I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
I hate the strikes, think they are wrongheaded - but it seems to me to be a fundamental human right and an important economic balance to be able to withdraw one’s labour.
I don't believe anyone is proposing they be banned from quitting.
And they are. Hence the problem.
There are proposals that people be banned from quitting?
I asked ChatGPT to resolve the dispute from a populist right wing perspective:
From a populist right wing perspective, the pay dispute between nursing staff in the NHS and the government could potentially be resolved in the following ways:
Emphasizing the importance of the NHS: The government could argue that the NHS is a vital institution that needs to be protected and supported, and that any pay increase for nursing staff should be balanced against the overall financial health and stability of the NHS.
Appeal to national pride: The government could try to appeal to national pride and the idea of "fair play" by suggesting that the nurses' demands are unreasonable or unfairly inflated.
Blaming external factors: The government could try to shift blame for the pay dispute onto external factors, such as the state of the economy or the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stoking division: The government could try to stoke division between the nursing staff and other groups, such as the general public or other healthcare workers, in order to reduce support for the nurses' demands.
So lots of words but no real insight.
ChatGPT is Private Eye's Polly Filla writ large, at this point.
I asked ChatGPT to resolve the dispute from a populist right wing perspective:
From a populist right wing perspective, the pay dispute between nursing staff in the NHS and the government could potentially be resolved in the following ways:
Emphasizing the importance of the NHS: The government could argue that the NHS is a vital institution that needs to be protected and supported, and that any pay increase for nursing staff should be balanced against the overall financial health and stability of the NHS.
Appeal to national pride: The government could try to appeal to national pride and the idea of "fair play" by suggesting that the nurses' demands are unreasonable or unfairly inflated.
Blaming external factors: The government could try to shift blame for the pay dispute onto external factors, such as the state of the economy or the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stoking division: The government could try to stoke division between the nursing staff and other groups, such as the general public or other healthcare workers, in order to reduce support for the nurses' demands.
So lots of words but no real insight.
ChatGPT is Private Eye's Polly Filla writ large, at this point.
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
I asked ChatGPT to resolve the dispute from a populist right wing perspective:
From a populist right wing perspective, the pay dispute between nursing staff in the NHS and the government could potentially be resolved in the following ways:
Emphasizing the importance of the NHS: The government could argue that the NHS is a vital institution that needs to be protected and supported, and that any pay increase for nursing staff should be balanced against the overall financial health and stability of the NHS.
Appeal to national pride: The government could try to appeal to national pride and the idea of "fair play" by suggesting that the nurses' demands are unreasonable or unfairly inflated.
Blaming external factors: The government could try to shift blame for the pay dispute onto external factors, such as the state of the economy or the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stoking division: The government could try to stoke division between the nursing staff and other groups, such as the general public or other healthcare workers, in order to reduce support for the nurses' demands.
So lots of words but no real insight.
ChatGPT is Private Eye's Polly Filla writ large, at this point.
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Aren't these the same Tories you were planning to vote for?
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
That’s a different issue though. It’s not Brexit that has dried up work visas, the government hating/fearing work visa’s and European foreign workers - like Alabanians in our building industry - is if anything undermining Brexit by creating a problem that’s not Brexit, but everyone thinking it is.
Arn’t we better exploring the strike ban legislation with on the one hand what Anabob said “withdrawing Labour is a fundamental human right”. Didn’t Conservatives argue the same thing when Polish workers unions withdrew Labour under their puppet communist regime? And on the other hand, is HY correct, this is a centrist moderate government bringing in/extending legislation like this, perhaps taking away a fundamental human right?
Sorry. I'm not following that at all. There are vacancies across the public sector. The free market solution to that lack of labour supply is an increase in the price. That is pay. I never mentioned Brexit or strikes. I'm getting some pleasure our of repeatedly explaining the free market to Conservatives. But it's getting a bit old. Their education mist have been a bit faulty cos they just aren't catching on.
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
You could ask patients.
That level of sensibleness is beyond the Tories and SKS though
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
You could ask patients.
Well that sounds 'rigorous'.
It sounds rigorous to me. Anything that ties remuneration to a desired outcome (in this case, happy, well and not dead patients) is going to be an improvement.
The oracle is being frustratingly centrist on this:
“There are several ways that this pay dispute between nursing staff in the NHS and the government could potentially be resolved:
Negotiation: Both parties could try to negotiate a resolution to the dispute through discussions and compromise. For example, the nurses may agree to a lower pay increase in exchange for improvements to working conditions.
Mediation: If negotiations are not successful, the parties could seek the assistance of a mediator to help facilitate discussions and facilitate a resolution to the dispute.
Arbitration: If mediation is not successful, the parties could agree to submit the dispute to arbitration, in which an impartial third party would hear both sides of the argument and make a binding decision on the issue.
Legal action: As a last resort, the nurses may decide to pursue legal action against the government if they feel that their rights have been violated. This could involve filing a lawsuit or seeking an injunction to halt the strike.
Ultimately, the resolution to the pay dispute will depend on the specific circumstances of the case and the willingness of both parties to find a mutually acceptable solution.”
No shit SherlockGPT.
You could always try discussing it with a living breathing person instead.
I asked ChatGPT to resolve the dispute from a populist right wing perspective:
From a populist right wing perspective, the pay dispute between nursing staff in the NHS and the government could potentially be resolved in the following ways:
Emphasizing the importance of the NHS: The government could argue that the NHS is a vital institution that needs to be protected and supported, and that any pay increase for nursing staff should be balanced against the overall financial health and stability of the NHS.
Appeal to national pride: The government could try to appeal to national pride and the idea of "fair play" by suggesting that the nurses' demands are unreasonable or unfairly inflated.
Blaming external factors: The government could try to shift blame for the pay dispute onto external factors, such as the state of the economy or the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stoking division: The government could try to stoke division between the nursing staff and other groups, such as the general public or other healthcare workers, in order to reduce support for the nurses' demands.
So lots of words but no real insight.
ChatGPT is Private Eye's Polly Filla writ large, at this point.
ChatGPT Grossly Padded Twaddle.
It gave me some equally unexciting answers from a Corbynista and a radical eco-socialist perspective (though I did like the patters suggestion that by paying more, it would encourage nurses to make more sustainable consumer choices).
It decided enough was enough when I asked for the perspective of a house cat. Apparently that would be inappropriate because it involves stereotyping domestic animals.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
You could ask patients.
That level of sensibleness is beyond the Tories and SKS though
It makes no sense at all as a 'rigorous measurement'.
We get constantly bombarded by 'we'd like your feedback' requests from every transaction we conduct these days and it makes fuck-all difference to the service we receive. I suspect most of the responses are never read.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
That’s a different issue though. It’s not Brexit that has dried up work visas, the government hating/fearing work visa’s and European foreign workers - like Alabanians in our building industry - is if anything undermining Brexit by creating a problem that’s not Brexit, but everyone thinking it is.
Arn’t we better exploring the strike ban legislation with on the one hand what Anabob said “withdrawing Labour is a fundamental human right”. Didn’t Conservatives argue the same thing when Polish workers unions withdrew Labour under their puppet communist regime? And on the other hand, is HY correct, this is a centrist moderate government bringing in/extending legislation like this, perhaps taking away a fundamental human right?
