The international swimming body FINA has introduced an idea around trans questions that reflects what some have suggested here, including an "open" category:
Fina, swimming's world governing body, has voted to stop transgender athletes from competing in women's elite races if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty.
Fina will also aim to establish an 'open' category at competitions for swimmers whose gender identity is different than their birth sex.
The new policy, which was passed with 71% of the vote from 152 Fina members, was described as "only a first step towards full inclusion" for transgender athletes.
The 34-page policy document says that male-to-female transgender athletes are still eligible to compete in the women's category "provided they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 [which marks the start of physical development], or before age 12, whichever is later". https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/swimming/61853450
"Average total pay growth for the private sector was 8.2% in January to March 2022, and for the public sector was 1.6% in the same time period; the finance and business services sector showed the largest growth rate (10.7%), partly because of strong bonus payments"
Key point. Public sector hasn't been struggling to recruit before. Market forces are at work. The invisible hand will ensure a large pay settlement. If you have faith in it.
Absolutely, if public sector staff are prepared to quit to get better paid jobs elsewhere, and nobody else is queueing up to fill the roles, then their employers will have no alternative but to pay more to replace them.
If they're not prepared to though, that's not the invisible hand that's acting.
They are. Which is why 2 or 3% won't stand. And why your kids won't have a teacher. But a week by week contractor. You may like that. But millions won't.
If that's the case, there's absolutely no reason to strike, is there?
Many people strike as the final attempt to get something fixed before they leave the industry.
And supply teachers are getting harder to find so don’t think the week by week contractors exist to fix the problem
If they aren't, deregulate wages and let the market sort it out.
There is no reason the state should be getting involved in wage levels. If the supply of teachers are short in a particular area, then wages should be able to go up, if there's an overabundance elsewhere then wages might stagnate. Why should the government be involved either way?
You’ve clearly never been a school governor then (and clearly not one who deals with finance).
Simple fact is that if wages go up schools need either more money or the number of teachers will drop because there really isn’t anything else that can be cut.
Heck a lot of schools will have less teachers come September to reflect higher fuel costs
Which is why schools should have the flexibility to set wages themselves and the state should not be involved in them whatsoever.
"National pay rates" are an anachronism that should never exist.
Academies can pay more - for some reason or other they don’t
In which case, presumably they aren't struggling to fill their vacancies, going back to where we started the conversation.
Academies can pay more but they can’t because the budget (set by the department of education) doesn’t allow them to do so.
Remember my previous point - a lot of schools are not replacing teachers because they need to safe money to pay the expected fuel bills.
Given that we are referring back to previous points - remember I used to be a school governor specializing in school finances…
If they deliberately aren't replacing teachers, then presumably they think they have enough. A school with fuel but no teachers is hardly a school now, is it?
Either way, that should be their choice - and if wage rises are going to cause problems, then presumably the school should be thinking carefully before agreeing any. You as a Governor ought to be able to get involved in wage discussions for your school, rather someone from Whitehall deciding what is appropriate for your school then applying that to every single school in the country uniformly as if there's no local factors involved.
Depends on the budget - you may well find that there are now teaching periods that are covered by teaching assistants rather than teachers themselves
Oh and the last thing I should be doing as a governor is negotiating wages - outside of senior management it’s the responsibility of others. Governors are there to set policy and ensure standards are maintained not day to day issues
Barry applying his universal expertise again, I see.
Does anyone know who Victor Chandler is, on the right hand side of the page?
Offshore betting entrepreneur. Founded and runs / ran a betting company based in Gibraltar. If he is still around. I had a job interview with them once at the Kings Cross Holiday Inn. Checking, he is 71.
"BetVictor".
Nice anecdote from Wiki:
In July 2009 Victor Chandler agreed to become the main sponsor of Nottingham Forest F.C. for a reported "significant six-figure fee". As part of his sponsorship he offered to pay for the following year's season tickets for Forest fans who opened an online account should Forest win the league. At the time of the offer Forest were rated as 80/1 outsiders to do this, but after a run of 19 games undefeated, Forest were second in the Championship in January 2010 and Chandler claimed Forest winning the league would cost him approximately £6m. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Chandler
Regarding pay in schools, the whole situation is bizarre. My neighbour is a teaching assistant, training to be a teacher, has done it for 2 years; and is earning below 10k a year. She is also doing a degree as part of this, paid for by the school, but she won't be able to qualify as a teacher until she has done a whole year of work for free (a 'training' year). This is also in the south east, where a typical house costs over £300k. Looking at the teachers salaries at my son's school, these are £20 - £30k for experienced, qualified teachers with little opportunity for progression beyond that point. Its not too difficult to see why the most rational response to the situation - in combination with the misery of the profession inflicted on teachers by government policy - is not to strike, but to just quit in pursuit of a serious job, by which I mean one that is properly paid.
A big part of the problem is that a lot of people who seem to be in these jobs are just not assertive enough and allow themselves to be essentially exploited, and then seem to get trapped in them through a form of emotional blackmail.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
What in your view is ?
Mixture of things:
1. targeted relief where required and the problem comes from temporary external factors (eg help on fuel bills.
2. temporary margin caps on companies passing through inflationary costs. As price increases are permanent in nature and boost long term margins if costs eventually fade away, companies should share should of the pain now (which many are not),
3. Taxes on areas where demand has been the primary driver of price increases eg luxury goods. High end property purchases subject to a temporary increase in the stamp duty rate.
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
One argument Foxy I heard for the GP crisis is that a disproportionate percentage of GPs were women who were electing to work part-time so they could look after their children and could afford to do so because of their high income levels. Does that seem plausible?
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
There is currently a vicious circle in the medical sector. Increased load means increased stress means doctors (and nurses and so on) leave or reduce their hours, which increases the load, and hence stress, on the ones who are left.
We have also, due to Covid disrupting training, a shortage of newly qualified specialists coming through. Thanks to the combination of Covid abroad and Brexit, it is harder to import medics, and many foreigners have already left.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
What in your view is ?
Mixture of things:
1. targeted relief where required and the problem comes from temporary external factors (eg help on fuel bills.
2. temporary margin caps on companies passing through inflationary costs. As price increases are permanent in nature and boost long term margins if costs eventually fade away, companies should share should of the pain now (which many are not),
3. Taxes on areas where demand has been the primary driver of price increases eg luxury goods. High end property purchases subject to a temporary increase in the stamp duty rate.
The problem with raising stamp duty is that it reduces supply. Don't forget, stamp duty in the UK is already (coughs...) 12% on properties worth £1.5m or more.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
Let me introduce you to a knew type of person:
He's 35. He and his girlfriend live with his parents as they try desperately to get the money together to get on the housing ladder.
Would you like to tell them that interest rates shouldn't go up?
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
Let me introduce you to a knew type of person:
He's 35. He and his girlfriend live with his parents as they try desperately to get the money together to get on the housing ladder.
Would you like to tell them that interest rates shouldn't go up?
That's fair enough.
But housing availability doesn't tend to increase when prices fall. Instead people find themselves trapped by negative equity, and the whole housing market grinds to a halt.
What you want is is for wages to rise 30-40% (nominally) while house prices remain flat.
---
Also, in my scenario, do you have any idea what happens to aggregate demand if disposible income gets squeezed even more? Your 35 year old might well find him/herself without a job.
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
They have been tapered that way for over a decade. Real terms pay for doctors has declined by 20-25% depending on grade, and on top of that we have had significant increases in deductions such as superannuation.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
What in your view is ?
Mixture of things:
1. targeted relief where required and the problem comes from temporary external factors (eg help on fuel bills.
2. temporary margin caps on companies passing through inflationary costs. As price increases are permanent in nature and boost long term margins if costs eventually fade away, companies should share should of the pain now (which many are not),
3. Taxes on areas where demand has been the primary driver of price increases eg luxury goods. High end property purchases subject to a temporary increase in the stamp duty rate.
