Statism fails again: "Cash-strapped councils may send us back to dark ages"

Permabear

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gandalf

It really begs the question what are these people doing in councils? 36 councils in a country the size of Ireland is a luxury we no longer can afford.

I do not agree with putting parks, roads and most services in the hands of the private sector though. But I think that the whole subject of councils needs to be addressed from the most fundimental level. At most we need 5 or 6 councils in this country and not 36.

anymore

Local authorities are chronically unproductive and unaccountable. I agree it is imperative that as many of the services being monopolised by local authorities be privatised.
We are overpaying for badly deliverd services !
A Local authority services are one of the main sources of inflation in irish society,

Scofflaw

Ah, the standard libertarian dialectic - straight from "there is a problem with councils" to "having councils is the problem" with nothing in between.

amused,
Scofflaw

OhNoYouDidn't

Scofflaw wrote: »

Ah, the standard libertarian dialectic - straight from "there is a problem with councils" to "having councils is the problem" with nothing in between.

amused,
Scofflaw

Exactly. Its not as if there are examples of over paid private sector staff making appaling decisions, is there?

OhNoYouDidn't

anymore wrote: »

Local authorities are chronically unproductive and unaccountable. I agree it is imperative that as many of the services being monopolised by local authorities be privatised.
We are overpaying for badly deliverd services !
A Local authority services are one of the main sources of inflation in irish society,

Because that NEVER happens in the Irish private sector....

anymore

Scofflaw wrote: »

Ah, the standard libertarian dialectic - straight from "there is a problem with councils" to "having councils is the problem" with nothing in between.

amused,
Scofflaw

By all means provide the mssing link or some constructive comment !

SeanW

Scofflaw wrote: »

Ah, the standard libertarian dialectic - straight from "there is a problem with councils" to "having councils is the problem" with nothing in between.

amused,
Scofflaw

DF did mention that in Sweden, 2/3 of the road network is maintained by private associations ... last time I checked Sweden wasn't exactly a hotbed of libertarianism

anymore

OhNoYouDidn't wrote: »

Because that NEVER happens in the Irish private sector....

When it does, we cxan simply switch providers !
When my private waste disposal operators empties my bin, I ma fairly sure where the empty bin will be left !
That is one of the reason i left the Local authority. If I have an issue i can ring the freephone number , as i have done, will get to speak to a pleasnt and helpful operatibe who will be resolved. I will nto be treated like a fool as happens with my Local authority - i have the emails to prove this !

gandalf

Scofflaw wrote: »

Ah, the standard libertarian dialectic - straight from "there is a problem with councils" to "having councils is the problem" with nothing in between.

amused,
Scofflaw

Not from me, we need councils, I just believe we have too many councils duplicating too much administration and not delivering value for money to services for the tax paying worker in the state.

bmaxi

I'm not a Communist or even a red hot Socialist but I get tired of reading about how well the private sector will run everything. The banks were private sector, Dell was private sector et, cetera, et cetera.
I have worked in the public sector and in the private sector, in multinational companies and there is incompetence, waste and mismanagement in both, the difference being that you don't tend to hear about private sector waste. Indeed I have seen deliberate waste in the private sector, purely for the purpose of making a senior executive's point and for massaging figures before an AGM. It is a certainty that these decisions were not taken in the public interest.
There has to be a social element to how public services are run. Are we to leave people to die at the side of the road because somebody decides they don't have the right insurance to pay for transport to hospital, or leave families to suffocate in tower blocks because the privately run Fire service doesn't have a contract to service that building?
I know these are extremes but the private sector is not the panacea for all our ills, how can it be when its sole raison d'etre is profit? What is needed is strict regulation and accountability, something which is sorely lacking at the moment and which I'm confident the Swedes have off to a fine art.

ejmaztec

I'd be all for taking pot-hole repairs away from the remit of the local authority, especially if they all "repair" potholes like they do in Kerry.

Shovelling a bit of tarmac into a hole, flattening it a bit (sometimes rolling the wheels of a truck over it two or three times:eek:), then having the rain wash it out 10 minutes later, is pure genius.