Sorry. I'm not following that at all. There are vacancies across the public sector. The free market solution to that lack of labour supply is an increase in the price. That is pay. I never mentioned Brexit or strikes. I'm getting some pleasure our of repeatedly explaining the free market to Conservatives. But it's getting a bit old. Their education mist have been a bit faulty cos they just aren't catching on.
Unfortunately you’ve just had a bit of the ol’ mist thing, go back in and have another look - because my raising visa/lack of them from government slots in perfectly to your “Tory’s don’t understand or care for free markets” argument.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Spot on BJO. The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade. Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge. It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb. The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
However, she continued her campaign online, posting several videos on her social media channels, including one in which she said that “Wu [is the] favorite boy candidate chosen by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).”
However, several government agencies disagree with Wu’s proposals, Wang said, implying that his candidacy led to friction within the government.
Wu rejected the accusations and accused KMT members of running a “dirty campaign,” in which KMT Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) called him “a giant baby.”
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Huang Tzu-che (黃子哲) also weighed in, calling him a “pus-filled cyst,” a play on his given name in Chinese.
“This is a highly personal insult,” Wu said, referring to Huang’s comment. “It once more shows that the KMT does not respect the electorate ... I believe most voters cannot accept such talk.”
“In a democratic election, candidates should aspire to take the high road and show respect,” he said. “However, it is not possible for us to ask the opposition to refrain from personal attacks. It is up to the people to use their votes and chose a candidate who stands for good policies.”
Separately, Wu’s campaign office said in a statement that “KMT officials have engaged in personal attacks that go beyond what is appropriate.”…
(The KMT is the Chinese nationalist pro-unification party.)
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
You could ask patients.
That level of sensibleness is beyond the Tories and SKS though
It makes no sense at all as a 'rigorous measurement'.
We get constantly bombarded by 'we'd like your feedback' requests from every transaction we conduct these days and it makes fuck-all difference to the service we receive. I suspect most of the responses are never read.
The difference your feedback does or doesn't make is tied to whether it results in real world outcomes for the providers of whatever you're feeding back on. Bonuses are such a mechanism. There are good nurses, indifferent nurses, and bad nurses in the NHS. I would be delighted if there were more mechanisms to encourage good practise. Down with the nurses' bonus cap I say.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
I hate the strikes, think they are wrongheaded - but it seems to me to be a fundamental human right and an important economic balance to be able to withdraw one’s labour.
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
You could ask patients.
Well that sounds 'rigorous'.
It sounds rigorous to me. Anything that ties remuneration to a desired outcome (in this case, happy, well and not dead patients) is going to be an improvement.
Just think about it for a minute. How's it actually going to work? What's going to be the decider for those "big cash bonuses for high performing nurses"? One bad review disqualifies you? Only the nurse at the top of the feedback league gets a big cash bonus?
Variable bonuses based on subjective measures are pretty much always a 'bad thing'.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
That’s a different issue though. It’s not Brexit that has dried up work visas, the government hating/fearing work visa’s and European foreign workers - like Alabanians in our building industry - is if anything undermining Brexit by creating a problem that’s not Brexit, but everyone thinking it is.
Arn’t we better exploring the strike ban legislation with on the one hand what Anabob said “withdrawing Labour is a fundamental human right”. Didn’t Conservatives argue the same thing when Polish workers unions withdrew Labour under their puppet communist regime? And on the other hand, is HY correct, this is a centrist moderate government bringing in/extending legislation like this, perhaps taking away a fundamental human right?
Sorry. I'm not following that at all. There are vacancies across the public sector. The free market solution to that lack of labour supply is an increase in the price. That is pay. I never mentioned Brexit or strikes. I'm getting some pleasure our of repeatedly explaining the free market to Conservatives. But it's getting a bit old. Their education mist have been a bit faulty cos they just aren't catching on.
Unfortunately you’ve just had a bit of the ol’ mist thing, go back in and have another look - because my raising visa/lack of them from government slots in perfectly to your “Tory’s don’t understand or care for free markets” argument.
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
You could ask patients.
That level of sensibleness is beyond the Tories and SKS though
It makes no sense at all as a 'rigorous measurement'.
We get constantly bombarded by 'we'd like your feedback' requests from every transaction we conduct these days and it makes fuck-all difference to the service we receive. I suspect most of the responses are never read.
The difference your feedback does or doesn't make is tied to whether it results in real world outcomes for the providers of whatever you're feeding back on. Bonuses are such a mechanism. There are good nurses, indifferent nurses, and bad nurses in the NHS. I would be delighted if there were more mechanisms to encourage good practise. Down with the nurses' bonus cap I say.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
That’s a different issue though. It’s not Brexit that has dried up work visas, the government hating/fearing work visa’s and European foreign workers - like Alabanians in our building industry - is if anything undermining Brexit by creating a problem that’s not Brexit, but everyone thinking it is.
Arn’t we better exploring the strike ban legislation with on the one hand what Anabob said “withdrawing Labour is a fundamental human right”. Didn’t Conservatives argue the same thing when Polish workers unions withdrew Labour under their puppet communist regime? And on the other hand, is HY correct, this is a centrist moderate government bringing in/extending legislation like this, perhaps taking away a fundamental human right?
Sorry. I'm not following that at all. There are vacancies across the public sector. The free market solution to that lack of labour supply is an increase in the price. That is pay. I never mentioned Brexit or strikes. I'm getting some pleasure our of repeatedly explaining the free market to Conservatives. But it's getting a bit old. Their education mist have been a bit faulty cos they just aren't catching on.
Unfortunately you’ve just had a bit of the ol’ mist thing, go back in and have another look - because my raising visa/lack of them from government slots in perfectly to your “Tory’s don’t understand or care for free markets” argument.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Aren't these the same Tories you were planning to vote for?
I have never voted Tory and wont be voting for SKS Tory either. Arent you planning to vote Tory?
However, she continued her campaign online, posting several videos on her social media channels, including one in which she said that “Wu [is the] favorite boy candidate chosen by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).”
However, several government agencies disagree with Wu’s proposals, Wang said, implying that his candidacy led to friction within the government.
Wu rejected the accusations and accused KMT members of running a “dirty campaign,” in which KMT Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) called him “a giant baby.”
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Huang Tzu-che (黃子哲) also weighed in, calling him a “pus-filled cyst,” a play on his given name in Chinese.
“This is a highly personal insult,” Wu said, referring to Huang’s comment. “It once more shows that the KMT does not respect the electorate ... I believe most voters cannot accept such talk.”
“In a democratic election, candidates should aspire to take the high road and show respect,” he said. “However, it is not possible for us to ask the opposition to refrain from personal attacks. It is up to the people to use their votes and chose a candidate who stands for good policies.”
Separately, Wu’s campaign office said in a statement that “KMT officials have engaged in personal attacks that go beyond what is appropriate.”…
(The KMT is the Chinese nationalist pro-unification party.)
Taiwanese elections, particularly for the relatively minor positions, are great. If everyone was assailed by loudspeakers between the hours of 2 and 6 am by rival candidates for the City Council, I'm sure turnout would be higher.
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
You could ask patients.
Well that sounds 'rigorous'.
It sounds rigorous to me. Anything that ties remuneration to a desired outcome (in this case, happy, well and not dead patients) is going to be an improvement.
