And all the uncertainties in the public sector about their futures and pensions is affecting the economy and the private sector. Public servants spend money in the private sector as do the rest of us after all. The Government is printing money to give to banks to sit on and do nothing with and cutting off a means of getting money and GROWTH into the economy. How much does it cost to pay unemployment benefits to people? With the administartion and various schemes to help them find jobs that aren't thereI would guess we might be better off with a low paid public servant doing their jobs and nursing us or collecting our bins. Surely a policy of putting workers into unemployment without another option to them is not viable- you have to make cuts but balance them with creation of alternative jobs- as I have said - the Government is a rudderless ship and I am seriously frightened on where it might be heading!
"Private health care ---under labour in England if you brought private medicine for a loved one you could be removed form geting ANY care from the NHS ----- how "socialist--and EVERY one on here would have brought that service for a loved one---- so dont give it hypercriticak boolox"
My point is that at times like this 'organisations that would like us to be influenced' mobilise supporters (paid or otherwise) to troll message boards giving out either seemingly sage words or agitprop. The idea being that if you (the organisation wanting to get a message across) say it long enough, loud enough and in as many different ways as you can, then that belief will begin to take hold. Then it is, of course, far easier to divide and rule.
I may well be wrong, (and I don't believe longevity saves you from this accusation) but I have never seen your name appear in any conversations about football. My first thought when I saw the thread and your 'new' name was (and I did not know which side you would be supporting) "must be a troll".
The only long-term answer is a highly educated, highly employable workforce of young people in an entrepreneurial culture in which new business can thrive and grow into bigger businesses.
We need to create a much higher number of jobs for young and old alike and as quickly as possible.
This is the key! Listening to the radio this morning and all the talk is about falling living standards and higher unemployment - how is that going to help? We need to be more positive - it seems this government is quite happy to put 700,000 public sector workers out on the streets and feels no obligation to help them back into work.
The problem is, your statements contradict each other. A highly-educated, highly-employable workforce of 60 million people? How many architects, lawyers, engineers and artists can the country sustain? The real problem is (as it pretty much always is) the erosion of the 'working' class. You don't need a million architects in the country. You do, however, need a million people to empty bins, clean toilets and manually enter bits of data for 8 hours a day. Unless we're willing to - through taxation - fund an economy that pays those people £50k a year each to do those jobs, we're fucked. We don't make anything any more, and even if we did we couldn't sell it because the same thing is being produced ten times cheaper using slave labour in the third world.
Labour did do something about public sector pension. They stopped final salary pensions, increased contributions and the unions agreed, which is exactly why people are against this second changing. The governement arguments have already been dealt with and the money raised is going to the treasury not the pensions fund.
The private health thing under labour is crap too, I know this from both my parents having a mix of private / NHS care when the both suffered cancer under labour governements.
You totally, totally prove the point that you do not understand this strike and therefore any opinion you have on it is base-less and worth-less.
£50k a year is a bit steep. I do think there needs to be an alternative to the current global economy. I watch Dargon's Den and effectively see genuinely amiable business men and women berate people for not getting their product made by slave labour in the third world! I think Europe should create a minimum employment standard (Hours/Wages/Conditions) for production of any goods that can be traded in it. (This is the sort of thing Europe should have been about rather than this common currency nonsense) This would allow manufacturing to grow again and people to get a fair wage for a fair day's work.
A small few gain from this but what they fail to realise is that you can only get away with so much and push people so far. Yes our I pods are cheaper but we are poorer!
My point is that at times like this 'organisations that would like us to be influenced' mobilise supporters (paid or otherwise) to troll message boards giving out either seemingly sage words or agitprop. The idea being that if you (the organisation wanting to get a message across) say it long enough, loud enough and in as many different ways as you can, then that belief will begin to take hold. Then it is, of course, far easier to divide and rule.
I may well be wrong, (and I don't believe longevity saves you from this accusation) but I have never seen your name appear in any conversations about football. My first thought when I saw the thread and your 'new' name was (and I did not know which side you would be supporting) "must be a troll".
Hope that explains my point!
My thoughts exactly! Shock! Horror! Someone who makes his living by screwing commission out of private sector pension schemes is all for running down those in the public sector. I wonder why that might be...