A complete cretin, given a few quid, could do a proper job.

anymore

bmaxi wrote: »

I'm not a Communist or even a red hot Socialist but I get tired of reading about how well the private sector will run everything. The banks were private sector, Dell was private sector et, cetera, et cetera.
I have worked in the public sector and in the private sector, in multinational companies and there is incompetence, waste and mismanagement in both, the difference being that you don't tend to hear about private sector waste. Indeed I have seen deliberate waste in the private sector, purely for the purpose of making a senior executive's point and for massaging figures before an AGM. It is a certainty that these decisions were not taken in the public interest.
There has to be a social element to how public services are run. Are we to leave people to die at the side of the road because somebody decides they don't have the right insurance to pay for transport to hospital, or leave families to suffocate in tower blocks because the privately run Fire service doesn't have a contract to service that building?
I know these are extremes but the private sector is not the panacea for all our ills, how can it be when its sole raison d'etre is profit? What is needed is strict regulation and accountability, something which is sorely lacking at the moment and which I'm confident the Swedes have off to a fine art.

Havent you heard about the young kids dying in HSE care ?

dan_d

Some days it feels like the whole bloody show is crumbling down around our ears........I find myself wondering more and more frequently lately why the hell we don't have more qualified people running for government, instead of the endless stream of Lawyers/teachers and randomers. Would it be too much to ask that a few nurses/doctors/engineers/economists/accountants etc try to get into Gov in this god-forsaken hell hole? People who actually solve problems for a living and maybe have some experience of what's going on out there????
(I'm feeling extremely pessimistic today! )

Sulmac

Giving local authorities the power to raise their own revenue would help to combat this problem.

Even better, as has been said already, would be reducing the number of authorities and getting rid of the pointless town and borough councils.

I've said this before, but basing local government on the eight regions would be ideal, as they are all (with the exception of the Border region) based around one large city/town. This is what we need for better co-ordination of council services and more sustainable development.

anymore

ejmaztec wrote: »

I'd be all for taking pot-hole repairs away from the remit of the local authority, especially if they all "repair" potholes like they do in Kerry.

Shovelling a bit of tarmac into a hole, flattening it a bit (sometimes rolling the wheels of a truck over it two or three times:eek:), then having the rain wash it out 10 minutes later, is pure genius.

A complete cretin, given a few quid, could do a proper job.

In my part of Cork, the temporary filling is not even flattened down anymore - they rely on passing traffic to do it. meanwhile they use two employess to water roadside flower troughs- one to do the watering and one to do the driving. The PS unions really decide what can and cannot be done and management go meekly along with it. One library in my area does not open on Saturdays !

Permabear

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Scofflaw

anymore wrote: »

Ah, the standard libertarian dialectic - straight from "there is a problem with councils" to "having councils is the problem" with nothing in between.

By all means provide the mssing link or some constructive comment !

That is the constructive comment - I've pointed out that there is a whole missing argument between the observation and the conclusion. If one wished to persuade people other than libertarians, it would be better to have a chain of logic in between, demonstrating that the job of councils could in every case be done better and at least as equitably by private companies in the Irish marketplace, and that people would find that preferable. I appreciate that to libertarians that's a self-evident truth, but then Marxism makes sense to Marxists.

I'm not wedded in any sense to the idea of councils as the necessary provider of all local services (although they're probably better than central government in several ways), but I'm certainly not persuaded by arguments like "the Council hasn't fixed my potholes therefore we should abolish them".

cordially,
Scofflaw

gandalf

Scofflaw wrote: »

I'm not wedded in any sense to the idea of councils as the necessary provider of all local services (although they're probably better than central government in several ways), but I'm certainly not persuaded by arguments like "the Council hasn't fixed my potholes therefore we should abolish them".

I agree with you on this.

The problem is that people don't realise that the council "haven't fixed my potholes" or "opened the library" or "cleaned the park/streets up" because they don't have the money to do so.

Unfortunately one of the reasons for lack of funds would be the number of councils and administrative duplication across the board followed by a lack of co-ordination in delivering these services.

We need to redesign the whole structure of local government so it is designed towards delivering resources to front line services in the most efficient manner possible. No one can argue that it is currently in a position to do this.

