Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
You need to compare with inputs to get the productivity changes.
Did you actually read the article?
Did you ?
From the Introduction:
One reason for poor NHS performance in recent years is the seemingly large fall in hospital productivity since the start of the pandemic. Put simply, the service is requiring more funding and more staff to deliver the same amount of hospital care. This year, for the first time, NHS England produced its own estimate of the productivity shortfall, estimating that acute hospital productivity in 2023–24 was 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels.
From the Conclusion:
NHS hospital productivity remains substantially below pre-pandemic levels. The productivity increase between last year and this year will not on its own deliver the scale of improvements in NHS performance promised at the election. NHS targets for increasing the number of treatments from the waiting list, produced as part of the previous government’s 2022 elective recovery plan, are still very likely to be missed this year. And at the current rate, you would need several more years’ improvements just to return the NHS to its pre-pandemic productivity levels, let alone exceed them. The NHS workforce plan is built on the assumption that the NHS can deliver continual improvements in labour productivity – without these, even the large planned increase in the NHS workforce would not, according to the service’s own estimates, be enough to meet demand for care.
And suggesting NHS deserve a real terms pay rise because output has increased in 2024 also requires you to accept there should have been pay cuts because output fell in the years before.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
Interesting that there are an apparent twice as many fascists among the young than in the above 65s. It is a relief that fascism is such a low percentage across all parties, even the Reform voters, though their populist nationalism might be described as fascism-lite.
Quite a few Commies amongst the 18-24.
One of Foxjr2's housemates is a communist.
That's the age group for whom communism is an attractive theoretical concept rather than a horrific reality afflicting huge populations of the world.
Sure but it doesn't bode well.
No, I quite agree. I can explain but I can't approve. Even when communism existed, we were relatively equivocal in this country about its awfulness. I remember going to the museum of communism in Prague in the 90s, which pulled no punches about how evil and how useless the system was, and thinking how we just wouldn't be that direct in Britain. Communism always retained a bit of a cachet even during the worst years of it globally.
I think it's simpler than romanticism.
If young people feel no stake in society, even when they study and work hard, then expect a proportion to radicalise.
People who feel failed by capitalism will look elsewhere for change.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
From the article you linked: Some insiders tell me the council was suffering a lot of other problems, and was on a path towards the 114 anyway, but they admit that the sudden timing of the announcement raised eyebrows.
One source said the inflated figure of £700m [on which basis the bankruptcy notice was issued] seemed to assume pay claims by all employees, which was never a possibility.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
I find it rather disappointing that Israel, the US, and maybe others find the need to be so aggressive in allowing the dust to settle in Syria. There was never a great hope that the Syrian people would collectively ask themselves what the hell they've been doing for the last 100 years, but I think that the external actors have really eliminated any chance of that.
Could Israel have held its hand out and said 'look, we can be friends, and together we can live in a region of peace and prosperity'? Clearly yes, but I doubt they ever considered it. 99% chance of failure, but it doesn't hurt to try.
Very much my reaction. FWIW.
Syria’s a nation which must be exhausted with war - and the early signs were of a genuine effort to do the right thing… possibly. Mass bombing of not just military installations, but also administrative facilities, jeopardises a potential peaceful settlement.
But we are talking about Netanyahu. And he’s not even the worst in his government.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Electronically, if it's already held in various accounts? You may not even need to move it, just know the account numbers and what's required to access it. I know Russia's no longer on SWIFT.
(As you may tell, this is not my field of 'expertise'...)
But then he hasn’t moved it to Moscow. It was already in his private bank accounts
Tho I am still gravely suspicious of £135bn. That would make him one of the richest men in the world. Top 5 or so
Syria never generated that kind of money as an economy in good days or bad
There have been accusations that a certain V. Putin is the richest man in the world, despite earning only about $100-150k a year.
This has got me wondering. Do despots ever get to enjoy the fruits of their despotism? Some do - but many end up killed, or have to keep working because they die. And being a despot is hard and unpleasant work - there's all sorts of unpleasant shit you need to do. The only reason you'd do it should really be to squirrel away unimaginable wealth for the benefit of a long and comfortable retirement. How many get to enjoy that? At best, Assad is going to be hanging out in Russia.
I've posted this before, but the Pet Shop Boy's song "The Dictator Decides" seems to be almost perfectly written for Assad.
You need to compare with inputs to get the productivity changes.
Did you actually read the article?
Did you ?
From the Introduction:
One reason for poor NHS performance in recent years is the seemingly large fall in hospital productivity since the start of the pandemic. Put simply, the service is requiring more funding and more staff to deliver the same amount of hospital care. This year, for the first time, NHS England produced its own estimate of the productivity shortfall, estimating that acute hospital productivity in 2023–24 was 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels.
From the Conclusion:
NHS hospital productivity remains substantially below pre-pandemic levels. The productivity increase between last year and this year will not on its own deliver the scale of improvements in NHS performance promised at the election. NHS targets for increasing the number of treatments from the waiting list, produced as part of the previous government’s 2022 elective recovery plan, are still very likely to be missed this year. And at the current rate, you would need several more years’ improvements just to return the NHS to its pre-pandemic productivity levels, let alone exceed them. The NHS workforce plan is built on the assumption that the NHS can deliver continual improvements in labour productivity – without these, even the large planned increase in the NHS workforce would not, according to the service’s own estimates, be enough to meet demand for care.
And suggesting NHS deserve a real terms pay rise because output has increased in 2024 also requires you to accept there should have been pay cuts because output fell in the years before.
There were real terms pay cuts in the NHS. Quite substantial ones.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Electronically, if it's already held in various accounts? You may not even need to move it, just know the account numbers and what's required to access it. I know Russia's no longer on SWIFT.
(As you may tell, this is not my field of 'expertise'...)
But then he hasn’t moved it to Moscow. It was already in his private bank accounts
Tho I am still gravely suspicious of £135bn. That would make him one of the richest men in the world. Top 5 or so
Syria never generated that kind of money as an economy in good days or bad
There have been accusations that a certain V. Putin is the richest man in the world, despite earning only about $100-150k a year.
As digging in to peoples records came up the other day in terms of banking/GDPR etc. I used to work for $a_company many years ago who had a lot of financial records on people. As we were all bored teens working for peanuts, we'd look up famous people/addresses to see how behind they were with their Littlewoods Catalogue payments - that kind of thing.
Much amusement until I, a nerd, thought to look up "1, Buckingham Place" (the home address of The Prisoner).
Up flashed "THIS QUERY HAS BEEN BLOCKED AND LOGGED" on my green-screen terminal.
At which point I rapidly turned it off and claimed it had "gone a bit funny".