The problem with raising stamp duty is that it reduces supply. Don't forget, stamp duty in the UK is already (coughs...) 12% on properties worth £1.5m or more.
Reduces supply of what? Stamps? It might reduce demand but we are not about to start demolishing houses in Kensington.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
What in your view is ?
Mixture of things:
1. targeted relief where required and the problem comes from temporary external factors (eg help on fuel bills.
2. temporary margin caps on companies passing through inflationary costs. As price increases are permanent in nature and boost long term margins if costs eventually fade away, companies should share should of the pain now (which many are not),
3. Taxes on areas where demand has been the primary driver of price increases eg luxury goods. High end property purchases subject to a temporary increase in the stamp duty rate.
The problem with raising stamp duty is that it reduces supply. Don't forget, stamp duty in the UK is already (coughs...) 12% on properties worth £1.5m or more.
That’s a fair point. Ideally, you would tax some of the gain that has been caused by effectively cheap Government money fuelling asset rises. However, we can get back to how to impose a cash burden on those with illiquid assets (my view would be if you are a higher income earner, you should see it maybe in your income tax bills but that’s another conversation).
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
I respectfully disagree. One of the reasons, possibly the main reason, that we have inflation now is that monetary policy has been far too loose and interest rates too low for too long. Pre-Covid the world economy was still trying to recover from the monetary shock of the GFC which has enormous deflationary effects. To combat that central bankers kept interest rates extremely low. Contrary to the article the returns on capital, as opposed to wages, were also low although there was significant asset inflation.
And then came Covid which, along with an even further reduction in interest rates, also brought in massive fiscal incontenence to offset the effect of a different kind of crash. It worked but at the cost of significant increases in the money supply which is now feeding into inflation.
The solutions, such as they are, in that essay would result in ongoing inflation at a much higher rate than we have been used to and that itself threatens purchasing power of the poor and the much more casual workforce than we had in the 1970s. In short, rather than being a means of exploiting the poor policies designed to limit inflation will have the effect of protecting them. Refighting the battles of the 70's, which nobody won, is not the solution, it is a part of the problem.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
Let me introduce you to a knew type of person:
He's 35. He and his girlfriend live with his parents as they try desperately to get the money together to get on the housing ladder.
Would you like to tell them that interest rates shouldn't go up?
Wouldn't that make it harder for him to afford a mortgage though?
1.6% a year is a hell of a lot easier to pay than 12% a year.
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
There is currently a vicious circle in the medical education sector. Increased load means increased stress means doctors teachers (and nurses TAs and so on) leave or reduce their hours, which increases the load, and hence stress, on the ones who are left.
We have also, due to Covid disrupting training, a shortage of newly qualified specialists coming through. Thanks to the combination of Covid abroad and Brexit, it is harder to import medics, and many foreigners have already left.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
Let me introduce you to a knew type of person:
He's 35. He and his girlfriend live with his parents as they try desperately to get the money together to get on the housing ladder.
Would you like to tell them that interest rates shouldn't go up?
That's fair enough.
But housing availability doesn't tend to increase when prices fall. Instead people find themselves trapped by negative equity, and the whole housing market grinds to a halt.
What you want is is for wages to rise 30-40% (nominally) while house prices remain flat.
---
Also, in my scenario, do you have any idea what happens to aggregate demand if disposible income gets squeezed even more? Your 35 year old might well find him/herself without a job.
Well, that 35 year old is much less afraid of losing his job as he doesn't have a mortgage. Obviously, his view would change completely were he to get a mortgage.
But we have a had 12 years of ultra-low interest rates. We've normalised them when we should have weaned ourselves off them gradually during the 2010s.
Sadly, I think we'll have to go through the pain of the 1970s before we finally realise that there's only one way to tackle inflation.
The job of union leaders is to increase the wages of, and better the conditions of, their members. Not to solve the Government's economic problems. Marx said that in a roundabout way. Economic science? An oxymoron, As is calling sociology a science.
It's traditional that union leaders are left wing to some extent, but it doesn't have to be.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
I respectfully disagree. One of the reasons, possibly the main reason, that we have inflation now is that monetary policy has been far too loose and interest rates too low for too long. Pre-Covid the world economy was still trying to recover from the monetary shock of the GFC which has enormous deflationary effects. To combat that central bankers kept interest rates extremely low. Contrary to the article the returns on capital, as opposed to wages, were also low although there was significant asset inflation.
And then came Covid which, along with an even further reduction in interest rates, also brought in massive fiscal incontenence to offset the effect of a different kind of crash. It worked but at the cost of significant increases in the money supply which is now feeding into inflation.
The solutions, such as they are, in that essay would result in ongoing inflation at a much higher rate than we have been used to and that itself threatens purchasing power of the poor and the much more casual workforce than we had in the 1970s. In short, rather than being a means of exploiting the poor policies designed to limit inflation will have the effect of protecting them. Refighting the battles of the 70's, which nobody won, is not the solution, it is a part of the problem.
I agree that monetary policy across the Developed World has been far too loose since the GFC.
The problem is that in the middle of a massive supply shock is not the time you want to correct that mistake. Simply, people in the UK (and elsewhere) are getting slammed by higher prices right now. Do we really want to crush demand by transferring wealth to those with lots of existing assets?
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
Let me introduce you to a knew type of person:
He's 35. He and his girlfriend live with his parents as they try desperately to get the money together to get on the housing ladder.
Would you like to tell them that interest rates shouldn't go up?
Wouldn't that make it harder for him to afford a mortgage though?
1.6% a year is a hell of a lot easier to pay than 12% a year.
Yes, that's a fair point. I guess it's more those in their 20s who should be ****ing livid at the thought that interest rates need to stay low so that those who borrowed beyond their means should be protected.
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Regarding pay in schools, the whole situation is bizarre. My neighbour is a teaching assistant, training to be a teacher, has done it for 2 years; and is earning below 10k a year. She is also doing a degree as part of this, paid for by the school, but she won't be able to qualify as a teacher until she has done a whole year of work for free (a 'training' year). This is also in the south east, where a typical house costs over £300k. Looking at the teachers salaries at my son's school, these are £20 - £30k for experienced, qualified teachers with little opportunity for progression beyond that point. Its not too difficult to see why the most rational response to the situation - in combination with the misery of the profession inflicted on teachers by government policy - is not to strike, but to just quit in pursuit of a serious job, by which I mean one that is properly paid.
A big part of the problem is that a lot of people who seem to be in these jobs are just not assertive enough and allow themselves to be essentially exploited, and then seem to get trapped in them through a form of emotional blackmail.
Mrs RP is the Scottish equivalent of a TA. Trained to a high level, with experience in managing SEN kids, and earns less than a tenner an hour. OK so she only does that half the week and can/does earn triple that freelancing for clients of my consultancy business when not in school.
She's been asked if she can do an additional day starting immediately. She said yes. Because its not about money, its about doing a job that actually makes a difference. And yes, the system exploits her and everyone like her. We pay so many critical jobs such a pittance. And when people say "we need a bit more" the hard right and their billionaire backers whine on about communist unions and "who will pay".
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
Let me introduce you to a knew type of person:
He's 35. He and his girlfriend live with his parents as they try desperately to get the money together to get on the housing ladder.
Would you like to tell them that interest rates shouldn't go up?
Perhaps worth pointing out that the government have already made provision for the scenario you describe above by way of the lifetime ISA - where they effectively pay 20% annual interest where the money is being saved towards a deposit on a first home. Arguably they are benefitting to a far greater degree from government policy than any other group, assuming they are taking advantage of this focussed intervention.
The impact of a 1% increase in interest rates would be catastrophic for a lot of homeowners. On a £200k mortgage, it is an extra £2k per year, or £160 per month in the context of significantly rising inflation. Not a particularly smart political move, I would say.