Just think about it for a minute. How's it actually going to work? What's going to be the decider for those "big cash bonuses for high performing nurses"? One bad review disqualifies you? Only the nurse at the top of the feedback league gets a big cash bonus?
Variable bonuses based on subjective measures are pretty much always a 'bad thing'.
Since every nurse deals with hundreds of patients in the course of a year, there would be plenty of feedback data offering a rounded picture of their over all performance. There could be various grades, from good to outstanding, with respective bonus amounts.
Surely the puzzle is that this isn't already in place. If it were in place, do you think we'd see old people being starved and having to drink the flower water?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
The very idea that the Government gives a monkeys about "free markets" is absolutely laughable. Its primary motivation is to line the pockets of its backers (and thus buy their votes) by robbing the rest of the country blind.
Decent pay rises for workers are somehow unaffordable - just as with most of the private sector outside casino banking, there's always a bloody excuse as to why anything other than a real terms cut every damned year is unaffordable - whereas codgers' pensions being uprated by 10% = no problem *at all*. There are about 5.7 million state employees across all branches of government, but 12.5 million state pensioners. QED.
You forget to mention that bankers need uncapped bonuses to keep them motivated. Nurses need to shut up and lose their right to negotiate pay.
If appropriately rigorous measurements were put in place, I'd be thrilled to see big cash bonuses for high performing nurses.
To even suggest such a thing shows a gross inability to understand the role. What 'rigorous measurements' could you put in place to assess the quality of care?
You could ask patients.
That level of sensibleness is beyond the Tories and SKS though
It makes no sense at all as a 'rigorous measurement'.
We get constantly bombarded by 'we'd like your feedback' requests from every transaction we conduct these days and it makes fuck-all difference to the service we receive. I suspect most of the responses are never read.
The difference your feedback does or doesn't make is tied to whether it results in real world outcomes for the providers of whatever you're feeding back on. Bonuses are such a mechanism. There are good nurses, indifferent nurses, and bad nurses in the NHS. I would be delighted if there were more mechanisms to encourage good practise. Down with the nurses' bonus cap I say.
You cannot monetise everything.
Given that we're discussing people going on strike to get a 19% payrise, it seems an odd argument that money is not a powerful motivating factor.
This is the kind of stuff that really could make a dent in productivity in the NHS - get the results of tests faster, get the right treatment going faster. Cure the patient faster with less side effects. Which gets them out of the hospital and home faster. Which in turn exposes them to less secondary stuff.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Spot on BJO. The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade. Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge. It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb. The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
You are just not listening at all Dixy. You are just like a butterfly batting around in its own little world, devoid of facts and truth.
Your post implies the RR bosses did the right thing? It’s just so easy to do the right thing? So why have the government chosen to take the opposite approach?
What about the ability of RR to settle like that, and the governments INABILITY to settle like that? Look at Mike’s header, the difficulty government has settling with just one, say nurses, because of the pressure it puts itself under with everyone else?
1. The government can’t control the private sector pay deals, but those pay deals do impact inflation. And so will public sector deals. 2. Where does government find the money to settle? Cuts somewhere else? What cuts? Reopening the budget to introduce more tax? The markets are watching our borrowing.
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Spot on BJO. The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade. Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge. It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb. The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
You are just not listening at all Dixy. You are just like a butterfly batting around in its own little world, devoid of facts and truth.
Your post implies the RR bosses did the right thing? It’s just so easy to do the right thing? So why have the government chosen to take the opposite approach?
What about the ability of RR to settle like that, and the governments INABILITY to settle like that? Look at Mike’s header, the difficulty government has settling with just one, say nurses, because of the pressure it puts itself under with everyone else?
1. The government can’t control the private sector pay deals, but those pay deals do impact inflation. And so will public sector deals. 2. Where does government find the money to settle? Cuts somewhere else? What cuts? Reopening the budget to introduce more tax? The markets are watching our borrowing.
You are being glib. You are not being fair.
I'm being glib and unfair by pointing out that the free market applies to the public sector? OK.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Spot on BJO. The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade. Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge. It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb. The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
You are just not listening at all Dixy. You are just like a butterfly batting around in its own little world, devoid of facts and truth.
Your post implies the RR bosses did the right thing? It’s just so easy to do the right thing? So why have the government chosen to take the opposite approach?
What about the ability of RR to settle like that, and the governments INABILITY to settle like that? Look at Mike’s header, the difficulty government has settling with just one, say nurses, because of the pressure it puts itself under with everyone else?
1. The government can’t control the private sector pay deals, but those pay deals do impact inflation. And so will public sector deals. 2. Where does government find the money to settle? Cuts somewhere else? What cuts? Reopening the budget to introduce more tax? The markets are watching our borrowing.
You are being glib. You are not being fair.
The government could have settled this months ago but they wanted to play a game of divide and conquer. Devoid of facts and truth? Perhaps you forget the month when you were the only person on this site defending Trussonomics and claiming the market was wrong.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Spot on BJO. The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade. Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge. It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb. The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
You are just not listening at all Dixy. You are just like a butterfly batting around in its own little world, devoid of facts and truth.
Your post implies the RR bosses did the right thing? It’s just so easy to do the right thing? So why have the government chosen to take the opposite approach?
What about the ability of RR to settle like that, and the governments INABILITY to settle like that? Look at Mike’s header, the difficulty government has settling with just one, say nurses, because of the pressure it puts itself under with everyone else?
1. The government can’t control the private sector pay deals, but those pay deals do impact inflation. And so will public sector deals. 2. Where does government find the money to settle? Cuts somewhere else? What cuts? Reopening the budget to introduce more tax? The markets are watching our borrowing.
You are being glib. You are not being fair.
Part of it is that RR will pass on price increases to their customers, I'm sure.
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
Since 1966 Germany have won three times, Italy and France twice each and England have done no better than fourth place. It's mediocrity. Deep mediocrity. Why are they so mediocre? It's a simple enough question.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Spot on BJO. The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade. Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge. It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb. The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
You are just not listening at all Dixy. You are just like a butterfly batting around in its own little world, devoid of facts and truth.
Your post implies the RR bosses did the right thing? It’s just so easy to do the right thing? So why have the government chosen to take the opposite approach?
What about the ability of RR to settle like that, and the governments INABILITY to settle like that? Look at Mike’s header, the difficulty government has settling with just one, say nurses, because of the pressure it puts itself under with everyone else?
1. The government can’t control the private sector pay deals, but those pay deals do impact inflation. And so will public sector deals.
You are being glib. You are not being fair.
I would say you have either missed off Corporate Greed from your list of things that impact inflation.
If inflation follows Public Sector pay it would be less than 2%
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
Since 1966 Germany have won three times, Italy and France twice each and England have done no better than fourth place. It's mediocrity. Deep mediocrity. Why are they so mediocre? It's a simple enough question.
Because we’re not as good as Germany, Italy of France and have no god given right to be?
There’s this assumption that this country should rule the world and if it doesn’t that’s a tragedy.
Regularly getting into the knockout stages of major tournaments is OK. More would be nice, but it’s not our entitlement.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Spot on BJO. The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade. Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge. It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb. The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
You are just not listening at all Dixy. You are just like a butterfly batting around in its own little world, devoid of facts and truth.
