Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
I hate it when that happens.
I think he means if only Scotland was independent the doctors would be on strike there too
Sunak needs several months of tumbling inflation. The lower it goes, the more outlandish the junior doctors' pay claim will look.
They should settle now for the same deal the nurses have been offered (with the cash bonus reflecting higher salaries, but with basic % increases the same).
Sunak should address the nation, saying we can afford no more for doctors than we can for nurses. Any disruption to the NHS, any deaths will be on the negotiators for the junior doctors. They have been told the offer will not be improved. And it will not.
Leveraging the nations's health for NHS pay deals is not something his government will tolerate.
As a teacher I agree that the nurses settlement sets a reasonable compromise balancing wage demands with the need to control inflation. Not sure why Keegan didn’t offer it to teachers tbh.
In fact I think the teachers union have said we’d accept that. I really don’t want to strike in the run up to exams.
She thinks Nick Gibb is good, Amanda Spielman is fit to be Chief of OFSTED* and exams are much improved.
Therefore the balance of evidence is she's an idiot. That's one possible explanation.
But I think it much more likely the Treasury are leaning harder on education to cut costs than they are health. For a start, we have already seen that any education settlement will be unfunded.
Again, the grey vote gets what the grey vote wants while everyone else gets hammered.
*Amusingly autocorrect on my laptop changed that to 'Ousted.' Freudian foreshadowing?
Yeah, anecdotally a lot of teachers I know voted to reject the pay offer not because it was paltry but because it was unfunded. That Keegan talked about reducing workload in the same breath was laughable.
The DfE were committed to setting up a Taskforce...
I do wonder what planet these politicians are on, this kind of rubbish just will not wash. People aren't idiots.
They are on planet disconnected from the reality of most people's lives.
That's particularly true of education, where a the well off, even if their kids are at a state school (unusual for most Tory ministers), are going to be sending them to one with few of the problems facing the majority of schools.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
If you’re going to keep repeating that old guff, at least get it right.
‘Police Scotland said Ms Sturgeon was at the house when officers arrived at 07:35 to arrest her husband.’
This Government has 4 unfixable issues that it can be easily attacked on (except that any Government using them won't be able to fix them).
1) Why are taxes higher now than ever before 2) Why are public services so bad 3) Why can we no longer do infrastructure projects (see for example HS2) 4) Why is public sector pay so low and how is it going to be resolved in areas where
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere. Some of it will be going on interest payments for the ocean of debt the Tories have got into. But so much of this "debt" is money printed by the Bank of England, so "debt" owed by the government to a bank owned by the government.
Where is the rest of it going? Not to front line services. So I start to wonder just how deep the spivocracy have enmeshed themselves into the machinery. We watched agog as the Tories handed billions of our money to themselves in exchange for either no PPE at all or unusable junk. But you only get that egregious when you are cocky and have run out of ways to line your own pockets.
Which does suggest an ocean of cash disappearing into the right bank accounts. Consultants, middle men, advisors. Not actually delivering anything on the ground, but making a fortune advising government departments of the things they could do if their cash wasn't being spent on consultants.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
If you’re going to keep repeating that old guff, at least get it right.
‘Police Scotland said Ms Sturgeon was at the house when officers arrived at 07:35 to arrest her husband.’
In that case the media reporting omitted that observation but even then hardly a dawn raid
The greatest political ad of all time was the 2015 Green Party PPB with the Cameron/Clegg/Miliband/Farage impersonators singing together.
You are too young to remember the yogic flyers......
Oh, I lament the failure to adopt transcendental meditation as a core policy.
I think the natural law party ideas would fit in well today.
Their add is genius. 60% reduction in crime in Merseyside vs none in the rest of the country. They even solved Brexit and this was back in 1994. All by jumping up and down on your knees in bed.
Yes, the current arrangement is independent boards which government ignores when it doesn't like the recommendation.
How many sets of recommendations from the Independent Pay Review Body have the Govts of the Day ignored since the current remit was set up in 2007?
I think the Govt need to do what they eventually did in the pandemic (was it 2020 or 2021?) and follow a recommendation made, which will still be around 1/3 or a little more than the rhetorical demand.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
If you’re going to keep repeating that old guff, at least get it right.
‘Police Scotland said Ms Sturgeon was at the house when officers arrived at 07:35 to arrest her husband.’
In that case the media reporting omitted that observation but even then hardly a dawn raid
Whatever. It wasn't an empty house. Sturgeon was there. Murrell was there. Staff at SNP HQ were there. Boxes and boxes of party stuff taken away. A one party police state doesn't do that.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
If you’re going to keep repeating that old guff, at least get it right.
‘Police Scotland said Ms Sturgeon was at the house when officers arrived at 07:35 to arrest her husband.’
In that case the media reporting omitted that observation but even then hardly a dawn raid
What time was sunrise in Scotland?
Bright and cheerful here this morning. Best to all!
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
If you’re going to keep repeating that old guff, at least get it right.
‘Police Scotland said Ms Sturgeon was at the house when officers arrived at 07:35 to arrest her husband.’
In that case the media reporting omitted that observation but even then hardly a dawn raid
That bit, in inverted commas, is a direct quote from the BBC ...
Not sure that doctors enjoy the same level of public support for their action, as do lower-paid public sector workers such as nurses and teachers. Presumably we should see some polling this week?
I'm not sure that people who actually depend on the NHS won't blame the government.
I have a hospital routine appointments for a blood test and a routine haematology checkup this morning, so I'll sound a couple of people out.
My view is that the Junior Doctors are punching themselves in the head by refusing to start negotiations when their pay claim is patently rhetorical, incorporating for example an RPI inflation rate, choosing to hurt patients along the way, and could run out of sympathy in fairly short order.
I'm listening to claims on the radio now about a "hemorrhage of staff abroad", where NHS staff continue to increase. "But but but all the Doctors will go to Australia", which was exactly the same threat I recall from last time a couple of years ago. Did they all go to Australia?
I wonder if the real damage being done here is to the reputation / credibility of the BMA.
Starmer will love it as he will claim that the NHS Recovery Plan is going backwards.
Not all doctors went to Australia. No-one seriously claimed ALL doctors would go to Australia, with or without three buts. Glad to help.
This Government has 4 unfixable issues that it can be easily attacked on (except that any Government using them won't be able to fix them).
1) Why are taxes higher now than ever before 2) Why are public services so bad 3) Why can we no longer do infrastructure projects (see for example HS2) 4) Why is public sector pay so low and how is it going to be resolved in areas where
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere. Some of it will be going on interest payments for the ocean of debt the Tories have got into. But so much of this "debt" is money printed by the Bank of England, so "debt" owed by the government to a bank owned by the government.
Where is the rest of it going? Not to front line services. So I start to wonder just how deep the spivocracy have enmeshed themselves into the machinery. We watched agog as the Tories handed billions of our money to themselves in exchange for either no PPE at all or unusable junk. But you only get that egregious when you are cocky and have run out of ways to line your own pockets.