I still think it was someone even nerdier than me who had hard-coded it as a response. But I also faintly fret I was placed on a special list.
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
This captures the idea of simple language mistakes that stubbornly persist despite one's best efforts to overcome them
Gibbay??
I've always pronounced it as "Jib-et", with jib being the jib of a crane. And I suppose that makes some sense: the jib of a crane projects, as does the jib on a ship's sail. And so does the arm on a gibbet. Surely there must be sone linguistic connection?
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
It really isn't absurd in this case.
Mrs Eek was at a council that went through single status to solve this issue back in 1994 and the other council she worked at in 1992 was starting the process as she left to return to uni in 1993. It's taken until today for Birmingham council to do the same issue and resolve the pay issues.
Edit since then none of the other 4 councils she's worked at has had any problem with paying women the same as men.. In fact the only issue she currently has is the in her current council the council doesn't feel the need to pay for the professional qualification you only use at an inquiry to prove that you are qualified to say that you aren't talking out of your arse.
Guess what she, has such an inquiry coming soon. The option is pay up or someone else is standing up on the day.
It is absurd. Supply and demand should determine pay, nothing else.
If the women workers wanted higher pay and another job was paying more then they should have been free to apply for the other job - if they got denied the other job due to their sex, then that would be discimination.
Paying people more for different jobs, because other jobs are paid more, is a complete and utter waste of money.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Electronically, if it's already held in various accounts? You may not even need to move it, just know the account numbers and what's required to access it. I know Russia's no longer on SWIFT.
(As you may tell, this is not my field of 'expertise'...)
But then he hasn’t moved it to Moscow. It was already in his private bank accounts
Tho I am still gravely suspicious of £135bn. That would make him one of the richest men in the world. Top 5 or so
Syria never generated that kind of money as an economy in good days or bad
There have been accusations that a certain V. Putin is the richest man in the world, despite earning only about $100-150k a year.
As digging in to peoples records came up the other day in terms of banking/GDPR etc. I used to work for $a_company many years ago who had a lot of financial records on people. As we were all bored teens working for peanuts, we'd look up famous people/addresses to see how behind they were with their Littlewoods Catalogue payments - that kind of thing.
Much amusement until I, a nerd, thought to look up "1, Buckingham Place" (the home address of The Prisoner).
Up flashed "THIS QUERY HAS BEEN BLOCKED AND LOGGED" on my green-screen terminal.
At which point I rapidly turned it off and claimed it had "gone a bit funny".
I still think it was someone even nerdier than me who had hard-coded it as a response. But I also faintly fret I was placed on a special list.
I would need to be someone nerdier than you.
The default position is that we flag everything and the reporting goes to management / HR to deal with..
When a call centre staff member says they can't see anything unless you pass authentication that will be the case. They simply won't see the record until they enter the details they ask for and you provde the correct answer...
You need to compare with inputs to get the productivity changes.
Did you actually read the article?
Did you ?
From the Introduction:
One reason for poor NHS performance in recent years is the seemingly large fall in hospital productivity since the start of the pandemic. Put simply, the service is requiring more funding and more staff to deliver the same amount of hospital care. This year, for the first time, NHS England produced its own estimate of the productivity shortfall, estimating that acute hospital productivity in 2023–24 was 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels.
From the Conclusion:
NHS hospital productivity remains substantially below pre-pandemic levels. The productivity increase between last year and this year will not on its own deliver the scale of improvements in NHS performance promised at the election. NHS targets for increasing the number of treatments from the waiting list, produced as part of the previous government’s 2022 elective recovery plan, are still very likely to be missed this year. And at the current rate, you would need several more years’ improvements just to return the NHS to its pre-pandemic productivity levels, let alone exceed them. The NHS workforce plan is built on the assumption that the NHS can deliver continual improvements in labour productivity – without these, even the large planned increase in the NHS workforce would not, according to the service’s own estimates, be enough to meet demand for care.
And suggesting NHS deserve a real terms pay rise because output has increased in 2024 also requires you to accept there should have been pay cuts because output fell in the years before.
There were real terms pay cuts in the NHS. Quite substantial ones.
I think you'll find everyone in the NHS has had a 500% pay increase and gets to retire on £250k/y. Like all public sector workers.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that...
Go onto YouTube and Google "History Buffs" and "Narcos". The YouTuber called "History Buffs" (Nick Hodges) reviewed the series "Narcos" about Escobar etc in some depth. Strikes me as the kind of thing you'd like.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Electronically, if it's already held in various accounts? You may not even need to move it, just know the account numbers and what's required to access it. I know Russia's no longer on SWIFT.
(As you may tell, this is not my field of 'expertise'...)
But then he hasn’t moved it to Moscow. It was already in his private bank accounts
Tho I am still gravely suspicious of £135bn. That would make him one of the richest men in the world. Top 5 or so
Syria never generated that kind of money as an economy in good days or bad
There have been accusations that a certain V. Putin is the richest man in the world, despite earning only about $100-150k a year.
This has got me wondering. Do despots ever get to enjoy the fruits of their despotism? Some do - but many end up killed, or have to keep working because they die. And being a despot is hard and unpleasant work - there's all sorts of unpleasant shit you need to do. The only reason you'd do it should really be to squirrel away unimaginable wealth for the benefit of a long and comfortable retirement. How many get to enjoy that? At best, Assad is going to be hanging out in Russia.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Electronically, if it's already held in various accounts? You may not even need to move it, just know the account numbers and what's required to access it. I know Russia's no longer on SWIFT.
(As you may tell, this is not my field of 'expertise'...)
But then he hasn’t moved it to Moscow. It was already in his private bank accounts
Tho I am still gravely suspicious of £135bn. That would make him one of the richest men in the world. Top 5 or so
Syria never generated that kind of money as an economy in good days or bad
There have been accusations that a certain V. Putin is the richest man in the world, despite earning only about $100-150k a year.
As digging in to peoples records came up the other day in terms of banking/GDPR etc. I used to work for $a_company many years ago who had a lot of financial records on people. As we were all bored teens working for peanuts, we'd look up famous people/addresses to see how behind they were with their Littlewoods Catalogue payments - that kind of thing.
Much amusement until I, a nerd, thought to look up "1, Buckingham Place" (the home address of The Prisoner).
Up flashed "THIS QUERY HAS BEEN BLOCKED AND LOGGED" on my green-screen terminal.
At which point I rapidly turned it off and claimed it had "gone a bit funny".
I still think it was someone even nerdier than me who had hard-coded it as a response. But I also faintly fret I was placed on a special list.
I would need to be someone nerdier than you.
The default position is that we flag everything and the reporting goes to management / HR to deal with..