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
Feels like blaming Labour is a bit of a non starter. The Tories have been in Government for a long time
They are trying though. The government clearly wants "Labour's Rail Strike" to go ahead. So it screws up a load of people - only plebs use trains anyway. Worth it to portray labour as being stuck in the 1970s. Hence Michael Green refusing to do his job and intervene in talks. Despite his department's micro-management being the direct reason they are in this mess.
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
One argument Foxy I heard for the GP crisis is that a disproportionate percentage of GPs were women who were electing to work part-time so they could look after their children and could afford to do so because of their high income levels. Does that seem plausible?
Sure, that is an inevitable result of the feminisation of medicine, which has been going on a long time. I qualified in the Eighties and my Medical School was equally male and female, now intake is 65% female. Yet person-power planning has failed to acknowledge that most will want to be part time for at least part of their career.
The other related social change in medicine is that Doctors often marry each other (Mrs Foxy is a nurse). The shift patterns forced through by Hunt 5 years ago mean that childcare is impossible for such couples unless one or both go part time. A couple of my male colleagues have gone part time for that reason too.
Pay isn't the only issue causing recruitment problems, there are a number of other issues to address.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
That would be true if we went back to "normal" and had real interest rates. But what we currently have is interest rates that are massively below the rate of inflation. Indeed, although we have had tiny increases in interest rates, the gap has risen.
Wage growth this year will be 5-7%. Interest rates might get up to 2.5-3% in the UK, slightly higher in the US. Inflation is increasing the negative return on saving. Taking your example, the oridnary person will have something like £2100 a month to spend, probably more. That may not offset the increases caused by inflation to fuel costs etc but it will offset any increase in the cost of their mortgage.
In the 80's interest rates were genuinely vicious. People were incentivised to reduce their debt. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, debt is cheap and inflation is making it even cheaper. No one is suggesting a return to that but we need to rebalance returns if asset inflation is going to be brought under control.
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
It was frustrating that no one asked Shapps about HS2. He was making the argument that the railways are now competing with Teams and Zoom, yet the government seem to think that it's a good idea to plough on with a very expensive new railway.
One of the stronger arguments, I'd have thought, is that the government ought to welcome spending tax payers money on the existing network, rather than telling the railways to be grateful for the tax payer money provided during COVID. Where's the logic in building a new railway if you're not going to make sure the existing network is tip top?
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
That isn't really a failure by the union, it is a failure by the companies and government.
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
Labour made a balls-up with doctors’ pay that has had long run but pernicious consequences down the road. Politicians are rarely held to account for slow burn mistakes like that, sadly (cf. Brexit).
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
Let me introduce you to a knew type of person:
He's 35. He and his girlfriend live with his parents as they try desperately to get the money together to get on the housing ladder.
Would you like to tell them that interest rates shouldn't go up?
That's fair enough.
But housing availability doesn't tend to increase when prices fall. Instead people find themselves trapped by negative equity, and the whole housing market grinds to a halt.
What you want is is for wages to rise 30-40% (nominally) while house prices remain flat.
---
Also, in my scenario, do you have any idea what happens to aggregate demand if disposible income gets squeezed even more? Your 35 year old might well find him/herself without a job.
Well, that 35 year old is much less afraid of losing his job as he doesn't have a mortgage. Obviously, his view would change completely were he to get a mortgage.
But we have a had 12 years of ultra-low interest rates. We've normalised them when we should have weaned ourselves off them gradually during the 2010s.
Sadly, I think we'll have to go through the pain of the 1970s before we finally realise that there's only one way to tackle inflation.
The last paragraph is the reason we are in the mess now. Central bankers are myopic - to paraphrase Herman Goering, when I hear the word inflation, I reach for my interest rates. In a situation like this, raising interest rates hits the poorest the hardest whilst allowing the rich to get off scot free.
Now, if you are saying all should share the pain, fine - so let’s have interest rate rises in that scenario but only if it’s accompanied by very significant temporary tax increases on the wealthy who have benefitted the most from the last decade of monetary policy.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
That isn't really a failure by the union, it is a failure by the companies and government.
It's a failure by all parties.
But given some of the top bods in the union are Russia-supporting @sshats, I hope the union lose badly.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
I respectfully disagree. One of the reasons, possibly the main reason, that we have inflation now is that monetary policy has been far too loose and interest rates too low for too long. Pre-Covid the world economy was still trying to recover from the monetary shock of the GFC which has enormous deflationary effects. To combat that central bankers kept interest rates extremely low. Contrary to the article the returns on capital, as opposed to wages, were also low although there was significant asset inflation.
And then came Covid which, along with an even further reduction in interest rates, also brought in massive fiscal incontenence to offset the effect of a different kind of crash. It worked but at the cost of significant increases in the money supply which is now feeding into inflation.
The solutions, such as they are, in that essay would result in ongoing inflation at a much higher rate than we have been used to and that itself threatens purchasing power of the poor and the much more casual workforce than we had in the 1970s. In short, rather than being a means of exploiting the poor policies designed to limit inflation will have the effect of protecting them. Refighting the battles of the 70's, which nobody won, is not the solution, it is a part of the problem.
I agree that monetary policy across the Developed World has been far too loose since the GFC.
The problem is that in the middle of a massive supply shock is not the time you want to correct that mistake. Simply, people in the UK (and elsewhere) are getting slammed by higher prices right now. Do we really want to crush demand by transferring wealth to those with lots of existing assets?
That seems... harsh...
The problem for central banks is that the response of governments to a supply shock has been to throw subsidies at supporting demand, which only chases prices higher. Central banks have little alternative to respond to such an inflationary fiscal policy but with a tighter monetary policy.
Meanwhile no attention being paid to whether supply-side efforts are being made to bring the supply shock to an end.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
I respectfully disagree. One of the reasons, possibly the main reason, that we have inflation now is that monetary policy has been far too loose and interest rates too low for too long. Pre-Covid the world economy was still trying to recover from the monetary shock of the GFC which has enormous deflationary effects. To combat that central bankers kept interest rates extremely low. Contrary to the article the returns on capital, as opposed to wages, were also low although there was significant asset inflation.
And then came Covid which, along with an even further reduction in interest rates, also brought in massive fiscal incontenence to offset the effect of a different kind of crash. It worked but at the cost of significant increases in the money supply which is now feeding into inflation.
The solutions, such as they are, in that essay would result in ongoing inflation at a much higher rate than we have been used to and that itself threatens purchasing power of the poor and the much more casual workforce than we had in the 1970s. In short, rather than being a means of exploiting the poor policies designed to limit inflation will have the effect of protecting them. Refighting the battles of the 70's, which nobody won, is not the solution, it is a part of the problem.
My turn to respectfully disagree.
It is funny when we talk about the necessary pain to target inflation, it’s always the poorer members of society who have to suffer that pain. Why not significant tax increases on the rich and / or those who have benefitted most from the decade of low interest rates? Demand-led inflation is most pernicious for high-end items so why aren’t we targeting those people specifically to curb demand?
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
Of course they are. And the top bods in the union won't care about that.
What the rail industry needs is more bums on seats after the decline caused by Covid. That's the best way of getting job security for the workers. What the union is doing will cause exactly the opposite - and if the railways get into financial troubles, they can strike again over job losses!
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
One argument Foxy I heard for the GP crisis is that a disproportionate percentage of GPs were women who were electing to work part-time so they could look after their children and could afford to do so because of their high income levels. Does that seem plausible?
Sure, that is an inevitable result of the feminisation of medicine, which has been going on a long time. I qualified in the Eighties and my Medical School was equally male and female, now intake is 65% female. Yet person-power planning has failed to acknowledge that most will want to be part time for at least part of their career.
The other related social change in medicine is that Doctors often marry each other (Mrs Foxy is a nurse). The shift patterns forced through by Hunt 5 years ago mean that childcare is impossible for such couples unless one or both go part time. A couple of my male colleagues have gone part time for that reason too.
