I work in the education sector and am fairly savvy with the wage structure of the organisations I deal with. Six figure salaries are commonplace at the top, even near the top. Some of the lower ranking directors, VPs and even support staff are taking home the kind of money many can only dream of.

While I appreciate the cuts have been deep, this year's funding is the lowest he's ever seen according to one senior board member, the money going on wages is far from modest.

Quote ="PCollinson1990"Not at all, basic health needs should be met. But not breast enlargements, gender change etc. Half our health care professionals can hardly speak English, Doctors getting hundreds of thousands of pounds but still working privately as well, the NHS is corrupt, drug companies making millions, if not billions. It's just my opinion.'" What are "basic health needs"? Where do you draw the line? "half of healthcare professionals can hardly speak English." What rubbish. Provide me with proof of this twaddle. Doctors deserve a decent salary. They don't grow on trees. Do you know how long it takes to qualify? The NHS is corrupt? Proof please? Drug companies make billions because they make the drugs. Who else would do it? It might be unfair and they may take the NHS for a ride but how do you solve it? In my experience most of the problem is down to our own government re-organising things despite saying there would be no top down re-organisation. You now have a system that is obsessed with "assurance" i.e. collecting data. I spend almost as much time writing reports on the work I've done than actually doing it. Staff are taken away from dealing with patients to do this stuff. Cut the pen pushing and you free up time. Unfortunately this is only getting worse. BTW none of this was caused by the EU and won't be helped by Brexit. It's a UK government issue. By the way pay scales for NHS can be found here: https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/about/ ... -pay-rates

Quote ="PCollinson1990"Not at all, basic health needs should be met. But not breast enlargements, gender change etc. Half our health care professionals can hardly speak English, Doctors getting hundreds of thousands of pounds but still working privately as well, the NHS is corrupt, drug companies making millions, if not billions. It's just my opinion.'" What are "basic health needs"? Where do you draw the line? "half of healthcare professionals can hardly speak English." What rubbish. Provide me with proof of this twaddle. Doctors deserve a decent salary. They don't grow on trees. Do you know how long it takes to qualify? The NHS is corrupt? Proof please? Drug companies make billions because they make the drugs. Who else would do it? It might be unfair and they may take the NHS for a ride but how do you solve it? In my experience most of the problem is down to our own government re-organising things despite saying there would be no top down re-organisation. You now have a system that is obsessed with "assurance" i.e. collecting data. I spend almost as much time writing reports on the work I've done than actually doing it. Staff are taken away from dealing with patients to do this stuff. Cut the pen pushing and you free up time. Unfortunately this is only getting worse. BTW none of this was caused by the EU and won't be helped by Brexit. It's a UK government issue. By the way pay scales for NHS can be found here: https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/about/ ... -pay-rates

I'm in a similar position - and for mine, the people who you refer to are a rare breed and few and far between; if they rocked up in the private sector with equivalent levels of skill and expertise, they'd command far more than the *relatively* modest salaries you describe.

It's really easy to use the one or two 6 figure salaried CEO or Exec Principal types to be outraged about - but these people are invariably NLE's and have responsibility for multi-million pound budgets, not to mention the welfare of thousands of kids. I'm more than comfortable with securing these experts in jobs where they are performing well - so it seems reasonable to me to pay them accordingly. They're the people who should be designing education strategy and delivery - instead of dickweeds like Michael Gove, who's got no expertise in education whatsoever, but has implemented sweeping changes to the education system in this country, few of which will have any direct benefit on the experience of kids attending the schools in question.

While there are some employees who are worth their weight in gold, there are also plenty of these 'rare breeds' who if they rocked up in the private sector, they'd be lucky to be making the tea. They certainly wouldn't be in jobs paying anything near the 50k-90k bracket. They'd be laughed out of the interview.

At the very top you would hope they'd be worth the money. But as you come down through the 'layer cake' there are a hell of a lot of middle management types who get seconded from school to school then ultimately from trust to trust when each employer realises they're not doing very much for their 50k-90k a year.

In some trusts there can be around 10 layers of board members/execs/directors/management/various principals/heads of department, and that's before you even get to the teachers.

Then I'd get the hell out of dodge - because given the current situation around funding for schools, I fail to see how any Academy or Trust could survive with that kind of inefficiency - the money just isn't there. I'm the Chair of a MAT Board (non Exec, unpaid) and every member Academy's budget is pared down and lean - and the SLT are a really impressive bunch of people, who would flourish wherever they worked.

I take your point that there are some teachers who are the top of their scale and with various enhancements that they've accumulated over the years - but the whole Academy/MAT thing has been going long enough for all of those anomalies to have been addressed and in some cases, where they don't justify their own cost, managed out.

bren2k has an agenda, there's no point even attempting debate, argue with a moron and they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

You must be talking from experience as you haven't said anything that doesn't sound like its from the pages of the Daily Mail or The Sun.

I'm more than capable of forming my own opinions, I don't believe in the largesse of the bloated welfare state and NHS.

Feel free to debate with me; you've yet to say anything other than what I'm sure you believe are pithy one liners, but which appear to be soundbites lifted from the Daily Mail.

There's no debating with you, myopic view believing in the idiocy of the NHS and wider welfare state, as said before, you have your agenda, feel free to keep bleating it, it is Spring afterall

Exact same could be said about you. You're quick to call people myopic and don't bring any experience to the debate just "my opinion". Back it up if you can but I suspect you can't and you're just brainwashed.

It would be crazy to think an organisation as big as the NHS doesn't have significant opportunities for efficiency savings and improvements.

