@ONS Public service productivity in Quarter 2 2024 is estimated to be 8.5% below its pre-#COVID19 pandemic peak in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2019.
And this is our problem in a nutshell. Our public services are falling apart, not because of cuts in spending which have been modest to non existent) but because we are getting less and less for our money. That is the problem the last government largely ducked and which this government has to come to terms with. If they don't no amount of additional taxation will be enough.
And the multi billion pound question is... why?
Is it about a lack of the smack of firm management, is it the money spent on diversity consultants, or is it that we have solved bottlenecks with the short term fix of extra bodies rather than equipping staff with better tools to achieve more?
My guess (based on the way that capital budgets always get raided to fix crises, and have been for decades, and we're going to be under Hunt) is that the last diagnosis is the main problem.
I think from my limited experience that there is a lack of quality management, that WFH has in fact reduced people's output despite all the claims to the contrary, that it has encouraged a mind set that this job is for my benefit rather than the benefit of the people to whom the service that is being provided, that it is my mental health and work life balance that is important, not the quality of life of the service users I am supposedly working for and, perhaps above all, the never ending multiplication of emails to masses of people who don't need to receive them but get interrupted anyway.
None of this will stop me from WFH today, of course.
David, you could have just said the inherently lazy barstewards will take the piss when allowed to work at home. The diligent productive people will do even more work.
I get more done at home, no question. Combination of longer hours (I'll some of the commute time) and fewer interruptions.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.
At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.
I think when there is a profit margin on the line, there is far less private companies who literally pay people to do nothing because they forgot about them though...
The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.
Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.
Let’s presume for one moment Angela Rayners wheeze of allowing public sector workers to do the same job for four days a week comes to pass. How would this impact productivity ?
Be a 20% drop minimum , and given less than 100% at present it can only make things worse as they need to employ more slackers to take up the work not being done as a result of the idiotic policy unless they get rid of 20% of the slackers if it only takes 4 days to do what they do currently.
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
Can you explain how you pay a mortgage from a poor income. The whole point is they will need to sell at least part of farm to pay it so making it even poorer income etc. Idiocy thought up by morons. It should be tax applied when any sale is made , inheriting land is worth nothing unless you sell.
How can the land be worth so much if it is impossible to generate any income from it?
Inheriting any possession is worth nothing unless you sell.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.
At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.
I think when there is a profit margin on the line, there is far less private companies who literally pay people to do nothing because they forgot about them though...
@ONS Public service productivity in Quarter 2 2024 is estimated to be 8.5% below its pre-#COVID19 pandemic peak in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2019.
And this is our problem in a nutshell. Our public services are falling apart, not because of cuts in spending which have been modest to non existent) but because we are getting less and less for our money. That is the problem the last government largely ducked and which this government has to come to terms with. If they don't no amount of additional taxation will be enough.
And the multi billion pound question is... why?
Is it about a lack of the smack of firm management, is it the money spent on diversity consultants, or is it that we have solved bottlenecks with the short term fix of extra bodies rather than equipping staff with better tools to achieve more?
My guess (based on the way that capital budgets always get raided to fix crises, and have been for decades, and we're going to be under Hunt) is that the last diagnosis is the main problem.
I think from my limited experience that there is a lack of quality management, that WFH has in fact reduced people's output despite all the claims to the contrary, that it has encouraged a mind set that this job is for my benefit rather than the benefit of the people to whom the service that is being provided, that it is my mental health and work life balance that is important, not the quality of life of the service users I am supposedly working for and, perhaps above all, the never ending multiplication of emails to masses of people who don't need to receive them but get interrupted anyway.
None of this will stop me from WFH today, of course.
David, you could have just said the inherently lazy barstewards will take the piss when allowed to work at home. The diligent productive people will do even more work.
I get more done at home, no question. Combination of longer hours (I'll some of the commute time) and fewer interruptions.
I’m a million more times more efficient at home because I don’t get distracted. But that’s why I go in, to get distracted.
The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.
Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.
You'd probably have to boost salaries a quite bit to make up for the additional uncertainty - there would be a lot of collateral damage along the way, and the pensions aren't worth as much if you could randomly lose your job in your 40s/50s.
Great solution , pay the lazy feckers more to make up for them being asked to actually put in a day's work.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.
At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.
I think when there is a profit margin on the line, there is far less private companies who literally pay people to do nothing because they forgot about them though...
Gardening leave?
There is a lot of gardening leave on Whitehall, but sadly also just a lot of resource management ineptitude.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.
At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.
You don't think it's likely, inevitable even, given profit motive, that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector? In any case I don't give a monkey's about a private company being inefficient unless I'm a shareholder, I'm not paying for that out of taxes.
@ONS Public service productivity in Quarter 2 2024 is estimated to be 8.5% below its pre-#COVID19 pandemic peak in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2019.
And this is our problem in a nutshell. Our public services are falling apart, not because of cuts in spending which have been modest to non existent) but because we are getting less and less for our money. That is the problem the last government largely ducked and which this government has to come to terms with. If they don't no amount of additional taxation will be enough.
And the multi billion pound question is... why?
Is it about a lack of the smack of firm management, is it the money spent on diversity consultants, or is it that we have solved bottlenecks with the short term fix of extra bodies rather than equipping staff with better tools to achieve more?
My guess (based on the way that capital budgets always get raided to fix crises, and have been for decades, and we're going to be under Hunt) is that the last diagnosis is the main problem.
I think from my limited experience that there is a lack of quality management, that WFH has in fact reduced people's output despite all the claims to the contrary, that it has encouraged a mind set that this job is for my benefit rather than the benefit of the people to whom the service that is being provided, that it is my mental health and work life balance that is important, not the quality of life of the service users I am supposedly working for and, perhaps above all, the never ending multiplication of emails to masses of people who don't need to receive them but get interrupted anyway.
None of this will stop me from WFH today, of course.
David, you could have just said the inherently lazy barstewards will take the piss when allowed to work at home. The diligent productive people will do even more work.
I get more done at home, no question. Combination of longer hours (I'll some of the commute time) and fewer interruptions.
The problem is that WFH is treated like many things in the UK - something to be done by properly amateur, generalist managers. Who have no clue.
In order to work effectively from home, you need
- An effective home setup - Effective comminutions (not the same as setup) - Management that has the skills to deal with remote working - Work structured to allow remote working
Sending everyone home with laptop doesn't fucking count.
Also, WFH needs to be flexible - if you are bringing new people into the team, for example, you can onboard them faster and better in person.