Pay isn't the only issue causing recruitment problems, there are a number of other issues to address.
There is a process in other parts of the public sector that I am familiar with. The industry becomes feminised and flexible working practices are bought in, which is welcomed and a good thing. But then men become alienated by the culture and leave the industry/sector, leading to skill shortages and recruitment problems. I've seen this quite a bit. People don't want to believe it is an issue and talking about it is impossible.
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
RDG largely represent the government these days. So many franchises are either fully "nationalised"* or run on a management contract. Either way the DfT decides pretty much everything, and their bean-counting is the problem.
So when Sebastian Fox splutters in faux outrage at the idea he wants strikes to happen, best to look at the evidence. The employer - Network Rail - isn't negotiating. NR is in the same boat as the RDG people - operates at the direct mandate of the DfT. Run by Mr Shapps.
*the "nationalised" franchises are operated by a consortium of private companies. Which is the same as the non-nationalised ones used to be.
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
The vast majority of while-collar work has been shown to be able to be done from anywhere, and companies have the technical infrastructure in place to enable this.
The biggest effect of a rail strike is going to be on leisure travel, which is mostly an afterthought for the train companies at the best of times. Most leisure users are quite used to engineering works screwing with their weekend plans.
The train companies themselves are now overstaffed, as the demand has not returned to anywhere close to pre-pandemic levels. A company needing to downsize without making compulsory redundancies, isn’t going to be offering inflation-busting pay rises.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
Let me introduce you to a knew type of person:
He's 35. He and his girlfriend live with his parents as they try desperately to get the money together to get on the housing ladder.
Would you like to tell them that interest rates shouldn't go up?
That's fair enough.
But housing availability doesn't tend to increase when prices fall. Instead people find themselves trapped by negative equity, and the whole housing market grinds to a halt.
What you want is is for wages to rise 30-40% (nominally) while house prices remain flat.
---
Also, in my scenario, do you have any idea what happens to aggregate demand if disposible income gets squeezed even more? Your 35 year old might well find him/herself without a job.
Well, that 35 year old is much less afraid of losing his job as he doesn't have a mortgage. Obviously, his view would change completely were he to get a mortgage.
But we have a had 12 years of ultra-low interest rates. We've normalised them when we should have weaned ourselves off them gradually during the 2010s.
Sadly, I think we'll have to go through the pain of the 1970s before we finally realise that there's only one way to tackle inflation.
The last paragraph is the reason we are in the mess now. Central bankers are myopic - to paraphrase Herman Goering, when I hear the word inflation, I reach for my interest rates. In a situation like this, raising interest rates hits the poorest the hardest whilst allowing the rich to get off scot free.
Now, if you are saying all should share the pain, fine - so let’s have interest rate rises in that scenario but only if it’s accompanied by very significant temporary tax increases on the wealthy who have benefitted the most from the last decade of monetary policy.
The tricky thing with that last bit is that it's very difficult to retrospectively target those that have benefitted. But I'm very much fine with tax rises.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what triggers inflation. And this feels different to 2011 when oil went up but then levelled off.
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
Disagree. The demand-led inflationary pressures are being driven by the top end of the market. Tighter monetary policy whacks everyone, especially the poor who find it harder to get credit.
This is spot on.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
That would be true if we went back to "normal" and had real interest rates. But what we currently have is interest rates that are massively below the rate of inflation. Indeed, although we have had tiny increases in interest rates, the gap has risen.
Wage growth this year will be 5-7%. Interest rates might get up to 2.5-3% in the UK, slightly higher in the US. Inflation is increasing the negative return on saving. Taking your example, the oridnary person will have something like £2100 a month to spend, probably more. That may not offset the increases caused by inflation to fuel costs etc but it will offset any increase in the cost of their mortgage.
In the 80's interest rates were genuinely vicious. People were incentivised to reduce their debt. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, debt is cheap and inflation is making it even cheaper. No one is suggesting a return to that but we need to rebalance returns if asset inflation is going to be brought under control.
Sure: but we also need to recognise that there has been a big transitory shock to the system, caused by energy prices going through the roof. (Which in turn is a consequence of both Covid - which essentially halted US drilling - and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.)
If oil prices were to drop to $60/barrel (and bear in mind that the break even price in the Permian, pre-Covid, was just $50), then that would flow through into falling electricity, gas and petrol prices.
Right now, most people are seeing 15-20% reductions in disposable income. Raising mortgage interest rates to (say) 5% might turn that 15-20% into 25-35%.
That would be a drop in demand similar to that which Spain went through during the Eurozone crisis.
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
Labour made a balls-up with doctors’ pay that has had long run but pernicious consequences down the road. Politicians are rarely held to account for slow burn mistakes like that, sadly (cf. Brexit).
The payrise that came from the new contracts in the early noughties is that they were designed to pay for what is done. Then the government discovered that doctors were doing a lot more than they were paid for, so got significant pay rises. It isn't possible to reverse that process 20 years later.
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
Labour made a balls-up with doctors’ pay that has had long run but pernicious consequences down the road. Politicians are rarely held to account for slow burn mistakes like that, sadly (cf. Brexit).
The payrise that came from the new contracts in the early noughties is that they were designed to pay for what is done. Then the government discovered that doctors were doing a lot more than they were paid for, so got significant pay rises. It isn't possible to reverse that process 20 years later.
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
What has been very clear in the post-Covid world is that whilst commuting travel is still well below the previous level, leisure travel is well above. The problem for the industry is that it has been set up for commuting - only a few operators actually accommodate leisure travel well. And in many cases the fares are deliberately punitive to deter it.
Which is how we find ourselves in the mess of having the wrong kinds of train. Expensive modern electric commuting stock sits rotting in the sidings, older usually diesel stock is absurdly overcrowded. And to top it off those wazzocks at the DfT tell their operators to not allow overtime - which means not enough drivers. Which means shorter trains as nobody to get them to / from depots for servicing and fuel. Which is how you end up with the likes of Trans-Pennine express both cancelling so many trains and running the remaining ones short-formed.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
I respectfully disagree. One of the reasons, possibly the main reason, that we have inflation now is that monetary policy has been far too loose and interest rates too low for too long. Pre-Covid the world economy was still trying to recover from the monetary shock of the GFC which has enormous deflationary effects. To combat that central bankers kept interest rates extremely low. Contrary to the article the returns on capital, as opposed to wages, were also low although there was significant asset inflation.
And then came Covid which, along with an even further reduction in interest rates, also brought in massive fiscal incontenence to offset the effect of a different kind of crash. It worked but at the cost of significant increases in the money supply which is now feeding into inflation.
The solutions, such as they are, in that essay would result in ongoing inflation at a much higher rate than we have been used to and that itself threatens purchasing power of the poor and the much more casual workforce than we had in the 1970s. In short, rather than being a means of exploiting the poor policies designed to limit inflation will have the effect of protecting them. Refighting the battles of the 70's, which nobody won, is not the solution, it is a part of the problem.
My turn to respectfully disagree.
It is funny when we talk about the necessary pain to target inflation, it’s always the poorer members of society who have to suffer that pain. Why not significant tax increases on the rich and / or those who have benefitted most from the decade of low interest rates? Demand-led inflation is most pernicious for high-end items so why aren’t we targeting those people specifically to curb demand?
Well, there are a couple of reasons why that might not work:
(1) the global rich are quite mobile. I* am planning on returning to the UK next summer, but might not bother if it turns out that it would be expensive (tax-wise)
(2) the main purpose of raising interest rates from an economic perspective is to lower demand, and therefore bring price levels down. The global rich spend only a small portion of their income, and therefore their spending levels are less sensitive to tax rises. Or to put it another way, how much does aggregate demand fall by raising tax rates on the 1%?
