If you don’t know who John Band is then really are missing out on a treat.
On Monday, Gideon George Osborne announced that a future Tory government would shaft the Guardian overhaul public sector recruitment by setting up a government-run central website to advertise all public sector jobs and banning all recruitment via newspaper adverts.
Yes, that does effectively mean that the Tories want to nationalise public sector recruitment advertising because they think the public sector can do it better, cheaper and more efficiently than the private sector – that whirring noise you can hear in the background is Keith Joseph rotating at around 15,000 rpm.
This, as the article points out, would screw over the Guardian by depriving it of one of its main income streams. It would also, if Gideon George really means all public sector advertising, crap on most local newspapers from a fairly great height as well, not that I expect he’s worked that one out just yet.
All of which spawned a nicely weighted commentary from John…
Better than this, however, is the following comments exchange between John (posting as ‘anonymous’) and the Tory blogger at the The UK Daily Pundit, who’s so in love with the idea of screwing the Groan over that he’s entirely failed to notice yet more of his party’s one-time principles disappearing down the shitter right before his very eyes.
At 8:49 AM, Innocent Abroad said…
Well, unless the Tories know something about IT procurement that Labour don’t, that should probably read £50 million if not £500 million.
Still, no price too high, if it bankrupts the Grauniad eh 😉 ?
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At 9:16 AM, UK Daily Pundit said…
Procurement is handled elsewhere. Recruitment is handled by Labour’s in-house magazine, the Guardian.
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At 10:16 AM, Anonymous said…
I think the previous poster was referring to the £5m website cost, which does sound like an enormous understatement even given the running costs of comparable private sector sites.
John B
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At 10:37 AM, UK Daily Pundit said…
5 million quid is more than enough to run a website. It’s government job ads not a NASA space programme. And think of the revenue a site like that could generate. It would pay for itself.
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At 11:25 AM, Anonymous said…
No it isn’t. This site would need to offer more than a million jobs a year; Monster.com spends about $180m excluding sales and marketing and salaries to offer about 12m jobs.
And the revenue will be generated from whom, exactly? If you’re suggesting charging applicants, forget it: it doesn’t work and never will. Meanwhile, banner ads for non-recruitment services would strangle private sector online business.
John B
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At 11:36 AM, UK Daily Pundit said…
What are you going on about Monster.com for? We’re not talking about Monster.com we’re talking about a central hub where government jobs will be advertised. So you might as well just accept the fact that the Guardian will go bust when the state funding it currently relies on is taken away. This should be a cause for celebration not pithy comments about Monster.com.
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At 12:01 PM, Anonymous said…
Because monster.com are a best-practice private jobs website, and therefore do the same thing that your pet government jobs database would do.
Do you believe the government will be able to run a job website more efficiently than the private sector market leader? If you do, why aren’t you a communist already?
John B
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At 1:13 PM, UK Daily Pundit said…
You seem to have misunderstood. The Conservatives aren’t talking about competing with anyone. They’re talking about allowing government departments and local authorities to advertise their vacancies free of charge. The net result will be massive cost savings for those departments and local authorities which choose to use the service and an anti-British, anti-semitic rag – the Guardian – going into administration. You should be celebrating.
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At 1:14 PM, Anonymous said…
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
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At 2:20 PM, UK Daily Pundit said…
For pestering me.
Is it just me, or does ‘For pestering me’ look rather like a euphemism for…
‘Oh shit, I’m losing this argument. Badly. No, really badly. I meaning ‘making me look like a complete and utter twat kind of badly’. Oh fuck, how do I shut this guy up. I know, I’ll delete his last post… Shit, how does that make me look, now? Oh no, why the fuck did I do that? Boy, am I going to look a complete cunt next time I start banging on about freedom of expression. Quick, must think of something to cover my arse. I know, I’ll say he was pestering me. Yeah, that’ll do…
Oh shit. Shit-shit-shit-shit-cunty-bollocks-shit. That looks even fucking worse than it did before. Err… maybe its best to do nothing. Just walk away and pretend it never happened. At least I can’t make it any worse.
But I can…
The apt comparison is not monster.com at all but gumtree.com which does indeed cost nothing. I think 5 million is rather high actually for a basic system for departments and authorities to advertise on, but that is government expenditure for you. How many tech support people do you really need? And because it will have a natural monopoly, once you build it THEY (public sector wannabe workers) will come. Barely any need for advertising beyond a link on every government website.
Centre-right, no affiliation. Other than to the Cleckheaton Working Mens Club: ‘youth workers’ not welcome.
Why doesn’t Mr. Pundit set up his own company to advertise this and undercut the Grauniad? In fact, why hasn’t this happened already?
Many government departments and local authorities already use their own websites to advertise vacancies. Birmingham has a fortnightly newspaper delivered (allegedly) to every house in the City which also carries a few pages of council vacancies (and does this at relatively low cost).
Advertising in somewhere like the Guardian is effective because it is the ‘trade’ paper for this sort of job and provides national advertising to draw in applicants for certain job grades – rather than just relying on those who happen to glance at the website of the local council.
Given the volume of jobs and the admin involved in runnning such a site, I’d be amazed if it could be done for
#Cliff Richard singing ‘Devil Woman’ – ringtone on Tony’s cellphone:
Tony: Hi Rupert … What a brilliant idea … no I won’t mention your name, of course … and you’ll convince Rebekah to that story about Cameron’s chlamydia … yes, okay, I’m sure Gordon likes you really, he’s just an old Scottish grump … and you’ll still be in charge of the country, of course … Muslims? Yeah, the secret gas chambers are already under construction … sorry, I’ll go now, bye
The comment you missed was the next one by me. “UKDP – you are right. Monster has to market itself to advertisers and clients carefully pitching ads etc. The website we’re talking about is a clearing house – little more than a database.
Nevertheless, I’ll speak to my friend who works in Monster’s international IT department (it’s in Prague) to see what he has to say.”.
Anyway, even if it is
the stat I quoted was monster’s non-sales-and-marketing expenses. but thanks for playing…