This was late 80s or early 90s. My manager was busy doing the same thing. I suspect the tabloids got their money's worth. If only I'd been more entrepreneurial as a teenager.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
It really isn't absurd in this case.
Mrs Eek was at a council that went through single status to solve this issue back in 1994 and the other council she worked at in 1992 was starting the process as she left to return to uni in 1993. It's taken until today for Birmingham council to do the same issue and resolve the pay issues.
Edit since then none of the other 4 councils she's worked at has had any problem with paying women the same as men.. In fact the only issue she currently has is the in her current council the council doesn't feel the need to pay for the professional qualification you only use at an inquiry to prove that you are qualified to say that you aren't talking out of your arse.
Guess what she, has such an inquiry coming soon. The option is pay up or someone else is standing up on the day.
It is absurd. Supply and demand should determine pay, nothing else.
If the women workers wanted higher pay and another job was paying more then they should have been free to apply for the other job - if they got denied the other job due to their sex, then that would be discimination.
Paying people more for different jobs, because other jobs are paid more, is a complete and utter waste of money.
Councils don't have competitive pay - they have bands in which everyone is placed. Surely there is no reason why a manager in 1 department managing x members of staff and a budget of Y should be paid any different from another member of staffing managing x staff with a budget of Y.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
You need to compare with inputs to get the productivity changes.
Did you actually read the article?
Did you ?
From the Introduction:
One reason for poor NHS performance in recent years is the seemingly large fall in hospital productivity since the start of the pandemic. Put simply, the service is requiring more funding and more staff to deliver the same amount of hospital care. This year, for the first time, NHS England produced its own estimate of the productivity shortfall, estimating that acute hospital productivity in 2023–24 was 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels.
From the Conclusion:
NHS hospital productivity remains substantially below pre-pandemic levels. The productivity increase between last year and this year will not on its own deliver the scale of improvements in NHS performance promised at the election. NHS targets for increasing the number of treatments from the waiting list, produced as part of the previous government’s 2022 elective recovery plan, are still very likely to be missed this year. And at the current rate, you would need several more years’ improvements just to return the NHS to its pre-pandemic productivity levels, let alone exceed them. The NHS workforce plan is built on the assumption that the NHS can deliver continual improvements in labour productivity – without these, even the large planned increase in the NHS workforce would not, according to the service’s own estimates, be enough to meet demand for care.
And suggesting NHS deserve a real terms pay rise because output has increased in 2024 also requires you to accept there should have been pay cuts because output fell in the years before.
There were real terms pay cuts in the NHS. Quite substantial ones.
See also Universities. Sadly us poor academics don’t quite have the same pull on the nations heartstrings as those damnable junior doctors…
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
It really isn't absurd in this case.
Mrs Eek was at a council that went through single status to solve this issue back in 1994 and the other council she worked at in 1992 was starting the process as she left to return to uni in 1993. It's taken until today for Birmingham council to do the same issue and resolve the pay issues.
Edit since then none of the other 4 councils she's worked at has had any problem with paying women the same as men.. In fact the only issue she currently has is the in her current council the council doesn't feel the need to pay for the professional qualification you only use at an inquiry to prove that you are qualified to say that you aren't talking out of your arse.
Guess what she, has such an inquiry coming soon. The option is pay up or someone else is standing up on the day.
It is absurd. Supply and demand should determine pay, nothing else.
If the women workers wanted higher pay and another job was paying more then they should have been free to apply for the other job - if they got denied the other job due to their sex, then that would be discimination.
Paying people more for different jobs, because other jobs are paid more, is a complete and utter waste of money.
Councils don't have competitive pay - they have bands in which everyone is placed. Surely there is no reason why a manager in 1 department managing x members of staff and a budget of Y should be paid any different from another member of staffing managing x staff with a budget of Y.
Yet that was often the case...
They clearly have far too much cash to waste if they're not only paying competitive rates and we can have major tax cuts until they do.
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Electronically, if it's already held in various accounts? You may not even need to move it, just know the account numbers and what's required to access it. I know Russia's no longer on SWIFT.
(As you may tell, this is not my field of 'expertise'...)
But then he hasn’t moved it to Moscow. It was already in his private bank accounts
Tho I am still gravely suspicious of £135bn. That would make him one of the richest men in the world. Top 5 or so
Syria never generated that kind of money as an economy in good days or bad
There have been accusations that a certain V. Putin is the richest man in the world, despite earning only about $100-150k a year.
This has got me wondering. Do despots ever get to enjoy the fruits of their despotism? Some do - but many end up killed, or have to keep working because they die. And being a despot is hard and unpleasant work - there's all sorts of unpleasant shit you need to do. The only reason you'd do it should really be to squirrel away unimaginable wealth for the benefit of a long and comfortable retirement. How many get to enjoy that? At best, Assad is going to be hanging out in Russia.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
This captures the idea of simple language mistakes that stubbornly persist despite one's best efforts to overcome them
You should be discreet about your inability to recognise that affect and effect are discrete words. The effect of such discretion may affect the way people see you. I don't have a fucking clue about gibbet. Does that help?
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Are you sure he wasn't trolling you? That sounds like the kind of thing Leon would write on here when he's bored on a Friday night.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
You need to compare with inputs to get the productivity changes.
Did you actually read the article?
Did you ?
From the Introduction:
One reason for poor NHS performance in recent years is the seemingly large fall in hospital productivity since the start of the pandemic. Put simply, the service is requiring more funding and more staff to deliver the same amount of hospital care. This year, for the first time, NHS England produced its own estimate of the productivity shortfall, estimating that acute hospital productivity in 2023–24 was 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels.
From the Conclusion:
NHS hospital productivity remains substantially below pre-pandemic levels. The productivity increase between last year and this year will not on its own deliver the scale of improvements in NHS performance promised at the election. NHS targets for increasing the number of treatments from the waiting list, produced as part of the previous government’s 2022 elective recovery plan, are still very likely to be missed this year. And at the current rate, you would need several more years’ improvements just to return the NHS to its pre-pandemic productivity levels, let alone exceed them. The NHS workforce plan is built on the assumption that the NHS can deliver continual improvements in labour productivity – without these, even the large planned increase in the NHS workforce would not, according to the service’s own estimates, be enough to meet demand for care.
And suggesting NHS deserve a real terms pay rise because output has increased in 2024 also requires you to accept there should have been pay cuts because output fell in the years before.
There were real terms pay cuts in the NHS. Quite substantial ones.
