A Tangled Web

PUBLIC SECTOR CUTBACKS.



The Government is poised to announce what is heralded as the biggest shake-up of the Northern Ireland civil service for many years. It is part of the government's local spending plans. Several thousand jobs are expected to be cut in the province as part of an efficiency drive announced by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown earlier in the year



Now I'd like to believe this - but I don't. Not a word. This Government, and Brown in particular, realises that its future electoral success is predicated on the maintenance of a large parasite sector, and that's what the public sector mostly is. So for all the high minded rhetoric, my prediction is that the public sector in NI will grow, that the Civil Service will grow. We will witness the Trade Unions feigning "outrage", playing along with Brown by appearing to reject his proposals, but in the end, they are all on the one side - Big Government.