Which does suggest an ocean of cash disappearing into the right bank accounts. Consultants, middle men, advisors. Not actually delivering anything on the ground, but making a fortune advising government departments of the things they could do if their cash wasn't being spent on consultants.
How easy is it to get hold of departmental figures for spending on such things - and also spending on contractors not employed by government, which seems to be a growing category, and one probably not subject to sub inflation wage restraint ?
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
If you’re going to keep repeating that old guff, at least get it right.
‘Police Scotland said Ms Sturgeon was at the house when officers arrived at 07:35 to arrest her husband.’
In that case the media reporting omitted that observation but even then hardly a dawn raid
What time was sunrise in Scotland?
Bright and cheerful here this morning. Best to all!
At this time of year? Much the same as down souith.
This Government has 4 unfixable issues that it can be easily attacked on (except that any Government using them won't be able to fix them).
1) Why are taxes higher now than ever before 2) Why are public services so bad 3) Why can we no longer do infrastructure projects (see for example HS2) 4) Why is public sector pay so low and how is it going to be resolved in areas where
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere. Some of it will be going on interest payments for the ocean of debt the Tories have got into. But so much of this "debt" is money printed by the Bank of England, so "debt" owed by the government to a bank owned by the government.
Where is the rest of it going? Not to front line services. So I start to wonder just how deep the spivocracy have enmeshed themselves into the machinery. We watched agog as the Tories handed billions of our money to themselves in exchange for either no PPE at all or unusable junk. But you only get that egregious when you are cocky and have run out of ways to line your own pockets.
Which does suggest an ocean of cash disappearing into the right bank accounts. Consultants, middle men, advisors. Not actually delivering anything on the ground, but making a fortune advising government departments of the things they could do if their cash wasn't being spent on consultants.
Some of it is going to B Ark Spivs because the government isn't very good- Starmer and Reeves will be praying that it's a lot, because a large Idiot Premium is the best way for their sums to add up.
But some of it is inevitable when you have Pay As You Go pensions- the bill the UK has been ignoring for decades is finally coming due. Similarly, the skimping on useful infrastructure is calling in its metaphorical debt.
And some of it is because Project Fear was only wrong about the timescale. If you make your country less productive by reducing trade and discouraging investment, you don't get the GDP growth you'd like. Then you either have to raise tax rates, cut services or do both.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
Clutching at straws there BigG.
I was more concerned by the Met explaining away why they prosecuted young Tory SPADS but didn't investigate Johnson at four of the five parties he allegedly attended? And the cynic in me might say, why was Johnson's (save for a minor infringement, which also unfairly in my view, enveloped his main internal opponent-Sunak) lawbreaking largely ignored whilst Currygate warranted a lengthy investigation?
Not sure that doctors enjoy the same level of public support for their action, as do lower-paid public sector workers such as nurses and teachers. Presumably we should see some polling this week?
Junior doctors' real terms pay has fallen by over a quarter in the last 15 years. They get plenty of sympathy from me.
2% payrise in the finyear just ended with 11% inflation was just insulting. 3.5% this year is another real terms pay cut.
Barclay needs to re-open negotiations with a serious offer.
The university strikes continue too.
And the teachers too. I'd wade through blood to get Labour in and stop the Tories destroying my kids' education.
Not sure that doctors enjoy the same level of public support for their action, as do lower-paid public sector workers such as nurses and teachers. Presumably we should see some polling this week?
"The polling agency Ipsos found that 54% of the 1,092 adults questioned said they supported the strikes, 3% more than did so when asked last month. Just over a quarter (26%) of participants said they opposed the stoppages while the other 17% had no view either way."
While junior doctors won't get quite the level of sympathy that nurses did, they are definitely more popular than the Government, and a long standoff between Barclay and Sunak vs your local friendly doctor isn't going to end well for the Government.
This Government has 4 unfixable issues that it can be easily attacked on (except that any Government using them won't be able to fix them).
1) Why are taxes higher now than ever before 2) Why are public services so bad 3) Why can we no longer do infrastructure projects (see for example HS2) 4) Why is public sector pay so low and how is it going to be resolved in areas where
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere. Some of it will be going on interest payments for the ocean of debt the Tories have got into. But so much of this "debt" is money printed by the Bank of England, so "debt" owed by the government to a bank owned by the government.
Where is the rest of it going? Not to front line services. So I start to wonder just how deep the spivocracy have enmeshed themselves into the machinery. We watched agog as the Tories handed billions of our money to themselves in exchange for either no PPE at all or unusable junk. But you only get that egregious when you are cocky and have run out of ways to line your own pockets.
Which does suggest an ocean of cash disappearing into the right bank accounts. Consultants, middle men, advisors. Not actually delivering anything on the ground, but making a fortune advising government departments of the things they could do if their cash wasn't being spent on consultants.
How easy is it to get hold of departmental figures for spending on such things - and also spending on contractors not employed by government, which seems to be a growing category, and one probably not subject to sub inflation wage restraint ?
Well, that is one place the Juniors do go, and the nurses and ODPs too. Work locum or Agency to double your wages and work your chosen schedule.
I am old enough to remember when Tories believed in Market Forces.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
Clutching at straws there BigG.
I was more concerned by the Met explaining away why they prosecuted young Tory SPADS but didn't investigate Johnson at four of the five parties he allegedly attended? And the cynic in me might say, why was Johnson's (save for a minor infringement, which also unfairly in my view, enveloped his main internal opponent-Sunak) lawbreaking largely ignored whilst Currygate warranted a lengthy investigation?
Durham has a competent police force, unworried by political considerations?
The only way to stop inflation is to control spending - big pay rises are not going to cut it! Many of us are old enough to have been here before. Applies to all governments.
So how large of a real terms pay cut do you think should be imposed ?
When any economy takes a big external hit like Ukraine or COVID a bill eventually lands on the doorstep. There can be a significant loss to GDP. Income levels , ability to spend are all affected and will fall either directly through wage and spending cuts or indirectly as inflation will always exceed pay rises. The trick comes in spreading the pain. Of course you know this but part of the fallout is political attacks, mostly on the government of the day. I'm watching a similar scenario playing out in Spain over the past 18 months with the incumbent left wing parties paying the price. All the rest is the usual hyperbolic froth and tribalism. On your specifics I would guess 3-5% may be the ballpark figure for the current one. Either way there's not a lot anyone can do about it beyond temporary mitigation.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
I thought that the "Sturgeon left first" story had been debunked.
Example: It is now understood Mr Murrell was arrested around 7.35am by plainclothes officers with Ms Sturgeon leaving after 8am before uniformed officers arrived on the scene. Since then, cops have been seen searching the couple's home and garden.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
The Scots did give the Nurses a decent (though still sub CPI) payrise. There is an increasing pay divide between English and Scottish Nurses.
This Government has 4 unfixable issues that it can be easily attacked on (except that any Government using them won't be able to fix them).
1) Why are taxes higher now than ever before 2) Why are public services so bad 3) Why can we no longer do infrastructure projects (see for example HS2) 4) Why is public sector pay so low and how is it going to be resolved in areas where
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere. Some of it will be going on interest payments for the ocean of debt the Tories have got into. But so much of this "debt" is money printed by the Bank of England, so "debt" owed by the government to a bank owned by the government.