See also Universities. Sadly us poor academics don’t quite have the same pull on the nations heartstrings as those damnable junior doctors…
It sounds like you're one of those foolish academics who does things like 'research' and (god help us) 'teaching'. Such a drag on the finances.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Are you sure he wasn't trolling you? That sounds like the kind of thing Leon would write on here when he's bored on a Friday night.
No - he had photo's from previous incidents. Which he delighted in passing round the family dinner table.
The guy who'd tied his head down to the track with a leather belt was... especially something I wish I hadn't seen.
You need to compare with inputs to get the productivity changes.
Did you actually read the article?
Did you ?
From the Introduction:
One reason for poor NHS performance in recent years is the seemingly large fall in hospital productivity since the start of the pandemic. Put simply, the service is requiring more funding and more staff to deliver the same amount of hospital care. This year, for the first time, NHS England produced its own estimate of the productivity shortfall, estimating that acute hospital productivity in 2023–24 was 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels.
From the Conclusion:
NHS hospital productivity remains substantially below pre-pandemic levels. The productivity increase between last year and this year will not on its own deliver the scale of improvements in NHS performance promised at the election. NHS targets for increasing the number of treatments from the waiting list, produced as part of the previous government’s 2022 elective recovery plan, are still very likely to be missed this year. And at the current rate, you would need several more years’ improvements just to return the NHS to its pre-pandemic productivity levels, let alone exceed them. The NHS workforce plan is built on the assumption that the NHS can deliver continual improvements in labour productivity – without these, even the large planned increase in the NHS workforce would not, according to the service’s own estimates, be enough to meet demand for care.
And suggesting NHS deserve a real terms pay rise because output has increased in 2024 also requires you to accept there should have been pay cuts because output fell in the years before.
There were real terms pay cuts in the NHS. Quite substantial ones.
See also Universities. Sadly us poor academics don’t quite have the same pull on the nations heartstrings as those damnable junior doctors…
It sounds like you're one of those foolish academics who does things like 'research' and (god help us) 'teaching'. Such a drag on the finances.
You should be a VP - doing the real work.
I know. I made my choice long ago. Think of me when you are in the pharmacy and they cant find your prescription…
The peeps I follow on Bluesky, including a lot of pol journos and pol types, are tonight busy debating what a xmas movie actually is and whether PB's favourite film counts.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
Women - know your place.
No, women should be able to do any job.
If a "similar" job has higher pay, why not apply for that job?
If its due to discrimination that they can't get that job, then that discrimination should be tackled.
If its because that other job has downsides that mean the job isn't wanted to be done, then maybe it deserves the higher pay rate it has.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you latest:
Photos of Birmingham DHL fire suggest device could have downed plane Images consistent with fire from magnesium-based device, suspected to be part of Russian sabotage plot
The peeps I follow on Bluesky, including a lot of pol journos and pol types, are tonight busy debating what a xmas movie actually is and whether PB's favourite film counts.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
I think the Ford case was pretty clear cut, but recent examples have been less so. The warehouse vs shop floor one, for example.
One of the pubs I worked in as a student had a very clear split between kitchen staff and front of house. Only front of house received the share of the tips jar. Only kitchen staff got the excess food. It was, I think a reasonable compromise. Front of house staff interacted with customers so earned the tips. The kitchen staff put the effort into the food.
But nowadays some chippy shit in the kitchen would take the pub to court for equal rights, or something…
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Are you sure he wasn't trolling you? That sounds like the kind of thing Leon would write on here when he's bored on a Friday night.
No - he had photo's from previous incidents. Which he delighted in passing round the family dinner table.
The guy who'd tied his head down to the track with a leather belt was... especially something I wish I hadn't seen.
That's...the sort of photo (AI generated, naturally) I can imagine Leon sharing on a Friday night.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Electronically, if it's already held in various accounts? You may not even need to move it, just know the account numbers and what's required to access it. I know Russia's no longer on SWIFT.
(As you may tell, this is not my field of 'expertise'...)
But then he hasn’t moved it to Moscow. It was already in his private bank accounts
Tho I am still gravely suspicious of £135bn. That would make him one of the richest men in the world. Top 5 or so
Syria never generated that kind of money as an economy in good days or bad
There have been accusations that a certain V. Putin is the richest man in the world, despite earning only about $100-150k a year.
This has got me wondering. Do despots ever get to enjoy the fruits of their despotism? Some do - but many end up killed, or have to keep working because they die. And being a despot is hard and unpleasant work - there's all sorts of unpleasant shit you need to do. The only reason you'd do it should really be to squirrel away unimaginable wealth for the benefit of a long and comfortable retirement. How many get to enjoy that? At best, Assad is going to be hanging out in Russia.
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Are you sure he wasn't trolling you? That sounds like the kind of thing Leon would write on here when he's bored on a Friday night.
He was definitely trolling - I know people who have had serious mental issues after dealing with the consequences of such an event.
I'm also feeling sorry for anyone who was on the 18:10 from Kings Lynn who are currently sat at Stevenage station with their train taken out of service and that's nothing compared to the poor driver.
Realtimetrains provides a LOT of information from which you can work out exactly what happened and when..
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
A skilled job should be paid the market rate, gender has nothing to do with it.
If a "similar" job has higher pay, why don't people apply for that job? Maybe its skills are rarer, and thus more valuable, if they're not doing so?
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
It was a conundrum well before post Brexit Britain - although perfectly valid in pre EU Britain given how long it took for a sensible, fair, equal pay regime to be implemented.
edit - Blooming heck someone (and I know who) messed that up a bit
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Are you sure he wasn't trolling you? That sounds like the kind of thing Leon would write on here when he's bored on a Friday night.
He was definitely trolling - I know people who have had serious mental issues after dealing with the consequences of such an event.
I'm also feeling sorry for anyone who was on the 18:10 from Kings Lynn who are currently sat at Stevenage station with their train taken out of service and that's nothing compared to the poor driver.
Realtimetrains provides a LOT of information from which you can work out exactly what happened and when..
Twenty years ago, my then best mate deliberately stepped out in front of a bus - he had severe mental health issues at the time. It was apparent at the inquest that the poor blameless bus driver was at least as traumatised as my mate's family and friends. The idea that the bus driver may have welcomed the opportunity to have time off to cope is ludicrous.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
My solution is to use technology to reduce the number of workers required *and* pay them more *and* increase productivity.
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Are you sure he wasn't trolling you? That sounds like the kind of thing Leon would write on here when he's bored on a Friday night.
He was definitely trolling - I know people who have had serious mental issues after dealing with the consequences of such an event.
I'm also feeling sorry for anyone who was on the 18:10 from Kings Lynn who are currently sat at Stevenage station with their train taken out of service and that's nothing compared to the poor driver.
Realtimetrains provides a LOT of information from which you can work out exactly what happened and when..