@ONS Public service productivity in Quarter 2 2024 is estimated to be 8.5% below its pre-#COVID19 pandemic peak in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2019.
And this is our problem in a nutshell. Our public services are falling apart, not because of cuts in spending which have been modest to non existent) but because we are getting less and less for our money. That is the problem the last government largely ducked and which this government has to come to terms with. If they don't no amount of additional taxation will be enough.
And the multi billion pound question is... why?
Is it about a lack of the smack of firm management, is it the money spent on diversity consultants, or is it that we have solved bottlenecks with the short term fix of extra bodies rather than equipping staff with better tools to achieve more?
My guess (based on the way that capital budgets always get raided to fix crises, and have been for decades, and we're going to be under Hunt) is that the last diagnosis is the main problem.
I think from my limited experience that there is a lack of quality management, that WFH has in fact reduced people's output despite all the claims to the contrary, that it has encouraged a mind set that this job is for my benefit rather than the benefit of the people to whom the service that is being provided, that it is my mental health and work life balance that is important, not the quality of life of the service users I am supposedly working for and, perhaps above all, the never ending multiplication of emails to masses of people who don't need to receive them but get interrupted anyway.
None of this will stop me from WFH today, of course.
David, you could have just said the inherently lazy barstewards will take the piss when allowed to work at home. The diligent productive people will do even more work.
I get more done at home, no question. Combination of longer hours (I'll some of the commute time) and fewer interruptions.
The problem is that WFH is treated like many things in the UK - something to be done by properly amateur, generalist managers. Who have no clue.
In order to work effectively from home, you need
- An effective home setup - Effective comminutions (not the same as setup) - Management that has the skills to deal with remote working - Work structured to allow remote working
Sending everyone home with laptop doesn't fucking count.
Also, WFH needs to be flexible - if you are bringing new people into the team, for example, you can onboard them faster and better in person.
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.
Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.
I expect more tumbleweed sadly.
I know you, like me, are knee deep in this.
An illustration of the waste:
My father is still at home with regular carer visits. He falls from time to time. Inevitable given his condition. No biggee. Check he's OK, help him up on sofa and make him a cuppa you might think.
But no. The carers will not apply common sense. They immediately call 999. Ambulance is booked but may be 4 - 6 hours. Dad expected to sit on floor for all this time, waiting to be helped up.So I (in another part of the country) get a call from the care agency, looking to be relieved. WTF do they expect me to do? I ring around best I can and - with luck - get a neighbour on phone who goes and helps him up. So I tell carer to cancel the ambulance. 'No' I'm told they can't do that. So now we have an ambulance coming at some point for an emergency which never existed. This has happened six times over last couple of months.
What a waste of time for the ambulance service. How many times is this scenario being played out across the country?
It's about discretion. A relative was working in care facility. She lifted a patient, by herself. Just off the bed, patient still over the bed. 6 inches or so. The patient was a little old lady. My relative likes to bench far more than the patients weight, at the gym. Risk to patient zero. Risk to my relative zero. Patient was in distress.....
Fired of course.
This is a huge issue. I have the same with ambulances being called.
The crew tell me they spend half the day dealing with this kind of stuff. No wonder wait times are 8 hours etc etc.
Agencies refuse to pick people off the floor. I even have equipment which I use myself to get relative off floor (i can provide details if anyone is interested).
They wont use that.
I assume this is all to do with modern insurance and risk and legal liability and all that shite.
But the nhs is picking up the pieces.
We've had the same thing. It is one of the reasons we've gone outside of the 'proper' agencies now.
We have a slide sheet and a lowerable bed which allows us to get the patient on to it without lifting, just a bit of dragging. The bed can then be jacked up.
Would the formal agency staff do that? No. Ambulance please.
Even for someone who just slid slowly onto the floor.
While Bademoch has promised to reverse the IHT changes for farmers and the VAT on school fees, she does not seem to have done the same for the end of the universal winter fuel allowance.
It is Tory policy to reverse the winter fuel cut too
It's labour's policy in Scotland - let Starmer explain that one
I'll be interested to see how Mr Sarwar promises to do that without budget cuts elsewhere, as the Barnett consequential of the DWP WFA has vanished (hence the SNP having to follow suit).
NB that this isn't grandstanding for the GE but the rather sooner Holyrood election which however isn't till May 2026, so time for him to quietly forget about it.
Tbf, the Barnett consequentials for Scotland are substantial this time round. There's enough cash to do it and the policy is now devolved (PAWHP).
Sure, but only the jmeans tested kind, and how can they do it except the same way as London? Which the SNP would have to do anyway. So no difference there. Troiuble is, any other way of doing it costs money to administer. Unless they do it as a tax allowance which is taxable? But then the SG don't get the tax back and the budget for that won't therefore balance.
Edit: also, the SG taxation powers are very limited. Might not allow the SG to organise anyuthing sensible to deal with the WFP replacement.
I think there is now enough slack to do it on a universal basis. But yes, in the medium term it would either be universal or PC-based. We kinda need a "Scottish Pensioner Payment" that is similar to the Scottish Child Payment rates of eligibility.
In theory the SG can change income tax however they want. They are going to get fewer/less receipts anyway due to depressing effect of employer NICs changes on salaries.
They are already getting less due to the crazy idea of raising top tax levels. How did the clowns think that would attract high paying jobs to Scotland
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.
At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.
You don't think it's likely, inevitable even, given profit motive, that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector? In any case I don't give a monkey's about a private company being inefficient unless I'm a shareholder, I'm not paying for that out of taxes.
I think that’s the argument made but my own experience says it isn’t true for larger organisations.
Vodafone is full of teams that literally do nothing but tread water. Ditto other large organisations where I’ve worked. It’s why I got fed up and ended up at start ups where I don’t have this problem.
Your argument about paying for it out of taxes is a fair one but I was only talking about efficiency.
So no, I don’t think the profit motive makes a company efficient beyond a certain point.
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
Can you explain how you pay a mortgage from a poor income. The whole point is they will need to sell at least part of farm to pay it so making it even poorer income etc. Idiocy thought up by morons. It should be tax applied when any sale is made , inheriting land is worth nothing unless you sell.
How can the land be worth so much if it is impossible to generate any income from it?
Inheriting any possession is worth nothing unless you sell.
Buy some agricultural land. Rent it out. Try and get planning permission.
The rent will pay the mortgage on the land. So, after a couple of decades, you own an asset outright.
If you get planning permission, you will be rich.
It's a no-lose investment. When you add in solar farming.....