Your post implies the RR bosses did the right thing? It’s just so easy to do the right thing? So why have the government chosen to take the opposite approach?
What about the ability of RR to settle like that, and the governments INABILITY to settle like that? Look at Mike’s header, the difficulty government has settling with just one, say nurses, because of the pressure it puts itself under with everyone else?
1. The government can’t control the private sector pay deals, but those pay deals do impact inflation. And so will public sector deals. 2. Where does government find the money to settle? Cuts somewhere else? What cuts? Reopening the budget to introduce more tax? The markets are watching our borrowing.
You are being glib. You are not being fair.
The government could have settled this months ago but they wanted to play a game of divide and conquer. Devoid of facts and truth? Perhaps you forget the month when you were the only person on this site defending Trussonomics and claiming the market was wrong.
My arguments defending Trussnomics wasn’t just for a month, I’ll make them right now.
The first point to make about the mini-budget is that most of it never happened and the few bits that survived have cross-party support. The flimsy argument Truss costs us £30bn £20bn 10bn is just rubbish, the argument doesn’t stand up. It’s a lazy trope Labour wheels out in blissful ignorants they are actually shooting themselves in the foot.
Secondly you say I spent a month a lone voice defending Trussnomics, truth is I spent longer as lone voice attacking the Energy Price Guarantee, as it was a Labour idea and they wanted to spend even more money on it is the reason I had to fight on alone - using facts and truth against peoples party political bias.
The truth is Labour did not challenge the existence of the Black Hole that needed filling, and the so called reason it existed - the fact is they actually revelled in it.
But it didn’t exist. Trussnomics did not create one. Only one the size of the Energy Price Guarantee.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Spot on BJO. The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade. Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge. It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb. The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
It's hard to blame ambulances for the strikes when even outwith strikes, people still have to take a taxi to get to hospital because the ambulance service is nonexistent at times.
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
But those workers don't answer phones or do their job is the issue. I rang my gp a couple of times in the last 2 years and either they didnt answer or just told me no appointments are available. I moved a few months ago I havent even bothered registering I will just go to A&E as gp's are a waste of time
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
You have been arguing that the strikes will tend to increase government support; the evidence is, so far, in the other direction.
As far as I can see (and FWIW I have some sympathy with the points you make), it’s going to be rather a big mess. Irrespective of whether the government response is the correct one (if there even is such a thing), I don’t think they’re going to get much in the way of thanks for it.
You have sympathy for the points I’m making because you know, if you were PM today you would use exactly the same argument here as Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak - re open the budget to try to find money to settle the disputes, knowing full well what you are doing prolongs inflation pain, and wondering how the markets see it especially if it looks like more borrowing. I raised the points to point out its not a party political position - posts like “that’s straight from the mail or Con HQ” were just laughable from thoughtless posters who don’t have a clue, so many on here too dishonest to admit the truth - Callaghan and Rishi actually have good reason to say no and defeat the strikers, and not give an inch.
But. How does that solve the question of vacancies? It's a supply and demand issue. Free market.
Tories are economically illiterate
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
Spot on BJO. The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade. Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge. It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb. The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
You are just not listening at all Dixy. You are just like a butterfly batting around in its own little world, devoid of facts and truth.
Your post implies the RR bosses did the right thing? It’s just so easy to do the right thing? So why have the government chosen to take the opposite approach?
What about the ability of RR to settle like that, and the governments INABILITY to settle like that? Look at Mike’s header, the difficulty government has settling with just one, say nurses, because of the pressure it puts itself under with everyone else?
1. The government can’t control the private sector pay deals, but those pay deals do impact inflation. And so will public sector deals. 2. Where does government find the money to settle? Cuts somewhere else? What cuts? Reopening the budget to introduce more tax? The markets are watching our borrowing.
You are being glib. You are not being fair.
I'm being glib and unfair by pointing out that the free market applies to the public sector? OK.
You are actually being daft to suggest a free market on pay in the public sector. There patently isn’t one is there. those who hold the purse strings of public sector pay are also those who need to bring inflation down, so they staff pay review bodies with like minded former sector managers, set the parameters, and then hide behind “the independent findings” as though they had nothing to do with it.
sorry for shouting but THERE IS NO FREE MARKET ON PAY IN PUBLIC SECTOR. Those in lead of bringing down inflation and managing the £1tn Public Sector budget, currently giving us taxpayers the worst VFM in Europe if not the world, are also those responsibility for public sector pay, so it can’t be considered just on its own merits can it?
You could be PM next week, and you would have no choice but to say and do the same thing. Fact.
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
But those workers don't answer phones or do their job is the issue. I rang my gp a couple of times in the last 2 years and either they didnt answer or just told me no appointments are available. I moved a few months ago I havent even bothered registering I will just go to A&E as gp's are a waste of time
No, the main issue is that there is not enough doctors, nurses, etc. to do the job. Unless the government does more to make these professions more attractive to new recruits, the problem will only get worse. And good luck at A&E; if you think GPs are a waste of time, just wait till you see how long you'll have to wait at A&E with a non-emergency health problem!
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
But those workers don't answer phones or do their job is the issue. I rang my gp a couple of times in the last 2 years and either they didnt answer or just told me no appointments are available. I moved a few months ago I havent even bothered registering I will just go to A&E as gp's are a waste of time
No, the main issue is that there is not enough doctors, nurses, etc. to do the job. Unless the government does more to make these professions more attractive to new recruits, the problem will only get worse. And good luck at A&E; if you think GPs are a waste of time, just wait till you see how long you'll have to wait at A&E with a non-emergency health problem!
Last time I went to a&E I didnt even give them my name before being seen. The receptionsit took one look at me and was straight in an on oxygen. I dont go to A&E for frivolous reasons. I rang my gp because I lost my inhaler and was told I needed to come in for a test first and could have an appointment in a few weeks. Was completely avoidable with them giving me a repeat prescription
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
Since 1966 Germany have won three times, Italy and France twice each and England have done no better than fourth place. It's mediocrity. Deep mediocrity. Why are they so mediocre? It's a simple enough question.
Because Italy, France and Germany have had better players than England have had.
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
Since 1966 Germany have won three times, Italy and France twice each and England have done no better than fourth place. It's mediocrity. Deep mediocrity. Why are they so mediocre? It's a simple enough question.
Because Italy, France and Germany have had better players than England have had.
Italy didn't even qualify for Qatar. Germany exited at the Group stage.
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
Since 1966 Germany have won three times, Italy and France twice each and England have done no better than fourth place. It's mediocrity. Deep mediocrity. Why are they so mediocre? It's a simple enough question.
Because Italy, France and Germany have had better players than England have had.
Italy didn't even qualify for Qatar. Germany exited at the Group stage.
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
But those workers don't answer phones or do their job is the issue. I rang my gp a couple of times in the last 2 years and either they didnt answer or just told me no appointments are available. I moved a few months ago I havent even bothered registering I will just go to A&E as gp's are a waste of time
No, the main issue is that there is not enough doctors, nurses, etc. to do the job. Unless the government does more to make these professions more attractive to new recruits, the problem will only get worse. And good luck at A&E; if you think GPs are a waste of time, just wait till you see how long you'll have to wait at A&E with a non-emergency health problem!