Twenty years ago, my then best mate deliberately stepped out in front of a bus - he had severe mental health issues at the time. It was apparent at the inquest that the poor blameless bus driver was at least as traumatised as my mate's family and friends. The idea that the bus driver may have welcomed the opportunity to have time off to cope is ludicrous.
Two things can be true simultaneously.
I can imagine there are perfectly normal, well-adjusted, people who would be sickened and appalled and traumatised by it happening to them.
I can also imagine there are twisted individuals who would welcome it happening to them so they can have time off. Especially if they've never been in the position its happened to them.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
My solution is to use technology to reduce the number of workers required *and* pay them more *and* increase productivity.
But that’s crazy talk, I suppose.
What's your technology solution to reducing the number of people who empty your bins?
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Are you sure he wasn't trolling you? That sounds like the kind of thing Leon would write on here when he's bored on a Friday night.
He was definitely trolling - I know people who have had serious mental issues after dealing with the consequences of such an event.
I'm also feeling sorry for anyone who was on the 18:10 from Kings Lynn who are currently sat at Stevenage station with their train taken out of service and that's nothing compared to the poor driver.
Realtimetrains provides a LOT of information from which you can work out exactly what happened and when..
Twenty years ago, my then best mate deliberately stepped out in front of a bus - he had severe mental health issues at the time. It was apparent at the inquest that the poor blameless bus driver was at least as traumatised as my mate's family and friends. The idea that the bus driver may have welcomed the opportunity to have time off to cope is ludicrous.
The idea that 99% of people (there will always be the weird exception) will be able to cope with such a thing is truly beyond the pail. Many drivers simply don't return to the job and I know of drivers who have ended up divorced because of the impact it has to them (although that's more my brothers area given who he works for).
If true, how would he do that? Through international banking?
Which Russia are, er, stealing off him taxing him on...
That should help the ruble. For a bit.
According to the World Bank, the peak GDP of Syria was some $68 Billion dollars, in 2011. Before it collapsed due to civil war. Some suggest to as low as $8 Billion, others $20 Billion.
Where would Assad have got multiples of the GDP of his entire country, in transportable form?
It is such a humongous amount that it seems impossible. But his family did rule the country for decades, and there's all the drugs business as well. My *guess* would be that it's a bogus figure, but he got out a lot.
It’s preposterously wrong. I’d be surprised and impressed if he managed to move a billion
He’s not known for having precious art. You’d need plane loads of gold and cash and diamonds to make a billion let alone “135 billion”. And - as has been asked - where did he get it?!
He was a head of state. For two decades. Of a dictatorship.
Pretty easy to have bank accounts in places which don’t care, I’d guess.
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
This captures the idea of simple language mistakes that stubbornly persist despite one's best efforts to overcome them
Gibbay??
Jib bet. We have the site of an old one near my parents village, although I’m not sure if it’s on maps.
I know - I was just wondering what the alternative pronunciations that Leon gets confused between are, and poking light fun.
I only learned the other week that placket is pronounced 'plack-ay'. Still sounds odd to me.
I always mix up affect and effect and I'm a stable, genius, so don't despair.
The move was done effectively. The affect of the effect was effective. You may affect to not know the effect, but that would not affect the effective outcome,
According to Senator Chris Smith at the congressional hearing just now, 12-30 drones recently followed a coastguard boat, and 50 were seen by them coming in from the ocean.
If true, how would he do that? Through international banking?
Which Russia are, er, stealing off him taxing him on...
That should help the ruble. For a bit.
According to the World Bank, the peak GDP of Syria was some $68 Billion dollars, in 2011. Before it collapsed due to civil war. Some suggest to as low as $8 Billion, others $20 Billion.
Where would Assad have got multiples of the GDP of his entire country, in transportable form?
It is such a humongous amount that it seems impossible. But his family did rule the country for decades, and there's all the drugs business as well. My *guess* would be that it's a bogus figure, but he got out a lot.
It’s preposterously wrong. I’d be surprised and impressed if he managed to move a billion
He’s not known for having precious art. You’d need plane loads of gold and cash and diamonds to make a billion let alone “135 billion”. And - as has been asked - where did he get it?!
He was a head of state. For two decades. Of a dictatorship.
Pretty easy to have bank accounts in places which don’t care, I’d guess.
But yes, 135 bn is just daft.
$135bn for Syria is plan daft. $135bn or more if you are in charge of Russia is a very different question..
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
What will really piss him off if he ever thinks of it is the close parallel to the career of Ramsay MacDonald.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
A skilled job should be paid the market rate, gender has nothing to do with it.
If a "similar" job has higher pay, why don't people apply for that job? Maybe its skills are rarer, and thus more valuable, if they're not doing so?
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
My solution is to use technology to reduce the number of workers required *and* pay them more *and* increase productivity.
But that’s crazy talk, I suppose.
Sometimes technology slows things down. Refuse collectors could complete an average street of black bag waste in the time it takes to load twenty wheelie bins. The men like it too. On " job and knock"* they are back home for elevensies.
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
Not necessarily. History is replete with disaffected (hah!) ex-leaders or ex-wannabes. David Lloyd George, Oswald Mosely, David Owen, Alec Salmond, spring to mind immediately, and I assume NI has its own examples.
According to Senator Chris Smith at the congressional hearing just now, 12-30 drones recently followed a coastguard boat, and 50 were seen by them coming in from the ocean.
Did they get any good photos or videos? Maybe they left their mobile phones behind?
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
Not necessarily. History is replete with disaffected (hah!) ex-leaders or ex-wannabes. David Lloyd George, Oswald Mosely, David Owen, Alec Salmond, spring to mind immediately, and I assume NI has its own examples.
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
What will really piss him off if he ever thinks of it is the close parallel to the career of Ramsay MacDonald.
Except Macdonald left the Labour Party to form a government with the Tories, Corbyn and his supporters think they are the real opposition to the Tories with Starmer just Tory lite
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
A skilled job should be paid the market rate, gender has nothing to do with it.
If a "similar" job has higher pay, why don't people apply for that job? Maybe its skills are rarer, and thus more valuable, if they're not doing so?
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
My solution is to use technology to reduce the number of workers required *and* pay them more *and* increase productivity.
But that’s crazy talk, I suppose.
Sometimes technology slows things down. Refuse collectors could complete an average street of black bag waste in the time it takes to load twenty wheelie bins. The men like it too. On " job and knock"* they are back home for elevensies.
* I'm trolling, task and finish is all but dead.
Oh I doubt you could finish collections by 11 - if they could someone very senior had screwed up.