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Is it me or has Israel-Palestine completely gone off the news radar since the US election ?
Muslim-Americans (pre-election). "Biden is not doing enough for the Palestinians! We will vote against Kamala to send a message!" Muslim-Americans (post-election). "Oh shit"
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Generalisations about companies, public and private, tend to break down. I worked for over a decade for Ciba-Geigy/Novartis in Switzerland - very large multinational pharma companies. They weren't perfect but in general their decision-making was pretty swift. It was generally decentralised and people who made mistakes weren't fired unless they made a habit of it. In general I was happy to work there (in middle management) and only left when I was elected to Parliament in Britain (I spent most of the last year coming over to campaign at weekends, ultimately defeating the nice but sleepy Tory MP who thought his 16% majority was safe).
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.
Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.
I expect more tumbleweed sadly.
I know you, like me, are knee deep in this.
An illustration of the waste:
My father is still at home with regular carer visits. He falls from time to time. Inevitable given his condition. No biggee. Check he's OK, help him up on sofa and make him a cuppa you might think.
But no. The carers will not apply common sense. They immediately call 999. Ambulance is booked but may be 4 - 6 hours. Dad expected to sit on floor for all this time, waiting to be helped up.So I (in another part of the country) get a call from the care agency, looking to be relieved. WTF do they expect me to do? I ring around best I can and - with luck - get a neighbour on phone who goes and helps him up. So I tell carer to cancel the ambulance. 'No' I'm told they can't do that. So now we have an ambulance coming at some point for an emergency which never existed. This has happened six times over last couple of months.
What a waste of time for the ambulance service. How many times is this scenario being played out across the country?
It's about discretion. A relative was working in care facility. She lifted a patient, by herself. Just off the bed, patient still over the bed. 6 inches or so. The patient was a little old lady. My relative likes to bench far more than the patients weight, at the gym. Risk to patient zero. Risk to my relative zero. Patient was in distress.....
Fired of course.
This is a huge issue. I have the same with ambulances being called.
The crew tell me they spend half the day dealing with this kind of stuff. No wonder wait times are 8 hours etc etc.
Agencies refuse to pick people off the floor. I even have equipment which I use myself to get relative off floor (i can provide details if anyone is interested).
They wont use that.
I assume this is all to do with modern insurance and risk and legal liability and all that shite.
But the nhs is picking up the pieces.
And meanwhile they are happy for the old and frail to be sat/lying on the floor for hours and hours in bewildered discomfort. It's quite shocking really.
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
Agreed re Bell’s tweet - a £3m house is comparable to a £3m farm if the homeowner can only make any income from activity done at the house and no other job, that the home has to hire or buy very expensive machinery to allow that activity and very expensive items that the expensive. Machinery works with to make even that small income.
I’m guessing Torsten’s parents don’t do this with their home and instead were able to leave it daily to go to other jobs which earner far more than the farmer will earn.
I would also be surprised if there were more people out there who would take on the massive burden of a £3m farm than would want to buy a £3m house.
I presume a £3m farm is worth the same as a £3m home... because that's how money works! It's fungible.
The idea that a £3m farm is more burden than a £3m home... well, possibly, but it's also more reward. It can't just be more burden, because then it wouldn't be worth the same.
A £3m diamond is worth the same as a £3m house - there are very few people who will splash out £3m on a diamond compared to a house the same value.
A £3m farm is likely to have a lot more land than a £3m house - should the house then be slashed in value because it has less land or are these two very different things where the monetary value is based on many different factors.
Again, we surely go down different routes depending what happens after inheritance.
Someone inherits their parents' £3m house and sells it, gets hit with IHT. Someone inherits their parents' £3m farm and sells it... well, why should they not pay the same* IHT? Someone inherits their parents £3m farm and farms it - we can have a discussion.
There's a further complication to the second two scenarios, if inheritor has lived on and worked on farm all their life then they have contributed to the value of the inheritance, in a way in which most people inheriting a house have not (unless they've spent a lot of time doing it up for their parents). But perhaps that aspect needs to be recognised either in simple, IHT-free partial transfers before death without retained benefit rules or some formal reduction in IHT recognising the contribution to value.
*under the present proposals, they don't anyway, I think?
I think it is simpler than that. Apply CGT on the sale of farms. It removes the whole issue of IHT as long as the value of the asset is not being realised.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Generalisations about companies, public and private, tend to break down. I worked for over a decade for Ciba-Geigy/Novartis in Switzerland - very large multinational pharma companies. They weren't perfect but in general their decision-making was pretty swift. It was generally decentralised and people who made mistakes weren't fired unless they made a habit of it. In general I was happy to work there (in middle management) and only left when I was elected to Parliament in Britain (I spent most of the last year coming over to campaign at weekends, ultimately defeating the nice but sleepy Tory MP who thought his 16% majority was safe).
Interesting counter, thanks Nick.
Perhaps it does just differ organisation to organisation.
Um, no. There's nothing wrong with a Conservative pledging to reverse socialist policies. And, indeed, this is part of what they'll need to do to rebuild their coalition.
Oh, and first.
You are right.
I totally agree with your post. It’s an appalling header. The last paragraph doesn’t even make grammatical sense does it? Is it “does” in this sentence that torpedoes the paragraph “her actions on this tax is further evidence of that does”. ?
TSE’s Kemi Attack is blatantly Kemi Centric completely ignoring she is figure head of a broad coalition on this one - LibDems side by side on platform with Kemi, Greenpeace and Just Stop Oil side by side with Kemi too on this one - TSE ignored that bit - Kemi is heading a broad alliance of all those in society who care and give a damn. All Labour have on their side is Treasury, IFS, BBC and Sky and ITV with out of date figures and dodgy fact checking. A state broadcaster should be focussing on financial stress, bankruptcies and suicides in farming. The Tractors should blockade the ports and oil refineries next as promised to make them shamed at their mistake of supporting help taken away where more help should be coming in. That’s the bottom line.
PS this weather is bad news for sheep. Hashtag difficult week.
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Is it me or has Israel-Palestine completely gone off the news radar since the US election ?
Muslim-Americans (pre-election). "Biden is not doing enough for the Palestinians! We will vote against Kamala to send a message!" Muslim-Americans (post-election). "Oh shit"
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Lol. In your list of jobs 'rich fuckers denigrate' do you have farmers?
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.
Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.
I expect more tumbleweed sadly.
Social care is the real destroyer of inheritances, not IHT.