Permabear

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bmaxi

anymore wrote: »

Havent you heard about the young kids dying in HSE care ?

I have indeed and I've also heard of old people living and dying in squalid conditions in private sector nursing homes, for which they were paying a premium rate.
I'm not interested in points scoring, I am quite prepared to concede there are areas where the private sector can and do the job well but I'm not convinced a large, unwieldy and unregulated private sector will perform any better than the public sector.

Nodin

Indeed. Having never witnessed the public sector, I can only say that if it truly is worse than the private, we're all doomed.

Wolfe Tone

The way I see it the councils are a necessity to provide these basic services. If they were privatized I believe that the ultimate result would be a private, rather than a public monopoly. The Irish market is too small to support multiple private enterprises providing these services.
Another scenario would be that the companies would simply divide the county into "Territories" and have monopolies on the go within these areas. Privatization is not the answer here.

Permabear

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P. Breathnach

If no funds are provided for road maintenance, then the private sector is unlikely to be any more efficient than the public sector.

Scofflaw

donegalfella wrote: »

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As usual, you've had to grossly misrepresent everyone else's point of view in order to score what you believe to be a point. You have a very dogmatic approach - the market will fix all - and so you attempt to represent everyone who disagrees with you as holding the diametrically opposite view, even though virtually nobody holds such a view.

The reason everyone else tells you about the failures of the private sector is not because everyone else is a relentless statist, but because you're apparently entirely blind to any faults the market may have, and people are trying to enlighten you.

Please stop misrepresenting everyone else's viewpoints. It's definitely approaching soapboxing at this stage.

regards,
Scofflaw

SlabMurphy

donegalfella wrote: »

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Not taking away the share of the blame of the ineptitude/cronyism of the councils, but isn't the root of the problem in the hands of the private sector ( the developers ) as they are the ones who owe the councils €400m ?

And if we had say the roads etc in the hands of the private sector, wouldn't we just have zombie roads along with zombie estates, zombie hotels etc as our experiences have shown us just how well unregulated capitalism works ?

bmaxi

donegalfella wrote: »

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Not so. I don't have a strong preference for whomever is repairing the roads, collecting the bins, running the hospitals etc. I just think the profit motive will always outweigh the common good. You bemoan the fact your local library is only open two days a week. Given that you live in a remote area it would be interesting to see how many days it would open were it in private hands, indeed if it would open at all. One thing I am sure of, it wouldn't be free.

silverharp

bmaxi wrote: »

Not so. I don't have a strong preference for whomever is repairing the roads, collecting the bins, running the hospitals etc. I just think the profit motive will always outweigh the common good. You bemoan the fact your local library is only open two days a week. Given that you live in a remote area it would be interesting to see how many days it would open were it in private hands, indeed if it would open at all. One thing I am sure of, it wouldn't be free.

there is a good question here , what would living patterns be like if urban taxpayers didnt have to support rural dwellers via the "live where you like (at someone elses expense) policies of the state"?
The problem for people like DF is that he is being heavily taxed (unless he is a hobby farmer ) but yet is at the mercy of monopoly providers of services.

fontanalis

Scofflaw wrote: »

Ah, the standard libertarian dialectic - straight from "there is a problem with councils" to "having councils is the problem" with nothing in between.

amused,
Scofflaw

Well the market will touch the free enterprises with it's noodly apendage and everything will be alright because the businesses are out for the little guy.
Funny he mentions about people doing the potholes themselves, I think he advocated this in the threads about the severe frost in the past winter, and what was it donegalfella said about the people straned by hurricane katrina. Instead of privatising everyhting why not go for an efficient public sector?

Scofflaw

silverharp wrote: »

there is a good question here , what would living patterns be like if urban taxpayers didnt have to support rural dwellers via the "live where you like (at someone elses expense) policies of the state"?
The problem for people like DF is that he is being heavily taxed (unless he is a hobby farmer ) but yet is at the mercy of monopoly providers of services.

Interesting that you should run the two of those together - the chances are, of course, that the average rural dweller is not being taxed to a level sufficient to pay for the services he/she receives, however inadequate they may feel those services to be - otherwise, there would presumably be rather less need for the steady flow of subsidy from city to country.

cordially,
Scofflaw