4 hours was my latest experience at A and E. "Queue full, call back later" for the GP
If I had a pound for all the rightwingers right now who are saying "lefties say they're for free speech, but they don't like it when the shoe's on the other foot and our hero Elon cancels them for a few days on Twitter", I'd probably be able to pay all my neighbours' electricity bills this winter.
Given that rightwingers tend to be for the law of the jungle, i.e. c*ntocracy, given too that present conditions are nowhere near as c*ntocratic as they'd like them to be, and given that the c*nts who own lots of assets tend of course to be c*ntocrats, because what else would you expect them to be, of course the rightwingers are terribly in favour of free speech for whoever can afford a microphone, so long as they've cornered the market in batteries, which they have. And so long as striking workers don't start getting too many ideas. Sack them if so, because the rights of property trump everything. And it's not social credit when Elon does it. It's just like an ordinary person planting some potatoes in his back garden. Nothing more than that.
What's so good about free speech anyway? The whole idea is tainted with the brand of that cocky imperial state minus the peacock feathers that was founded by freemasons and slaveowners, keeps military bases all over the world, and vulgarises everything it touches. Why should neo-Nazis who want to kill me get free speech? Or those who want to advocate repealing laws that ban raping babies? It's fit for debater talk only - a total wind-up, rather in the way that "woke" was created so that the right wing could mutter behind its hand "So you want blacks and women to be equal, well what about transsexuals? Should a man in a dress be able to use a women's toilet?" etc. etc. etc.
What are these types other than the western analogue of Daesh?
I don’t understand why the Tories got themselves into this mess. Surely the Liz Truss debacle taught them that free-market ideology is a vote loser at the moment?
This is the free market in operation. Collective bargaining by the workers is the free market, as is the exodus from Nursing by people voting with their feet resulting in 47 000 unfilled staff vacancies.
The problem is that the government is very selective in its love of the free market. It hates it when the workers are using it.
I got very close to ringing up any answers on R4 today to make a similar point.
The government has no choice here. If it doesn’t pay a market salary it will continue to lose staff and its costs will go up inexorably as it relies more and more on agency workers. Its problem isn’t just a strike: it’s good people leaving the profession (same with teaching) meaning service quality sinks and you enter a vicious circle of decline.
You can’t buck the market, and nursing staff are very clearly paid under the market rate. Train drivers on the other hand…
But those workers don't answer phones or do their job is the issue. I rang my gp a couple of times in the last 2 years and either they didnt answer or just told me no appointments are available. I moved a few months ago I havent even bothered registering I will just go to A&E as gp's are a waste of time
Agreed that GPs are a waste of time. I've never seen a GP in the whole of my adult life, either inside or outside the NHS. The only reason I registered with an NHS one - with a guy who turned out to be an outrageously dishonest turd (as they all are, day in, day out) - was because a private dentist who had started work on my teeth had the honesty to say that he didn't have the specialist skills needed to finish the job and wanted to refer to me to a state hospital dentist who did. (This was in the kind of area where there are lots of middle class professionals who, shall we say, don't take any sh*t from the council or from any other type of Johnny Bureaucrat). Since an NHS registration was required for the referral to go ahead, that's what I did. That was more than 10 years ago. At least the GP didn't bother contacting me in any SARSCoV2 connection, though. (On paper he probably did, but in reality he didn't.)
Blow for Nicola Sturgeon as study shows even Yes voters want to KEEP majority of UK state Polling suggests even Yes voters want to keep the British welfare system, armed forces and pensions while also following the same path on international diplomacy
I will concede though, I was wrong about Conservative advances in todays Opinium.
It may look like a bit of a Meh poll to you, but to me it looks a very bad poll for the Tories.
Surely not!
From the moment you assured us Macron wasn't going to make the final round .....and when he did that Le Pen was certain to beat him in the play off.....
......and that Truss was an unfolding genius that would put the GREAT back into Great Britain
(though it pained you to say so being a Lib Dem)
.......and that we were comically misreading the polls by not concentrating on the only one that mattered OPINIUM which proved that Rishi wasn't behind but biding his time for the home stretch...
........ I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking PB had been blessed.....
.......and It could only be a matter of time before we got another Obama 50/1 shot
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
Since 1966 Germany have won three times, Italy and France twice each and England have done no better than fourth place. It's mediocrity. Deep mediocrity. Why are they so mediocre? It's a simple enough question.
Because we’re not as good as Germany, Italy of France and have no god given right to be?
There’s this assumption that this country should rule the world and if it doesn’t that’s a tragedy.
Regularly getting into the knockout stages of major tournaments is OK. More would be nice, but it’s not our entitlement.
England got into the last 8 at their last three major tournaments, a more consistent record than any other European team.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
Since 1966 Germany have won three times, Italy and France twice each and England have done no better than fourth place. It's mediocrity. Deep mediocrity. Why are they so mediocre? It's a simple enough question.
Because we’re not as good as Germany, Italy of France and have no god given right to be?
There’s this assumption that this country should rule the world and if it doesn’t that’s a tragedy.
Regularly getting into the knockout stages of major tournaments is OK. More would be nice, but it’s not our entitlement.
I never suggested that it was an "entitlement." The women's team weren't "entitled" to win their European championship but they found a way to do it regardless, whereas the men faceplanted. Again. I asked why they seem never to be good enough when broadly comparable neighbours sometimes actually are.
Look at it another way: Croatia - less than half the population of London, only started entering the World Cup in 1998 - has so far managed one 2nd and two 3rd places; England, which has been trying since 1950, won once, 56 years ago, and hasn't come close since. Two fourth places and a dozen assorted flops, mostly quarter final faceplants or failing even to qualify. It's just so meh. Beige. The kit ought not to be white or red, it should be beige. Fawn. Rental magnolia. Especially when you think of the vast resources at the command of the FA - football attracts more money, attention and participation than every other sport put together - it's all just so very underwhelming and poor, really.
The 10% inflation rate is caused by restrictions on energy and food supplies post Ukraine war and added demand post lockdown.
There may therefore be a case to increase nurses pay by 6% to match the national average but not the 19% the RCN wants
The nurses aren't going to get the 19% they want, although I take it that you understand where they got that figure from?
Regardless: pensioners are going to get 10%. Why can't public sector employees also have 10%? There are more than twice as many pensioners as public sector employees, yet OAP goodies are deemed affordable whereas workers' pay demands aren't. Why, oh why might that be? I couldn't possibly guess.
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
Since 1966 Germany have won three times, Italy and France twice each and England have done no better than fourth place. It's mediocrity. Deep mediocrity. Why are they so mediocre? It's a simple enough question.
Because we’re not as good as Germany, Italy of France and have no god given right to be?
There’s this assumption that this country should rule the world and if it doesn’t that’s a tragedy.
Regularly getting into the knockout stages of major tournaments is OK. More would be nice, but it’s not our entitlement.
England got into the last 8 at their last three major tournaments, a more consistent record than any other European team.
Southgate is a good manager, but to do better needs to be a bit more adventurous. That risk taking is the way to get further, but also to go out sooner.
France are hard to play against because they mix it up a bit more, switching from predictable possession based football to going long at times.
Rodgers is much the same at Leicester. The possession based game became too predictable, and a lot of the reason for our change of form in recent games is mixing it up with a more direct style.