That is not to say it doesn't do a great job because for the most part it certainly does.

Perhaps if its customers didn't abuse it as much as they do then it could actually have a 2 hour window for A&E!!

Brainwashed? Nope, I just don't think the world owes me anything, is parting the moderator exam having to carry a Labour membership card?

All trusts make a massive effort to try and educate the public to "Choose well" when they decide where to go for medical assistance.

Despite that you always get people in A&E that shouldn't be there.

As for savings my own Trust has been making these for the past 7 years. We're in the middle of cutting £3m in 3 years.

Speaking for ourselves the fat is well and truly gone.

Your stereotypes are laughable.

One of the problems with big organisations is the ordering of consumables and supplies. More often than not, the person ordering doesn't know the true costs, nor do they care as it's not their money. We're living in an age where the relieving of our money is more aggressive than ever. Suppliers aren't here to do them a favour, they're here to make as much profit as they can. 'Big organisation has requested a price... think of a number... double it... put it in an official quote... hope they don't question it.'

I've worked on both sides and have seen it first hand. I've worked for a supplier who would add a third onto quotes for a large University and every time said Uni would just send over a purchase order. On the other side I've seen admin staff ordering letterheads for £1 each thinking that's what they must cost, and a supplier adding an extra £1000 profit on a job which should have cost around £300.

I'm sure the NHS has procurement procedures in place for this kind of thing but I'd hazard a guess they won't necessarily be getting the best value for money across the organisation.

Again, in your eyes. Thankfully the public don't agree, we're fed up of paying for you to push pens and go to meetings.

What the hell are you actually rambling about?

You persistently claim that there's no debating with certain people - without having tried.

Feel free to go back to any of my posts and respond with facts that constitute a debate - I'm quite happy to discuss. Here's a tip though - debate does not consist of calling someone stupid, labelling them a lefty, or saying that "we" are sick of your type.

Give it a go - you seem to feel that you have all the answers to the problems of society - enlighten us?

No point, you know everything, no point joining in. My comments are valid because they are true, let's imagine a country under Corbin shall we, fills people with dread because he, and the Labour Party are like a really bad circus who have forgotten the tent and are ignoring the Eleohants in the room.

Bye then.

I'm assuming some of these savings are achieved through the procurement chain etc. I've never understood why the Police, Fire, NHS......... don't have a centrally managed & incentivised (privatised if it takes that) procurement/sourcing group.

There must be millions of savings to be had there

Equally privatising back office staff........

My experiences of 'nationalised' public sector organisations is one of incompetence brought about by 'shuffling' staff around/upwards and wastefulness underpinned by a lack of accountability.

That's a masterful way to win an argument; I bow to your superior debating technique.

I don't work in procurement but we do have a specialised team that will search high and low across all providers to source things at the lowest cost.

So if you can get it off amazon cheapest that's where we get it.

The issue with procurement comes higher up the chain. It appears that if you want a bit of specialist kit. For example I was after some respirators and other such kit for treating contaminated patients. The only place you could get this was via the NHS Supply Chain and the providers into that charge what seems to be a fortune. They also set up long contracts to service equipment that can be eye wateringly expensive but with no other supplier available you're stuck. The costs of this goes up every time they're negotiated. The money from government hasn't gone up in 7 years.

That may be because it's specialised kit and they can get away with it because we can't go anywhere else.

What do you do? Enforce pricing limits on private companies? It looks like some sort or regulation is needed. It's all very well blaming the NHS but often I think the private sector takes so much out simply because it can get away with it.

Elsewhere there's a similar scenario in higher education. My wife works for a well known university. Various subjects must have certain electronic journals available to students for them to be a degree subject - e.g. some health degrees and some law degrees.

The companies that own these journals put them in bundles of say 20 or 30 so you may want 3 or 4 but have to take the others too you don't want. Each bundle costs maybe around £50k.

The companies are savvy so they make sure universities have to but many bundles so you can offer the degree so spend millions.

There is no competition amongst these companies. One called Elsevier puts up subscriptions each year by several grand. They are able to do what they like.

The result is universities get out of pocket and have to charge higher fees or stop offering certain degrees. That leads to fewer qualified people eventually. At least the fat cats clear up though.

Interesting analysis. When I joined the civil service in the early 90s a lot of that was true. A lot has been done to streamline things since. Once you do take the plunge and make it slicker you can make big savings but often they’ll only be made once as once you go private companies tend to offer the same services for similar prices so whenever contracts are up there’s no immediate bonus. When I re-trained and moved into the NHS I’ve seen how an initial saving can often have unintended consequences. For example you’ll get people on minimum wage doing jobs that they have no stake in so service standards get worse, e.g. in terms of catering, building maintenance, IT or cleaning. People don’t go the extra mile anymore and if you need anything out of the ordinary then forget it.

I think a lot of public sector people are hopeless at contracting too so get screwed on the SLAs.

Where I work all the support services apart from domestic cleaners is done in house. It’s a heck of a lot easier to organise when you’re all under the same management structure. It just needs effective management. We’re one of the few still in the black financially….for now. It’s no coincidence that this was achieved with minimum PFI involvement.

So,you're proving my point, the NHS is as corrupt as inefficient, time everyone was sacked and privatisation paid for the best of the best. I know doctors and dentists from the Maldives, India that don't even have the right qualifications, all just waved through, the UK has become an embarrassment, Mrs May is taking control back, maybe we can charter a boat for all the lefties to the Falklands, no return ticket required