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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Greensleeves on Monday 27 September 10 12:44 BST (UK)
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I see from the leaked list of quangos which the government is planning to axe that it includes The National Archives, the future of which is shown as 'under review'. Worrying..... Suppose it'll get sold off to the highest bidder and we'll end up paying through the nose for the data. Or am I just being a miserable old cynic....?
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hi g s
no i,m with you it,s all about money these days and as genealogy has taken off since w d y t y a have been on air it,s turned into a very lucrative market and if private enterprise can make good profits from it why can,t governments do the same if its run properly
trevor
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As you sow, so also shall you reap!
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Selling off is just one possibility. There has been a tendency over the last few years to merge offices together. One example is the merger of the Tax and Customs offices. It may be possible that the NA could be merged with the GRO and Passport Offices, although the logisitics of moving either of them could be quite daunting.
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Must get there quickly before it becomes the preserve of the rich, like many other things.
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The possibilities for merging could be interesting: National Archives and Forestry Commission, for example ;D ;D
Whichever way it goes, I fear that we will be paying more for less. But I do think that the National Archives are such a wonderful resource that it would be terrible to deny people access to them.
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So do I Greensleeves, but when saving is obsessional common sense by definition goes out of the window!
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They merged Education and Employment, which always seemed a little odd to me ... education dealing with pre-school upwards, and employment dealing with anyone under pension age ! How could they possibly be similar ??
Anything is possible it seems ... ahhh ! It wasn't like that when I was younger ... ::)
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The possibilities for merging could be interesting: National Archives and Forestry Commission, for example ;D ;D
Brilliant Greensleeves! All they'd have to do would be to put Environment and Employment in with them and we could keep half the unemployed counting the numbers of papers in the archives, passing their audit results along to the other half who then spend their time planting enough trees for the Foresty Commission to be able to replace all the parchment, whilst the Environment keeps track of the balance for EU targets..
Everybody happy and the lack of jobs solved overnight. Wonder what other departmental mergers could work as well?
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Sounds reminiscient of Keynes' idea from the 1930s of paying unemployed men to dig holes and paying another group to fill them in again; and just about as productive. Why not something either economically useful like upgrading large slices of our Victorian infrastructure before it collapses, or electrifying the entire railway system with a modern 25KV system, or perhaps something socially useful like cleaning up litter and other mess?
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Years ago my daughter's then boyfriend, went to Moscow for about 3 months as part of his university course. There he found, Russian university graduates opening doors for him and others when they entered buildings etc. and on coming out again, a different set of graduates on the other side of the door doing the same thing. He managed to ask one of them why they were doing it. He was told they had to and, anyway, it meant there was full employment. So obviously the Russians had read Keynes. :o
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Or may be Lizzie that Keynes had read Marx.However, in countries of high population, China, India etc. jobs which are largely automated, or done by one person are often multi handed, i.e. I am told that in an Indian supermarket, your basket will be unpacked at the checkout, each item handed separately to the cashier who then passes it one to another person to repack for the customer. In China, steam railway locomotives had four or even five men to stoke the firebox. Clearly believe the Devil makes work for idle hands!
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Working like that must be soul destroying though.
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But arguably better than doing nothing and finding work for idle hands.
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To my mind it would be very worrying if the national archives were taken over by a private company.
Whos to say they would look after things properly :(
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Why shouldn't they ?
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The National Archives are about more than just family history
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aboutus
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Yes, I know, but that does not answer my question :)
I'm not sure why you think that a company would take any less care of something very valuable than a bunch of Whitehall employees who do not get paid on results ? After all, they haven't got a great track record of taking care of our data, have they ?
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That's true. :D
maybe I'm just frightned of change ::)
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Much of the problem comes back to lack of training and motivation. The private sector is arguably no better than the private sector at this, and certainly no more competent, when the profit motive blinds them to everything, i.e. the bank collapse!I am all for change so long as it is from private to public, i.e. progressive and not regressive back towards the 19th century.
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I think this is in danger of becoming too political now.
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Recently I asked The National Archives to research the disposition of a prisoner transferred to Millbank Prison from Parkhurst Prison on a specified date in the 1840's
The subsequent Quotation requested a provisional downpayment of £444.42
The Bank refused my application for a mortgage.
The National Archives..................!!!!!!
BAC3
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I had a quote of around £50 about 10 years ago but that was for 50 pages, so I accepted it.
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I think this is in danger of becoming too political now.
It was political from post number 1, but there is nothing in the rules about polical comments. It is topical though, and the discussion has been very polite and civilised.