In our council we have 2 teams running a 4 day week but we are also a very small council and I'm sure the movement from bags to bins resulted in some people losing their jobs and others having expanded days.
It does mean that outside of Christmas we have standard collections on our usual day of the week.
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Are you sure he wasn't trolling you? That sounds like the kind of thing Leon would write on here when he's bored on a Friday night.
He was definitely trolling - I know people who have had serious mental issues after dealing with the consequences of such an event.
I'm also feeling sorry for anyone who was on the 18:10 from Kings Lynn who are currently sat at Stevenage station with their train taken out of service and that's nothing compared to the poor driver.
Realtimetrains provides a LOT of information from which you can work out exactly what happened and when..
Twenty years ago, my then best mate deliberately stepped out in front of a bus - he had severe mental health issues at the time. It was apparent at the inquest that the poor blameless bus driver was at least as traumatised as my mate's family and friends. The idea that the bus driver may have welcomed the opportunity to have time off to cope is ludicrous.
As I've said before, an old friend of mine was an Signal and Telegraph engineer on the railway, and was part of a team called in to investigate/repair incidents on the eastern region (various things need to be checked before trains can run, especially after a road vehicle has been involved. It's not just the train that can be damaged. If it is at a crossing, they also need to check all the apparatus was working properly before the incident).
He would tell stories of finding bits of human a fair distance down the track after a suicide. He had a certain amount of gallows humour about it, but that was just to hide the shock. He also said cleaners back at depots would find bits under the trains.
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
What will really piss him off if he ever thinks of it is the close parallel to the career of Ramsay MacDonald.
Except Macdonald left the Labour Party to form a government with the Tories, Corbyn and his supporters think they are the real opposition to the Tories with Starmer just Tory lite
Yes, I know what he did, as it happens. I was just musing on the 'elected leader twice, tried to win him an election but who then went on to form his own weird party with three people.'
Of course, the parallel is inexact. Corbyn is waaaay posher than Macdonald. And of course, he lost both his elections as leader.
On my calculations Assad could buy up all the homes of Russia's 3rd and 4th largest cities, Novosibirsk and Yekatarinburg (total pop 3.2 million) with his supposed loot from Syria
On my calculations Assad could buy up all the homes of Russia's 3rd and 4th largest cities, Novosibirsk and Yekatarinburg (total pop 3.2 million) with his supposed loot from Syria
Really? He took as much as fourteen shillings and sixpence with him?
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
What will really piss him off if he ever thinks of it is the close parallel to the career of Ramsay MacDonald.
Except Macdonald left the Labour Party to form a government with the Tories, Corbyn and his supporters think they are the real opposition to the Tories with Starmer just Tory lite
Reeves's old bollocks today over a 5% across departments cut in government spending suggest the old fool might have a point.
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
What will really piss him off if he ever thinks of it is the close parallel to the career of Ramsay MacDonald.
Except Macdonald left the Labour Party to form a government with the Tories, Corbyn and his supporters think they are the real opposition to the Tories with Starmer just Tory lite
Yes, I know what he did, as it happens. I was just musing on the 'elected leader twice, tried to win him an election but who then went on to form his own weird party with three people.'
Of course, the parallel is inexact. Corbyn is waaaay posher than Macdonald. And of course, he lost both his elections as leader.
Nonsense, 2017 was a stunning victory for Jezza, just 2% behind the Tories on the popular vote, and just 55 seats behind them.
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
I don't know about the others, but Shockhat Adam is no left wing fanatic or radical Muslim for that matter.
He was a small businessman, with his own opticians shop, and wife who also works in the private sector. Sure he cares deeply about Gaza, but not only Gaza. He raised both relief for the victims of the Sudanese War and ending the 2 child limit in Parliament this week. He has a work rate on constituency matters that shames other MPs too, the polar opposite to grifters like Farage.
I think Labour will struggle to win the seat back.
On my calculations Assad could buy up all the homes of Russia's 3rd and 4th largest cities, Novosibirsk and Yekatarinburg (total pop 3.2 million) with his supposed loot from Syria
Really? He took as much as fourteen shillings and sixpence with him?
Sadly someone has committed suicide on the ECML near Stevenage - I'm currently sat on the train hoping that the catering staff delivery another drink so I can commiserate the position where he (as it will be a him) thought it was the best idea, the poor driver who could do nothing about it and the cleaners who will have to clean up the miss...
My brother-in-law was a train driver. And there would apparently be arguments amongst the drivers as to who got to drive the train past the psychiatric hospital as there was a chance "you'd get one" and then take a year off on full pay to 'recover'.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Are you sure he wasn't trolling you? That sounds like the kind of thing Leon would write on here when he's bored on a Friday night.
He was definitely trolling - I know people who have had serious mental issues after dealing with the consequences of such an event.
I'm also feeling sorry for anyone who was on the 18:10 from Kings Lynn who are currently sat at Stevenage station with their train taken out of service and that's nothing compared to the poor driver.
Realtimetrains provides a LOT of information from which you can work out exactly what happened and when..
Twenty years ago, my then best mate deliberately stepped out in front of a bus - he had severe mental health issues at the time. It was apparent at the inquest that the poor blameless bus driver was at least as traumatised as my mate's family and friends. The idea that the bus driver may have welcomed the opportunity to have time off to cope is ludicrous.
As I've said before, an old friend of mine was an Signal and Telegraph engineer on the railway, and was part of a team called in to investigate/repair incidents on the eastern region (various things need to be checked before trains can run, especially after a road vehicle has been involved. It's not just the train that can be damaged. If it is at a crossing, they also need to check all the apparatus was working properly before the incident).
He would tell stories of finding bits of human a fair distance down the track after a suicide. He had a certain amount of gallows humour about it, but that was just to hide the shock. He also said cleaners back at depots would find bits under the trains.
You couldn't pay me enough to do that.
likewise - as I said earlier - it's the cleaners, the driver and because they seem to have pulled the people off the train that struck the person that I feel sorry for. I'm struggling to work out who deserves my sympathy the most...
According to Senator Chris Smith at the congressional hearing just now, 12-30 drones recently followed a coastguard boat, and 50 were seen by them coming in from the ocean.
Aliens arrived by coastguard boat? They must be very desperate!
Coincidentally I’ve just finished Escobar by Roberto Escobar
It’s fascinating on many levels; one is: the sheer difficulty of handling vast amounts of cash. In a discrete way. Every year they expected to lose 10% of it to rot, fire or rats
When they buried it they had to bury it with coffee because apparently cash starts to smell badly and strongly after six months. Coffee disguises that
I know digital banking has moved on a tad since El Patron but there is literally no way Assad “moved $135 billion” unless he managed to bring several of Saudi Arabia’s major oilfields in his carry on luggage
Oh dear. Call yourself a writer? Discreet, not discrete.
