FlyTheNest

This week’s summit “is really the first hesitant attempt to forge a bilateral relationship with France,” said Eyal. “For the U.K. the problem is what will be the substantive content, beyond military cooperation, in these bilateral relationships after Brexit?”

“The U.K. is trying to recreate a relationship which went out of fashion in the 1960s,” he added. “It’s now so counterintuitive to modern diplomats — both sides will be grasping in the dark to make this work.”

Under PF2, the government will gain a smaller proportion of profit if deals are refinanced – a cut from 50% of gains to 33% – which could cost taxpayers millions of pounds.

Although we do not form a view on the value for money (VfM) of PFI and PF2 there
are some key points which have emerged from our work which we would like to highlight:
• PF2 is similar to PFI
The fundamentals of the financing structure and contract remain the same.
• Increased transparency
Data on forecast and actual PF2 equity returns will be published for all PF2 deals.
However this does not apply to other non-PF2 PPP deals, and data on the cost
of debt is not published.
• Budgetary and balance sheet incentives remain
As part of the PFI reform HM Treasury considered removing incentives, unrelated
to VfM, which have driven the use of private finance but it chose not to. If capital
and cash budgets are insufficient, private finance may be the only investment
option for public bodies.
• Lack of data on benefits
There is still a lack of data available on the benefits of private finance procurement.

1.29 Making changes to the discount rate applied to future costs can also affect which
financing route is assessed as VfM. The VfM assessment compares private finance
costs with a government discount rate of 3.5%, which is 6.09% with inflation, known
as the Social Time Preference Rate (STPR), which is higher than government’s actual
borrowing costs (Figure 5). The higher the rate applied, the lower the present value of
future payments. For example a payment of £100 in 12 years will have a present value of
just £49 when discounted by the STPR. Discounting using a lower discount rate, which
compares private finance with the actual cost of government borrowing, results in fewer
private finance deals being assessed as VfM.32
1.30 Using a fixed discount rate, set in 2003, means that the VfM assessment does not
reflect the additional cost of private finance above the prevailing cost of government
borrowing. In the current low-interest-rate environment it is possible to privately finance
projects below the 6.09% rate. When this is the case private finance will be assessed
as costing less than public finance even though the actual long-term cash costs of
debt servicing and repayment will be higher than government debt costs. HM Treasury
does not consider the cost of government borrowing to be relevant in making financing
decisions on PFI and PF2 deals.33 However, other countries, such as Germany and the
United States, do compare the cost of private finance with government borrowing costs
when assessing financing options like PFI.

I'm talking about the Department of Health Press Office.

Why don't we dump them? We could have one of those press-button, dial yer-own-answer, premium phone lines; dial-a-quote.

Press one for; 'The NHS has had more money than any time in the history of coinage... there is more money than ever before'.

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He seems to think it's self-evident govt shouldn't build its own hospitals or roads

RogerOThornhill wrote:I see Rentoul comments on this but mistakenly.

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He seems to think it's self-evident govt shouldn't build its own hospitals or roads

But that's not the same as outsourcing which involves transfer of employees to the private sector but doing the same roles as they were before.

I doubt anyone is suggesting that the public sector ought to own construction companies.

SpinningHugo wrote:
I think as a matter of usage Rentoul is clearly right. Whether a service is outsourced is not determined by whetehr at some point in the past it was not.

See also Wren-Lewis where in the second paragraph he uses outsourcing in the same sense as Rentoul.

In business, outsourcing is "an agreement in which one company contracts-out a part of their existing internal activity to another company".[1] It involves the contracting out of a business process (e.g. payroll processing, claims processing) and operational, and/or non-core functions (e.g. manufacturing, facility management, call center support) to another party (see also business process outsourcing).

SpinningHugo wrote:I think you need to differentiate two different things.

If I outsource something, I put it out.

If something is outsourced it is out.

So building work (and catering and transport and cleaning) may all be outsourced, even though they were never 'insourced'.

RogerOThornhill wrote:our company had probably a £100 million+ of capital expenditure projects on the go at any one time which I had to report on, and I never heard anyone describing them as having been outsourced. Simply not the right terminology.

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:Nice

RogerOThornhill wrote:

SpinningHugo wrote:I think you need to differentiate two different things.

If I outsource something, I put it out.

If something is outsourced it is out.

So building work (and catering and transport and cleaning) may all be outsourced, even though they were never 'insourced'.

Sorry but that is completely wrong.

The term 'outsourcing' has a particular use which I've described above.

I know you can never accept that you may be wrong but trust me - I've been there on this one and know its precise meaning.
If you'd ever been in a business environment you'd know what it meant and wouldn't be so confused.

Tubby Isaacs wrote:I think Roger's point is that outsourcing doesn't usually refer to building work, whether the building people are "in house" or not.

SpinningHugo wrote: So, if,say, I start a company, and always use outside contractors to do the cleaning, you'd say that the cleaning work was not outsourced? do we have another word for this service that is not (and has never been) done inhouse?

The superbug is becoming increasingly difficult to treat. As from 2005, trusts have been required to regularly report incidents of MRSA, which has enabled researchers to produce empirical evidence for the first time that compares the rates of infection in hospitals that outsource cleaning with those using in-house cleaners.