I'd be interested in his views on the argument that part of the reason that many private sector pensions are failing is because much of the profit is creamed off by those running it i.e people like him.
The real problem is not the cost of each individual public sector pension to government coffers. It is that during the tenure of the last government an extra 1,000,000 - count them - public sector jobs were created. What's that equivilent to? About 3-4% of the working population maybe? It was, is and always would have been unsustainable. To a great extent it is these extra posts that are making the public sector pension schemes unaffordable for the country. The government today is begininng to cut back on this extreme waste created by Messrs Blair, Brown and Balls.
Northern Ireland's Civil Service recruitment site still says they offer a "generous package". That is dreadful - they should be offering a competitive package. My sister left a secretarial job in N. Ireland to join the PSNI - why - the public sector pension of course. In N. Ireland 31% of the workforce is in the public sector - how bonkers is that? In Scotland it is about a quarter (which is another interesting question - would that be sustainable if Scotland got its desired independence?) The same in Wales. The UK average is about 19%. That tells you all you need to know - England is being shafted again to keep the rest of the country afloat.
BTW, blaming the bankers for the government's on-going deficit problems - year on year the debt is still growing - may make good press but it is a complete red herring. Don't forget that all those bankers pay high levels of tax and NI and their expenditure on luxury items keeps many workers in employment. Ask the car workers at Bentley, Aston Martin and Jaguar if they'd like the bankers' bonuses stopped or whether they'd like to keep their manufacturing jobs.
I think the bankers are blamed as they are still not lending enough, which is stifling growth, which is keeping unemployment high and stifling tax receipts and increasing unemployment payments, which would if reversed bring the deficit down, perhaps?
Ha ha ha DRF you prove my point 100% there is only one point of view to you "socialists" YOURS everyone else is a Daily Mail reader !!
13 years of your beloved Labour TOSSERS destroyed this country ---end of.
Torys out for what they cant get---yes of course ---remember the expences scandle ? no Labour tossers in there was there.
Hate the Torys because they all go to private school ---- and of course Labour MPs didnt ?
Diane Abbot -- another great socailist sends her kids to private school. Who also said "west indian mothers are better parents" --- not racist that.
Torys line their pockets --- Red Kens last act as Mayorwas to give his Socialist Action advisors a £20K wage increase EACH , thats 6 of em then on £120k a pop.
Less than 50% of the people in each Union on strike voted. The majority of those who VOTED wanted to strike --- how the f**k is that 2/3 support this strike what utter kak.
The Dailty Mail must have a reader ship in 10z of millions if anyone who disagrees with you right on leftys is a "mail reader"
There is a fair point there- a big problem was that during their second term, the labour government got a bit too ambitious with the public sector - it was done for the right reasons- making the NHS and Education better and was affordable because the economy was bouyant - the debt was at record lows at the time. But it was a big error as it increased the costs for the future - when there was no way of knowing how affordable it would be then! To be fair they a) couldn't have predicted at that time the global financial disaster -caused by greedy bankers and politicians (please watch 'Inside Job' and make an informed decision on this after seeing that). and b) they did try to reign it back from about 2004/5 and the public sector was being gradually cut from then. But they would have been better served, cutting the debt further when the economy was booming, which they should also take some credit for with the criticism.
The deficit is the difference between income and what you are paying out. The trick is to increase income (growth) so that you can still pay out at a reasonable level as we do rely on a public sector to teach our kids, police us and look after our health and I would guess that most of us would want to continue to do that. This government had a plan and it could have worked well if we got the growth but there was a big risk that their plan would stifle growth. Of course external factors have made it harder to do so (which were not the Governments fault) but you need a plan B and that is something this government doesn't have unfortunately. And Unfortunately is the key word- for all of us.
The only long-term answer is a highly educated, highly employable workforce of young people in an entrepreneurial culture in which new business can thrive and grow into bigger businesses.
We need to create a much higher number of jobs for young and old alike and as quickly as possible.
This is the key! Listening to the radio this morning and all the talk is about falling living standards and higher unemployment - how is that going to help? We need to be more positive - it seems this government is quite happy to put 700,000 public sector workers out on the streets and feels no obligation to help them back into work.
