Genuine question. Which parts of the public sector are actually thriving, any?

Nope, can't immediately think of any.

I've got one.
Channel 4.

Ok, not publicly funded but publicly owned.👍

Not my two areas, that's for sure.
My main job in the civil service is in crisis, with most of the experienced staff having been made redundant during a very ill-conceived move into a handful of big city regional centres. When Dundee closed, the 50 odd compliance staff who departed had well over a thousand years of face to face experience in a difficult, confrontational line of work.
Many of the replacement staff are young, lower paid and with little or no life experience to fall back on when situations become tricky. Training for them is woeful, yet many have very unrealistic expectations of quick promotion before they've even learned how to get their boots dirty. Promotion being the only means of getting a realistic pay rise now.
Secondary job is in healthcare; enuf said.

I think highlandman and I are in the same department.

Despite the crisis in the NHS the government has capped the number of students who can train for medicine. God knows how they'll go on with these 40 new hospitals.

Waves at Highlandman and MoreCashThanDash.

Am training up those newbies…

*trying to train up

The current ruling government party...voted in by the people apparently for the people but they seem to be thriving and making a fortune - as they are there for the public, I think they qualify, but unsure it is worth praising!

MPs.

I believe the railway company LNER which was pulled back into public ownership has gone from strength to strength. Think there are a few train companies in the same situation, Northern being another but not sure how successful they are as a seperate entity..

None.
They're being deliberately de-funded as a precursor to privatisation. 🙂

APF

Good call DaveyBoy. It’s as if it would be a good idea to take them back to publicly owned.

@Megatron; aye, and I travel to teach some of them their personal safety. I try not to scare them too much with tales from the days when we actually did real work..

Which parts of the public sector are actually thriving, any?

That is obviously a trick question. If any part of the public sector was thriving it would be privatised, and if it wasn't possible to be privatised then it would have its budget slashed at least in real terms - thereby guaranteeing future failings.

Having said that Network Rail, which is publicly owned, is still currently making £millions in profits, despite the devastating effects of the pandemic on the railways.

But the railways have proved exceptionally difficult to privatise and keep privatised. Margaret Thatcher attempted to privatise the railways and failed, John Major managed to succeed but almost immediately the infrastructure had to be nationalised again.

For the last 30 years UK governments have had to repeatedly intervene and subsidise the railways due to private sector failings, as they desperately tried to keep them under private ownership. However I believe that most railway operations in the UK today are now under the ownership of either the UK government or other foreign governments.

So not very typical.

Edit: I hadn't seen that DaveyBoy had basically made a similar point as I wrote my waffling post.

I believe the railway company LNER which was pulled back into public ownership has gone from strength to strength

They are doing better than any other Train Company since Covid (note, apart from the Open Access Operators, all Train Companies are Government owned) , and recent figures show they are carrying a few percentage more people than before Covid, but, they are not making a profit, or, it should be, they are not covering their full costs, the Government put a huge subsidy into the railways.

Not exactly adding to the thriving aspect of things but worth a mention as it made me laugh out loud/despair in equal measures....

My wife's mental health team found out this week they've got a dedicated electric pool car (BMW i3), and in fact they've had it for over a year, just no-one told them. So it's sat unused in a hospital car park that entire time with 50 miles on the clock! They've had the RAC out today to free the brakes and see if they can get it moving as various things have seized.

It's things like this that really pee me off, you have teams of dedicated people doing there best with limited time and resources, whilst others manage to spaff away budgets with no repercussions.

In my area we're doing the usual cycle of repeating changes we did 10/20/30 years ago, there are a lot of good folk trying to make positive changes though, but as with other areas, there are also think tanks, analysts, etc being brought in to work out how to make us more appealing for privatisation, or more efficient. We do seem to do more justifying our existence these days via metrics, which weirdly takes us away from doing the actual day job, funny that.

It is peaks and troughs though, couple of years ago there was a push to bring more experience in, but we're at the drain point again and losing those with the knowledge and experience, but are bringing in a lot of youth, but that can lead to a bigger drain later, as we're no longer in the 'job for life' world, and companies around us aren't daft, they know if we pay to train them up they can headhunt them later with larger salaries and save on growing their own talent.

Waves at Highlandman and MoreCashThanDash.

Am training up those newbies…

I was one of those newbies 2 years ago.

Still know **** all about how to do my job properly, and I'm surrounded by equally inexperienced colleagues who are equally terrified every time we look at a case.

Public sector including anything funded from national or local government. From the military to… well, organisations I don’t even know about.

Are we including all the Tory donors'/Lord/mates outsourcing companies in this because they're doing very well thank you very much.

I would say Network Rail.

Thriving you say? Well surely it's obvious, all of the different complaints departments and their related ombudsman.

The worse things get the more in demand they become...

It’s as if it would be a good idea to take them back to publicly owned.

Weird that isn't it? Public sector looks absolutely doomed with this lot of weapons grade ****s in charge.

Ok, so we've got:

Channel 4
Some train companies/ Network Rail

I'm not including the Tory donor thing as that's most definitely private sector. Very private.

So... If I like watching The Inbetweeners on my mobile whilst on the train I'm living my best life?