Budget crackdown could claim 725,000 public sector jobs

The headline should read "725,000 purchased Labour voters to be cut". After all, when the state employs people using money it is borrowing what else do you call them?

725,000 would be a good start with many more to go. I do not understand the logic of Dave Prentis saying that tax revenue will be lost as it cost billions at the beginning to retain these jobsworths and it will be cheaper to keeo them on the dole until they obtain real jobs.

Dave Prentis is wrong - technically cuts of 10% would decimate our public services. This is actually 2.5 times worse than a decimation.

Okay - let's "centricate" the beggars.

Lets face it---we used to run an Empire , without a computor or even a phone,

all things concidered did a fair job of it in the main, given 1 man and a dog +

pencil. Now look at this cancerous mess of parasites , who create bugger all

but a sea-anchor on anyone with a job out of government.

Ian's maths is about as accurate as Alistair Darling's. There are approximately 7m public sector workers so the theoretical loss of 725,000 jobs is just about 10%.

The Adam Smith Institute suggest that 270,000 public sector jobs could go with no discernible impact on public services.

Perhaps public sector staff who retain their jobs should consider working a full week like most of the private sector, working until they are 65 to get a full pension like most of the private sector, and not expecting a copper bottomed gold plated pension paid for by the taxpayer, who at best will have to work until they are 68 and then retire into comparative poverty if they come from the private sector.

Humble apologies to Ian, whose maths I am sure is excellent. I did of course mean Harry's maths!!!

A good start , but the first priority should be to get them back to a 40 hr week and the same pensions as the rest of us.

Under the 13 years of Labour approximately 1m new public jobs were created. We managed to survive very well (or rather better) before all of these extras, suffered less red tape and restrictions on our lives.

So cutting 725,000 should not be a problem if it is done sensibly. For a start cut NHS "management" by 50% and get them making a positive and effective contribution towards patient care instead of have "very important meetings".

Some good comments above! The thing about those in public sector jobs is that they often seem to think they automatically *deserve* a job, even if it's a 'non-job' (e.g. those employed by pointless quangoes or the raft of hospital administrators) that doesn't provide any net benefit to anyone other than the state employee. They think they should be shielded from any pain suffered routinely by those in the private sector. How arrogant. Things really have shifted from those in the public sector serving the public to the public serving those in the public sector. Unacceptable and high time to get rid.

Clearly there is a need to reduce the number of jobs - but people above need to be careful - in the same way as the world economy is connected - in ways we don't always understand - the same is now true of the private and public sector. I have worked in it for over 20 years at very senior levels - about 50%-60% of budgets I have been responsible for (often £100's Millions) end up purchasing good and services from the private sector. I completly accept that there are big savings to be made -and should be made - but the sort of comments above are over simplistic and fail to understand the risks of massive cuts taking place very quickly - it is not just school children that will suffer from poor schools not being rebuilt - but it takes millions away from the private sector!