About those deserving state employees

Gordon Brown said they were "the finest people in the country" and poured money into their pockets. Just how much is laid bare in an article by four Office of National Statistics researchers in the latest Economic and Labour Market Review (here). The summary and overall graph:

Total reward for full-time employees is higher in the public sector than the private sector, predominately due to the larger proportion (57 percent versus 10 percent in the state sector) of employees who do not belong to employer pension schemes (with zero pension contributions) in the private sector. Distributional analysis shows that the gap between private and public sector employees is particularly marked at the top end of the distribution.



Not particularly difficult to see why winning back the female vote is going to be a nigh-impossible task for the Coalition. Nor why the Labour pukes rushed through the Equality Act at the end of their time in government, as that will enable the state-employed women to claim that any attempt to reduce state sector spending will have a disproportionate effect on them.

I seriously doubt that Cameron and Osborne had thought this through beforehand, and that they have the mental subtlety and moral courage to win the battle with the statists. Unless they repeal the Equality Act I do not see how they can undo the New Labour Project of so packing and privileging the state sector that the Labour pukes would remain in power regardless of who was in office.