* And I am probably merely a member of the Global Quite Well Off, rather than the Global Rich
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
The vast majority of while-collar work has been shown to be able to be done from anywhere, and companies have the technical infrastructure in place to enable this.
The biggest effect of a rail strike is going to be on leisure travel, which is mostly an afterthought for the train companies at the best of times. Most leisure users are quite used to engineering works screwing with their weekend plans.
The train companies themselves are now overstaffed, as the demand has not returned to anywhere close to pre-pandemic levels. A company needing to downsize without making compulsory redundancies, isn’t going to be offering inflation-busting pay rises.
Demand for what, though? Trains or seats on trains? Not the same thing. You can't sack half the driver because the 8.21 is now only three-quarters full. One reason the government is looking at closing ticket offices, despite this previously being opposed by Boris.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
I respectfully disagree. One of the reasons, possibly the main reason, that we have inflation now is that monetary policy has been far too loose and interest rates too low for too long. Pre-Covid the world economy was still trying to recover from the monetary shock of the GFC which has enormous deflationary effects. To combat that central bankers kept interest rates extremely low. Contrary to the article the returns on capital, as opposed to wages, were also low although there was significant asset inflation.
And then came Covid which, along with an even further reduction in interest rates, also brought in massive fiscal incontenence to offset the effect of a different kind of crash. It worked but at the cost of significant increases in the money supply which is now feeding into inflation.
The solutions, such as they are, in that essay would result in ongoing inflation at a much higher rate than we have been used to and that itself threatens purchasing power of the poor and the much more casual workforce than we had in the 1970s. In short, rather than being a means of exploiting the poor policies designed to limit inflation will have the effect of protecting them. Refighting the battles of the 70's, which nobody won, is not the solution, it is a part of the problem.
I agree that monetary policy across the Developed World has been far too loose since the GFC.
The problem is that in the middle of a massive supply shock is not the time you want to correct that mistake. Simply, people in the UK (and elsewhere) are getting slammed by higher prices right now. Do we really want to crush demand by transferring wealth to those with lots of existing assets?
That seems... harsh...
The problem for central banks is that the response of governments to a supply shock has been to throw subsidies at supporting demand, which only chases prices higher. Central banks have little alternative to respond to such an inflationary fiscal policy but with a tighter monetary policy.
Meanwhile no attention being paid to whether supply-side efforts are being made to bring the supply shock to an end.
That's certainly true.
The reality is that there's less oil and gas around, and therefore we need to use less.
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
The vast majority of while-collar work has been shown to be able to be done from anywhere, and companies have the technical infrastructure in place to enable this.
The biggest effect of a rail strike is going to be on leisure travel, which is mostly an afterthought for the train companies at the best of times. Most leisure users are quite used to engineering works screwing with their weekend plans.
The train companies themselves are now overstaffed, as the demand has not returned to anywhere close to pre-pandemic levels. A company needing to downsize without making compulsory redundancies, isn’t going to be offering inflation-busting pay rises.
An issue for all public transport operators is that commuter travel is *normally* quite predictable - especially with season tickets. You know there will be demand at the rush hours Monday to Friday, and less at midday, weekends and bank holidays.
Leisure travel is much less predictable. People hark back to the good old days, when a couple of Kings would be hooked up to fifteen coaches to take people to Torbay for a factory shut-down week. Or football specials. Or the way the railway could just chuck an extra three or four coaches onto the back of a train, or run specials.
What is mentioned less is that - apparently - often these services would be fairly empty and loss-making. A wet weather forecast could reduce the people on a special dramatically - especially if not pre-booked. Or other events conflicting.
Leisure travel is really bumpy in nature.
This means public transport operators prefer commuter travel, even if it has its own significant issues.
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
Of course they are. And the top bods in the union won't care about that.
What the rail industry needs is more bums on seats after the decline caused by Covid. That's the best way of getting job security for the workers. What the union is doing will cause exactly the opposite - and if the railways get into financial troubles, they can strike again over job losses!
Ker-ching!
What percentage real terms pay cut do you want them to accept?
Their demand is for a 7℅ rise which is a 2℅ cut in real terms currently soon to be worse.
Good morning everybody. Still bright and summery here. Glad I don't have to use the trains often nowadays but I might have to go to London soon for a neuro-surgery appointment. I wonder how I'm going to manage that!
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
The vast majority of while-collar work has been shown to be able to be done from anywhere, and companies have the technical infrastructure in place to enable this.
The biggest effect of a rail strike is going to be on leisure travel, which is mostly an afterthought for the train companies at the best of times. Most leisure users are quite used to engineering works screwing with their weekend plans.
The train companies themselves are now overstaffed, as the demand has not returned to anywhere close to pre-pandemic levels. A company needing to downsize without making compulsory redundancies, isn’t going to be offering inflation-busting pay rises.
Demand for what, though? Trains or seats on trains? Not the same thing. You can't sack half the driver because the 8.21 is now only three-quarters full. One reason the government is looking at closing ticket offices, despite this previously being opposed by Boris.
No, you can’t lose people from a train, but over time you can run fewer passenger services, which allows more paths for freight trains on the network.
Ticket offices are the low hanging fruit, IIRC the vast majority of people use the machines at the moment (those who haven’t bought online in advance), and one staff member can run a dozen machines at a busy station. Bonus points for the machines making it a pain in the arse to buy split tickets and other money saving anomalies.
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
I respectfully disagree. One of the reasons, possibly the main reason, that we have inflation now is that monetary policy has been far too loose and interest rates too low for too long. Pre-Covid the world economy was still trying to recover from the monetary shock of the GFC which has enormous deflationary effects. To combat that central bankers kept interest rates extremely low. Contrary to the article the returns on capital, as opposed to wages, were also low although there was significant asset inflation.
And then came Covid which, along with an even further reduction in interest rates, also brought in massive fiscal incontenence to offset the effect of a different kind of crash. It worked but at the cost of significant increases in the money supply which is now feeding into inflation.
The solutions, such as they are, in that essay would result in ongoing inflation at a much higher rate than we have been used to and that itself threatens purchasing power of the poor and the much more casual workforce than we had in the 1970s. In short, rather than being a means of exploiting the poor policies designed to limit inflation will have the effect of protecting them. Refighting the battles of the 70's, which nobody won, is not the solution, it is a part of the problem.
I agree that monetary policy across the Developed World has been far too loose since the GFC.
The problem is that in the middle of a massive supply shock is not the time you want to correct that mistake. Simply, people in the UK (and elsewhere) are getting slammed by higher prices right now. Do we really want to crush demand by transferring wealth to those with lots of existing assets?
That seems... harsh...
The problem for central banks is that the response of governments to a supply shock has been to throw subsidies at supporting demand, which only chases prices higher. Central banks have little alternative to respond to such an inflationary fiscal policy but with a tighter monetary policy.
Meanwhile no attention being paid to whether supply-side efforts are being made to bring the supply shock to an end.
That's certainly true.
The reality is that there's less oil and gas around, and therefore we need to use less.
Mostly the economy doesn't need oil and gas, it needs energy. Ostensibly we were already in the process of switching from oil and gas to other technologies to provide energy that didn't produce greenhouse gases (though there was some notion of using gas as a bridging fuel).
There seems to be very little urgency in speeding up this transition.
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
Labour made a balls-up with doctors’ pay that has had long run but pernicious consequences down the road. Politicians are rarely held to account for slow burn mistakes like that, sadly (cf. Brexit).
The payrise that came from the new contracts in the early noughties is that they were designed to pay for what is done. Then the government discovered that doctors were doing a lot more than they were paid for, so got significant pay rises. It isn't possible to reverse that process 20 years later.
I'll take that as a 'yes'
The pattern of medical pay since the NHS started has been of episodic crises of staffing, resolved by a new contract and significant payrise, which is then whittled away over 15-20 years before a further crisis of staffing. There were new contracts in the early sixties, late Seventies* and again in the early naughties, and now we are at that point again.