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:This is quite fun

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42731272" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;?

Who would you choose as the first female statue in Parliament Square?

Tubby Isaacs wrote:I think Roger's point is that outsourcing doesn't usually refer to building work, whether the building people are "in house" or not.

SpinningHugo wrote:

Tubby Isaacs wrote:I think Roger's point is that outsourcing doesn't usually refer to building work, whether the building people are "in house" or not.

And my point is that it is not correct to simply assume that it is always best to have goods or services delivered inhouse. A quick and easy way of showing that is to think of the goods/services that are almost always outsourced: eg building work.

The semantic point is mildly interesting, but wholly secondary.

RogerOThornhill wrote:

SpinningHugo wrote: So, if,say, I start a company, and always use outside contractors to do the cleaning, you'd say that the cleaning work was not outsourced? do we have another word for this service that is not (and has never been) done inhouse?

No, it's not outsourcing.

No particular word for it - just buying in a service. It's only outsourcing if you're transferring something you already do yourself to an outside company.

Example from the NHS.

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-12-21-nhs ... a%E2%80%99" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The superbug is becoming increasingly difficult to treat. As from 2005, trusts have been required to regularly report incidents of MRSA, which has enabled researchers to produce empirical evidence for the first time that compares the rates of infection in hospitals that outsource cleaning with those using in-house cleaners.

Given that all cleaning used to be using their own employees, any change is outsourcing. Couldn't really be much clearer.

gilsey wrote:

Tubby Isaacs wrote:I think Roger's point is that outsourcing doesn't usually refer to building work, whether the building people are "in house" or not.

You can easily make a distinction between a finite building contract, which would only be undertaken once in a generation, and an ongoing service such as cleaning or building maintenance. It would be odd to call the former 'outsourcing'.

Even if you're building things all the time, as the govt could be, each school, road or hospital is different and separately tendered. Part of a PFI deal is outsourcing because it usually includes ongoing maintenance and some services, but the other part is a financing arrangement. I think the melding of the two things is one of the worst features of PFI.

Tubby Isaacs wrote:

gilsey wrote:

Tubby Isaacs wrote:I think Roger's point is that outsourcing doesn't usually refer to building work, whether the building people are "in house" or not.

You can easily make a distinction between a finite building contract, which would only be undertaken once in a generation, and an ongoing service such as cleaning or building maintenance. It would be odd to call the former 'outsourcing'.

Even if you're building things all the time, as the govt could be, each school, road or hospital is different and separately tendered. Part of a PFI deal is outsourcing because it usually includes ongoing maintenance and some services, but the other part is a financing arrangement. I think the melding of the two things is one of the worst features of PFI.

I think this is spot on.

I think PFI as a 40 year contract was very much a product of its time- Labour faced such neglected public facilities that needed doing up ASAP that it wasn't feasible to borrow cash up front for them. So they went for financing over 40 years and chucked in services as well.

There are obvious downsides to that.

“What they’ve done is underbid, made a lot of money out of it and then moved on,” Corbyn said. “When the East Coast mainline was publicly-owned, it paid in a handsome profit to the Treasury and it was well-run.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:I note in passing that Stella Creasy has been making some good comments re what to do about PFI contracts now.

You see, this is what Labour "moderates" should be doing. Party members will notice, as will the leadership (despite what SH claims to the contrary)

Whining and moaning in the bars to your favourite right wing hack (off the record, of course) just means you end up universally despised.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:I note in passing that Stella Creasy has been making some good comments re what to do about PFI contracts now.

You see, this is what Labour "moderates" should be doing. Party members will notice, as will the leadership (despite what SH claims to the contrary)

Whining and moaning in the bars to your favourite right wing hack (off the record, of course) just means you end up universally despised.

SpinningHugo wrote:

AnatolyKasparov wrote:I note in passing that Stella Creasy has been making some good comments re what to do about PFI contracts now.

You see, this is what Labour "moderates" should be doing. Party members will notice, as will the leadership (despite what SH claims to the contrary)

Whining and moaning in the bars to your favourite right wing hack (off the record, of course) just means you end up universally despised.

Creasy's is definitely in the wrong party. Her CLP hate her. She'll be out once deselection comes in in about 5 years or so.

Accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg say the UK tax authorities could help small businesses hurt by Carillion’s collapse.

The UK tax rules allow companies to claim VAT relief on unpaid bills -- but only six months after the money was due. Carillion made some suppliers wait 120 days for payment, so in a worst-case scenario a supplier might face a 10 month wait before they can reclaim VAT from the government.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:

SpinningHugo wrote:

AnatolyKasparov wrote:I note in passing that Stella Creasy has been making some good comments re what to do about PFI contracts now.

You see, this is what Labour "moderates" should be doing. Party members will notice, as will the leadership (despite what SH claims to the contrary)

Whining and moaning in the bars to your favourite right wing hack (off the record, of course) just means you end up universally despised.

Creasy's is definitely in the wrong party. Her CLP hate her. She'll be out once deselection comes in in about 5 years or so.

No, she is Labour and could and would never be anywhere else. Chris "magic money tree" Leslie, on the other hand......