From the horse’s mouth, via the Observer’s pre-postmortem of the Blair years:
One possible explanation for the negative scores lies in the enormous disillusion of many public sector workers with the tide of target, monitoring and audit that inhibits their ability to perform their 'real jobs'.More than 40 per cent of British adults either work in, or have partners who work in, the public sector. These people talk about their largely negative experience of the public sector to their friends and acquaintances. It is hardly surprising that these negative views spread to the wider population.
Institutional rot is the big untold New Labour story. It’s what ties story-selling squaddies to fucked up NHS computer systems and everything in between, but it only ever comes out piecemeal in relation to specific crises. This is partly because we’re talking process as much as event, and it doesn’t help that the papers either take New Lab guff about reform at face value if they’re government supporters or prefer bogus lesbians on the rates non-stories if they aren’t.
I wonder how much the Tories are aware of this. I mean, if and when the time comes for them to take a peek round the scary door marked “constant reform as slow execution”, I wonder if they’ll emerge pale and sweating at what they see…
That's a naive outlook. Better in the public sector with a FS pension that is likely to be honoured and not in fear of being culled when the next private equity investor or M+A leads to the inevitable restructuring.
Posted by: Will | April 13, 2007 at 01:26 PM