Capita shares hit despite decent sales Public sector outsourcer Capita watched its shares fall just over four per cent this morning despite the company reporting a pretty decent set of results. For the year ended 31 December 2009 Capita made sales of £2.7bn and a profit before tax of £325.1m, up ten per cent and 17 per cent respectively. Capita booked contract …
Capita aka Local Councils PLC - taking money from the public purse (taxpayer's pockets) and not paying any tax in the UK with their bank accounts and 'offices' offshore.
This company is a leech on the face of the country and the absolute antithesis of what privatising public services was supposed to achieve. They've closed out competition by small local traders for council accounts and they don't put anything back into either the economy or the community.
Chronic nooToryLabour cronyism put them where they are and their operations should be investigated by the monopolies commission.
....the Conservatives likely to win, with a small majority, the chance that a major contract will be in the offing is high....since the outsourcing of most of the DwP work is one of their "cuts". The Jobcentres would be run by employment agencies that operate within the area they are local to.
Capita management are "optimistic" that they would get a large slice of the work.
Private Eye has given significant coverage to this bunch of charlatans - there are many reasons why PE calls them "Crapita" - and the ways that too many national and local government airheads hand them obscenely inflated contracts to screw up systems and milk the taxpayer.
They aren't the only bunch of sharp-suited bandits in operation, of course, and there has been ample coverage devoted to their shenanigans, in Private Eye and a couple of broadsheets, but bugger all action to stop them. Indeed, if anything they are being given more and more stuff to screw up at our expense.
Their best trick to date is the way they not only act as primary contractor but also as advisers, thus giving them the golden opportunity to sell the customer - that would be us - any bit of kit or barely functioning software they fancy. As long as we have idiots operating on our behalf and who are happy to spend gazillions on any old pile of shiny new bollox, these parasites will empty the pot of our diminishing fortunes, piss in it and then hand it back.
Right, someone get me a coffee!
I was a contractor to a Capita company in 2008 and I saw pointless projects initiated just to spend the budget. Value for money was an alien concept - the goal was to gold plate everything and spend government money like it was going out of fashion.
It then turned out the budget surplus was an error! I lol'd.
But tbh what do you expect when you outsource public services to a for profit company?
I've been working in private sector businesses, serving the public sector, for almost 20 years.
The level of waste and inefficiency can sometimes be eyewatering. And this is the public sector departments I'm talking about, not the companies I've worked for.
As a taxpayer, it leaves me furious to see this level of waste in the public sector.
As for the private companies, they have to compete hard in difficult markets, and therefore have no choice but to run lean and mean operations. Yes, they do generate profits, some of which are returned to shareholders, but even taking this into account they use public funds far more efficiently.
So please, a bit of balance in the discussion, and a bit less politics!
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