I always get these mixed up. I also mix up - seriously - affect and effect. And I’m never quite sure how to pronounce “gibbet”
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
Historians in the future will find it difficult to fathom how Labour elected a leader - twice - and tried to win him an election but who went on to form his own weird far socialist/muslim-purity party with three people.
Not necessarily. History is replete with disaffected (hah!) ex-leaders or ex-wannabes. David Lloyd George, Oswald Mosely, David Owen, Alec Salmond, spring to mind immediately, and I assume NI has its own examples.
Edward Carson?
Yeah, and others. I didn't go into details because distinguishing between the pre1920s Ireland and the post1920s Ireland and all the flavours of executives in NI meant that precision would have been difficult due to me being on a train. But "leader leaves party and forms a new one" is very common.
"Israel destroyed the Syrian military fleet overnight, Israel's defence minister Israel Katz has said.
The operation appeared to be part of a broader campaign to eliminate strategic threats to Israel, and came after the IDF targeted airbases and science laboratories in Syria."
Hope it continues into next year. Well done Israel. 🇮🇱
Eh?
They are more than a year into an unnecessary war facilitated by their government's staggering complacency and incompetence.
Their international reputation has been trashed by war crimes in Gaza.
Their formerly flourishing economy is in the toilet.
Their Prime Minister's trial for corruption started today and his indictment for war crimes was handed down a few weeks ago.
An erratic man who bears a grudge against him was just elected US President.
Their government is held together by a few cranks and fanatics, but may be about to split apart on the draft dodging issue.
Peace with Arab neighbours has receded further into the distance.
They may have scored some tactical successes, and have avoided the complete wipeout that always threatens, but 2024 has been by any reasonable standards a very bad year for Israel. And 2025 may be worse.
I said that 2024 has been a good year, not that 2023 or prior was, so their prior complacency which I scorn doesn't fall under the purview of 2024.
The "war crimes" bullshit is shite spouted by their perpetual critics who wouldn't care less if Israel got wiped off the map, many of whom think they should never have been on the map in the first place.
Netanyahu should be on trial. Netanyahu is not Israel.
Meanwhile back in the real world, Hamas has been smashed, its leadership in Gaza dead or trounced.
Hezbollah have been whacked hard and have surrendered to end that conflict.
Iran are on the ropes.
Syria has fallen.
And they've taken out Syria's military with very little loss in return.
That's an astonishingly successful 12 months. Even if it pisses off those who'd rather Israel roll over and play dead than take the fight to her sworn enemies.
Why do I sense you got a micro-erection as you typed the words "sworn enemies"?
It's a huge relief that Anabob doesn't seem to be around tonight. If he were, we'd be well into 10,000 posts on where on earth Assad will be able to spend all his cash.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
Yes, we often tend to think of woke as a recent phenomenon, but its roots go back to 1960s radicalism. These laws will need to be unpicked by a future government.
I can't wait for you Reformers to turn the clock back to 1900.
Birmingham Council is poised to pay out hundreds of millions of pounds to women workers including teaching assistants, carers, caterers and cleaners in order to finally settle the thousands of equal pay claims that have pushed the local authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
Have you never heard of the Equal Pay Act 1970? A nice easy way to educate yourself is to watch the excellent film Made in Dagenham.
A law that should be repealed.
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
What are you on about you plumb? The Equal Pay Act ensures women get paid the same as men for a similarly skilled job. The Ford example was women doing skilled work sewing car seat covers were paid labourers wages. That wasn't right.
Women should be paid the same as men for the same job, not "similar".
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
A skilled job should be paid a skilled workers wage irrespective of gender. Same goes for the council context.
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
My solution is to use technology to reduce the number of workers required *and* pay them more *and* increase productivity.
But that’s crazy talk, I suppose.
What's your technology solution to reducing the number of people who empty your bins?
Robots to pickup the council wheelie bins are in prototype already. Creating robots that can pick up and load the colour coded recycling bins would not be an impossible task either. Certainly compared to robots that can pick raspberries without damaging them.
On my calculations Assad could buy up all the homes of Russia's 3rd and 4th largest cities, Novosibirsk and Yekatarinburg (total pop 3.2 million) with his supposed loot from Syria
Really? He took as much as fourteen shillings and sixpence with him?
According to Senator Chris Smith at the congressional hearing just now, 12-30 drones recently followed a coastguard boat, and 50 were seen by them coming in from the ocean.
Did they get any good photos or videos? Maybe they left their mobile phones behind?
I doubt they would be allowed to provide their own mobile footage. At the same hearing, the FBI have said it's "concerning" and that they can't explain it all as yet.
My own guess is most of this from Musk is he was seriously pissed at not being invited to Labour's invest in britain conference the other month. So he's determined to get Starmer.
Comments
From the Introduction:
One reason for poor NHS performance in recent years is the seemingly large fall in hospital productivity since the start of the pandemic. Put simply, the service is requiring more funding and more staff to deliver the same amount of hospital care. This year, for the first time, NHS England produced its own estimate of the productivity shortfall, estimating that acute hospital productivity in 2023–24 was 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels.
From the Conclusion:
NHS hospital productivity remains substantially below pre-pandemic levels. The productivity increase between last year and this year will not on its own deliver the scale of improvements in NHS performance promised at the election. NHS targets for increasing the number of treatments from the waiting list, produced as part of the previous government’s 2022 elective recovery plan, are still very likely to be missed this year. And at the current rate, you would need several more years’ improvements just to return the NHS to its pre-pandemic productivity levels, let alone exceed them. The NHS workforce plan is built on the assumption that the NHS can deliver continual improvements in labour productivity – without these, even the large planned increase in the NHS workforce would not, according to the service’s own estimates, be enough to meet demand for care.
And suggesting NHS deserve a real terms pay rise because output has increased in 2024 also requires you to accept there should have been pay cuts because output fell in the years before.
There should be a fantastically complex German compound noun for relatively simple linguistic errors that are personally and weirdly hard to overcome
Actually I’ll have a go:
"Sprachfehlerhartnäckigkeit" would be a fitting German compound noun for this concept, combining:
Sprach- (language/linguistic)
fehler- (error/mistake)
hartnäckigkeit (stubbornness/persistence)
This captures the idea of simple language mistakes that stubbornly persist despite one's best efforts to overcome them
If young people feel no stake in society, even when they study and work hard, then expect a proportion to radicalise.
People who feel failed by capitalism will look elsewhere for change.
Some insiders tell me the council was suffering a lot of other problems, and was on a path towards the 114 anyway, but they admit that the sudden timing of the announcement raised eyebrows.