*The 1975 junior doctors strike was about pay for overtime. Before then the first 40 hours of overtime each week were unpaid. When I started work in the Eighties we were paid 38% of the hourly rate for overtime (yes, considerably less than the regular rate!)
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
Of course they are. And the top bods in the union won't care about that.
What the rail industry needs is more bums on seats after the decline caused by Covid. That's the best way of getting job security for the workers. What the union is doing will cause exactly the opposite - and if the railways get into financial troubles, they can strike again over job losses!
Ker-ching!
What percentage real terms pay cut do you want them to accept?
Their demand is for a 7℅ rise which is a 2℅ cut in real terms currently soon to be worse.
Hardly holding the country to ransom territory.
How about the same cut their passengers are getting? And no, most railway passengers are not in very well paid jobs...
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
Labour made a balls-up with doctors’ pay that has had long run but pernicious consequences down the road. Politicians are rarely held to account for slow burn mistakes like that, sadly (cf. Brexit).
The payrise that came from the new contracts in the early noughties is that they were designed to pay for what is done. Then the government discovered that doctors were doing a lot more than they were paid for, so got significant pay rises. It isn't possible to reverse that process 20 years later.
I'll take that as a 'yes'
The pattern of medical pay since the NHS started has been of episodic crises of staffing, resolved by a new contract and significant payrise, which is then whittled away over 15-20 years before a further crisis of staffing. There were new contracts in the early sixties, late Seventies* and again in the early naughties, and now we are at that point again.
*The 1975 junior doctors strike was about pay for overtime. Before then the first 40 hours of overtime each week were unpaid. When I started work in the Eighties we were paid 38% of the hourly rate for overtime (yes, considerably less than the regular rate!)
Would any job other than that of a junior doctor, expect more than 40 hours per week of overtime?
I could hold up 90 hours a week doing hospitality work as a student, but only for a few weeks at a time - and no-one died if I fcuked up! I did a few times a vocational trip for a week to Lourdes with a bunch of handicapped kids, and that took a couple of days’ recovery even as an energetic teenager!
The problem is pay rises will only make the inflation situation worse.
Not for those who get them!
The hospital porter probably needs 11%. A consultant ? Not so much. Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
Labour made a balls-up with doctors’ pay that has had long run but pernicious consequences down the road. Politicians are rarely held to account for slow burn mistakes like that, sadly (cf. Brexit).
The payrise that came from the new contracts in the early noughties is that they were designed to pay for what is done. Then the government discovered that doctors were doing a lot more than they were paid for, so got significant pay rises. It isn't possible to reverse that process 20 years later.
I'll take that as a 'yes'
The pattern of medical pay since the NHS started has been of episodic crises of staffing, resolved by a new contract and significant payrise, which is then whittled away over 15-20 years before a further crisis of staffing. There were new contracts in the early sixties, late Seventies* and again in the early naughties, and now we are at that point again.
*The 1975 junior doctors strike was about pay for overtime. Before then the first 40 hours of overtime each week were unpaid. When I started work in the Eighties we were paid 38% of the hourly rate for overtime (yes, considerably less than the regular rate!)
Are you satisfied, Dr F, that the current method of training junior doctors is the most suitable one? They have as I understand it an often life-altering rotational system. Is that really the best way?
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
Of course they are. And the top bods in the union won't care about that.
What the rail industry needs is more bums on seats after the decline caused by Covid. That's the best way of getting job security for the workers. What the union is doing will cause exactly the opposite - and if the railways get into financial troubles, they can strike again over job losses!
Ker-ching!
What percentage real terms pay cut do you want them to accept?
Their demand is for a 7℅ rise which is a 2℅ cut in real terms currently soon to be worse.
Hardly holding the country to ransom territory.
How about the same cut their passengers are getting? And no, most railway passengers are not in very well paid jobs...
Well that would basically what the unions are asking for!
Average total pay growth for the private sector was 8.2% in January to March 2022, and for the public sector was 1.6% in the same time period; the finance and business services sector showed the largest growth rate (10.7%), partly because of strong bonus payments.
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
Of course they are. And the top bods in the union won't care about that.
What the rail industry needs is more bums on seats after the decline caused by Covid. That's the best way of getting job security for the workers. What the union is doing will cause exactly the opposite - and if the railways get into financial troubles, they can strike again over job losses!
Ker-ching!
What percentage real terms pay cut do you want them to accept?
Their demand is for a 7℅ rise which is a 2℅ cut in real terms currently soon to be worse.
Hardly holding the country to ransom territory.
How about the same cut their passengers are getting? And no, most railway passengers are not in very well paid jobs...
Well that would basically what the unions are asking for!
Average total pay growth for the private sector was 8.2% in January to March 2022, and for the public sector was 1.6% in the same time period; the finance and business services sector showed the largest growth rate (10.7%), partly because of strong bonus payments.
We're talking about how pay will increase in the future, as these pay rises are for the future...
He is absolutely spot on that raising interest rates is not the way to sort out inflation issues. I’m not sure it’s a deliberate policy to hit the poor, more that Central Banks need to be sent to do something and reach for the first tool that they can think of.
I respectfully disagree. One of the reasons, possibly the main reason, that we have inflation now is that monetary policy has been far too loose and interest rates too low for too long. Pre-Covid the world economy was still trying to recover from the monetary shock of the GFC which has enormous deflationary effects. To combat that central bankers kept interest rates extremely low. Contrary to the article the returns on capital, as opposed to wages, were also low although there was significant asset inflation.
And then came Covid which, along with an even further reduction in interest rates, also brought in massive fiscal incontenence to offset the effect of a different kind of crash. It worked but at the cost of significant increases in the money supply which is now feeding into inflation.
The solutions, such as they are, in that essay would result in ongoing inflation at a much higher rate than we have been used to and that itself threatens purchasing power of the poor and the much more casual workforce than we had in the 1970s. In short, rather than being a means of exploiting the poor policies designed to limit inflation will have the effect of protecting them. Refighting the battles of the 70's, which nobody won, is not the solution, it is a part of the problem.
My turn to respectfully disagree.
It is funny when we talk about the necessary pain to target inflation, it’s always the poorer members of society who have to suffer that pain. Why not significant tax increases on the rich and / or those who have benefitted most from the decade of low interest rates? Demand-led inflation is most pernicious for high-end items so why aren’t we targeting those people specifically to curb demand?
Well, there are a couple of reasons why that might not work:
(1) the global rich are quite mobile. I* am planning on returning to the UK next summer, but might not bother if it turns out that it would be expensive (tax-wise)
(2) the main purpose of raising interest rates from an economic perspective is to lower demand, and therefore bring price levels down. The global rich spend only a small portion of their income, and therefore their spending levels are less sensitive to tax rises. Or to put it another way, how much does aggregate demand fall by raising tax rates on the 1%?
* And I am probably merely a member of the Global Quite Well Off, rather than the Global Rich
Well, two points there:
1. The global rich are maybe not as mobile as appears and are also reliant on a degree of Government goodwill to maintain their lifestyles. If I’m Mark Zuckerberg and the US Govt says “pay 10% of your wealth”, I’ll moan and grumble but, ultimately, I pay;
2. Re the bringing prices down, the true demand-led inflation is in high end goods so that’s exactly where any constraints on demand need to be targeted. More to the point, they have been the most direct beneficiaries of the Government led stimulus since 2008 which has boosted asset values. Their hard work, effort, reward etc hasn’t really got a huge amount to do with it, it’s essentially been to ride a wave
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
Of course they are. And the top bods in the union won't care about that.
What the rail industry needs is more bums on seats after the decline caused by Covid. That's the best way of getting job security for the workers. What the union is doing will cause exactly the opposite - and if the railways get into financial troubles, they can strike again over job losses!
