think we have a mismatch between our expectations of being a rich economy & actually (on GDP per capita terms) being less rich than we think?
"At the end of March 2022 - when the Ministry of Social Development began regularly reporting these numbers - 285 people in 117 Hastings households were living in emergency accommodation.
At the end of September 2023, that was down to 66 people in 39 households - a 77 percent drop.
Officials put the success down to the district's place-based housing strategy, which was introduced as a pilot in 2019."
"The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development said it was looking to achieve the same success with place-based housing strategies in nine other communities from Te Tai Tokerau to Queenstown, in a bid to move thousands of people out of motels and off the public housing waitlist."