I'm not going to go get a bunch of graphs, but it certainly feels like both UK and world wide affluence has grown since 1984. The point I was making wasn't whether we had grown, which can of course be disputed but that we don't seem to have any realistic alternatives other than minor tuning to levels of regulation and commercial intervention. The model of private enterprise providing most needs and wants with gov filling in seems to be the world wide model now with only differences around how much enterprise and how much state.



and you know it will probably get to a point where it's working well this way and then we'll have another party come in, reverse all the changes, get that to the point it's working well before it gets changed again

Without wandering too far off topic I used to have local gov and local education in my sales patch for IT support. Our area was datacentre, not end user. I know we were better quality and more efficient at that than any council or uni would be doing it themselves.
Not so with laptops and end users which requires a more local level contact and on-site personnel, we got out of that business. However there are companies that are very good at that and can use expertese and skill earned by doing the same elsewhere to do it better.
I've also seen the likes of Northgate help both private and gov enterprises with payroll and personnel systems.

That sounds a bizarre structure, to break down to such small units.

I didn't do anything with that level of education but saw things happening differently in healthcare. I'm not in the health care sector these days (I was for the latter half of 2012 and put all my efforts into the corporations supporting healthcare providers, the likes of Cerner, McKesson, BUPA, etc) so I'm not entirely up to date on their structure. What I understand of it is though: Surgeries are encouraged to run like standalone businesses, but that are also encouraged to for consortia to work together for projects that benefit from economies of scale such as IT infrastructure and out of hours coverage. That consortium can be hundreds of surgeries.

What's interesting for me in that space is the way such consortia or unis or hospitals can become skilled and specialists in particular areas, and use that to earn revenue. That means for the likes of me I have more than just ways to save costs - we can help them build capabilities they can sell on to their peers. i.e. one hospital was working on an imaging system that they planned to sell the use on onwards to other hospitals. One of the resellers I work with now is putting together a data storage solution for a uni who plan to sell usage of that storage facility to other unis as cloud storage, saving those unis costs compared to having and managing their own storage, but generating revenue and profit for the uni we're working with.

And how much do you think the council currently pays for it's laptops and software? An ex missus of mine is a "Public Sector Alliances Manager" for a software company. Basically, instead of my local council (Capita sponsored) simply going to PC World and buying a few dozen copies of Windows, due to some insane licensing agreement they have to buy it through a third party, who obviously shove a whopping surcharge on.

My own employer is the same, and it's a huge international company, every month or so we have the new hire car supplier, flight arranger etc etc. Even the tea bags, sugar and milk go through this process. The bloke who delivers the milk from his battered old pick up has to invoice, which then gets sent to Germany for approval, he then gets paid. The place that supplies the biscuits (Family Circle) charge £10 or £11 per box, the exact same box in Sainsbury's, £2.50! And don't get me started on how much it costs to lease, LEASE, a printer.

What a behemoth like a council or the NHS wants is a supplier who can pretty much guarantee supply, so they'll pay a premium for that. Your wife's school should get down to PC World/wherever and buy the dozen computers like any ordinary Joe, without the hassle of having to go through "procurement".

I've got similar crazy stories from the hotel group my wife works for, they are a Scottish company with all of their hotels in Scotland except one, which is in Leeds, which lets be honest is not a city that is short of all sorts of suppliers to the hotel industry, but every day a truck is sent down from Scotland to deliver clean linen and collect the used stuff, at least an eight hour trip that cannot be cheaper than sourcing it locally

I think businesses always look for the cheapest and quickest way to source supplies while they are under the control of board members who are "grounded", that is they live locally, have a connection to the area, to the county - as soon as they become part of a Group from outside the area or outside the country then common sense goes out of the window and the "corporate" workers take over, usually the ones for whom you'd be hard pushed to define what role they play other than turning up and drawing a salary.