The problem is, your statements contradict each other. A highly-educated, highly-employable workforce of 60 million people? How many architects, lawyers, engineers and artists can the country sustain? The real problem is (as it pretty much always is) the erosion of the 'working' class. You don't need a million architects in the country. You do, however, need a million people to empty bins, clean toilets and manually enter bits of data for 8 hours a day. Unless we're willing to - through taxation - fund an economy that pays those people £50k a year each to do those jobs, we're fucked. We don't make anything any more, and even if we did we couldn't sell it because the same thing is being produced ten times cheaper using slave labour in the third world.
Whatever. People need jobs. Mass unemployment cases all kinds of problems for a nation. I don't care how it's acheived, but finding employment for our population should be high on the agenda of all political parties.
The only long-term answer is a highly educated, highly employable workforce of young people in an entrepreneurial culture in which new business can thrive and grow into bigger businesses.
We need to create a much higher number of jobs for young and old alike and as quickly as possible.
This is the key! Listening to the radio this morning and all the talk is about falling living standards and higher unemployment - how is that going to help? We need to be more positive - it seems this government is quite happy to put 700,000 public sector workers out on the streets and feels no obligation to help them back into work.
The problem is, your statements contradict each other. A highly-educated, highly-employable workforce of 60 million people? How many architects, lawyers, engineers and artists can the country sustain? The real problem is (as it pretty much always is) the erosion of the 'working' class. You don't need a million architects in the country. You do, however, need a million people to empty bins, clean toilets and manually enter bits of data for 8 hours a day. Unless we're willing to - through taxation - fund an economy that pays those people £50k a year each to do those jobs, we're fucked. We don't make anything any more, and even if we did we couldn't sell it because the same thing is being produced ten times cheaper using slave labour in the third world.
Whatever. People need jobs. Mass unemployment cases all kinds of problems for a nation. I don't care how it's acheived, but finding employment for our population should be high on the agenda of all political parties.
Absolutely no argument from me there. However you slice it - something needs to be done about unemployment, and it should be a top priority for any government. The problem is, Keynesian policies won't work in our current situation, so you can't just 'create' the jobs. Mass emigration is out as well (no-one needs or wants us anywhere in the world, and even if they did, the only places that could support the mass emigration of millions of Britons have been completely fucked over by us for the past fifty years, and people wouldn't be able to put up with the living conditions they'd have to endure when they got there). At some point, the whole financial system needs recapitalising - which will cause massive inflation. Someone, somewhere, needs to be brave enough to anticipate that and just start spending hand over fist at a national level. I'm not talking about Greece here - I mean Britain, Germany or the US (who are pretty much ignoring the crisis anyway, as they know they're in the enviable position of being able to carpet-bomb anyone who ever dares to call in their debt back to the stone age). As soon as that happens, recapitalisation (with all the inherent woes that go with it) will be inevitable.
I agree something drastic different probably needs to happen - One thing that could work would be an enforced suspension of markets for a fixed period and recapitalisation - drastic but so are the times. Would of course need the co-operation of US and the rest of Europe which will be difficult but circumstances could get so bad that difficult things are done! Surprised China isn't doing more to help now because they could be big losers out of how this could end up.
Ha ha ha DRF you prove my point 100% there is only one point of view to you "socialists" YOURS everyone else is a Daily Mail reader !!
13 years of your beloved Labour TOSSERS destroyed this country ---end of.
Torys out for what they cant get---yes of course ---remember the expences scandle ? no Labour tossers in there was there.
Hate the Torys because they all go to private school ---- and of course Labour MPs didnt ?
Diane Abbot -- another great socailist sends her kids to private school. Who also said "west indian mothers are better parents" --- not racist that.
Torys line their pockets --- Red Kens last act as Mayorwas to give his Socialist Action advisors a £20K wage increase EACH , thats 6 of em then on £120k a pop.
Less than 50% of the people in each Union on strike voted. The majority of those who VOTED wanted to strike --- how the f**k is that 2/3 support this strike what utter kak.