Where is the rest of it going? Not to front line services. So I start to wonder just how deep the spivocracy have enmeshed themselves into the machinery. We watched agog as the Tories handed billions of our money to themselves in exchange for either no PPE at all or unusable junk. But you only get that egregious when you are cocky and have run out of ways to line your own pockets.
Which does suggest an ocean of cash disappearing into the right bank accounts. Consultants, middle men, advisors. Not actually delivering anything on the ground, but making a fortune advising government departments of the things they could do if their cash wasn't being spent on consultants.
How easy is it to get hold of departmental figures for spending on such things - and also spending on contractors not employed by government, which seems to be a growing category, and one probably not subject to sub inflation wage restraint ?
I'm probably wrong! But we're tipping record amounts in via tax at the top, and getting ever poorer and more threadbare services out the bottom. So the money is going somewhere.
This is a live electoral issue. An awful lot of people live in places that are visibly tatty. Councils with no money no longer sweep the streets or have flower displays or fund anti-social behaviour teams. Schools and hospitals and doctors where they are obviously tatty with poor service delivery. Rampant out of control crime and no effective policing.
They voted Brexit because they were offered a solution to the mess. Then Tory for the first time ever because lets get it done and give the other lot a go. And yet everything just keeps getting crappier and more expensive.
The Tory plan appears to be a tax cut budget then an election. Look at the shiny farthing we just gave you, aren't we kind, vote us back in. But more than a farthing is needed. A bazooka of cash is needed. And we have shown that we can deploy bazookas for Covid and Ukraine so it can be done. And not doing so costs its own bazooka of cash as the economy contracts and the costs of clearing up the societal mess rises.
The real sad bit is that Labour won't actually fix any of this. They will just be less mendacious and corrupt.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
If you’re going to keep repeating that old guff, at least get it right.
‘Police Scotland said Ms Sturgeon was at the house when officers arrived at 07:35 to arrest her husband.’
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
Clutching at straws there BigG.
I was more concerned by the Met explaining away why they prosecuted young Tory SPADS but didn't investigate Johnson at four of the five parties he allegedly attended? And the cynic in me might say, why was Johnson's (save for a minor infringement, which also unfairly in my view, enveloped his main internal opponent-Sunak) lawbreaking largely ignored whilst Currygate warranted a lengthy investigation?
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
The Scots did give the Nurses a decent (though still sub CPI) payrise. There is an increasing pay divide between English and Scottish Nurses.
So they're not going to go to Australia after all. The Junior Doctors will go to Auchtermuchty.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
Clutching at straws there BigG.
I was more concerned by the Met explaining away why they prosecuted young Tory SPADS but didn't investigate Johnson at four of the five parties he allegedly attended? And the cynic in me might say, why was Johnson's (save for a minor infringement, which also unfairly in my view, enveloped his main internal opponent-Sunak) lawbreaking largely ignored whilst Currygate warranted a lengthy investigation?
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
Who do the population like and respect more, quacks or politicians? I'm betting Dr Sunak earning 30k+ a year, but saving lives and making life a little better for his patients is going to get a lot more sympathy than PM Sunak, Tory millionaire, married into a billionaire family.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
The Scots did give the Nurses a decent (though still sub CPI) payrise. There is an increasing pay divide between English and Scottish Nurses.
So they're not going to go to Australia after all. The Junior Doctors will go to Auchtermuchty.
Increasingly both Doctors and Nurses simply leave the profession. Teachers, University staff, Civil Servants, Social Care staff too.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
The Scots did give the Nurses a decent (though still sub CPI) payrise. There is an increasing pay divide between English and Scottish Nurses.
Same with the teachers - 8.5k difference at some points on main scale.
For comparison, teachers in England were offered approx 650 quid after tax, as a one off, and unfunded - meaning a funding cut for schools. I can only assume Keegan is doing this deliberately, or she is incredibly stupid.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
I thought that the "Sturgeon left first" story had been debunked.
Example: It is now understood Mr Murrell was arrested around 7.35am by plainclothes officers with Ms Sturgeon leaving after 8am before uniformed officers arrived on the scene. Since then, cops have been seen searching the couple's home and garden.
Apparently 'digging up the garden' was a media myth as well! THough the wording here in the quote seems to be correct - they were poking around the shed etc.
This Government has 4 unfixable issues that it can be easily attacked on (except that any Government using them won't be able to fix them).
1) Why are taxes higher now than ever before 2) Why are public services so bad 3) Why can we no longer do infrastructure projects (see for example HS2) 4) Why is public sector pay so low and how is it going to be resolved in areas where
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere. Some of it will be going on interest payments for the ocean of debt the Tories have got into. But so much of this "debt" is money printed by the Bank of England, so "debt" owed by the government to a bank owned by the government.
Where is the rest of it going? Not to front line services. So I start to wonder just how deep the spivocracy have enmeshed themselves into the machinery. We watched agog as the Tories handed billions of our money to themselves in exchange for either no PPE at all or unusable junk. But you only get that egregious when you are cocky and have run out of ways to line your own pockets.
Which does suggest an ocean of cash disappearing into the right bank accounts. Consultants, middle men, advisors. Not actually delivering anything on the ground, but making a fortune advising government departments of the things they could do if their cash wasn't being spent on consultants.
How easy is it to get hold of departmental figures for spending on such things - and also spending on contractors not employed by government, which seems to be a growing category, and one probably not subject to sub inflation wage restraint ?
I'm probably wrong! But we're tipping record amounts in via tax at the top, and getting ever poorer and more threadbare services out the bottom. So the money is going somewhere.
This is a live electoral issue. An awful lot of people live in places that are visibly tatty. Councils with no money no longer sweep the streets or have flower displays or fund anti-social behaviour teams. Schools and hospitals and doctors where they are obviously tatty with poor service delivery. Rampant out of control crime and no effective policing.
They voted Brexit because they were offered a solution to the mess. Then Tory for the first time ever because lets get it done and give the other lot a go. And yet everything just keeps getting crappier and more expensive.
The Tory plan appears to be a tax cut budget then an election. Look at the shiny farthing we just gave you, aren't we kind, vote us back in. But more than a farthing is needed. A bazooka of cash is needed. And we have shown that we can deploy bazookas for Covid and Ukraine so it can be done. And not doing so costs its own bazooka of cash as the economy contracts and the costs of clearing up the societal mess rises.
The real sad bit is that Labour won't actually fix any of this. They will just be less mendacious and corrupt.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Probably not the best example I could have cited, but when you are determined not to see the wood for the trees, there is no point suggesting an alternative.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Interested that you think the RCN will vote to reject the government offer.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
The Scots did give the Nurses a decent (though still sub CPI) payrise. There is an increasing pay divide between English and Scottish Nurses.
