Public sector bad ~ private sector good

Tax staff in Bootle opposing the cuts

That was one of the slogans used in the 1980s by those opposed to the first great swathes of privatisation that were cutting across state-owned industries during the Thatcher era. It could be argued that the state had no business running industries such as British Leyland: that's not a view I'd automatically endorse, especially in relation to manufacturing, because rescuing industry in trouble and thereby saving jobs, preserving skills and improving our balance of payments by reducing our need for foreign imports makes a lot of sense to me.

That's all yesterday's debate. The principle of privatisation has a quarter of a century or more later become an article of faith, rather than a different view of how to run the economy. All opinion polls showed that the privatisation of the post office was opposed by a clear majority. The Coalition went ahead all the same, even though the Post Office was making a healthy profit, unlike the old British Leyland; being a drain on the public purse was not a factor here. However, we tax payers were still conned because the government took over the expensive responsibilities of the pension fund, thereby making the Post Office sell-off very attractive indeed to potential investors. Furthermore, the share prices were either deliberately or incompetently set too low; the surge in price straight after privatisation was a nice bribe for the investors, but another financial loss for us tax payers. This took us right back to the bad old days of "Tell Sid", when the British Gas share prices were pitched so low at privatisation that within 24 hours you had an unearned bonanza at the nation's expense. The prospect of quick winnings was to entice ordinary people to invest and, by involving them, break down a lot of the opposition to privatisation.

In tandem with these latter day privatisations are drastic cuts to public sector jobs. The propaganda against the public sector has been so successful - uncaring bureaucrats with jobs for life and gold plated pensions - that people don't react very much when they hear that the jobs of civil servants and local authority workers are being cut. In terms of council jobs, people simply complain that they're not getting the same level of service that they had before the cuts and rarely link cause and effect. For example, my own council has laid off library workers and closed many libraries, not because they weren't being used, but because of the Coalition's cuts to council funding - and yet many of our local residents complained because the Christmas tree the council put up on our main shopping street was smaller than in previous years. After all, the thinking goes, they've only got rid of a load of useless pen pushers who wouldn't know a hard day's work if it hit them over the head.

I'll conclude with a couple of examples of civil service cutbacks that are damaging and self-defeating; similar stories can be heard across the public sector, including in the NHS, education and social services.

1. In 2013, the Environment Agency (EA) issued 7,000 flood warnings, the highest in its history, and in recent weeks there have been as many as 188 flood warnings at one time, 14 of them involving danger to life. We seem to be moving into a period of more extreme and unpredictable weather, probably associated with global warning and we may well need more staff to deal with it, but the Coalition's response will be to get rid of 1,550 EA staff in 2014. (Numbers from Private Eye)
2. Tax avoidance and evasion cost the tax payer 16 times the amount lost through benefit fraud. The Coalition is cutting HMRC (tax) staff and closing down offices all over the country. If we're not dealing effectively with tax fiddling now - and we aren't - what chance do we have with fewer staff? The conclusion I draw is that tax fiddling is respectable, whereas benefit claimants are routinely reviled by politicians and in the media. If tax fiddling got the same relentless flood of shock-horror stories in the press, TV documentaries and ministerial denunciations, there is no way the Coalition could turn a blind eye to it, as it does now. We get an occasional token swipe at Amazon or Vodaphone, and that's our lot. (Tax/benefit comparison from Channel 4 News website)

When your job cuts damage the economy and people's lives, homes and livelihoods, you are in the realm of irrational dogma. Yes, you can argue that the state shouldn't own car manufacturers, but you cannot argue that cutting staff who warn about floods or who could be chasing tax fiddlers makes any kind of sense all.