The Dailty Mail must have a reader ship in 10z of millions if anyone who disagrees with you right on leftys is a "mail reader"
A well reasoned argument there. You must have more headlines you can chuck in there to support your left-wing numpty, pc gone mad, anti-white socialist policies ranting?
Everybody who walks out agrees with the strike- my mate said he didn't vote because he was too busy and knew the outcome anyway. Suspect if the government changed legislation to make it harder to strike, you would get bigger turn outs and votes which would help unions.
But it isn't that massive and will have little effect - try the plan B first though please - that is plan A.1
and quantative easing is that Keynsian too effectively?
I guess it depends on your view of how much borrowing to invest in infrastructure is needed (which is what they are doing), so perhaps enough to have a significant effect on the number of unemployed?
"Less than 50% of the people in each Union on strike voted. The majority of those who VOTED wanted to strike --- how the f**k is that 2/3 support this strike what utter kak."
The turnout for a general election is around 30% so this strike is as valid as any governement.
Do you know the percentage who voted for the Coalition - 0%.
You have to get money into the economy and people to spend it. Infrastucture is a good way but the scale will have to be higher IMO to have an effect. Cutting jobs without finding alternative jobs is a terrible way.
An example was grammar schools. Rather than try and improve other schools to aspire to the level of grammar schools Red Labour, Blue Labour and Yellow Labour got rid of them in most areas.
Private health works very well for those who can afford it or haven't had an illness previously yet Red and Yellow Labour say abolish private health rather than work to raise the NHS to those standards.
Bit off the point but Margaret Thatcher closed more grammar schools than any other education secretary. It's precisely the selection process for grammar school that caused the other schools to be less successful. Grammars have zilch support among the teachers I meet as a governor in the primary and secondary sector. But I accept they are fine if you only care about a quarter of the kids.
A little bit disingenuous Airman if you don't mind my saying!
You know as well as I do that when Thatcher was Education Secretary Local Authorities (eg ILEA) had far more autonomy than subsequently. Labour authorities abolished the grammars whereas (some) Tory authorities in areas like Kent, Buckinghamshire and Gloucestershire kept them and they survive today although Cameron has threatened them.
I am no defender of the Conservative Party. In my opinion we live in a one party state beholden to the diktakts of the EU which periodically rebrands itself red, blue or blue and yellow to convince the sheeple that they still have democratic rights. Hence my use of terms like Red, Blue and Yellow Labour.
"Less than 50% of the people in each Union on strike voted. The majority of those who VOTED wanted to strike --- how the f**k is that 2/3 support this strike what utter kak."
The turnout for a general election is around 30% so this strike is as valid as any governement.
Do you know the percentage who voted for the Coalition - 0%.
That's meaningless. Percentage who voted for David Cameron as Prime Minister - 0%
You vote for the candidate you want as your MP. The successful candidate goes and represents you and your fellow constituents. Don't like how they represented you? Vote for someone else next time. Thats all you get unfortunately.
It is true you will get some labour politicians who are more tory than a lot of tories and visa versa. For many, allegance to a political party is a bit like supporting a football club.
Good luck to the strikers. I hope all those talking about the damage to the economy will be insisting on working on the extra jubilee bank holiday next year.
I wasn't going to get involved in this thread as my views on these subjects tend to be a little unpopular. However, I've read a few things that I'd like to comment on:
I'm sure that the NI I've been paying (both employer and employee as I own and run my own company) was supposed to guarantee a state pension at age 65. If this 'contract' has been changed then I don't see why the public service pensions should be protected from change?
The suggestions that many of the public sector workers are on low incomes makes me wonder what difference this makes? Are we saying that the low paid you should be able to expect the public purse to make a greater contribution towards their pension as they cannot afford to?
I think the real question is not about what's fair. It's not about what the public sector get in relation to the private sector. It's about how much money this is going to cost with an increasing population of public sector pension claimants with a smaller total population of workers in the 'working' age group. However, I believe that the lower paid are being protected against this anyway.
Are we going to ask those paying tax to pay more and more to fund these pensions or are we going to cut more and more public services to pay for them?
Like Bing said earlier, if the money isn't there it isn't there!
I can see why those on strike are doing it, but there are tough decisions that need to be made.