For the sake of transparency I believe Scottish junior doctors are being balloted until May 1st on whether to pursue strike action, but there certainly doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency on going toe to toe with the SG. No doubt this will be seen by the Yoonerati as a symptom of Useless and the SNP being soft on standing up to the Marxist unions.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
The Scots did give the Nurses a decent (though still sub CPI) payrise. There is an increasing pay divide between English and Scottish Nurses.
Same with the teachers - 8.5k difference at some points on main scale.
For comparison, teachers in England were offered approx 650 quid after tax, as a one off, and unfunded - meaning a funding cut for schools. I can only assume Keegan is doing this deliberately, or she is incredibly stupid.
From my anectodal experience the unfunded nature of the pay offer has hardened resolve. It isn't all about pay or workload. Working conditions play a huge role. I can't do my job effectively as it is with the current resources available. Let alone with yet another large cut in per pupil funding.
This Government has 4 unfixable issues that it can be easily attacked on (except that any Government using them won't be able to fix them).
1) Why are taxes higher now than ever before 2) Why are public services so bad 3) Why can we no longer do infrastructure projects (see for example HS2) 4) Why is public sector pay so low and how is it going to be resolved in areas where
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere. Some of it will be going on interest payments for the ocean of debt the Tories have got into. But so much of this "debt" is money printed by the Bank of England, so "debt" owed by the government to a bank owned by the government.
Where is the rest of it going? Not to front line services. So I start to wonder just how deep the spivocracy have enmeshed themselves into the machinery. We watched agog as the Tories handed billions of our money to themselves in exchange for either no PPE at all or unusable junk. But you only get that egregious when you are cocky and have run out of ways to line your own pockets.
Which does suggest an ocean of cash disappearing into the right bank accounts. Consultants, middle men, advisors. Not actually delivering anything on the ground, but making a fortune advising government departments of the things they could do if their cash wasn't being spent on consultants.
How easy is it to get hold of departmental figures for spending on such things - and also spending on contractors not employed by government, which seems to be a growing category, and one probably not subject to sub inflation wage restraint ?
Well, that is one place the Juniors do go, and the nurses and ODPs too. Work locum or Agency to double your wages and work your chosen schedule.
I am old enough to remember when Tories believed in Market Forces.
Yes, of course - something common to all government departments, I think. But how easy is it to get an analysis of the spending ? You essentially have two classes of workers, and it would be interesting to get a grasp of the actual numbers.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
If you’re going to keep repeating that old guff, at least get it right.
‘Police Scotland said Ms Sturgeon was at the house when officers arrived at 07:35 to arrest her husband.’
In that case the media reporting omitted that observation but even then hardly a dawn raid
There is also the issue of a very expensive
110k touring motorised vehicle taken from the drive of Murrel's 92 yr old mother .. Why one wonders????
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
The Scots did give the Nurses a decent (though still sub CPI) payrise. There is an increasing pay divide between English and Scottish Nurses.
So they're not going to go to Australia after all. The Junior Doctors will go to Auchtermuchty.
Increasingly both Doctors and Nurses simply leave the profession. Teachers, University staff, Civil Servants, Social Care staff too.
If we take it that the number of training places is both limited and oversubscribed then it shouldn't matter. Because those who don't want to join because the pay and conditions are so dreadful will go into teaching and those who are happy to accept the privations of being a doctor in the NHS will take up those places.
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere.
*cough*BREXIT*cough*
It isn't Brexit. That has added cost to business and shrunk the size of the economy. Taxes are still at a record peacetime high and the shrinking economy doesn't mean there is insufficient cash to pay for things.
The Tory answer is always "we are spending record amounts on the NHS / Education". And yet it gets worse and worse as a lived experience. So the money is being tipped in and not reaching the places it is needed. It is being syphoned out. Going into pockets rather than headteacher budgets.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
I think that's a little unfair on the trades. I'm currently doing up an old timber building by the river to be our permanent home. I'm doing most of the work myself, but that's because I've had 40 years of doing stuff. Helping mates who have a trade as a labourer, doing my own houses up (learning and making mistakes as I went along), being too skint to afford a mechanic to fix or replace parts on a car. The fire service taught me a lot of practical skills too. Getting an apprenticeship, working hard for crap pay while you learn the skills and gain a reputation isn't the road to riches, but can set you up with a trade for life. I've tried to get all my lads hands on with the tools, but only the youngest can wield a Dewalt with any panache,
Who do the population like and respect more, quacks or politicians? I'm betting Dr Sunak earning 30k+ a year, but saving lives and making life a little better for his patients is going to get a lot more sympathy than PM Sunak, Tory millionaire, married into a billionaire family.
Good point. Because the barriers to entry for MPs is very high. You need a pulse. And we know how much those cost.
Who do the population like and respect more, quacks or politicians? I'm betting Dr Sunak earning 30k+ a year, but saving lives and making life a little better for his patients is going to get a lot more sympathy than PM Sunak, Tory millionaire, married into a billionaire family.
We lucky people in Scotland get the best of both worlds with Sandesh Gulhane who is both a gp and MSP. That he loves to appear in scrubs probably indicates which incarnation he knows resonates with the public.
Who do the population like and respect more, quacks or politicians? I'm betting Dr Sunak earning 30k+ a year, but saving lives and making life a little better for his patients is going to get a lot more sympathy than PM Sunak, Tory millionaire, married into a billionaire family.
The irony is that with erosion of GP and pharmacist pay rates, Dr and Mrs Sunak probably couldn't send little Rishi to Winchester any more.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Probably not the best example I could have cited, but when you are determined not to see the wood for the trees, there is no point suggesting an alternative.
The point is that "Junior Doctors" know the way their industry is structured. Doing the graft at the beginning and then far better than average riches to follow. Perhaps crazy levels if they do private work also.
I know we had a thing about the doxxed departed on here but look at @Foxy. No idea their identity but doing very well thank you, pondering retiring. Was once a junior doctor. That's how it works.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
In many one party states, it is traditional to arrest/imprison the outgoing Maximum Leader, the moment they leave office.
Corruption charges are standard operating procedure for this.
The similarity to the ritual sacrifice of the Sacred King, to cast off sins and failures, has long been noted.
This Government has 4 unfixable issues that it can be easily attacked on (except that any Government using them won't be able to fix them).
1) Why are taxes higher now than ever before 2) Why are public services so bad 3) Why can we no longer do infrastructure projects (see for example HS2) 4) Why is public sector pay so low and how is it going to be resolved in areas where
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere. Some of it will be going on interest payments for the ocean of debt the Tories have got into. But so much of this "debt" is money printed by the Bank of England, so "debt" owed by the government to a bank owned by the government.
Where is the rest of it going? Not to front line services. So I start to wonder just how deep the spivocracy have enmeshed themselves into the machinery. We watched agog as the Tories handed billions of our money to themselves in exchange for either no PPE at all or unusable junk. But you only get that egregious when you are cocky and have run out of ways to line your own pockets.
Which does suggest an ocean of cash disappearing into the right bank accounts. Consultants, middle men, advisors. Not actually delivering anything on the ground, but making a fortune advising government departments of the things they could do if their cash wasn't being spent on consultants.