Only if you need residential care for dementia, at home care is still exempt after May scrapped the dementia tax.
Personally I favour an insurance model for social care like the Japanese
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Yeah. Nothing like a colourful, ribald post to get a few likes!
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.
Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.
I expect more tumbleweed sadly.
I know you, like me, are knee deep in this.
An illustration of the waste:
My father is still at home with regular carer visits. He falls from time to time. Inevitable given his condition. No biggee. Check he's OK, help him up on sofa and make him a cuppa you might think.
But no. The carers will not apply common sense. They immediately call 999. Ambulance is booked but may be 4 - 6 hours. Dad expected to sit on floor for all this time, waiting to be helped up.So I (in another part of the country) get a call from the care agency, looking to be relieved. WTF do they expect me to do? I ring around best I can and - with luck - get a neighbour on phone who goes and helps him up. So I tell carer to cancel the ambulance. 'No' I'm told they can't do that. So now we have an ambulance coming at some point for an emergency which never existed. This has happened six times over last couple of months.
What a waste of time for the ambulance service. How many times is this scenario being played out across the country?
It's about discretion. A relative was working in care facility. She lifted a patient, by herself. Just off the bed, patient still over the bed. 6 inches or so. The patient was a little old lady. My relative likes to bench far more than the patients weight, at the gym. Risk to patient zero. Risk to my relative zero. Patient was in distress.....
Fired of course.
This is a huge issue. I have the same with ambulances being called.
The crew tell me they spend half the day dealing with this kind of stuff. No wonder wait times are 8 hours etc etc.
Agencies refuse to pick people off the floor. I even have equipment which I use myself to get relative off floor (i can provide details if anyone is interested).
They wont use that.
I assume this is all to do with modern insurance and risk and legal liability and all that shite.
But the nhs is picking up the pieces.
And meanwhile they are happy for the old and frail to be sat/lying on the floor for hours and hours in bewildered discomfort. It's quite shocking really.
It is, as @Cyclefree and myself have noted, because of the attempts to replace human decency and discretion with rules.
If you pick the little old lady up, while working for an organisation, you will be fired. And probably not work in that area again.
So the result of all that process, all those files... a little old lady lying on the floor. Whose stopped crying, because she has run out of energy to cry. Just lying still like an animal that has given up.
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
The housing shortage is primarily driven by your favourite addiction: immigration.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
I worked for a global megacorp for many years and most of its departments seemed to be in perpetual low-level conflict with each other, and deliberately so. It is often hard to recognise the idealised versions of private sector companies that some advance.
It is this failure to recognise how things actually work that leads to the public sector's biggest failing: top-down reorganisations. Labour's John Reid told us the Home Office was not fit for purpose, yet post break-up, crime and immigration are out of control. Likewise decennial NHS reforms from Thatcher to Lansley.
Even if reforms are a good idea on paper, management or ministers must account for the cost of implementation.
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
Agreed re Bell’s tweet - a £3m house is comparable to a £3m farm if the homeowner can only make any income from activity done at the house and no other job, that the home has to hire or buy very expensive machinery to allow that activity and very expensive items that the expensive. Machinery works with to make even that small income.
I’m guessing Torsten’s parents don’t do this with their home and instead were able to leave it daily to go to other jobs which earner far more than the farmer will earn.
I would also be surprised if there were more people out there who would take on the massive burden of a £3m farm than would want to buy a £3m house.
I presume a £3m farm is worth the same as a £3m home... because that's how money works! It's fungible.
The idea that a £3m farm is more burden than a £3m home... well, possibly, but it's also more reward. It can't just be more burden, because then it wouldn't be worth the same.
A £3m diamond is worth the same as a £3m house - there are very few people who will splash out £3m on a diamond compared to a house the same value.
A £3m farm is likely to have a lot more land than a £3m house - should the house then be slashed in value because it has less land or are these two very different things where the monetary value is based on many different factors.
Again, we surely go down different routes depending what happens after inheritance.
Someone inherits their parents' £3m house and sells it, gets hit with IHT. Someone inherits their parents' £3m farm and sells it... well, why should they not pay the same* IHT? Someone inherits their parents £3m farm and farms it - we can have a discussion.
There's a further complication to the second two scenarios, if inheritor has lived on and worked on farm all their life then they have contributed to the value of the inheritance, in a way in which most people inheriting a house have not (unless they've spent a lot of time doing it up for their parents). But perhaps that aspect needs to be recognised either in simple, IHT-free partial transfers before death without retained benefit rules or some formal reduction in IHT recognising the contribution to value.
*under the present proposals, they don't anyway, I think?
I think it is simpler than that. Apply CGT on the sale of farms. It removes the whole issue of IHT as long as the value of the asset is not being realised.
Yes, that seems worth exploring, or suspending IHT on farms until the land is sold, with the IHT written off after 25 years.
With half of agricultural land being sold to non-farmers last year there is a real issue to be tackled.
Is it me or has Israel-Palestine completely gone off the news radar since the US election ?
Muslim-Americans (pre-election). "Biden is not doing enough for the Palestinians! We will vote against Kamala to send a message!" Muslim-Americans (post-election). "Oh shit"
Latinos (pre-election). "We are here to stay and Biden is not doing enough for us! We will vote against Kamala to send a message!" Latinos (post-election). "Oh shit"
Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 1h has anyone come up with a way of not having to deal with British weather from November to March without - and this is the crucial point - being wealthy
Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 1h people talk about seasonal depression but increasingly believe that what I have is seasonal fury, just apoplectic at the dampness, furious at how early it gets dark, spitting feathers at the rain
'The US embassy in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv said it will be closed today after it received “specific information of a potential significant air attack.”
The embassy told its employees to shelter in place while advising US citizens to be prepared to immediately shelter in the event an air alert is announced, according to an advisory issued on its website.'
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
The housing shortage is primarily driven by your favourite addiction: immigration.
The housing shortage is actually driven by a system for building properties that restricts the level of building. Deliberately. And to far less than is required.
You can buy agricultural land, right now, for a few grand an acre. Within walking distance of a station an hour out of Central London. The sale price of a couple of houses on that acre would be 7 figures......
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
The housing shortage is primarily driven by your favourite addiction: immigration.
You have to go right back to mid 1982 to find the last reduction in population (England and Wales):
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
There is considerable supply of people willing to be couriers.
I have far more trouble getting tradesmen; most of whom are paid about the same as I used to be as management consultant.
Market economics innit.
Edit to add: the country would be in a better place, IMO, if more of the middle classes paid people to do some of the jobs they begrudgingly do. And if they were more likely to use private education and healthcare.
