Public Service on the Brink - Imprint Academic

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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.
Source: The Guardian

Credit: David Walker

"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."

Source: Hampstead and Highgate Express

"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'."

Source: Morning Star

Credit: Richard Bagley

"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."

Source: New Start

Credit: Carol McKenzie

"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."

Source: Our Kingdom

Credit: Stuart Weir

"It is impossible in this short space to summarise the diverse contributions to this valuable collection... What the collection goes some way to show is that public service is in the grasp of an unrelenting and unproven ideology that is stripping it bare of its essential values."

Source: Suburb News

"This is jenny Manson's second book of essays by various hands. Eleven contributors offer to the question posed in her introductory piece: why do we now have a crisis of confidence in the public services, with demoralisation within and mistrust from without?"

Source: Perspectives

Credit: Ted Tapper

"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 ideological attack on the very idea of the effectiveness of public provision was reinforced by a number of economic and managerial strategies."

Source: Public Service Magazine

Credit: Oliver Rowe

"Jenny Manson has drawn together a series of accounts of public service from people outside the sector - such as academics Ursula Murray and David Wiggins and including PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka and former diplomat Rodric Braithwaite. Manson sees an undermining of the public service ethos over the 30 or more years."

Source: ARC News

Credit: Will Richardson

"There is too much in this book to do it justice in a short review, but one contributor, Oliver Huitson (whose day job is described as working in finance in the city) supplies a well-argued attack on the Private Finance Initiative... both from the wider perspective of social good and the narrower one of value for money."

Source: Local Government Studies

"A living history of notions of public service."
Paperback
- Publication Date: 01 March 2012
- ISBN-13: 9781845403065
- Extent: Main content page count : 250
- Code: 1845403061
- Dimensions: 15.6 x 23.4 x 1.8 cm
- Weight: 400 grams
- List Price: £17.95
- ONIX Version 2.1, Version 3

Details

Title: Public Service on the Brink
Edited by: Jenny Manson
Language: English
Publisher: Imprint Academic
Imprint: Imprint Academic

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