Blow for Nicola Sturgeon as study shows even Yes voters want to KEEP majority of UK state Polling suggests even Yes voters want to keep the British welfare system, armed forces and pensions while also following the same path on international diplomacy
The 10% inflation rate is caused by restrictions on energy and food supplies post Ukraine war and added demand post lockdown.
There may therefore be a case to increase nurses pay by 6% to match the national average but not the 19% the RCN wants
It's also pretty clear from the other public sector adjacent agreements that there's a tolerable deal to be done around 6-8 percent. Probably not enough to stop the drifting away of staff, but enough to stop the strikes.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
Blow for Nicola Sturgeon as study shows even Yes voters want to KEEP majority of UK state Polling suggests even Yes voters want to keep the British welfare system, armed forces and pensions while also following the same path on international diplomacy
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
Wonder whether the expectation of a general election is indicative more of a desire for a general election. I think there will be many people frustrated at having to wait.
Not me. It's time we had another full(ish) term.
Of course, by repealing the FTPA (which in fairness both Labour and Conservatives wanted to do), the government cannot hide behind even the flimsy pretext of following the official schedule, as the opposition will rightly point out if they thought they would win they could, and would, call one sooner.
Governments mid-term are often unpopular in the polls. Rarely when a government has had a sizeable Commons majority has the opposition ever demanded "Call a general election now". Which is not to say that such a precedent means much, because nowadays most of the population don't know which way's up, because they're too busy picking at their phones or obeying orders to do this or do that, for fear of Armageddon. It won't surprise much of the electorate if there's an election in 2023 or if the law gets changed and the next one's held in 2027.
You mean, apart from Starmer now, Cameron in 2007, Kinnock in 1990 and 1991, Heath in 1968, Wilson in 1963 and Gaitskell in 1957?
They do it very often. Just not every day of the week and only when there might be a reasonable excuse for one.
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
I never said I was in the popular position on the argument, only in the right to point out, whenever Labour have been in power, they have used exactly the same argument I debated Stodge into defeat with, that is, where is your budget, and credibility with the markets, if you settle with the strikers asking 19%? Settling is not easy, because it means a double whammy in having to fund settlements by re opening budgets, and wage inflation prolongs the high inflation agony for everyone - which ironically for your post, does regard Mike saying in the header, cave in to one strike force only encourages others, a bit like a don’t give in to hostage takers. So yes, I have explained regarding the header - the headers on my side! 😇
In recent hours Grant Schnapps has been put in charge of bringing legislation to parliament in January to finish these strikes once and for all - trains will by law have to run or else workers will be sacked if they don’t run them, ambulance staff will be banned from striking and sacked if they do, and unions banned from compensating lost earnings of strikers.
If people like the sound of this legislation, they can applaud Mick Lynch for his role in bringing it about - if you don’t like the sound of this legislation just look in direction of Mick Lynch and the greedy union barons.
As HY points out, we have a centrist moderate government.
"Greedy union barons" is a hilarious phrase. Can we have "bully boys" as well? Pitted against "entrepreneurs", the public, and babies in incubators maybe? There's Stephen Fitzpatrick, majority owner of Ovo, working his SOCKS off as an entrepreneur, and here come these baronial pushy selfish bullies who grant themselves the right - without even asking the king! - to go on strike! They're so lazy they don't like the idea of getting second and third jobs, such as going on the game each night, to EARN the money they need to be able to give the altruistic Fitzpatrick the treble-sized leccy payments that he so clearly deserves. Acting like a bunch of posh moneygrabbing entitled profiteers, those damned workers are, trampling all over the ordinary Heil readers obsessed with house prices and savings rates.
You have some good points, but personally I wouldn’t go that far.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
Not a big surprise; good news for England, I feel.
England will fail at the next European championship, of course, but it'd be churlish to blame that on Southgate. He's done a credible job of trying to manufacture a silk purse from the sow's ear of the biggest underachievers in the international game, but he's not the second coming of Christ. Miracles cannot be expected of him.
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them? There are better teams, that's all.
That's no answer to anything. Why are there always better teams?
Well for most major footballing countries there are.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
Since 1966 Germany have won three times, Italy and France twice each and England have done no better than fourth place. It's mediocrity. Deep mediocrity. Why are they so mediocre? It's a simple enough question.
Because we’re not as good as Germany, Italy of France and have no god given right to be?
There’s this assumption that this country should rule the world and if it doesn’t that’s a tragedy.
Regularly getting into the knockout stages of major tournaments is OK. More would be nice, but it’s not our entitlement.
I never suggested that it was an "entitlement." The women's team weren't "entitled" to win their European championship but they found a way to do it regardless, whereas the men faceplanted. Again. I asked why they seem never to be good enough when broadly comparable neighbours sometimes actually are.
Look at it another way: Croatia - less than half the population of London, only started entering the World Cup in 1998 - has so far managed one 2nd and two 3rd places; England, which has been trying since 1950, won once, 56 years ago, and hasn't come close since. Two fourth places and a dozen assorted flops, mostly quarter final faceplants or failing even to qualify. It's just so meh. Beige. The kit ought not to be white or red, it should be beige. Fawn. Rental magnolia. Especially when you think of the vast resources at the command of the FA - football attracts more money, attention and participation than every other sport put together - it's all just so very underwhelming and poor, really.
England is actually the cricket sibling of the "flat track bully" - -consistently beats worse teams in qualifying and championships (yes you have to do this of course ) but fails miserably when up against any team "its own size" .
The Sunday Rawnsley: A year of cascading scandals and whipsawing policies has also been 12 months in which vital public services have come dangerously close to collapse and food banks haven’t been able to cope with the demand for their help. The serial debauchery of the king of rogues was followed by the ruinous reign of the mad queen. Financial markets started applying a “moron premium” to the price of lending to Britain.
It’s not disruption by the opposition parties that has destabilised the governance of Britain but the Conservative party itself.
No explanation can overlook Brexit, a rupture unique to this country and one that has left Britons poorer than they need have been, while scrambling the synapses of the Conservative party responsible for it.
A sequence of successively worse prime ministers has crashed and burned because they promised things they couldn’t deliver. This cycle of leadership boom and bust has been accompanied by vicious purges as the so-called Brexit revolution devoured itself. The pool of Tory talent has been drained, especially of Conservatives of more decent and sensible character, many of whom have been ejected from the party or abandoned it in despair.
So 2022 has been a year of extreme misgovernance, but it is best interpreted not as a shockingly unexpected aberration, but the culmination of forces unleashed since 2016.
Mutinous Conservative MPs are already chuntering that, if their prospects aren’t looking up by the spring, Mr Sunak will find himself putsched out of Downing Street next year. And the name you are most likely to hear bandied about as his replacement? Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
That this is even being talked about tells us that the dementia of the Conservative party has reached a very advanced stage.
The Sunday Rawnsley: A year of cascading scandals and whipsawing policies has also been 12 months in which vital public services have come dangerously close to collapse and food banks haven’t been able to cope with the demand for their help. The serial debauchery of the king of rogues was followed by the ruinous reign of the mad queen. Financial markets started applying a “moron premium” to the price of lending to Britain.
It’s not disruption by the opposition parties that has destabilised the governance of Britain but the Conservative party itself.
No explanation can overlook Brexit, a rupture unique to this country and one that has left Britons poorer than they need have been, while scrambling the synapses of the Conservative party responsible for it.