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
The housing shortage is primarily driven by your favourite addiction: immigration.
The housing shortage is actually driven by a system for building properties that restricts the level of building. Deliberately. And to far less than is required.
You can buy agricultural land, right now, for a few grand an acre. Within walking distance of a station an hour out of Central London. The sale price of a couple of houses on that acre would be 7 figures......
Also not helped that there aren't enough builders etc. being trained to actually make the planned increase in housebuilding happen...
The nasty fringe on here who attack the “lazy” public sector on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, and with no reference to any of the work done on why “public sector productivity” metrics are bollocks, do annoy me. The myth of the “efficient private sector” crumbles instantly if you’ve worked in or with it at senior levels.
Large private firms are at least as inefficient and prone to error, but don’t have to disclose those errors as much, even when publicly traded, so pretend they are not. Small firms are often quite efficient, but also doing something quite simple and niche, where it’s a lot easier to do that.
In fact there are almost no private sector firms attempting to do anything half as complex as a Government Department or the NHS, or managing their way through as much ambiguity and change.
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
The housing shortage is primarily driven by your favourite addiction: immigration.
You have to go right back to mid 1982 to find the last reduction in population (England and Wales):
Properly interpreted, that graph shows just how crazy the effect of recent immigration has been. We've had sustained levels of population expansion that match the early 60s peak of the baby-boom ever since 2005.
Is it me or has Israel-Palestine completely gone off the news radar since the US election ?
Muslim-Americans (pre-election). "Biden is not doing enough for the Palestinians! We will vote against Kamala to send a message!" Muslim-Americans (post-election). "Oh shit"
Latinos (pre-election). "We are here to stay and Biden is not doing enough for us! We will vote against Kamala to send a message!" Latinos (post-election). "Oh shit"
I saw one vox pox with a latino who when asked about his undocumented mother and whether he was worried replied that they wouldn't deport her, she's been her years and worked all her life and has no criminal record.
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.
Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.
I expect more tumbleweed sadly.
Social care is the real destroyer of inheritances, not IHT.
Only if you need residential care for dementia, at home care is still exempt after May scrapped the dementia tax.
Personally I favour an insurance model for social care like the Japanese
I’ve never understood why the idea doesn’t take off. It makes total sense to me. We all face the risk of a long life in a home, but in practice only a minority get there. Classic case for insurance.
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
Agreed re Bell’s tweet - a £3m house is comparable to a £3m farm if the homeowner can only make any income from activity done at the house and no other job, that the home has to hire or buy very expensive machinery to allow that activity and very expensive items that the expensive. Machinery works with to make even that small income.
I’m guessing Torsten’s parents don’t do this with their home and instead were able to leave it daily to go to other jobs which earner far more than the farmer will earn.
I would also be surprised if there were more people out there who would take on the massive burden of a £3m farm than would want to buy a £3m house.
I presume a £3m farm is worth the same as a £3m home... because that's how money works! It's fungible.
The idea that a £3m farm is more burden than a £3m home... well, possibly, but it's also more reward. It can't just be more burden, because then it wouldn't be worth the same.
A £3m diamond is worth the same as a £3m house - there are very few people who will splash out £3m on a diamond compared to a house the same value.
A £3m farm is likely to have a lot more land than a £3m house - should the house then be slashed in value because it has less land or are these two very different things where the monetary value is based on many different factors.
Again, we surely go down different routes depending what happens after inheritance.
Someone inherits their parents' £3m house and sells it, gets hit with IHT. Someone inherits their parents' £3m farm and sells it... well, why should they not pay the same* IHT? Someone inherits their parents £3m farm and farms it - we can have a discussion.
There's a further complication to the second two scenarios, if inheritor has lived on and worked on farm all their life then they have contributed to the value of the inheritance, in a way in which most people inheriting a house have not (unless they've spent a lot of time doing it up for their parents). But perhaps that aspect needs to be recognised either in simple, IHT-free partial transfers before death without retained benefit rules or some formal reduction in IHT recognising the contribution to value.
*under the present proposals, they don't anyway, I think?
I think it is simpler than that. Apply CGT on the sale of farms. It removes the whole issue of IHT as long as the value of the asset is not being realised.
Yes, that seems worth exploring, or suspending IHT on farms until the land is sold, with the IHT written off after 25 years.
With half of agricultural land being sold to non-farmers last year there is a real issue to be tackled.
Suspending IHT until cash is realised raises no tax quickly - I honestly believe that the Labour Party thinks farmers have cash in bank to write HMRC a cheque.
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.
At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.
You don't think it's likely, inevitable even, given profit motive, that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector? In any case I don't give a monkey's about a private company being inefficient unless I'm a shareholder, I'm not paying for that out of taxes.
That's exactly right. Being efficient means maximising the output from a given amount of land, labour and capital inputs. It is a constant, tedious, demanding grind and even when you put in the effort you still need judgement to get it right, because it involves making decisions about the future.
It is much easier to demand a subsidy from a spineless government or whack prices up on captive customers. Then inefficiencies get built in and you quickly end up with business that serve their employees and shareholders, not their customers.
The two defences against those practices are competition and the possibility of bankruptcy. Competition without bankruptcy is no use, like for instance a nationalised industry in a competitive industry. Nor is bankruptcy without competition - then you just get fat monopolists. Sometimes effective economic regulation can mimic competitive discipline, but it is very difficult and always a second best option.
The competitive, dynamic economy we desperately need, needs as much competition and as little state support as possible. Unfortunately of course this government is pulling in the opposite direction, and the last one was hardly a vigorous champion of free enterprise. We may get a saner government one day.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.
At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.
You don't think it's likely, inevitable even, given profit motive, that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector? In any case I don't give a monkey's about a private company being inefficient unless I'm a shareholder, I'm not paying for that out of taxes.
That's exactly right. Being efficient means maximising the output from a given amount of land, labour and capital inputs. It is a constant, tedious, demanding grind and even when you put in the effort you still need judgement to get it right, because it involves making decisions about the future.
It is much easier to demand a subsidy from a spineless government or whack prices up on captive customers. Then inefficiencies get built in and you quickly end up with business that serve their employees and shareholders, not their customers.
The two defences against those practices are competition and the possibility of bankruptcy. Competition without bankruptcy is no use, like for instance a nationalised industry in a competitive industry. Nor is bankruptcy without competition - then you just get fat monopolists. Sometimes effective economic regulation can mimic competitive discipline, but it is very difficult and always a second best option.