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;D ;D ;D
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I'm a volunteer at a museum, and I know the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (which sets standards and gives advice) is to be closed in 2012 (just after a major restructuring which must have cost a bit!). My worry is not that organisations such as the NA and MLA are privatised, but that their info is simply thrown into a (very large) cupboard and left until it rots.
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I think we all have a responsibility to make sure that this does not happen. And I'm not just talking about museums and record storage facilities..... how much social history is thrown away every year when people pass away, and old documents and photos get thrown into the skip ?
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I'm somewhat dismayed by this. I have three objections:
1. We the people of a country own these public assets. I don't believe they should be alienated from our ownership for short-term political gain.
2. I've observed privatisations both here in Oz and in the UK. Very often, they seem to operate less efficiently than they did in public ownership.
3. Usually the cost of things goes up once an organisation is privatised. I think we should all get all the PCC wills that we can, because if privatisation occurs, they will be much more expensive.
I believe a country's National Archives belong to the people in general - not to a private company. If there was a similar proposal in Australia, I would be protesting long and loud!
MarieC
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I agree completely Marie...I, too, would be complaining long and hard
if it happened here in Oz.
Joy :) :)
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I think this is in danger of becoming too political now.
It was political from post number 1, but there is nothing in the rules about polical comments. It is topical though, and the discussion has been very polite and civilised.
But rather one-sided and I feel uncomfortable with this, so I will bow out of this thread.
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I'm somewhat dismayed by this. I have three objections:
1. We the people of a country own these public assets. I don't believe they should be alienated from our ownership for short-term political gain.
2. I've observed privatisations both here in Oz and in the UK. Very often, they seem to operate less efficiently than they did in public ownership.
3. Usually the cost of things goes up once an organisation is privatised. I think we should all get all the PCC wills that we can, because if privatisation occurs, they will be much more expensive.
I believe a country's National Archives belong to the people in general - not to a private company. If there was a similar proposal in Australia, I would be protesting long and loud!
MarieC
Spot on Marie, and hopefully it will never be needed, but I fear more for the future of local archives, specially with proposals about for "virtual" councils, i.e. meet once a year to award the contracts,every service out for private tender.
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That doesn't sound very good at all, Redroger! One does indeed wonder what will happen to the local archives under that scenario. >:( It's amazing to me that a country like the UK with such a long and brilliant history could even consider endangering the sources by which people can study this history. Sometimes I'm tempted to think that we all live in an age of new barbarism. :( :o
MarieC
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Selling off is just one possibility. There has been a tendency over the last few years to merge offices together. One example is the merger of the Tax and Customs offices. It may be possible that the NA could be merged with the GRO and Passport Offices, although the logisitics of moving either of them could be quite daunting.
And in all of this spending review, we so often see ideas which mean actually spending a heck of a lot more money than is actually saved. Who is in charge anyway?
Maybe the NA being sold off to a private company is not such a bad idea, maybe they could run things more efficiently??!!!!!
Kerry
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I don't think the situation is as grave as many are fearing. In common with lots of other countries, we are all having to tighten our finances, and so proposals have been made for finding ways to save money. But that's all they are - proposals.
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Depends what you call efficiency, there is financial efficiency where everything is run on the sole basis of making a profit; the essence of the very system that caused the mess, and there is efficiacy, effectiveness in providing a service. Whilst an effective service may be financially efficient it doesn't have to be, it can be subsidised by the taxpayers, why not? after all we are subsidising many things which I regard as less desirable than archive national or local.
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I am sorry if this thread has been taken as political because I hadn't intended it to be partial to one side or the other; to be honest I don't think the previous government was any better. I cite here Ordnance Survey which, after years of co-operation with external bodies, was then reorganised into a profit-making organisation, resulting in bodies which had freely given OS their spatial data then being charged to have it back. The confusion is compounded by the fact that OS retains its Crown copyright which means that any infringement is a criminal, rather than a civil, offence.
I know that this is not strictly on the original subject, but I am just pointing out how things can go horribly wrong when profit is the primary motive. I would not like the National Archives to be subject to this kind of 'market forces' management, any more than I like the way OS is greedy for profit. At least with OS, people who are getting fed up with the current regime are now looking into open-source spatial imagery. But with National Archives, there will be no alternative, and they are, or at least I had hoped they would be, one of the guardians of our national heritage.
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It is something I wouldn't have known about GS without you posting a thread. :-*
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Me neither and I wonder if there is anything we can do that is positive rather than just speculating.
