There are some people we must prevent from working in public service

Try this on for size:

Having spent years attempting to fix broken projects and teams within the NHS and local government, and also in the private sector, what I have learned is this: a public service and a business are inherently different beasts and asking one to behave as the other is like asking a fish to ride a bicycle.

The clue is in the name: the primary aim of a public service is to provide a service to the public – to protect crucial social utilities from the instabilities of capitalism and to avoid negative social impacts.

Public services are democratic. If a service fails to deliver our needs, we can hold those responsible to account at the ballot box. Important matters such as wages, pensions and working conditions are the result of negotiation, and subject to internal and popular support.

No, no, don't agree or disagree a yet, add this from the same piece:

Businesses are hierarchical, not democratic, and wages, terms and conditions are set by the executive and subject to the market. This can be mitigated to some degree by collective bargaining through unions, but the private sector has historically delivered lower wages and poorer working conditions for its employees.

And piece the two together. A public service really, really, is only there to provide that service. Yet it also pays its workers better than a private business. Therefore, the inescapable conclusion must be that a public service is more inefficient than a private business. Because, of whatever available resources there are to provide said service more of them are lavished upon the workers rather than the service provision.

Kerry-anne Mendoza is a former ­management consultant in banking, local government and the NHS, who left her job to join the Occupy protest.

Probably a good idea eh, as we almost certainly don't want her running a public service, do we?

This is not the right time for another pay claim by NHS unions

On Monday, NHS unions plan stoppages 'short of strike action'. It may not feel like it if your hospital treatment has been cancelled or you are lying in a ward with fewer nurses to look after you. The stoppages come after strikes back in October failed to move the government to raise its pay offer for NHS staff. A pay review body recommended a 1% increase for all NHS staff, but the government argues that this is unaffordable and unfair. After all, the 3% 'increment' rise puts more money into the hands of higher-paid NHS workers than lower-paid ones.And some 55% of NHS staff already get an annual 3% rise: so the government is saying that any extra cash for wages should go to the workers who do not get this. So it is proposing a 1% rise for the others, but not an extra 1% on top of the existing 3% increments.

Extending the 1% rise to all NHS workers, says the government, will cost around £300 million. Some 75% of hospitals' budgets is staff costs, so the extra cost that the union proposals would impose on them would mean cutbacks in staff – some 4,000 nurses lost this year, and another 10,000 next year. That could leave hospitals unsafe, risking another Mid-Staffordshire disaster.

Many members of the public would say that NHS staff should count themselves lucky. Average pay in the UK grew just 0.1% last year, and many businesses are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. But NHS pay has been rising since 2012. More than 5,000 nurses were recruited last year, and more midwives too. Public sector pay is generally higher than private sector pay for the same job, even before you count the more secure and higher public sector pensions. Lower paid workers, including those in the NHS, have been helped by the rise in the tax threshold to £10,000. Moreover, the £133 billion NHS budget – some 18% of public spending or over £2,000 per man, woman and child – is ring-fenced, so there is no chance of it falling – unlike the fortunes of most high-street businesses.

And if you want to know how bad things can really get, look at Portugal, which slashed its health budget 17%. Our public finances are not quite in that much of a mess, but things are still tight. The UK has economic growth of 3% but it is still fragile, and there are lots of things that could still spell disaster – a potential crisis in the eurozone, ebola, tension with Russia, you name it. The British government is 1.45trillion in debt, and adding to that debt by another £100 billion a year, despite creaming off 40% of the national income in taxes.

This just is not the right time for another pay claim. And certainly not for another Winter of Discontent (with images of ambulance crews dropping 'non-emergency' cases off in the snow to find their way home). The mind shivers. It is clear the government cannot budge, so why don't we all go back to work and try to get Britain out of this mess?