The competitive, dynamic economy we desperately need, needs as much competition and as little state support as possible. Unfortunately of course this government is pulling in the opposite direction, and the last one was hardly a vigorous champion of free enterprise. We may get a saner government one day.
The 'saner government' may come out of necessity - when the money runs dry.
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
The housing shortage is primarily driven by your favourite addiction: immigration.
How is immigration my "favourite addiction"? Show me a post illustrating this supposed position.
In the US, Democrats and liberals quoted Trump to show him in the worst possible light. This header feels similar about Kemi. It didn't work in the US and I don't think it will work here - but there are over 4 years to go to the next election, so why don't we just wait and see how bad things get under Labour before we get too worked up.
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Legendary rant. Love it! 👌
I've had a scan through the thread and I'm struggling to see who or what exactly TFS is referring to.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.
At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.
You don't think it's likely, inevitable even, given profit motive, that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector? In any case I don't give a monkey's about a private company being inefficient unless I'm a shareholder, I'm not paying for that out of taxes.
That's exactly right. Being efficient means maximising the output from a given amount of land, labour and capital inputs. It is a constant, tedious, demanding grind and even when you put in the effort you still need judgement to get it right, because it involves making decisions about the future.
It is much easier to demand a subsidy from a spineless government or whack prices up on captive customers. Then inefficiencies get built in and you quickly end up with business that serve their employees and shareholders, not their customers.
The two defences against those practices are competition and the possibility of bankruptcy. Competition without bankruptcy is no use, like for instance a nationalised industry in a competitive industry. Nor is bankruptcy without competition - then you just get fat monopolists. Sometimes effective economic regulation can mimic competitive discipline, but it is very difficult and always a second best option.
The competitive, dynamic economy we desperately need, needs as much competition and as little state support as possible. Unfortunately of course this government is pulling in the opposite direction, and the last one was hardly a vigorous champion of free enterprise. We may get a saner government one day.
The 'saner government' may come out of necessity - when the money runs dry.
I do worry about the Government furlough genie being out of the bottle come the next recession, and everyone expecting their job to be preserved.
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.
Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.
I expect more tumbleweed sadly.
Social care is the real destroyer of inheritances, not IHT.
Only if you need residential care for dementia, at home care is still exempt after May scrapped the dementia tax.
Personally I favour an insurance model for social care like the Japanese
I’ve never understood why the idea doesn’t take off. It makes total sense to me. We all face the risk of a long life in a home, but in practice only a minority get there. Classic case for insurance.
"at home care is still exempt"
Not sure what this refers to. Care in your own home is certainly NOT exempt. If you have savings or assets over £23K you pay for the whole shooting match yourself. The exemption, which is what you might mean, is the actual house you live in.
Even those whose savings are not at £23K (obvs a lot of people across the population) may find their family somehow has to find top-up money as the council is struggling to find an agency who will work at their rates and turn up for more than a quick bish-bosh-bash 15min visit.
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Legendary rant. Love it! 👌
I've had a scan through the thread and I'm struggling to see who or what exactly TFS is referring to.
I thought the same.
I wondered whether I'm expected to wipe my father's arse*? Given the distance involved this is not possible. Even if I had Mr Tickle arms.
* for the record I have, many times, but the less said the better. I just think of Starmer.
Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.
What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?
The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.
Agreed re Bell’s tweet - a £3m house is comparable to a £3m farm if the homeowner can only make any income from activity done at the house and no other job, that the home has to hire or buy very expensive machinery to allow that activity and very expensive items that the expensive. Machinery works with to make even that small income.
I’m guessing Torsten’s parents don’t do this with their home and instead were able to leave it daily to go to other jobs which earner far more than the farmer will earn.
I would also be surprised if there were more people out there who would take on the massive burden of a £3m farm than would want to buy a £3m house.
I presume a £3m farm is worth the same as a £3m home... because that's how money works! It's fungible.
The idea that a £3m farm is more burden than a £3m home... well, possibly, but it's also more reward. It can't just be more burden, because then it wouldn't be worth the same.
A £3m diamond is worth the same as a £3m house - there are very few people who will splash out £3m on a diamond compared to a house the same value.
A £3m farm is likely to have a lot more land than a £3m house - should the house then be slashed in value because it has less land or are these two very different things where the monetary value is based on many different factors.
Again, we surely go down different routes depending what happens after inheritance.
Someone inherits their parents' £3m house and sells it, gets hit with IHT. Someone inherits their parents' £3m farm and sells it... well, why should they not pay the same* IHT? Someone inherits their parents £3m farm and farms it - we can have a discussion.
There's a further complication to the second two scenarios, if inheritor has lived on and worked on farm all their life then they have contributed to the value of the inheritance, in a way in which most people inheriting a house have not (unless they've spent a lot of time doing it up for their parents). But perhaps that aspect needs to be recognised either in simple, IHT-free partial transfers before death without retained benefit rules or some formal reduction in IHT recognising the contribution to value.
*under the present proposals, they don't anyway, I think?
I think it is simpler than that. Apply CGT on the sale of farms. It removes the whole issue of IHT as long as the value of the asset is not being realised.
Yes, that seems worth exploring, or suspending IHT on farms until the land is sold, with the IHT written off after 25 years.
With half of agricultural land being sold to non-farmers last year there is a real issue to be tackled.
Who knew farms-presumably any land in the country that isn't residential-escaped IHT? After yesterday everyone does. My guess is there will now be an unseemly scrabble from the deathbeds of those with a couple of £million to get on the bandwagon fast.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Most public sector organisations have no idea how many employees they have at anytime. This has become much worse since COVID. I know for a fact that the cabinet office found 100s of people who were still salaried in 2021/2 who had been given no work for months and this will have been much worse in other departments.
It's not just the insane Bureaucracy, it's the fact that there is little grip on what the purpose of each department is and what the overall goal is. This lack of direction and grip means the public sector is terrible at driving down costs and removing useless processes.
You could apply all of this to private sector organisations though. I’m not saying that the public sector is a bastion of efficiency, just that I’m not seeing this amazing private sector efficiency people keep talking about.
At start ups, yes. But that’s not really what we are talking about here.
You don't think it's likely, inevitable even, given profit motive, that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector? In any case I don't give a monkey's about a private company being inefficient unless I'm a shareholder, I'm not paying for that out of taxes.
That's exactly right. Being efficient means maximising the output from a given amount of land, labour and capital inputs. It is a constant, tedious, demanding grind and even when you put in the effort you still need judgement to get it right, because it involves making decisions about the future.