How easy is it to get hold of departmental figures for spending on such things - and also spending on contractors not employed by government, which seems to be a growing category, and one probably not subject to sub inflation wage restraint ?
I'm probably wrong! But we're tipping record amounts in via tax at the top, and getting ever poorer and more threadbare services out the bottom. So the money is going somewhere.
This is a live electoral issue. An awful lot of people live in places that are visibly tatty. Councils with no money no longer sweep the streets or have flower displays or fund anti-social behaviour teams. Schools and hospitals and doctors where they are obviously tatty with poor service delivery. Rampant out of control crime and no effective policing.
They voted Brexit because they were offered a solution to the mess. Then Tory for the first time ever because lets get it done and give the other lot a go. And yet everything just keeps getting crappier and more expensive.
The Tory plan appears to be a tax cut budget then an election. Look at the shiny farthing we just gave you, aren't we kind, vote us back in. But more than a farthing is needed. A bazooka of cash is needed. And we have shown that we can deploy bazookas for Covid and Ukraine so it can be done. And not doing so costs its own bazooka of cash as the economy contracts and the costs of clearing up the societal mess rises.
The real sad bit is that Labour won't actually fix any of this. They will just be less mendacious and corrupt.
The "somewhere" is to the lockdown debt.
Your penultimate sentence seems to be correct. I wouldn't be so sure about the last one.
The only way to stop inflation is to control spending - big pay rises are not going to cut it! Many of us are old enough to have been here before. Applies to all governments.
So how large of a real terms pay cut do you think should be imposed ?
When any economy takes a big external hit like Ukraine or COVID a bill eventually lands on the doorstep. There can be a significant loss to GDP. Income levels , ability to spend are all affected and will fall either directly through wage and spending cuts or indirectly as inflation will always exceed pay rises. The trick comes in spreading the pain. Of course you know this but part of the fallout is political attacks, mostly on the government of the day. I'm watching a similar scenario playing out in Spain over the past 18 months with the incumbent left wing parties paying the price. All the rest is the usual hyperbolic froth and tribalism. On your specifics I would guess 3-5% may be the ballpark figure for the current one. Either way there's not a lot anyone can do about it beyond temporary mitigation.
If that's government policy, then government should be honest about it and tell us how much poorer they believe the country to be.
At the moment it's all smoke, mirrors and spin.
I wouldn't disagree that economies have taken large external hits - plus for us, the self inflicted one from Brexit - but we have a government which pretends that we aren't poorer as a nation.
Labour ought to do the same - and have an opportunity to frame it in a way not advantageous for the government. Occasionally, voters appreciate honesty.
The top two are absolutely key. We pay a fortune in tax. Highest in peacetime. And yet services provided are the worst they have been since many of them were founded. We pay so much money to the government, yet it claims to have no money for front line provision of everything from education to healthcare to transport.
The money is going somewhere.
*cough*BREXIT*cough*
It isn't Brexit. That has added cost to business and shrunk the size of the economy. Taxes are still at a record peacetime high and the shrinking economy doesn't mean there is insufficient cash to pay for things.
The Tory answer is always "we are spending record amounts on the NHS / Education". And yet it gets worse and worse as a lived experience. So the money is being tipped in and not reaching the places it is needed. It is being syphoned out. Going into pockets rather than headteacher budgets.
Ever heard of population growth and population ageing?
The only way to stop inflation is to control spending - big pay rises are not going to cut it! Many of us are old enough to have been here before. Applies to all governments.
So how large of a real terms pay cut do you think should be imposed ?
When any economy takes a big external hit like Ukraine or COVID a bill eventually lands on the doorstep. There can be a significant loss to GDP. Income levels , ability to spend are all affected and will fall either directly through wage and spending cuts or indirectly as inflation will always exceed pay rises. The trick comes in spreading the pain. Of course you know this but part of the fallout is political attacks, mostly on the government of the day. I'm watching a similar scenario playing out in Spain over the past 18 months with the incumbent left wing parties paying the price. All the rest is the usual hyperbolic froth and tribalism. On your specifics I would guess 3-5% may be the ballpark figure for the current one. Either way there's not a lot anyone can do about it beyond temporary mitigation.
If that's government policy, then government should be honest about it and tell us how much poorer they believe the country to be.
At the moment it's all smoke, mirrors and spin.
I wouldn't disagree that economies have taken large external hits - plus for us, the self inflicted one from Brexit - but we have a government which pretends that we aren't poorer as a nation.
Labour ought to do the same - and have an opportunity to frame it in a way not advantageous for the government. Occasionally, voters appreciate honesty.
And the misery isn't evenly spread. It is for the workers, not the mortgage free retired Tory client vote.
Who do the population like and respect more, quacks or politicians? I'm betting Dr Sunak earning 30k+ a year, but saving lives and making life a little better for his patients is going to get a lot more sympathy than PM Sunak, Tory millionaire, married into a billionaire family.
We lucky people in Scotland get the best of both worlds with Sandesh Gulhane who is both a gp and MSP. That he loves to appear in scrubs probably indicates which incarnation he knows resonates with the public.
There’s something about Sandesh..
Exactly. He looks like the sort of fella old lady's would coo over as he's checking their pulse. Put him in a sharp suit, with a political rosette on and they'd do a runner!
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
In many one party states, it is traditional to arrest/imprison the outgoing Maximum Leader, the moment they leave office.
Corruption charges are standard operating procedure for this.
The similarity to the ritual sacrifice of the Sacred King, to cast off sins and failures, has long been noted.
Also traditionally those one parties tend to control the media, electoral process and armed forces while not depending on other parties for coalitions with which to govern.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Probably not the best example I could have cited, but when you are determined not to see the wood for the trees, there is no point suggesting an alternative.
The point is that "Junior Doctors" know the way their industry is structured. Doing the graft at the beginning and then far better than average riches to follow. Perhaps crazy levels if they do private work also.
I know we had a thing about the doxxed departed on here but look at @Foxy. No idea their identity but doing very well thank you, pondering retiring. Was once a junior doctor. That's how it works.
That is how social exclusion works in law and medicine. Only those from wealthy backgrounds can afford to stick out the lean years.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
The Scots did give the Nurses a decent (though still sub CPI) payrise. There is an increasing pay divide between English and Scottish Nurses.
Same with the teachers - 8.5k difference at some points on main scale.
For comparison, teachers in England were offered approx 650 quid after tax, as a one off, and unfunded - meaning a funding cut for schools. I can only assume Keegan is doing this deliberately, or she is incredibly stupid.
Since she’d have to be pretty stupid anyway to do that, you’ve come up with a false dichotomy.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Probably not the best example I could have cited, but when you are determined not to see the wood for the trees, there is no point suggesting an alternative.
The point is that "Junior Doctors" know the way their industry is structured. Doing the graft at the beginning and then far better than average riches to follow. Perhaps crazy levels if they do private work also.
I know we had a thing about the doxxed departed on here but look at @Foxy. No idea their identity but doing very well thank you, pondering retiring. Was once a junior doctor. That's how it works.
That is how social exclusion works in law and medicine. Only those from wealthy backgrounds can afford to stick out the lean years.
