Public Service on the Brink - Softcover

Public Service on the Brink, edited by Jenny Manson, provides a refreshingly frank, insightful and experiential account in addressing the denigration, unsuccessful reorganisation and general undermining of the public service ethos over the past thirty years or so. As such, the book's perspective is less concerned with questions about what it is public services do and how they do this, and is instead more concerned about questions on the why of public service as a public good in its own right. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone concerned with contemporary events affecting public service and services. The book is clearly written and engaging and it signposts the reader to further literature where relevant. While it is detailed in places, it also provides a welcome overview and introduction to the crisis of public service across different sectors. Finally, it is thought-provoking in putting forth some of the complex arguments and explanations for the emergence of the many ideas, approaches, perspectives and contradictions that public service as a public good has undergone over the past thirty years.--Carol McKenzie "New Start "

"It is a piecemeal affair whose stated aim is to "describe the denigration, unsuccessful reorganisation and general undermining of the public service." That said, this remains a welcome addition to the fight to roll back the undemocratic incompetence driven by private-sector snake oil salesmen.--Richard Bagley "Morning Star "

The former NHS director Mark Britnell, now at KPMG, went further at an Apax private equity event, telling investors that "in future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider not a state deliverer" and "any willing provider" from the private sector will be able to sell goods and services to the system. "The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years" - though he has since sought to soften those words.--Polly Toynbee "Guardian "

"The simple fact is this: the RMT not only does what trade unions have as their very core purpose, which is protecting the rights of their members, but it also runs campaigns and lobbys harder than anyone else in the UK about issues of transport safety and ticket prices."--DAN CARRIER

"British railways and new deal for communities initiative." "The book concludes with an overview of the very negative press perception of public employees and their unions, calling for a more balanced perspective." "This sustained ideloogical attack on the very idea of the effectiveness of public provision was reinforced by a number of economic and managerial strategies."--Ted Tapper "Perspectives "

"Conservative politicians had mostly had no experience of thestate system anyway, such was the dominance of the private schools, and were deeply committed to the ideology of choice, competition and the free market."--Libby Goldby "Camden New Journal. "

At the end of March last year there was a yawning gap in Ministry of Justice accounts of 2bn. The state was owed 600m in unpaid court fees, and had failed to collect a further 1.26bn in confiscation orders. The ministry told the National Audit Office there was "no chance" of recovering 900m of the money. But without a shift in basic public views about public services, it's hard to explain what has happened during recent decades. A new book, Public Service on the Brink, due out in March, can't help but expose what is missing. It sets out to be a vindication of public services, but too often becomes an uncomfortable celebration of victimhood.--David Walker"

"Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, is no less impassioned in his criticism of recent governments treatment of public services. Highlighting privatisation and individualism, he says bluntly, 'while the market may be effective at delivering a range of chocolate bars to consumers with relative affordability, it cannot extract profit directly from assisting people back to work or paying benefits to carers, pensioners or the disabled'."

"It is a piecemeal affair whose stated aim is to 'describe the denigration, unsuccessful reorganisation and general undermining of the public service.' That said, this remains a welcome addition to the fight to roll back the undemocratic incompetence driven by private-sector snake oil salesmen.--Richard Bagley

"Public Service on the Brink, edited by Jenny Manson, provides a refreshingly frank, insightful and experiential account in addressing the denigration, unsuccessful reorganisation and general undermining of the public service ethos over the past thirty years or so... I would strongly recommend this book to anyone concerned with contemporary events affecting public service and services."--Carol McKenzie

The contributors to this book mount a robust defence of the concept and practice of public service at a crucial time for its future. They question the ill-conceived assumptions behind the endless programmes of reform imposed by successive governments, often on the basis of advice from people with no direct experience of working in the public sector. With cuts in public spending by the coalition government and austerity programmes being imposed in Britain and abroad, the book could not be more timely in its reminder of the core purpose of public service. After a long period of denigration of the public sector, here is the voice that has not been heard clearly through these decades of reorganisation: I know what my job is and I want to do it as well as I can. Indeed I would love my work if I could get one day's peace to get on with it. But I am beset at every turn by unintelligible, time wasting and fruitless management initiatives, constant change, ill-judged targets, wrong-headed "commercial" exemplars and continuous and misguided restructuring. I have to watch as, instead of my "customers" (actually patients, pupils, taxpayers) getting a better deal from me, the only beneficiaries seem to be those who can lobby for special treatment. The book contains accounts of public service by people of varying backgrounds and ages who work both inside and outside of the public sector. They share an allegiance to the value and purpose of working for the common good and an enthusiasm for getting things right and for the opportunity to recount their experience through this book."