It is much easier to demand a subsidy from a spineless government or whack prices up on captive customers. Then inefficiencies get built in and you quickly end up with business that serve their employees and shareholders, not their customers.
The two defences against those practices are competition and the possibility of bankruptcy. Competition without bankruptcy is no use, like for instance a nationalised industry in a competitive industry. Nor is bankruptcy without competition - then you just get fat monopolists. Sometimes effective economic regulation can mimic competitive discipline, but it is very difficult and always a second best option.
The competitive, dynamic economy we desperately need, needs as much competition and as little state support as possible. Unfortunately of course this government is pulling in the opposite direction, and the last one was hardly a vigorous champion of free enterprise. We may get a saner government one day.
You also need it to be easy for new entrants to the market, otherwise competition and bankruptcy reduce the number of players in the market, until you lose competition, and the companies become "too big to fail" and so you lose bankruptcy too.
I feel that, in our fairly mature stage of capitalism, that's the weakest link.
A lot of regulation implicitly assumes that it exists to regulate existing companies, rather than to regulate a market into which new companies should be encouraged to enter.
Generations of families working as farmers have toiled their entire working lives for well below minimum wage; they've entirely invested themselves into the family farm
Withdrawing the facility to pass it on in full will massively disincentivise this tradition of thankless toil
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Please don't flounce. What a fantastic post.
We need common people such as yourself on here to remind us why we decided not to go the manual labour/leave school at 16 route and instead worked hard, achieved good jobs through hard work (albeit not breaking paving stones kind of hard work - yuk) and are now generally happy looking down on the rabble of which you form such an important part.
The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.
Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.
Let’s presume for one moment Angela Rayners wheeze of allowing public sector workers to do the same job for four days a week comes to pass. How would this impact productivity ?
Massively increase it, because labour productivity is measured as output per hour worked.
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Legendary rant. Love it! 👌
I've had a scan through the thread and I'm struggling to see who or what exactly TFS is referring to.
I thought the same.
I wondered whether I'm expected to wipe my father's arse*? Given the distance involved this is not possible. Even if I had Mr Tickle arms.
* for the record I have, many times, but the less said the better. I just think of Starmer.
I suspect those having their habitual rants about the public sector (and suggesting bouncing the shittier x% of the workforce into courier jobs etc). I, for one, welcome a rant from the other side for a bit of balance
Generations of families working as farmers have toiled their entire working lives for well below minimum wage; they've entirely invested themselves into the family farm
Withdrawing the facility to pass it on in full will massively disincentivise this tradition of thankless toil
Surely the solution then is not to fiddle with IHT rules, but to ensure farmers are adequately compensated.
PB is becoming a class ridden shithole. The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do. You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it. You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres. I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Very good.
Now pedal harder on your eBike, Serf. My daughter should have got her Deliveroo nearly 48 seconds ago. No tip for you.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
True. Everything needing to be passed through 5 layers with noone prepared to make a decision. The larger the organisation the worse they are to deal with as a supplier or customer.
The inefficiencies can exist in large orgs so long as they're making profits though...
I've previously described working as a contractor at Citi, as the financial crash happened. Some vignettes...
- A BA, from the same company as me, did more work than a whole floor of the BAs, pre crash - People whose job it was to attend meetings, and construct personations from those meetings, that they would give at other meetings. Some people were 2 jobs away from both top management and the people who actually did banking. - A manager screaming "Does anyone know our exposure to fucking Lehmans?" - After the crash, they binned whole floors of people in the tower in Canary wharf. It was Kung Fu mixed with Jenga....
Last line shows the difference between private and public
The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.
Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.
Let’s presume for one moment Angela Rayners wheeze of allowing public sector workers to do the same job for four days a week comes to pass. How would this impact productivity ?
Massively increase it, because labour productivity is measured as output per hour worked.
LOL. That must be one of those wild wheezes that academics come up with.
We are getting less done but because we have cut the hours worked our productivty has gone up! Surely be that reckoning if we want to have soaring productivity we should just cut to a 1 day week. We would have the best productivity in the Western world by that measure.
To try to bring some context to the debate, a lot of local Government workers (often female) work part time so they might do an 18 hour week rather than the standard 36 but it's my experience their managers often cram a week's work into half a week and I've witnesses some heated exchanges in meeting where part time staff can feel they are being over worked.
Productivity isn't just about working long hours which might be how it works in the culture of some private sector companies where if you're not working a 60 hour week you're not considered "loyal" to the company (I know it's not like that). How people work and how they are managed is a much bigger factor in determining productivity than the number of hours.
Given how the mental health services work , from personal family experience they do nothing at the front end. Only way to get any help is to call police and get the ill person arrested , sectioned and detained in a hospital. No aftercare , no follow ups ., nothing they are just left to rot till they do something arrestable.
She gave a list of burdens on small businesses (nb @Stocky not benefits), of which maternity pay happened to be the final item
She described the totality of that list of burdens as excessive
Claims to the contrary are ignorant or disingenuous
"Maternity pay varies, depending on who you work for. But statutory maternity pay is a function of tax, tax comes from people who are working. We’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This, in my view, is excessive!"
“We need to have more personal responsibility. There was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies.”
“the answer cannot be let the government help people to have babies”.
Rowing back on punitive, class war-driven taxes for no benefit other than to "smash the rich" is just the sort of Conservative Party I can see myself rejoining.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
True. Everything needing to be passed through 5 layers with noone prepared to make a decision. The larger the organisation the worse they are to deal with as a supplier or customer.
The inefficiencies can exist in large orgs so long as they're making profits though...
I've previously described working as a contractor at Citi, as the financial crash happened. Some vignettes...
- A BA, from the same company as me, did more work than a whole floor of the BAs, pre crash - People whose job it was to attend meetings, and construct personations from those meetings, that they would give at other meetings. Some people were 2 jobs away from both top management and the people who actually did banking. - A manager screaming "Does anyone know our exposure to fucking Lehmans?" - After the crash, they binned whole floors of people in the tower in Canary wharf. It was Kung Fu mixed with Jenga....
Last line shows the difference between private and public
Again, a reminder, in recent years, NHS England sacked 9000 out of 24000.
The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.
Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.
Let’s presume for one moment Angela Rayners wheeze of allowing public sector workers to do the same job for four days a week comes to pass. How would this impact productivity ?
Massively increase it, because labour productivity is measured as output per hour worked.
LOL. That must be one of those wild wheezes that academics come up with.