As I understand it the strikers have little support from the public, and that support will almost certainly diminish as more and more people need to take days off as holiday. I suspect that initially the employers will give free days off, but in due course they will have to take the days off as holiday - lets remember that most in the private sector get just 20 days annual leave a year, which is just two thirds of what teachers get in the summer alone!
I can't see how this industrial action can possibly benefit those taking it. In the end it could well be that this will become a battle that the Government cannot afford to lose, and with the support of the public, they will be able to win it.
Despite what the public sector workers believe on the issue of pensions they don't have the support of the public, many of whom will never have a pension like theirs.
"Less than 50% of the people in each Union on strike voted. The majority of those who VOTED wanted to strike --- how the f**k is that 2/3 support this strike what utter kak."
The turnout for a general election is around 30% so this strike is as valid as any governement.
Do you know the percentage who voted for the Coalition - 0%.
Two huge errors on this.
1. turnout is not 30% in GE its upwards of 60%. Its general elections under FPTP which have been won by less than 40% of the popular vote. That's just a function of a three or more horse race. In a strike ballot it is a two horse race, yes or no. It is important therefore to consider the legitimacy of a vote where the turnout was very low.
2. it is not a presidential election, we vote for individuals who represent us. They form parties and groupings and those groupings have to have a majority. The electorate chose their MPs, that produced the Tories with the most MP's but no majority. Another group decided to join with them to form a working majority. That is how our system works. The Prime Minister is normally chosen as being the leader of the largest party. In earlier coalitions, the other parties to the coalition have often forced the largest parties hand in replacing the current Prime Minister with somebody more acceptable. Asquith replaced by Lloyd George and Chamberlain, replaced by Churchill.
and the just announced massive infrastructure investment isn't Keynsian then?
Well no it isn't, but that's because it's the Tory party that are doing it, in any other language it would be. Eighteen odd months ago there was "Plan A" and that what to reduce spending in the expectation that the private sector would take up the slack. Quelle surpeise, it didn't, Osborne and Cameron fundamentally didn't understand that people invest when they see that the forecasts for a decent ROI are there, however when there's uncertainty they tend to sit on their cash. So after 18 months of sneering at spending/investing and denying the need for a Plan B the coalition government have more-or-less admitted that Labour's spending plans were what they should have stuck with. The latest plans are to spend more than Labour forecast at the last election - the Tory party were happy to deride that as economic lunacy, so now we have Keynesian economics and we've lost 18 months. By the way the UK economy was growing at 1.1% in GDP terms when Labour left office, the latest plan (as of yesterday) suggests that growth next year will be 0.9%, and that looks fanciful.
Strange innit...we were given a day off for the Royal wedding earlier this year, no one considered what consequence that would have on the economy, indeed we were told that the increase in tourism would benefit the economy (it didn't - no surprise there) but when a considerably smaller number of people strike we are told that it will cause dire economic problems.
Comments
To Dippenhall
My point is that at times like this 'organisations that would like us to be influenced' mobilise supporters (paid or otherwise) to troll message boards giving out either seemingly sage words or agitprop. The idea being that if you (the organisation wanting to get a message across) say it long enough, loud enough and in as many different ways as you can, then that belief will begin to take hold. Then it is, of course, far easier to divide and rule.
I may well be wrong, (and I don't believe longevity saves you from this accusation) but I have never seen your name appear in any conversations about football. My first thought when I saw the thread and your 'new' name was (and I did not know which side you would be supporting) "must be a troll".
Hope that explains my point!
Ho hum I knew I'd get drawn in.
Gooner.
That unreliable news gathering service known as the BBC said 2/3rds backing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15910621
Labour did do something about public sector pension. They stopped final salary pensions, increased contributions and the unions agreed, which is exactly why people are against this second changing. The governement arguments have already been dealt with and the money raised is going to the treasury not the pensions fund.
The private health thing under labour is crap too, I know this from both my parents having a mix of private / NHS care when the both suffered cancer under labour governements.
You totally, totally prove the point that you do not understand this strike and therefore any opinion you have on it is base-less and worth-less.
A small few gain from this but what they fail to realise is that you can only get away with so much and push people so far. Yes our I pods are cheaper but we are poorer!