Isn't "lean years" = more than wages of many in society?
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
In many one party states, it is traditional to arrest/imprison the outgoing Maximum Leader, the moment they leave office.
Corruption charges are standard operating procedure for this.
The similarity to the ritual sacrifice of the Sacred King, to cast off sins and failures, has long been noted.
Also traditionally those one parties tend to control the media, electoral process and armed forces while not depending on other parties for coalitions with which to govern.
The only way to stop inflation is to control spending - big pay rises are not going to cut it! Many of us are old enough to have been here before. Applies to all governments.
No, that's not the only way to stop inflation - increasing supply is another and far better way to do it. Energy supply especially, as this is at the basis of everything. This Government has not just been ineffective in this regard: their policies on domestic hydrocarbons have been actively harmful.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
Class war! Is it only horny handed sons (& daughters) of toil who can depend on public support for industrial action?
Everything is relative. "Junior doctors" are predominantly in the 5% if not the 1% but by all means man the barricades on their behalf.
As I mentioned previously I’ve been searching for barricades to man but a mysterious dearth of them in Scotland,
The Scots did give the Nurses a decent (though still sub CPI) payrise. There is an increasing pay divide between English and Scottish Nurses.
Same with the teachers - 8.5k difference at some points on main scale.
For comparison, teachers in England were offered approx 650 quid after tax, as a one off, and unfunded - meaning a funding cut for schools. I can only assume Keegan is doing this deliberately, or she is incredibly stupid.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
I think that's a little unfair on the trades. I'm currently doing up an old timber building by the river to be our permanent home. I'm doing most of the work myself, but that's because I've had 40 years of doing stuff. Helping mates who have a trade as a labourer, doing my own houses up (learning and making mistakes as I went along), being too skint to afford a mechanic to fix or replace parts on a car. The fire service taught me a lot of practical skills too. Getting an apprenticeship, working hard for crap pay while you learn the skills and gain a reputation isn't the road to riches, but can set you up with a trade for life. I've tried to get all my lads hands on with the tools, but only the youngest can wield a Dewalt with any panache,
Invaluable DIY tip and off topic
I couldn't agree more. With tradesman you are not paying for what they do, but what they know. I had spent days trying to solder an elbow onto a copper pipe, but it wouldn't seal because I couldn't keep it dry. A plumber friend sealed the pipe to keep the joint dry using a piece of bread. The joint kept dry and the solder took, and the bread shot out under pressure of the water. I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years, and for that alone he was worth his £60 an hour or part- thereof. I am not dismissing the very expensive skills of tradesman, my point is that their skills are sometimes easily transferable to the untrained. Less so the knowledge of a skilled clinician.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Probably not the best example I could have cited, but when you are determined not to see the wood for the trees, there is no point suggesting an alternative.
The point is that "Junior Doctors" know the way their industry is structured. Doing the graft at the beginning and then far better than average riches to follow. Perhaps crazy levels if they do private work also.
I know we had a thing about the doxxed departed on here but look at @Foxy. No idea their identity but doing very well thank you, pondering retiring. Was once a junior doctor. That's how it works.
That is how social exclusion works in law and medicine. Only those from wealthy backgrounds can afford to stick out the lean years.
Isn't "lean years" = more than wages of many in society?
The world has changed outside the NHS - in most jobs, flogging the juniors until moral improves is no longer The Way.
Drove past the Royal this am Intending to beep my horn in solidarity with junior doctors, nothing! What the hell is going on, is industrial action now banned in one party police state Scotland?
Question. If we have a one party police state in Scotland, why did the police state just dawn raid the one party, arrest its ex boss and confiscate huge amounts of papers and computers from its HQ?
In a police state, the state have the police dawn raid everyone else, not the party in charge...
If you are referring to the raid on Sturgeon's house she left at 8.10 am, 20 minutes before the police arrived at the empty house
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
In many one party states, it is traditional to arrest/imprison the outgoing Maximum Leader, the moment they leave office.
Corruption charges are standard operating procedure for this.
The similarity to the ritual sacrifice of the Sacred King, to cast off sins and failures, has long been noted.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Interested that you think the RCN will vote to reject the government offer.
It wouldn't surprise me either.
Its what my wife and daughter are reporting. I thought the one off payment would seal the deal with experienced nurses getting over £3k, but apparently not. There are some big arguments on Nurse's Whats App groups. The union are pleading with the nurses to accept the offer as they have said if they don't the one off payment offer will be withdrawn and they cannot negotiate for anything else. Its definitely on a knife edge.
Who do the population like and respect more, quacks or politicians? I'm betting Dr Sunak earning 30k+ a year, but saving lives and making life a little better for his patients is going to get a lot more sympathy than PM Sunak, Tory millionaire, married into a billionaire family.
We lucky people in Scotland get the best of both worlds with Sandesh Gulhane who is both a gp and MSP. That he loves to appear in scrubs probably indicates which incarnation he knows resonates with the public.
There’s something about Sandesh..
Exactly. He looks like the sort of fella old lady's would coo over as he's checking their pulse. Put him in a sharp suit, with a political rosette on and they'd do a runner!
Yes, blue scrubs (perhaps not coincidentally matching the Saltire) trump a royal blue Tory rosette any day.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
I think that's a little unfair on the trades. I'm currently doing up an old timber building by the river to be our permanent home. I'm doing most of the work myself, but that's because I've had 40 years of doing stuff. Helping mates who have a trade as a labourer, doing my own houses up (learning and making mistakes as I went along), being too skint to afford a mechanic to fix or replace parts on a car. The fire service taught me a lot of practical skills too. Getting an apprenticeship, working hard for crap pay while you learn the skills and gain a reputation isn't the road to riches, but can set you up with a trade for life. I've tried to get all my lads hands on with the tools, but only the youngest can wield a Dewalt with any panache,
I couldn't agree more. With tradesman you are not paying for what they do, but what they know. I had spent days trying to solder an elbow onto a copper pipe, but it wouldn't seal be
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Probably not the best example I could have cited, but when you are determined not to see the wood for the trees, there is no point suggesting an alternative.
The point is that "Junior Doctors" know the way their industry is structured. Doing the graft at the beginning and then far better than average riches to follow. Perhaps crazy levels if they do private work also.
I know we had a thing about the doxxed departed on here but look at @Foxy. No idea their identity but doing very well thank you, pondering retiring. Was once a junior doctor. That's how it works.
It really shouldn't be that way. We have posters on here celebrating their own £150k p a salaries for posting here 24/7 and arguing Junior Doctors deserve no more than a 5% uplift on £14 an hour. That's b*ll*cks!
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Interested that you think the RCN will vote to reject the government offer.
It wouldn't surprise me either.
Its what my wife and daughter are reporting. I thought the one off payment would seal the deal with experienced nurses getting over £3k, but apparently not. There are some big arguments on Nurse's Whats App groups. The union are pleading with the nurses to accept the offer as they have said if they don't the one off payment offer will be withdrawn and they cannot negotiate for anything else. Its definitely on a knife edge.
When's the announcement of the results of the vote?