One source said the inflated figure of £700m [on which basis the bankruptcy notice was issued] seemed to assume pay claims by all employees, which was never a possibility.
Perhaps slightly more relevant is that between 2010 and 2020 government funding to Birmingham council reduced by 77.8% https://blog.bham.ac.uk/cityredi/insights-into-birmingham-city-councils-spending-power-revenue-funding-and-spending-between-2010-11-and-2019-2020/
Nevertheless, fair play, there was more truth to your post than I initially thought.
Syria’s a nation which must be exhausted with war - and the early signs were of a genuine effort to do the right thing… possibly.
Mass bombing of not just military installations, but also administrative facilities, jeopardises a potential peaceful settlement.
But we are talking about Netanyahu. And he’s not even the worst in his government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WddJVy4y-8
Though I fear the last line will not come true:
"This sad old dictator must sooner or later
Flee so that you can be free
If you get rid of me
We can all be free"
Much amusement until I, a nerd, thought to look up "1, Buckingham Place" (the home address of The Prisoner).
Up flashed "THIS QUERY HAS BEEN BLOCKED AND LOGGED" on my green-screen terminal.
At which point I rapidly turned it off and claimed it had "gone a bit funny".
I still think it was someone even nerdier than me who had hard-coded it as a response. But I also faintly fret I was placed on a special list.
If the women workers wanted higher pay and another job was paying more then they should have been free to apply for the other job - if they got denied the other job due to their sex, then that would be discimination.
Paying people more for different jobs, because other jobs are paid more, is a complete and utter waste of money.
The default position is that we flag everything and the reporting goes to management / HR to deal with..
When a call centre staff member says they can't see anything unless you pass authentication that will be the case. They simply won't see the record until they enter the details they ask for and you provde the correct answer...
Nobody should be stopping any woman, or anyone else, from applying for or getting a higher paid job. That doesn't justify people keeping the job they've got and then demanding more money for it.
I certainly plan on ceasing working after I die.
Yet that was often the case...
I only learned the other week that placket is pronounced 'plack-ay'. Still sounds odd to me.
He wasn't my favourite person.
Equal rights for the undead!
I don't have a fucking clue about gibbet.
Does that help?
You should be a VP - doing the real work.
If a skilled job has plenty of supply of people willing to do the job, then its wages should be lower. That's supply and demand, not discrimination.
If women want a "similar" job's wages, they should apply for that similar job. If they don't get it because they're women, then that's discrimination - not paying a totally different job less.
The guy who'd tied his head down to the track with a leather belt was... especially something I wish I hadn't seen.
If a "similar" job has higher pay, why not apply for that job?
If its due to discrimination that they can't get that job, then that discrimination should be tackled.
If its because that other job has downsides that mean the job isn't wanted to be done, then maybe it deserves the higher pay rate it has.
Photos of Birmingham DHL fire suggest device could have downed plane
Images consistent with fire from magnesium-based device, suspected to be part of Russian sabotage plot
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/10/photos-of-birmingham-dhl-fire-suggest-device-could-have-downed-plane
Meanwhile, Starmer dithers over defence spending.
One of the pubs I worked in as a student had a very clear split between kitchen staff and front of house. Only front of house received the share of the tips jar. Only kitchen staff got the excess food. It was, I think a reasonable compromise. Front of house staff interacted with customers so earned the tips. The kitchen staff put the effort into the food.
But nowadays some chippy shit in the kitchen would take the pub to court for equal rights, or something…
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/gaza-independents-to-register-new-party/
But seriously, that's fucked up. On many levels.
I'm also feeling sorry for anyone who was on the 18:10 from Kings Lynn who are currently sat at Stevenage station with their train taken out of service and that's nothing compared to the poor driver.
Realtimetrains provides a LOT of information from which you can work out exactly what happened and when..
PBers who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £100k a year demanding public sector workers collect their rubbish for peanuts is one of the conundrums of our post Brexit Britain.
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/fe88b5e18c6443c7afaf6e32f8432687
If a "similar" job has higher pay, why don't people apply for that job? Maybe its skills are rarer, and thus more valuable, if they're not doing so?
edit - Blooming heck someone (and I know who) messed that up a bit
The idea that the bus driver may have welcomed the opportunity to have time off to cope is ludicrous.
But that’s crazy talk, I suppose.
I can imagine there are perfectly normal, well-adjusted, people who would be sickened and appalled and traumatised by it happening to them.
I can also imagine there are twisted individuals who would welcome it happening to them so they can have time off. Especially if they've never been in the position its happened to them.
Of a dictatorship.
Pretty easy to have bank accounts in places which don’t care, I’d guess.
But yes, 135 bn is just daft.
According to Senator Chris Smith at the congressional hearing just now, 12-30 drones recently followed a coastguard boat, and 50 were seen by them coming in from the ocean.
* I'm trolling, task and finish is all but dead.
In our council we have 2 teams running a 4 day week but we are also a very small council and I'm sure the movement from bags to bins resulted in some people losing their jobs and others having expanded days.
It does mean that outside of Christmas we have standard collections on our usual day of the week.
He would tell stories of finding bits of human a fair distance down the track after a suicide. He had a certain amount of gallows humour about it, but that was just to hide the shock. He also said cleaners back at depots would find bits under the trains.
You couldn't pay me enough to do that.
Of course, the parallel is inexact. Corbyn is waaaay posher than Macdonald. And of course, he lost both his elections as leader.
Corbyn – with his 40-year membership of Labour – is likely to be more reluctant.
He was a small businessman, with his own opticians shop, and wife who also works in the private sector. Sure he cares deeply about Gaza, but not only Gaza. He raised both relief for the victims of the Sudanese War and ending the 2 child limit in Parliament this week. He has a work rate on constituency matters that shames other MPs too, the polar opposite to grifters like Farage.
I think Labour will struggle to win the seat back.
Looks like he has managed to do rather better out of his regime collapsing than Saddam, Ceaucescu and Gaddafi did.
Not only not being executed or killed like them but also taking vast sums with him to maintain himself and his family
That isn't to say he will be destitute but I suspect he will have $x0m to $xbn rather than $x0bn....
If he were, we'd be well into 10,000 posts on where on earth Assad will be able to spend all his cash.
It would be 12 shillings and a tanner.
At the same hearing, the FBI have said it's "concerning" and that they can't explain it all as yet.
Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social
·
15m
Elon Musk following the local elections now ...
https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3lcy6eh7lns2b
My own guess is most of this from Musk is he was seriously pissed at not being invited to Labour's invest in britain conference the other month. So he's determined to get Starmer.