I'd be interested in his views on the argument that part of the reason that many private sector pensions are failing is because much of the profit is creamed off by those running it i.e people like him.
The real problem is not the cost of each individual public sector pension to government coffers. It is that during the tenure of the last government an extra 1,000,000 - count them - public sector jobs were created. What's that equivilent to? About 3-4% of the working population maybe? It was, is and always would have been unsustainable. To a great extent it is these extra posts that are making the public sector pension schemes unaffordable for the country. The government today is begininng to cut back on this extreme waste created by Messrs Blair, Brown and Balls.
Northern Ireland's Civil Service recruitment site still says they offer a "generous package". That is dreadful - they should be offering a competitive package. My sister left a secretarial job in N. Ireland to join the PSNI - why - the public sector pension of course. In N. Ireland 31% of the workforce is in the public sector - how bonkers is that? In Scotland it is about a quarter (which is another interesting question - would that be sustainable if Scotland got its desired independence?) The same in Wales. The UK average is about 19%. That tells you all you need to know - England is being shafted again to keep the rest of the country afloat.
BTW, blaming the bankers for the government's on-going deficit problems - year on year the debt is still growing - may make good press but it is a complete red herring. Don't forget that all those bankers pay high levels of tax and NI and their expenditure on luxury items keeps many workers in employment. Ask the car workers at Bentley, Aston Martin and Jaguar if they'd like the bankers' bonuses stopped or whether they'd like to keep their manufacturing jobs.
The deficit is the difference between income and what you are paying out. The trick is to increase income (growth) so that you can still pay out at a reasonable level as we do rely on a public sector to teach our kids, police us and look after our health and I would guess that most of us would want to continue to do that. This government had a plan and it could have worked well if we got the growth but there was a big risk that their plan would stifle growth. Of course external factors have made it harder to do so (which were not the Governments fault) but you need a plan B and that is something this government doesn't have unfortunately. And Unfortunately is the key word- for all of us.
and quantative easing is that Keynsian too effectively?
I guess it depends on your view of how much borrowing to invest in infrastructure is needed (which is what they are doing), so perhaps enough to have a significant effect on the number of unemployed?
"Less than 50% of the people in each Union on strike voted. The majority of those who VOTED wanted to strike --- how the f**k is that 2/3 support this strike what utter kak."
The turnout for a general election is around 30% so this strike is as valid as any governement.
Do you know the percentage who voted for the Coalition - 0%.
A little bit disingenuous Airman if you don't mind my saying!
You know as well as I do that when Thatcher was Education Secretary Local Authorities (eg ILEA) had far more autonomy than subsequently. Labour authorities abolished the grammars whereas (some) Tory authorities in areas like Kent, Buckinghamshire and Gloucestershire kept them and they survive today although Cameron has threatened them.
I am no defender of the Conservative Party. In my opinion we live in a one party state beholden to the diktakts of the EU which periodically rebrands itself red, blue or blue and yellow to convince the sheeple that they still have democratic rights. Hence my use of terms like Red, Blue and Yellow Labour.
That's meaningless. Percentage who voted for David Cameron as Prime Minister - 0%
You vote for the candidate you want as your MP. The successful candidate goes and represents you and your fellow constituents. Don't like how they represented you? Vote for someone else next time. Thats all you get unfortunately.
Well no it isn't, but that's because it's the Tory party that are doing it, in any other language it would be. Eighteen odd months ago there was "Plan A" and that what to reduce spending in the expectation that the private sector would take up the slack. Quelle surpeise, it didn't, Osborne and Cameron fundamentally didn't understand that people invest when they see that the forecasts for a decent ROI are there, however when there's uncertainty they tend to sit on their cash. So after 18 months of sneering at spending/investing and denying the need for a Plan B the coalition government have more-or-less admitted that Labour's spending plans were what they should have stuck with. The latest plans are to spend more than Labour forecast at the last election - the Tory party were happy to deride that as economic lunacy, so now we have Keynesian economics and we've lost 18 months. By the way the UK economy was growing at 1.1% in GDP terms when Labour left office, the latest plan (as of yesterday) suggests that growth next year will be 0.9%, and that looks fanciful.