The trouble with a one-off payment is that, even if inflation falls as rapidly as is hoped (a shiny sixpence says that it won't, becuase inflation is always stickier than we'd like), the increased cost of living is permanent.
Not sure that doctors enjoy the same level of public support for their action, as do lower-paid public sector workers such as nurses and teachers. Presumably we should see some polling this week?
"The polling agency Ipsos found that 54% of the 1,092 adults questioned said they supported the strikes, 3% more than did so when asked last month. Just over a quarter (26%) of participants said they opposed the stoppages while the other 17% had no view either way."
Worth saying that the BMA Ads are hard to argue against..
While I agree Doctors should be paid a decent wage, and I hope they get the 35%, I really don't like it when salaried professionals convert their yearly salary into an hourly wage. It feels like a statistical sleight of hand to me and anyone that works in a pretty well-paid job, but one that requires long hours, tends to come out pretty poor on that metric.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
I think that's a little unfair on the trades. I'm currently doing up an old timber building by the river to be our permanent home. I'm doing most of the work myself, but that's because I've had 40 years of doing stuff. Helping mates who have a trade as a labourer, doing my own houses up (learning and making mistakes as I went along), being too skint to afford a mechanic to fix or replace parts on a car. The fire service taught me a lot of practical skills too. Getting an apprenticeship, working hard for crap pay while you learn the skills and gain a reputation isn't the road to riches, but can set you up with a trade for life. I've tried to get all my lads hands on with the tools, but only the youngest can wield a Dewalt with any panache,
Invaluable DIY tip and off topic
I couldn't agree more. With tradesman you are not paying for what they do, but what they know. I had spent days trying to solder an elbow onto a copper pipe, but it wouldn't seal because I couldn't keep it dry. A plumber friend sealed the pipe to keep the joint dry using a piece of bread. The joint kept dry and the solder took, and the bread shot out under pressure of the water. I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years, and for that alone he was worth his £60 an hour or part- thereof. I am not dismissing the very expensive skills of tradesman, my point is that their skills are sometimes easily transferable to the untrained. Less so the knowledge of a skilled clinician.
You can also use bread to remove a transmission pilot bearing if you don't have a puller.
It must be tricky for some people to argue both the following at the same time:
1. If the doctors don't get a substantial pay rise, of course they won't all leave for Australia, Ireland or wherever. This is the greatest country on earth. They're just bluffing - take no notice.
2. If Labour gets into power and raises taxes on the rich, there will be a huge exodus of our brightest and best to global low tax regimes. They're definitely not bluffing - we need to listen to them.
It must be tricky for some people to argue both the following at the same time:
1. If the doctors don't get a substantial pay rise, of course they won't all leave for Australia, Ireland or wherever. This is the greatest country on earth CURRENTLY. They're just bluffing - take no notice.
2. If Labour gets into power and raises taxes on the rich, there will be a huge exodus of our brightest and best to global low tax regimes. They're definitely not bluffing - we need to listen to them.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
I think that's a little unfair on the trades. I'm currently doing up an old timber building by the river to be our permanent home. I'm doing most of the work myself, but that's because I've had 40 years of doing stuff. Helping mates who have a trade as a labourer, doing my own houses up (learning and making mistakes as I went along), being too skint to afford a mechanic to fix or replace parts on a car. The fire service taught me a lot of practical skills too. Getting an apprenticeship, working hard for crap pay while you learn the skills and gain a reputation isn't the road to riches, but can set you up with a trade for life. I've tried to get all my lads hands on with the tools, but only the youngest can wield a Dewalt with any panache,
I couldn't agree more. With tradesman you are not paying for what they do, but what they know. I had spent days trying to solder an elbow onto a copper pipe, but it wouldn't seal be
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Probably not the best example I could have cited, but when you are determined not to see the wood for the trees, there is no point suggesting an alternative.
The point is that "Junior Doctors" know the way their industry is structured. Doing the graft at the beginning and then far better than average riches to follow. Perhaps crazy levels if they do private work also.
I know we had a thing about the doxxed departed on here but look at @Foxy. No idea their identity but doing very well thank you, pondering retiring. Was once a junior doctor. That's how it works.
It really shouldn't be that way. We have posters on here celebrating their own £150k p a salaries for posting here 24/7 and arguing Junior Doctors deserve no more than a 5% uplift on £14 an hour. That's b*ll*cks!
Anyway off to make my millions.
Why does Vanilla keep deleted unposted comments? Its very annoying and is why so many posts start with three saved dots.
And lest we forget if you stick a slice of bread in a Dualit 2 Slice Lite Toaster for 3 mins and then put butter and marmite on it you have yourself a tasty breakfast.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Interested that you think the RCN will vote to reject the government offer.
It wouldn't surprise me either.
Its what my wife and daughter are reporting. I thought the one off payment would seal the deal with experienced nurses getting over £3k, but apparently not. There are some big arguments on Nurse's Whats App groups. The union are pleading with the nurses to accept the offer as they have said if they don't the one off payment offer will be withdrawn and they cannot negotiate for anything else. Its definitely on a knife edge.
Which is where some honesty from government might help.
As it is, the relentless spin (spending a record amount on x, y, z, etc) means no one believes the spending constraints claimed by government.
On topic. I think that the "junior doctors" will before too long run out of sympathy. There is only so long that the public sees what appear to be very well educated, charming young people, perhaps with knitted scarves and mascots on the picket line and withdrawing treatment from the poorest in society, before they think "hold on".
A claimed pay rate of £14 an hour is compelling evidence for the public to be on board with the Junior Doctors.
£99 (less VAT) an hour (in his bank account) for a tradesman (after a 12 week training course) to fix your boiler but just £14 an hour for a 7 year trained and 10 year time-served doctor to save your child's life.
You seriously think it is a 12 week training course.? To fix a boiler you must be gas safe registered. You must do a 4 year apprenticeship and then do gas safe assessments in each individual element of gas work which then must be done again every 3-5 years (which cost thousands.)
Maybe I should have just left it as "plumber" but as you completely missed my point anyway, no harm done.
I think your point was that to be a qualified tradesman takes little effort and you are then very well paid.
That is simply not true.
I try not to pay tradesmen. I spent (at my wife's behest) my entire bank holiday weekend laying down a concrete slab to house a greenhouse. I can wire a light switch and a ceiling rose. I can re-route a waste pipe, I can solder and bend copper pipes. I can replace the clutch on a classic Mini. I can exchange a gearbox on a Ford Capri. All with a Haynes manual, YouTube and no training whatsoever.
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
All those poorly paid heart surgeons
Interested that you think the RCN will vote to reject the government offer.
It wouldn't surprise me either.
Its what my wife and daughter are reporting. I thought the one off payment would seal the deal with experienced nurses getting over £3k, but apparently not. There are some big arguments on Nurse's Whats App groups. The union are pleading with the nurses to accept the offer as they have said if they don't the one off payment offer will be withdrawn and they cannot negotiate for anything else. Its definitely on a knife edge.
Comments
Presumably she was made aware of the situation to leave in time
Hardly a dawn raid
I think the natural law party ideas would fit in well today.
