Well, at least you are confirming that government procurement methods often end in scandal. So what "competition" do you think is appropriate for WBC library services?
As someone who has been made redundant twice in a long and varied career, I can tell you where financial advantage comes from and that is by the process you praise i.e. procurement. More specifically, worker procurement. Employing agency workers means no employers National Insurance contributions and no pension contributions to pay. That typically amounts to a 20% "saving" on staff costs but of course, that "saving" is an illusion since headline salaries stay the same or are lowered when supply of labour exceeds demand or rising when the opposite occurs. The national trend is and has been for some time, fewer and fewer agency workers contributing to a pension. That in turn results in greater state liabilities for maintaining a basic level of existence for an aging population in retirement. There are demographic factors too but this underlying factor rarely receives any publicity. The actual cost has and is being delayed but is emerging now as more and more non civil servant workers reach retirement age. The effect to date is that a few have benefited while for the majority of outsourced workers, salaries/wages and living standards have stagnated and the gap between rich and poor has widened dramatically. Anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows that.
Your analysis of the railways does not mention any advantages from its privatisation as Railtrack; the only private entity to attempt its outsourced management. It also fails to mention that the railways were allowed to decay; being starved of investment for many decades in favour of investment in air and road transport. The current C4 investment programme still has a few years to run and I believe that the railways have improved by every measure since public investment was started, post the Railtrack era. It is not perfect but empirically improving. Despite what you say, Network Rail is fully accountable to the state since the state is the major funder of the improvement programmes, it tightly controls the capital spend and fixes TOC fare increases.
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