A sequence of successively worse prime ministers has crashed and burned because they promised things they couldn’t deliver. This cycle of leadership boom and bust has been accompanied by vicious purges as the so-called Brexit revolution devoured itself. The pool of Tory talent has been drained, especially of Conservatives of more decent and sensible character, many of whom have been ejected from the party or abandoned it in despair.
So 2022 has been a year of extreme misgovernance, but it is best interpreted not as a shockingly unexpected aberration, but the culmination of forces unleashed since 2016.
Mutinous Conservative MPs are already chuntering that, if their prospects aren’t looking up by the spring, Mr Sunak will find himself putsched out of Downing Street next year. And the name you are most likely to hear bandied about as his replacement? Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
That this is even being talked about tells us that the dementia of the Conservative party has reached a very advanced stage.
Another Conservative leadership election we can bet on.
Blow for Nicola Sturgeon as study shows even Yes voters want to KEEP majority of UK state Polling suggests even Yes voters want to keep the British welfare system, armed forces and pensions while also following the same path on international diplomacy
It's a wholly predictable ordering or priorities. The average Scottish voter wants the cheap finery of a state - a president, sports teams, as many opportunities as possible to repudiate the English, flag shagging basically - whilst continuing to depend on the neighbours for all the boring and expensive stuff, e.g. the upkeep of all their clapped out sick old folk and an army.
They feel trapped and miserable living in the same house as us - but they enjoy our money too much, which is why they won't sue for divorce unless they're convinced that they can take us to the cleaners in the process.
The primary political motivation of the bulk of the electorate, on both sides of the border, is their own wallets. Brexit happened and Scexit didn't because, crudely put, Boris Johnson was able to successfully con enough people into thinking that they'd be better off voting to go, whereas Alex Salmond wasn't. The red bus won it for Leave and the transfer payments won it for No, and that's really all there is to it.
Comments
ChatGPT is Private Eye's Polly Filla writ large, at this point.
Low wages means the NHS have masses of vacancies and have to pay premium rates to fill shifts costing the service more than the cost of an inflation matching pay deal
12 years of below inflation pay awards have led to staff leaving in droves and a worse and worse service and higher and higher premiums to fill shifts
Tories dont even get supply and demand.
Thick tossers.
Of course SKS is now parroting the we cant afford a pay increase. Thick Tory tosser.
Rinse and Repeat for all public sector environments Schools, Police, Ambulance service, etc etc
There are vacancies across the public sector. The free market solution to that lack of labour supply is an increase in the price. That is pay.
I never mentioned Brexit or strikes.
I'm getting some pleasure our of repeatedly explaining the free market to Conservatives. But it's getting a bit old. Their education mist have been a bit faulty cos they just aren't catching on.
However “Mick Lynch who is paralysing Britain with crippling rail strikes earns £120,000-a-year total pay package and lives in London home worth nearly £1m”
The average total remuneration of the 30 union bosses on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. VFM? Or nice work if you can get it?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9983775/The-30-union-chiefs-earn-150k.html
It decided enough was enough when I asked for the perspective of a house cat. Apparently that would be inappropriate because it involves stereotyping domestic animals.
Good TV mag
Shit arguments that its the nurses, ambulance workers, railway cleaners fault that the country is fucked though
"Gas lighting fuckers"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gljtvwhcdhc
We get constantly bombarded by 'we'd like your feedback' requests from every transaction we conduct these days and it makes fuck-all difference to the service we receive. I suspect most of the responses are never read.
The real problem is using the public sector as a scapegoat for over a decade.
Today Rolls Royce workers, represented by UNITE, negotiated a 17.6% pay rise without need for a walkout. That's the going rate agreed by employer and employees. Some of it a one off payment, but nonetheless. It's a big wodge.
It's a private company. And a Union. Coming to an agreement, without conflict. Superb.
The government. As an employer wants a fight with the public sector for Maggie cosplay. It isn't interested in the market rate
Enoch Wu continues campaign amid insults
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2022/12/18/2003790935
… Wang did not hold any campaign events, after she on Thursday tested positive for COVID-19.
However, she continued her campaign online, posting several videos on her social media channels, including one in which she said that “Wu [is the] favorite boy candidate chosen by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).”
However, several government agencies disagree with Wu’s proposals, Wang said, implying that his candidacy led to friction within the government.
Wu rejected the accusations and accused KMT members of running a “dirty campaign,” in which KMT Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) called him “a giant baby.”
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Huang Tzu-che (黃子哲) also weighed in, calling him a “pus-filled cyst,” a play on his given name in Chinese.
“This is a highly personal insult,” Wu said, referring to Huang’s comment. “It once more shows that the KMT does not respect the electorate ... I believe most voters cannot accept such talk.”
“In a democratic election, candidates should aspire to take the high road and show respect,” he said. “However, it is not possible for us to ask the opposition to refrain from personal attacks. It is up to the people to use their votes and chose a candidate who stands for good policies.”
Separately, Wu’s campaign office said in a statement that “KMT officials have engaged in personal attacks that go beyond what is appropriate.”…
(The KMT is the Chinese nationalist pro-unification party.)
The 2018-2021 period seems to me to have been one of substantial overachievement relative to the established norm, whereas more recent form - the dreadful Nations' League campaign and the failure against the French - merely represents a reassertion of sporting gravity. England specialise in reasonably consistent mediocrity (as evidenced by their holding the record for World Cup quarter final exits, now at seven,) punctuated by the occasional horror show: a top ten side, some distance behind the front rank and lacking sufficient quality or consistency to have any realistic chance of ever winning anything. That is, if you could fast forward another couple of centuries then you might find that they finally, at some point, won another major tournament once, through the monkeys-typewriters principle. But the chances of any of us alive today being witness to such an event are surely slim?
Perhaps someone who understands football much better than I do can explain how it is that the women's team finally found a way to win a tournament, whereas the men always find a way to faceplant? What's wrong with them?
It is not Union Leaders that call the workers out on strike, it is the workers themselves.
So much for "The high wage economy*"
* only apples to city bonuses and PPE scams.
Variable bonuses based on subjective measures are pretty much always a 'bad thing'.
NHS must be reformed and we cannot afford inflation matching pay awards lines could have come from any Tory Government
Time for a cheeseboard Wednesday Man. I could do with some Kefalotyri and reet Yorkshire piccalilli myself now.
A Culture of [Blood] Cultures
Why hasn't rapid sequencing for serious infections and sepsis become standard of care?
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-culture-of-blood-cultures
If everyone was assailed by loudspeakers between the hours of 2 and 6 am by rival candidates for the City Council, I'm sure turnout would be higher.
Surely the puzzle is that this isn't already in place. If it were in place, do you think we'd see old people being starved and having to drink the flower water?
Win, win, win.
Your post implies the RR bosses did the right thing? It’s just so easy to do the right thing? So why have the government chosen to take the opposite approach?
What about the ability of RR to settle like that, and the governments INABILITY to settle like that? Look at Mike’s header, the difficulty government has settling with just one, say nurses, because of the pressure it puts itself under with everyone else?
1. The government can’t control the private sector pay deals, but those pay deals do impact inflation. And so will public sector deals.