That's particularly true of education, where a the well off, even if their kids are at a state school (unusual for most Tory ministers), are going to be sending them to one with few of the problems facing the majority of schools.
‘Police Scotland said Ms Sturgeon was at the house when officers arrived at 07:35 to arrest her husband.’
The money is going somewhere. Some of it will be going on interest payments for the ocean of debt the Tories have got into. But so much of this "debt" is money printed by the Bank of England, so "debt" owed by the government to a bank owned by the government.
Where is the rest of it going? Not to front line services. So I start to wonder just how deep the spivocracy have enmeshed themselves into the machinery. We watched agog as the Tories handed billions of our money to themselves in exchange for either no PPE at all or unusable junk. But you only get that egregious when you are cocky and have run out of ways to line your own pockets.
Which does suggest an ocean of cash disappearing into the right bank accounts. Consultants, middle men, advisors. Not actually delivering anything on the ground, but making a fortune advising government departments of the things they could do if their cash wasn't being spent on consultants.
I think the Govt need to do what they eventually did in the pandemic (was it 2020 or 2021?) and follow a recommendation made, which will still be around 1/3 or a little more than the rhetorical demand.
That is simply not true.
Bright and cheerful here this morning. Best to all!
But some of it is inevitable when you have Pay As You Go pensions- the bill the UK has been ignoring for decades is finally coming due. Similarly, the skimping on useful infrastructure is calling in its metaphorical debt.
And some of it is because Project Fear was only wrong about the timescale. If you make your country less productive by reducing trade and discouraging investment, you don't get the GDP growth you'd like. Then you either have to raise tax rates, cut services or do both.
I was more concerned by the Met explaining away why they prosecuted young Tory SPADS but didn't investigate Johnson at four of the five parties he allegedly attended? And the cynic in me might say, why was Johnson's (save for a minor infringement, which also
unfairly in my view, enveloped his main internal opponent-Sunak) lawbreaking largely ignored whilst Currygate warranted a lengthy investigation?
NLP PPB 1994 election - flying from 1:10 on.
I am old enough to remember when Tories believed in Market Forces.
Example:
It is now understood Mr Murrell was arrested around 7.35am by plainclothes officers with Ms Sturgeon leaving after 8am before uniformed officers arrived on the scene. Since then, cops have been seen searching the couple's home and garden.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-breaks-silence-after-29641057
This is a live electoral issue. An awful lot of people live in places that are visibly tatty. Councils with no money no longer sweep the streets or have flower displays or fund anti-social behaviour teams. Schools and hospitals and doctors where they are obviously tatty with poor service delivery. Rampant out of control crime and no effective policing.
They voted Brexit because they were offered a solution to the mess. Then Tory for the first time ever because lets get it done and give the other lot a go. And yet everything just keeps getting crappier and more expensive.
The Tory plan appears to be a tax cut budget then an election. Look at the shiny farthing we just gave you, aren't we kind, vote us back in. But more than a farthing is needed. A bazooka of cash is needed. And we have shown that we can deploy bazookas for Covid and Ukraine so it can be done. And not doing so costs its own bazooka of cash as the economy contracts and the costs of clearing up the societal mess rises.
The real sad bit is that Labour won't actually fix any of this. They will just be less mendacious and corrupt.
Remember the famous Belgian footballer who jumped his Mercedes off a roundabout through a gym wall at first floor level?
Turns out he was doing an estimated 120mph on an urban road, and the cause of the 'crash' "is being investigated".
https://www.brusselstimes.com/442703/an-accident-is-no-accident-when-speeding-is-involved
If you need open heart surgery on the other hand, I am not your man.
For comparison, teachers in England were offered approx 650 quid after tax, as a one off, and unfunded - meaning a funding cut for schools. I can only assume Keegan is doing this deliberately, or she is incredibly stupid.
It wouldn't surprise me either.
It isn't all about pay or workload.
Working conditions play a huge role.
I can't do my job effectively as it is with the current resources available. Let alone with yet another large cut in per pupil funding.
But how easy is it to get an analysis of the spending ? You essentially have two classes of workers, and it would be interesting to get a grasp of the actual numbers.
There is also the issue of a very expensive
110k touring motorised vehicle taken from the drive of Murrel's 92 yr old mother .. Why one wonders????
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/12fzhe2/exclusive_police_have_seized_a_110000_luxury/
There may be a gap before this normalises.
The Tory answer is always "we are spending record amounts on the NHS / Education". And yet it gets worse and worse as a lived experience. So the money is being tipped in and not reaching the places it is needed. It is being syphoned out. Going into pockets rather than headteacher budgets.
There’s something about Sandesh..
https://www.chemistanddruggist.co.uk/CD136742/Unprecedented-closures-Pharmacy-leaders-press-Sunak-for-cash-injection#.Y9o5rhoZ0Fo.twitter
I know we had a thing about the doxxed departed on here but look at @Foxy. No idea their identity but doing very well thank you, pondering retiring. Was once a junior doctor. That's how it works.
Corruption charges are standard operating procedure for this.
The similarity to the ritual sacrifice of the Sacred King, to cast off sins and failures, has long been noted.
Your penultimate sentence seems to be correct. I wouldn't be so sure about the last one.
At the moment it's all smoke, mirrors and spin.
I wouldn't disagree that economies have taken large external hits - plus for us, the self inflicted one from Brexit - but we have a government which pretends that we aren't poorer as a nation.
Labour ought to do the same - and have an opportunity to frame it in a way not advantageous for the government.
Occasionally, voters appreciate honesty.
An ‘ouch’ moment financially but I suppose cheaper than a blowout at 70…
I couldn't agree more. With tradesman you are not paying for what they do, but what they know. I had spent days trying to solder an elbow onto a copper pipe, but it wouldn't seal because I couldn't keep it dry. A plumber friend sealed the pipe to keep the joint dry using a piece of bread. The joint kept dry and the solder took, and the bread shot out under pressure of the water. I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years, and for that alone he was worth his £60 an hour or part- thereof. I am not dismissing the very expensive skills of tradesman, my point is that their skills are sometimes easily transferable to the untrained. Less so the knowledge of a skilled clinician.
Anyway off to make my millions.
The trouble with a one-off payment is that, even if inflation falls as rapidly as is hoped (a shiny sixpence says that it won't, becuase inflation is always stickier than we'd like), the increased cost of living is permanent.
1. If the doctors don't get a substantial pay rise, of course they won't all leave for Australia, Ireland or wherever. This is the greatest country on earth. They're just bluffing - take no notice.
2. If Labour gets into power and raises taxes on the rich, there will be a huge exodus of our brightest and best to global low tax regimes. They're definitely not bluffing - we need to listen to them.
https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1644646938447339521?cxt=HBwWgoCzsajr-tItAAAA&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw==&refsrc=email
There's right-wing, and there's nuts. That said, Farage is right to point out that Trump is doing well in GOP terms.
As it is, the relentless spin (spending a record amount on x, y, z, etc) means no one believes the spending constraints claimed by government.