Ker-ching!
What percentage real terms pay cut do you want them to accept?
Their demand is for a 7℅ rise which is a 2℅ cut in real terms currently soon to be worse.
Hardly holding the country to ransom territory.
How about the same cut their passengers are getting? And no, most railway passengers are not in very well paid jobs...
Well that would basically what the unions are asking for!
Average total pay growth for the private sector was 8.2% in January to March 2022, and for the public sector was 1.6% in the same time period; the finance and business services sector showed the largest growth rate (10.7%), partly because of strong bonus payments.
We're talking about how pay will increase in the future, as these pay rises are for the future...
Though as the rail workers didn't get a payrise last year...
As 1st revealed by @theipaper, @RMTunion confirms on @BBCr4today that in talks with train operating companies (as opposed to NetworkRail) there's been "no pay rise on the table"
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
Given the current state of the railways that is not terribly surprising.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
Of course they are. And the top bods in the union won't care about that.
What the rail industry needs is more bums on seats after the decline caused by Covid. That's the best way of getting job security for the workers. What the union is doing will cause exactly the opposite - and if the railways get into financial troubles, they can strike again over job losses!
Ker-ching!
What percentage real terms pay cut do you want them to accept?
Their demand is for a 7℅ rise which is a 2℅ cut in real terms currently soon to be worse.
Hardly holding the country to ransom territory.
How about the same cut their passengers are getting? And no, most railway passengers are not in very well paid jobs...
Well that would basically what the unions are asking for!
Average total pay growth for the private sector was 8.2% in January to March 2022, and for the public sector was 1.6% in the same time period; the finance and business services sector showed the largest growth rate (10.7%), partly because of strong bonus payments.
We're talking about how pay will increase in the future, as these pay rises are for the future...
Though as the rail workers didn't get a payrise last year...
And neither did many other people.
You also need to take the context of this into account. The rail system has had unprecedented amounts invested into it for the last couple of decades. Tens of billions of enhancements and renewals - and Crossrail and HS2 are only minority part of that.
Passenger numbers increased massively, more than doubling since privatisation.
And then Covid happened. The railways have had massive increased subsidies over the last two years to keep them going. Pay increases have to come from somewhere - either passengers or the state.
Comments
Fina, swimming's world governing body, has voted to stop transgender athletes from competing in women's elite races if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty.
Fina will also aim to establish an 'open' category at competitions for swimmers whose gender identity is different than their birth sex.
The new policy, which was passed with 71% of the vote from 152 Fina members, was described as "only a first step towards full inclusion" for transgender athletes.
The 34-page policy document says that male-to-female transgender athletes are still eligible to compete in the women's category "provided they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 [which marks the start of physical development], or before age 12, whichever is later".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/swimming/61853450
Linguistic shift to English leads Rwanda to host its first Commonwealth summit
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/focus/20220617-linguistic-shift-to-english-leads-rwanda-to-host-its-first-commonwealth-summit
"BetVictor".
Nice anecdote from Wiki:
In July 2009 Victor Chandler agreed to become the main sponsor of Nottingham Forest F.C. for a reported "significant six-figure fee". As part of his sponsorship he offered to pay for the following year's season tickets for Forest fans who opened an online account should Forest win the league. At the time of the offer Forest were rated as 80/1 outsiders to do this, but after a run of 19 games undefeated, Forest were second in the Championship in January 2010 and Chandler claimed Forest winning the league would cost him approximately £6m.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Chandler
I had a small lay of Rory, he seems eternally too short priced at majors.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/19/he-comes-over-as-weak-keir-starmer-fails-to-convince-wakefield-voters
The working classes needed to be put in their place
BY THOMAS FAZI"
https://unherd.com/2022/06/how-the-elites-exploit-inflation/
A big part of the problem is that a lot of people who seem to be in these jobs are just not assertive enough and allow themselves to be essentially exploited, and then seem to get trapped in them through a form of emotional blackmail.
Another great video from Perun about the Russian and Ukrainian economies after >100 days of war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGwO99fQaI
The Commonwealth gives Britain a boost
The invisible threads which bind our family of nations are of immense practical value for trade
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/19/commonwealth-gives-britain-boost/ (£££)
Once inflation takes hold, the only solution it tighter monetary policy and reduced public spending.
1. targeted relief where required and the problem comes from temporary external factors (eg help on fuel bills.
2. temporary margin caps on companies passing through inflationary costs. As price increases are permanent in nature and boost long term margins if costs eventually fade away, companies should share should of the pain now (which many are not),
3. Taxes on areas where demand has been the primary driver of price increases eg luxury goods. High end property purchases subject to a temporary increase in the stamp duty rate.
Pay rises in the NHS should be tapered upward, I believe a large part of the GP crisis is due to the fact most can afford to be part time tbh.
We have also, due to Covid disrupting training, a shortage of newly qualified specialists coming through. Thanks to the combination of Covid abroad and Brexit, it is harder to import medics, and many foreigners have already left.
Imagine you are an ordinary person. Every month you receive £2,000 in post tax income.
In the old days, £100 went in petrol, £400 in mortgage interest, £200 on heating and electricity.
Leaving you about £1,300 for food, clothes, entertainment etc.
Now petrol prices, electricity prices and gas prices have gone through the roof. £160 is now going on petrol, and £400 (!) on heating and electricity. Your available income has just dropped by £260 - or about 20%.
If we push interest rates up, that will turn a bad situation into a worse one. It will also result in foreclosures and falling house prices, which will dent labour mobility.
Low interest rates suck for rich people, because their money in the bank is now depreciating. But most people aren't like that. Most people (except pensioners) have mortgages and other debts.
Raising interest rates would hammer people in work, so those living off their savings can be protected.
He's 35. He and his girlfriend live with his parents as they try desperately to get the money together to get on the housing ladder.
Would you like to tell them that interest rates shouldn't go up?
But housing availability doesn't tend to increase when prices fall. Instead people find themselves trapped by negative equity, and the whole housing market grinds to a halt.
What you want is is for wages to rise 30-40% (nominally) while house prices remain flat.
---
Also, in my scenario, do you have any idea what happens to aggregate demand if disposible income gets squeezed even more? Your 35 year old might well find him/herself without a job.
And then came Covid which, along with an even further reduction in interest rates, also brought in massive fiscal incontenence to offset the effect of a different kind of crash. It worked but at the cost of significant increases in the money supply which is now feeding into inflation.
The solutions, such as they are, in that essay would result in ongoing inflation at a much higher rate than we have been used to and that itself threatens purchasing power of the poor and the much more casual workforce than we had in the 1970s. In short, rather than being a means of exploiting the poor policies designed to limit inflation will have the effect of protecting them. Refighting the battles of the 70's, which nobody won, is not the solution, it is a part of the problem.
1.6% a year is a hell of a lot easier to pay than 12% a year.
But we have a had 12 years of ultra-low interest rates. We've normalised them when we should have weaned ourselves off them gradually during the 2010s.
Sadly, I think we'll have to go through the pain of the 1970s before we finally realise that there's only one way to tackle inflation.
It's traditional that union leaders are left wing to some extent, but it doesn't have to be.
The problem is that in the middle of a massive supply shock is not the time you want to correct that mistake. Simply, people in the UK (and elsewhere) are getting slammed by higher prices right now. Do we really want to crush demand by transferring wealth to those with lots of existing assets?
That seems... harsh...
V telling that no Rail Delivery Group (the TOCs body) spksperson on media.
She's been asked if she can do an additional day starting immediately. She said yes. Because its not about money, its about doing a job that actually makes a difference. And yes, the system exploits her and everyone like her. We pay so many critical jobs such a pittance. And when people say "we need a bit more" the hard right and their billionaire backers whine on about communist unions and "who will pay".
