Government canteens lose shit loads of money

[notwell]

 

I said I thought I ate in there. To be fair it could have been separate in there. Long time ago.

 

So your memory fails you now that you might be wrong?

 

From your link

 

9.6 Staff Canteen

 

Free or subsidised meals provided in a staff canteen are not charged as a benefit in kind as long as the following conditions apply:

 

- the meals must be provided on a reasonable scale

- the provision of fine wines, elaborate menus etc is unreasonable and should be charged as a benefit in kind

- the canteen must NOT be open to the general public

- all employees should have access to the canteen

 

So if, as a member of the general public, you have eaten there then you have killed your own argument.

Not really. My argument is that you don't have the first clue about the canteen or its prices or if in reality there is any subsidy (even before an allowance of 409 quid).

 

You just went venting. You must be a daily mail reader.

[BossHogg]

Yes let's change the argument now you've lost it. It's losing £600k a year (ie. It costs £600k more to run than it makes selling food to government workers). How do you define subsidised if that doesn't qualify?

[the stinking enigma]

Do they serve real ale? If not they can stick it up their arse. i'm not eating there

[quilp]

 

Subsidized? Not really...

Well, it is if it's making a loss.

I suppose. Be interesting to know how many covers they all have, collectively, on a daily basis.

[Terminal]

It always smells quite nice when you walk past the canteen but you can never be quite sure that they're not serving roast amputated femur today.

[quilp]

The cannibals were pensioned-off.

[BossHogg]

The cannibals were pensioned-off.

They ate more than a few taxpayers before they went though.

[Non-Believer]

Is it the cost of feeding Geoff Corkish.....?

[Kopek]

If you think that Nobles Cafe is 'making' 334,000 and that Ramsey Cott has a profit of 75,000, you are not very good business men.

 

These figures are likely to be 'turnover' and cannot be offset against losses elsewhere in the Dept catering.

 

Makes you wonder what the 600k figure represents?

[notwell]

Yes let's change the argument now you've lost it. It's losing £600k a year (ie. It costs £600k more to run than it makes selling food to government workers). How do you define subsidised if that doesn't qualify?

I haven't lost the argument. You simply don't see the big picture.

 

The hospital is vital part of the island along with its staff. I don't know how many people work at the hospital but it must be an incredible amount of people.

 

It needs to provide facilities for patients, visitors, from birth to death, often with many of the staff on pretty shit money (I know my mum was) and you are moaning about the catering?

[sarahc]

I thought the hospital did all the school meals as well. Is this included in the figures?

[BossHogg]

 

Yes let's change the argument now you've lost it. It's losing £600k a year (ie. It costs £600k more to run than it makes selling food to government workers). How do you define subsidised if that doesn't qualify?

I haven't lost the argument. You simply don't see the big picture.

The hospital is vital part of the island along with its staff. I don't know how many people work at the hospital but it must be an incredible amount of people.

It needs to provide facilities for patients, visitors, from birth to death, often with many of the staff on pretty shit money (I know my mum was) and you are moaning about the catering?

A loss of £364,000 a year to provide food to hospital workers is obscene. So what if they are on shit money? Who gets a staff canteen in 2016? It's a hangover of the 1970s that's costing us a fortune to provide. Would H & Bs keep running a pub that lost three hundred grand a year on food? No it wouldn't. They want to either put the prices up or start employing food workers who don't cost a fortune to turn out food at a loss.

[Kopek]

You children wont get any tea if you don't stop your arguing!

[Roger Mexico]

Not for the first time a thread is being derailed by notwell's usual insistence on picking a fight on something irrelevant based on nothing more than his belief in his own omniscience. However it is worth pointing out that a canteen is only subsidised if it is meant to be subsidised. Making a loss due to incompetence doesn't count, unless such a thing can be shown to be systematic.

 

As so often it's worth looking at Hansard to see what was actually said rather than rely on the mangling of it by the Manx media.

 

2.1. Government Catering Services –

Breakdown of overspend

 

The Hon. Member for Douglas North (Mr Ashford) to ask the Minister for Health and Social Care:

 

Further to the statement by her predecessor in June 2016, how the £1.1 million overspend in Government Catering Services is broken down by individual areas including Noble’s Hospital, school canteens and the National Sports Centre?

 

The Minister for Health and Social Care (Mrs Beecroft): The overspend for 2015-16 is broken 675 down as follows by area:

£000s

Noble’s hospital kitchen 377

Noble’s staff restaurant 364*

Government Office Canteen 105

NSC Café 66

Primary schools 81

Secondary schools 2

IOM College 41

TOTAL 1036

 

The following areas returned a surplus:

£000s

Ramsey Cottage Kitchen 75

Noble’s coffee shop 334*

TOTAL 409

 

There was therefore a net loss in catering services of £627,000. When Government Catering Services was created, the Department accepted a savings target of £500,000 over the first two years. When added to the £627,000 this creates the overall deficit of £1.1 million.

 

* there are close links between the staff restaurant and the coffee shop and it is difficult to separate out the costs between the two units. It is therefore likely that both the overspend in the staff restaurant and the surplus in the coffee shop are overstated.

 

What actually happened was that to 'save money' it was decided to centralise all Government catering services under the control of the Department of Health. Tynwald was assured that this would save £4 million a year and that it was so vitally important and urgent that no actual consideration could be given to the scheme or potential problems examined. After all IOMG senior civil servants are almost all-knowing as notwell, so nothing could possibly go wrong.

 

After two years of the scheme, it turns out the promised target of £4 million a year savings has magically been replace by one of just £500,000. And rather than even that being met, the actual result is the opposite - an increase in costs. What is more the biggest source of those losses is the Hospital that was supposed to be in charge of the whole wonderful new super-efficient operation.

 

There's a particular source of amusement in the desperate attempt to pretend that the source of the loss on the staff canteen is just an accountancy error and the profit made by the coffee shop really didn't exist and should really be credited to the staff canteen. Because of course selling goods with an enormous profit margin, like tea and coffee, to a large and captive audience will never make money. Look at there way there's no coffee shops in Douglas for example.

[BossHogg]

What a mess. So it's only the services selling food at a fair mark up to non government workers (e.g.: the captive public at Nobles and Ramsey Cottage Hospital) that make a profit. Everything else is once again run on our wonderful Manx Communist model for the continued benefit of people paid from the public purse on both sides of the transaction.