2. Where does government find the money to settle? Cuts somewhere else? What cuts? Reopening the budget to introduce more tax? The markets are watching our borrowing.
You are being glib. You are not being fair.
I’d say England are bang on what you’d expect. To be, on average, in the top 8 of the world in world cups isn’t bad at all.
OK.
If inflation follows Public Sector pay it would be less than 2%
Or You are being glib. You are not being fair.
Never again will the Daily Mail make it through my front door though!!
There’s this assumption that this country should rule the world and if it doesn’t that’s a tragedy.
Regularly getting into the knockout stages of major tournaments is OK. More would be nice, but it’s not our entitlement.
The first point to make about the mini-budget is that most of it never happened and the few bits that survived have cross-party support. The flimsy argument Truss costs us £30bn £20bn 10bn is just rubbish, the argument doesn’t stand up. It’s a lazy trope Labour wheels out in blissful ignorants they are actually shooting themselves in the foot.
Secondly you say I spent a month a lone voice defending Trussnomics, truth is I spent longer as lone voice attacking the Energy Price Guarantee, as it was a Labour idea and they wanted to spend even more money on it is the reason I had to fight on alone - using facts and truth against peoples party political bias.
The truth is Labour did not challenge the existence of the Black Hole that needed filling, and the so called reason it existed - the fact is they actually revelled in it.
But it didn’t exist. Trussnomics did not create one. Only one the size of the Energy Price Guarantee.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63573989
sorry for shouting but THERE IS NO FREE MARKET ON PAY IN PUBLIC SECTOR. Those in lead of bringing down inflation and managing the £1tn Public Sector budget, currently giving us taxpayers the worst VFM in Europe if not the world, are also those responsibility for public sector pay, so it can’t be considered just on its own merits can it?
You could be PM next week, and you would have no choice but to say and do the same thing. Fact.
There may therefore be a case to increase nurses pay by 6% to match the national average but not the 19% the RCN wants
It may look like a bit of a Meh poll to you, but to me it looks a very bad poll for the Tories.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=29&LAB=44&LIB=9&Reform=8&Green=5&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=14.3&SCOTLAB=30.7&SCOTLIB=6.7&SCOTReform=0.6&SCOTGreen=1.7&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=43.7&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
Who knew? Whoooooo Knew????
"Queue full, call back later" for the GP
Given that rightwingers tend to be for the law of the jungle, i.e. c*ntocracy, given too that present conditions are nowhere near as c*ntocratic as they'd like them to be, and given that the c*nts who own lots of assets tend of course to be c*ntocrats, because what else would you expect them to be, of course the rightwingers are terribly in favour of free speech for whoever can afford a microphone, so long as they've cornered the market in batteries, which they have. And so long as striking workers don't start getting too many ideas. Sack them if so, because the rights of property trump everything. And it's not social credit when Elon does it. It's just like an ordinary person planting some potatoes in his back garden. Nothing more than that.
What's so good about free speech anyway? The whole idea is tainted with the brand of that cocky imperial state minus the peacock feathers that was founded by freemasons and slaveowners, keeps military bases all over the world, and vulgarises everything it touches. Why should neo-Nazis who want to kill me get free speech? Or those who want to advocate repealing laws that ban raping babies? It's fit for debater talk only - a total wind-up, rather in the way that "woke" was created so that the right wing could mutter behind its hand "So you want blacks and women to be equal, well what about transsexuals? Should a man in a dress be able to use a women's toilet?" etc. etc. etc.
What are these types other than the western analogue of Daesh?
Blow for Nicola Sturgeon as study shows even Yes voters want to KEEP majority of UK state
Polling suggests even Yes voters want to keep the British welfare system, armed forces and pensions while also following the same path on international diplomacy
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/blow-nicola-sturgeon-study-shows-28757129
From the moment you assured us Macron wasn't going to make the final round .....and when he did that Le Pen was certain to beat him in the play off.....
......and that Truss was an unfolding genius that would put the GREAT back into Great Britain
(though it pained you to say so being a Lib Dem)
.......and that we were comically misreading the polls by not concentrating on the only one that mattered OPINIUM which proved that Rishi wasn't behind but biding his time for the home stretch...
........ I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking PB had been blessed.....
.......and It could only be a matter of time before we got another Obama 50/1 shot
Look at it another way: Croatia - less than half the population of London, only started entering the World Cup in 1998 - has so far managed one 2nd and two 3rd places; England, which has been trying since 1950, won once, 56 years ago, and hasn't come close since. Two fourth places and a dozen assorted flops, mostly quarter final faceplants or failing even to qualify. It's just so meh. Beige. The kit ought not to be white or red, it should be beige. Fawn. Rental magnolia. Especially when you think of the vast resources at the command of the FA - football attracts more money, attention and participation than every other sport put together - it's all just so very underwhelming and poor, really.
Regardless: pensioners are going to get 10%. Why can't public sector employees also have 10%? There are more than twice as many pensioners as public sector employees, yet OAP goodies are deemed affordable whereas workers' pay demands aren't. Why, oh why might that be? I couldn't possibly guess.
France are hard to play against because they mix it up a bit more, switching from predictable possession based football to going long at times.
Rodgers is much the same at Leicester. The possession based game became too predictable, and a lot of the reason for our change of form in recent games is mixing it up with a more direct style.
They do it very often. Just not every day of the week and only when there might be a reasonable excuse for one.
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin warns it is ‘perilous’ to expect military personnel to be used routinely to cover public sector workers
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/17/not-spare-capacity-strikes-says-armed-forces-head/ (£££)
There's a balance to be struck between selling the family silver and repelling investors altogether
TL/DR Britain is both poorer and less secure after selling off its national assets: industries as well as utilities.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/12/18/how-foreign-states-raided-britains-crown-jewels/
I have zero artistic skills, so the results are (ahem) interesting...
It’s not disruption by the opposition parties that has destabilised the governance of Britain but the Conservative party itself.
No explanation can overlook Brexit, a rupture unique to this country and one that has left Britons poorer than they need have been, while scrambling the synapses of the Conservative party responsible for it.
A sequence of successively worse prime ministers has crashed and burned because they promised things they couldn’t deliver. This cycle of leadership boom and bust has been accompanied by vicious purges as the so-called Brexit revolution devoured itself. The pool of Tory talent has been drained, especially of Conservatives of more decent and sensible character, many of whom have been ejected from the party or abandoned it in despair.
So 2022 has been a year of extreme misgovernance, but it is best interpreted not as a shockingly unexpected aberration, but the culmination of forces unleashed since 2016.
Mutinous Conservative MPs are already chuntering that, if their prospects aren’t looking up by the spring, Mr Sunak will find himself putsched out of Downing Street next year. And the name you are most likely to hear bandied about as his replacement? Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
That this is even being talked about tells us that the dementia of the Conservative party has reached a very advanced stage.
They feel trapped and miserable living in the same house as us - but they enjoy our money too much, which is why they won't sue for divorce unless they're convinced that they can take us to the cleaners in the process.
The primary political motivation of the bulk of the electorate, on both sides of the border, is their own wallets. Brexit happened and Scexit didn't because, crudely put, Boris Johnson was able to successfully con enough people into thinking that they'd be better off voting to go, whereas Alex Salmond wasn't. The red bus won it for Leave and the transfer payments won it for No, and that's really all there is to it.