Category: 20. Nations

“Not another” public sector productivity drive!

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO – National Audit Office – recently highlighted ‘profligate waste‘ found in the UK public sector – for example, he cited: Procurement – A third of contracts worth some £100bn are not subject to competitive tendering Infrastructure projects – Billions have been wasted on HS2 and building 40 new hospitals …

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Can Labour really get Britain growing again?

Extracts follow from an insightful and important article by  Andrew Rawnsley, Chief Political Commentator of the Observer, published by the Grauniad – he considers, after years of Tory failure, whether Labour can get Britain growing again? Quite apart from England’s stuttering, albeit successful, start in the Rugby 6 Nations championship and Ronnie Sullivan’s recent triumph on …

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Local Government to produce ‘productivity plans’?

‘Stop press’ – Michael Gove has just ordered councils to produce new ‘productivity plans’. Apparently, several UK local government councils have either gone bust or are very close to it. Armchair experts suggest they never had any realistic plans anyway and, for non-statutory services, they just shelled out more local tax-payers’ money on loopy projects …

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Does Britain need a new public body to spur productivity?

Despite being a key player in the recently established TPI – The Productivity Institute – Diane Coyle, professor of public policy at Cambridge University, claims that ‘Britain needs a new public body to spur productivity as this would help in tackling the country’s chronic under-investment and policy churn’ – this implies that the TPI only …

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“Does anyone even understand productivity?” – The Critic

A new magazine ‘The Critic’ has just been launched – it includes an article on official measures of national productivity which, in its own way, makes many salient points about how seriously flawed they are, yet on which most of our political leaders and expert economists base their policies – readers will know we made …

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UK Civil Service expansion ended whilst quality of services to rise!

The Chancellor has announced a cap on civil servant headcount across Whitehall ‘to stop any further expansion, increase efficiencies and boost productivity’ – apart from an overwhelming sense of deja vu, one wonders what the impact of this latest initiative will be on individual processes remaining staff have to follow and so the quality of services …

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Productivity relatively ignored!

Once upon a time a CBI survey of senior UK managers found that 80% of them paid little attention to productivity – it was not a boardroom issue – their specific views included: It’s too difficult to measure productivity in most areas and sectors It’s seldom the main determinant of financial success for any organisation …

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Brexit, strikes and labour shortages

Below, Larry Elliott, economics editor of the Guardian, resurrects the economic debate about Brexit – he says: “If you want a benefit of Brexit, here it is: British employers must now innovate again” – what he overlooks is, for many of us including me, Brexit was about sovereignty, not economics – we would have liked to …

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Our productivity problem may not be as bad as it looks

Some good sense from Clancy Yeates, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, about current productivity levels down-under and applicable to most developed nations  High inflation isn’t the only thing that’s bothering Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe. He’s also been making noises lately about a problem affecting many economies around the world, including ours: weak productivity …

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Stalling UK wage growth costs £11,000 a year

The Resolution Foundation examined what wages might be today if growth seen before the 2008 financial crisis had not fallen away – according to research shared exclusively with BBC Panorama, 15 years of wage stagnation has left British workers £11,000 worse off a year    The Resolution Foundation calculated that had wages continued to grow …

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How to narrow the UK’s productivity gap

A personal view from Ian Stewart, Deloitte’s Chief Economist in the UK, writing in publication ‘Reaction’ – his analysis is so much better than the guff we normally read that I modestly thought he must have read my book – although, like most economists, he offers no doubts about the validity of national productivity statistics …

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Government waste!

We forever read about UK taxes already being high whilst many public services are struggling – and politicians of all colours outbidding each other with promises of more funding for more inputs – and many existing workforces threaten strikes for more inflation-beating pay, funded by the famous magic-money-tree What we never read about, at least …

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Are French People Just Lazy?

A guest essay in the OPINION column of the New York Times by Robert Zaretsky, a historian and author, raises this appealing question, at least to an Englishman Demonstrators during a rally called by French trade unions in Nantes, western France, a week or so ago – Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images France has been …

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Public sector productivity – TPI reports

A report by The Productivity Institute unveils urgent recommendations to raise public sector productivity through focusing on outcomes and identifying bottlenecks for improvement – but one is left wondering what individual  public sector managers would actually do tomorrow as a result – and also thinking the claimed £1.8bn benefits on offer are paltry compared with …

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Train in Vain?

An important article from the Resolution Foundation and their Economy 2030  project studying skills, tasks, and training in the UK labour market – written byNye Cominetti, Rui Costa, Andrew Eyles, Kathleen Henehan, and Sandra McNally – human capital and skills are important for improving the UK’s labour market and economic performance – they  assess how the skills needed in …

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Ditch ‘costly, restrictive’ skills list for migrants to help speed up economy

A practical common-sense solution emerges from down under and the Oz Productivity Commission – written up by Shane Wright in the Sydney Morning Herald   The skills shortage list for migrants would be ditched and businesses given the right to bring workers from overseas at higher wages under a proposal the Productivity Commission believes would …

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Computer Saturation and the Productivity Slowdown

A very interesting article follows, written by Pablo Azar and just published by Liberty Street Economics – especially as it supports the view expressed in our new book ‘Productivity Knowhow’ Revisited that “it’s the mix of resources and methods used” that determines most of productivity levels achieved, not the individual  inputs themselves – a view …

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Turning Around The Productivity Slowdown

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