The impact of a 1% increase in interest rates would be catastrophic for a lot of homeowners. On a £200k mortgage, it is an extra £2k per year, or £160 per month in the context of significantly rising inflation. Not a particularly smart political move, I would say.
I wonder if the RMT are rather in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If working from home shows we can survive a strike, they will be in real trouble.
A more astute move would be agitation for proper reform or ticketing and prices to encourage the spread of travel throughout the day. Plus putting better WiFi on trains so people could work while travelling.
The other related social change in medicine is that Doctors often marry each other (Mrs Foxy is a nurse). The shift patterns forced through by Hunt 5 years ago mean that childcare is impossible for such couples unless one or both go part time. A couple of my male colleagues have gone part time for that reason too.
Pay isn't the only issue causing recruitment problems, there are a number of other issues to address.
Wage growth this year will be 5-7%. Interest rates might get up to 2.5-3% in the UK, slightly higher in the US. Inflation is increasing the negative return on saving. Taking your example, the oridnary person will have something like £2100 a month to spend, probably more. That may not offset the increases caused by inflation to fuel costs etc but it will offset any increase in the cost of their mortgage.
In the 80's interest rates were genuinely vicious. People were incentivised to reduce their debt. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, debt is cheap and inflation is making it even cheaper. No one is suggesting a return to that but we need to rebalance returns if asset inflation is going to be brought under control.
One of the stronger arguments, I'd have thought, is that the government ought to welcome spending tax payers money on the existing network, rather than telling the railways to be grateful for the tax payer money provided during COVID. Where's the logic in building a new railway if you're not going to make sure the existing network is tip top?
Now, if you are saying all should share the pain, fine - so let’s have interest rate rises in that scenario but only if it’s accompanied by very significant temporary tax increases on the wealthy who have benefitted the most from the last decade of monetary policy.
But given some of the top bods in the union are Russia-supporting @sshats, I hope the union lose badly.
And chuck those guys out.
Meanwhile no attention being paid to whether supply-side efforts are being made to bring the supply shock to an end.
It is funny when we talk about the necessary pain to target inflation, it’s always the poorer members of society who have to suffer that pain. Why not significant tax increases on the rich and / or those who have benefitted most from the decade of low interest rates? Demand-led inflation is most pernicious for high-end items so why aren’t we targeting those people specifically to curb demand?
What the rail industry needs is more bums on seats after the decline caused by Covid. That's the best way of getting job security for the workers. What the union is doing will cause exactly the opposite - and if the railways get into financial troubles, they can strike again over job losses!
Ker-ching!
So when Sebastian Fox splutters in faux outrage at the idea he wants strikes to happen, best to look at the evidence. The employer - Network Rail - isn't negotiating. NR is in the same boat as the RDG people - operates at the direct mandate of the DfT. Run by Mr Shapps.
*the "nationalised" franchises are operated by a consortium of private companies. Which is the same as the non-nationalised ones used to be.
The biggest effect of a rail strike is going to be on leisure travel, which is mostly an afterthought for the train companies at the best of times. Most leisure users are quite used to engineering works screwing with their weekend plans.
The train companies themselves are now overstaffed, as the demand has not returned to anywhere close to pre-pandemic levels. A company needing to downsize without making compulsory redundancies, isn’t going to be offering inflation-busting pay rises.
If oil prices were to drop to $60/barrel (and bear in mind that the break even price in the Permian, pre-Covid, was just $50), then that would flow through into falling electricity, gas and petrol prices.
Right now, most people are seeing 15-20% reductions in disposable income. Raising mortgage interest rates to (say) 5% might turn that 15-20% into 25-35%.
That would be a drop in demand similar to that which Spain went through during the Eurozone crisis.
Which is how we find ourselves in the mess of having the wrong kinds of train. Expensive modern electric commuting stock sits rotting in the sidings, older usually diesel stock is absurdly overcrowded. And to top it off those wazzocks at the DfT tell their operators to not allow overtime - which means not enough drivers. Which means shorter trains as nobody to get them to / from depots for servicing and fuel. Which is how you end up with the likes of Trans-Pennine express both cancelling so many trains and running the remaining ones short-formed.
(1) the global rich are quite mobile. I* am planning on returning to the UK next summer, but might not bother if it turns out that it would be expensive (tax-wise)
(2) the main purpose of raising interest rates from an economic perspective is to lower demand, and therefore bring price levels down. The global rich spend only a small portion of their income, and therefore their spending levels are less sensitive to tax rises. Or to put it another way, how much does aggregate demand fall by raising tax rates on the 1%?
* And I am probably merely a member of the Global Quite Well Off, rather than the Global Rich
Do I trust the Tories to do it. No.
The reality is that there's less oil and gas around, and therefore we need to use less.
Leisure travel is much less predictable. People hark back to the good old days, when a couple of Kings would be hooked up to fifteen coaches to take people to Torbay for a factory shut-down week. Or football specials. Or the way the railway could just chuck an extra three or four coaches onto the back of a train, or run specials.
What is mentioned less is that - apparently - often these services would be fairly empty and loss-making. A wet weather forecast could reduce the people on a special dramatically - especially if not pre-booked. Or other events conflicting.
Leisure travel is really bumpy in nature.
This means public transport operators prefer commuter travel, even if it has its own significant issues.
Their demand is for a 7℅ rise which is a 2℅ cut in real terms currently soon to be worse.
Hardly holding the country to ransom territory.
Glad I don't have to use the trains often nowadays but I might have to go to London soon for a neuro-surgery appointment. I wonder how I'm going to manage that!
Ticket offices are the low hanging fruit, IIRC the vast majority of people use the machines at the moment (those who haven’t bought online in advance), and one staff member can run a dozen machines at a busy station. Bonus points for the machines making it a pain in the arse to buy split tickets and other money saving anomalies.
There seems to be very little urgency in speeding up this transition.
*The 1975 junior doctors strike was about pay for overtime. Before then the first 40 hours of overtime each week were unpaid. When I started work in the Eighties we were paid 38% of the hourly rate for overtime (yes, considerably less than the regular rate!)
It's important to remember, however, that my Sainz bet came off yesterday.
[Only a tiny bit green, but I'll take it].
Had the safety car been 5-6 laps later I think he would've had the win.
Edited extra bit: also, pre-weekend, he was 16 for the win, each way available. had a tiny sum on that.
I could hold up 90 hours a week doing hospitality work as a student, but only for a few weeks at a time - and no-one died if I fcuked up! I did a few times a vocational trip for a week to Lourdes with a bunch of handicapped kids, and that took a couple of days’ recovery even as an energetic teenager!
Are you satisfied, Dr F, that the current method of training junior doctors is the most suitable one? They have as I understand it an often life-altering rotational system. Is that really the best way?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/may2022
Average total pay growth for the private sector was 8.2% in January to March 2022, and for the public sector was 1.6% in the same time period; the finance and business services sector showed the largest growth rate (10.7%), partly because of strong bonus payments.
1. The global rich are maybe not as mobile as appears and are also reliant on a degree of Government goodwill to maintain their lifestyles. If I’m Mark Zuckerberg and the US Govt says “pay 10% of your wealth”, I’ll moan and grumble but, ultimately, I pay;
2. Re the bringing prices down, the true demand-led inflation is in high end goods so that’s exactly where any constraints on demand need to be targeted. More to the point, they have been the most direct beneficiaries of the Government led stimulus since 2008 which has boosted asset values. Their hard work, effort, reward etc hasn’t really got a huge amount to do with it, it’s essentially been to ride a wave
You also need to take the context of this into account. The rail system has had unprecedented amounts invested into it for the last couple of decades. Tens of billions of enhancements and renewals - and Crossrail and HS2 are only minority part of that.
Passenger numbers increased massively, more than doubling since privatisation.
And then Covid happened. The railways have had massive increased subsidies over the last two years to keep them going. Pay increases have to come from somewhere - either passengers or the state.