Kerry
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Unfortunately it's almost impossible to discuss government agencies without getting a little political, and this could affect us all. However, governments can collaborate with businesses to achieve things and still make a profit without selling off the assets - take the government's recent collaboration with Brightsolid to release the 1911 census, for example. The actual census material is still the property of the Crown, and both the government and private enterprise have made money from it.
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Again GS you are right, the previous government was no better, but let's remember where the whole idea of privatisation comes from; it is a consequence of membership of the European Union, which requires all state owned undertakingsa to be privatised. Regarding the statements made about privatisations usually giving a worse service, look at the totally botched rail privatisation in Britain, and the serious safety situation which arose a few years ago as a result, Hatfield and Potter's Bar disasters etc.
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A friend observed to me recently
the public sector go all out for their patients/customers/clients and couldn't care less about the staff whilst the private sector pamper their staff and shareholders and couldn't care less about customers/clients
Whilst I am sure that is a generalisation I can number a variety of examples I know that hold up that statement :(
Kerry
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Maybe, my experience tells me that the majority of private employers couldn't give a damn about their staff either, in fact, all to often as regards staff training they would poach trained individuals from the public sector. Still happens I believe with agency nurses and teachers.
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I suppose what makes me uncomfortable is that information such as the National Archives is garnered using public (ie taxpayers') money, so in theory we own it. If I paid for a field of wheat to be harvested and stored, I would assume that I could then take it and use it as I thought fit. I would not expect the chap who owned the silo, who had already been recompensed for its storage, to then try to sell it back to me.
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Deleted - posted in the wrong place!
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I suppose what makes me uncomfortable is that information such as the National Archives is garnered using public (ie taxpayers') money, so in theory we own it. If I paid for a field of wheat to be harvested and stored, I would assume that I could then take it and use it as I thought fit. I would not expect the chap who owned the silo, who had already been recompensed for its storage, to then try to sell it back to me.
But you wouldn't take a document from TNA because you 'own' it. While records in TNA are designated public records under legislation, it doesn't mean that the public can do with them what they want!
I think that the worry over the future of TNA is a bit premature - there will be consultations, reviews, and a possible change in legislation before anything happens (if, indeed, anything does).
While support for TNA (and other archives) is great, the support needs to be focused if there is to be any influence from it. Since nothing about the future of TNA is concrete, I wouldn't worry unduly just now.
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I suppose what makes me uncomfortable is that information such as the National Archives is garnered using public (ie taxpayers') money, so in theory we own it.
Hmmm...... Britain's gold reserves is garnered using taxpayer's money too, but I suspect that a letter to the Chancellor asking for our share would meet deaf ears ! ;D
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I suppose what makes me uncomfortable is that information such as the National Archives is garnered using public (ie taxpayers') money, so in theory we own it.
Hmmm...... Britain's gold reserves is garnered using taxpayer's money too, but I suspect that a letter to the Chancellor asking for our share would meet deaf ears ! ;D
That is unless you are a banker, one of the, to quote a Lib-Dem for once instead of Marx or Keynes, "spivs and gamblers" who got us into this mess.
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Short answer - No ;D
"The National Archives
Retain - Retain on grounds of performing a technical function which should remain independent from Government"
[From list of Quangos released this morning]
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Excellent news :)
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Phewwwwwwww
That is good news!
Kerry :D
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But many useful things, e.g. National Audit Office are to be scrapped, and audits carried out by "independent accountants" talk about foxes guarding hen houses!
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Yes, I am glad the National Archives are okay for the time being, but agree with Roger that some of the reasoning regarding other bodies is somewhat questionable.
GS
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But many useful things, e.g. National Audit Office are to be scrapped
Just to clarify - it is the "Audit Commission" which has been scrapped, NOT the National Audit Office (NAO). The Commission dealt with Local Authority and NHS matters in England and Wales and their regulatory function will be taken over by the NAO, thereby actually increasing the oversight to be exercised by the National Audit Office which already deals with national government matters.
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But the actual audits will be carried out by the private sector, people who audit the accounts of traders etc. who have transactions with local authorities, effectively therefore scrutinising their own clients' accounts, hence my comment about foxes and keys to henhouses.
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Whatever the future for other bodies (and I'm sorry if any are being unjustly axed), as an Aussie I'm delighted to hear the good news about the National Archives!! ;D ;D
MarieC
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HOPEFULLY this won't deflect the attention towards local archives. HOPEFULLY!!