We are getting less done but because we have cut the hours worked our productivty has gone up! Surely be that reckoning if we want to have soaring productivity we should just cut to a 1 day week. We would have the best productivity in the Western world by that measure.
To try to bring some context to the debate, a lot of local Government workers (often female) work part time so they might do an 18 hour week rather than the standard 36 but it's my experience their managers often cram a week's work into half a week and I've witnesses some heated exchanges in meeting where part time staff can feel they are being over worked.
Productivity isn't just about working long hours which might be how it works in the culture of some private sector companies where if you're not working a 60 hour week you're not considered "loyal" to the company (I know it's not like that). How people work and how they are managed is a much bigger factor in determining productivity than the number of hours.
Given how the mental health services work , from personal family experience they do nothing at the front end. Only way to get any help is to call police and get the ill person arrested , sectioned and detained in a hospital. No aftercare , no follow ups ., nothing they are just left to rot till they do something arrestable.
The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.
Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.
Let’s presume for one moment Angela Rayners wheeze of allowing public sector workers to do the same job for four days a week comes to pass. How would this impact productivity ?
Massively increase it, because labour productivity is measured as output per hour worked.
LOL. That must be one of those wild wheezes that academics come up with.
We are getting less done but because we have cut the hours worked our productivty has gone up! Surely be that reckoning if we want to have soaring productivity we should just cut to a 1 day week. We would have the best productivity in the Western world by that measure.
To try to bring some context to the debate, a lot of local Government workers (often female) work part time so they might do an 18 hour week rather than the standard 36 but it's my experience their managers often cram a week's work into half a week and I've witnesses some heated exchanges in meeting where part time staff can feel they are being over worked.
Productivity isn't just about working long hours which might be how it works in the culture of some private sector companies where if you're not working a 60 hour week you're not considered "loyal" to the company (I know it's not like that). How people work and how they are managed is a much bigger factor in determining productivity than the number of hours.
Given how the mental health services work , from personal family experience they do nothing at the front end. Only way to get any help is to call police and get the ill person arrested , sectioned and detained in a hospital. No aftercare , no follow ups ., nothing they are just left to rot till they do something arrestable.
Generations of families working as farmers have toiled their entire working lives for well below minimum wage; they've entirely invested themselves into the family farm
Withdrawing the facility to pass it on in full will massively disincentivise this tradition of thankless toil
Surely the solution then is not to fiddle with IHT rules, but to ensure farmers are adequately compensated.
As we discussed last night, that is not in the broader interests of the nation. It is more important to have cheap milk than it is for dairy farmers to make a good living.
Now, I hear you ask, how long can this race to the bottom continue. No idea, I am not a dairy farmer so I don't know the limits of efficiency that can be achieved and what happens when they are pushed too far.
But that is the principle by which successive governments have operated.
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
Can you explain how you pay a mortgage from a poor income. The whole point is they will need to sell at least part of farm to pay it so making it even poorer income etc. Idiocy thought up by morons. It should be tax applied when any sale is made , inheriting land is worth nothing unless you sell.
How can the land be worth so much if it is impossible to generate any income from it?
Inheriting any possession is worth nothing unless you sell.
Buy some agricultural land. Rent it out. Try and get planning permission.
The rent will pay the mortgage on the land. So, after a couple of decades, you own an asset outright.
If you get planning permission, you will be rich.
It's a no-lose investment. When you add in solar farming.....
Why do we do it that way round? Wouldn't it make more sense for the local council to buy land at the going rate, then award itself planning permission and sell the land to developers? That would stop people speculating, avoid the potential for corruption (landowners bribing councillors to grant planning permission) and provide a tidy source of income for the council.
Plus how many times are we going to hear Lab trot (geddit?) out the phrase "to fund the NHS"? As Cyclefree noted, not every bloody thing in this country should be structured around the NHS which, as readers will be aware I believe, is a useless, not fit for purpose organisation as interested in killing people as mending their broken legs.
Plus how many times are we going to hear Lab trot (geddit?) out the phrase "to fund the NHS"? As Cyclefree noted, not every bloody thing in this country should be structured around the NHS which, as readers will be aware I believe, is a useless, not fit for purpose organisation as interested in killing people as mending their broken legs.
How about farmers pay their taxes so we can fund our armed forces to deal with Russia?
Meanwhile, one for you Brexitoloons who support our leaving the EU.
I am currently on the Eurostar and while I was still in the UK there was no wifi, literally none, despite trying to connect via the Eurostar app/web page.
Now I am in La France I can say it is lightning fast and I am able, finally, to bring my thoughts and wisdom to PB.
Generations of families working as farmers have toiled their entire working lives for well below minimum wage; they've entirely invested themselves into the family farm
Withdrawing the facility to pass it on in full will massively disincentivise this tradition of thankless toil
Surely the solution then is not to fiddle with IHT rules, but to ensure farmers are adequately compensated.
As we discussed last night, that is not in the broader interests of the nation. It is more important to have cheap milk than it is for dairy farmers to make a good living.
Now, I hear you ask, how long can this race to the bottom continue. No idea, I am not a dairy farmer so I don't know the limits of efficiency that can be achieved and what happens when they are pushed too far.
But that is the principle by which successive governments have operated.
Yes and no. Top priority is having milk production in the UK*, next comes making it cheap, then comes improving farmers’ pay. However there is a bit of a feedback in which priority one is inextricably linked to priority three, at the margins.
*Of course we don’t have to. There’s a perfectly valid free market view that says we don’t need to take any interest in where the food comes from, and we can secure it with diverse supply. But I think that’s a bit short sighted as the world drifts further away from open markets and back towards protectionism and power blocks.
The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.
Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.
Let’s presume for one moment Angela Rayners wheeze of allowing public sector workers to do the same job for four days a week comes to pass. How would this impact productivity ?
Massively increase it, because labour productivity is measured as output per hour worked.
LOL. That must be one of those wild wheezes that academics come up with.
We are getting less done but because we have cut the hours worked our productivty has gone up! Surely be that reckoning if we want to have soaring productivity we should just cut to a 1 day week. We would have the best productivity in the Western world by that measure.
To try to bring some context to the debate, a lot of local Government workers (often female) work part time so they might do an 18 hour week rather than the standard 36 but it's my experience their managers often cram a week's work into half a week and I've witnesses some heated exchanges in meeting where part time staff can feel they are being over worked.
Productivity isn't just about working long hours which might be how it works in the culture of some private sector companies where if you're not working a 60 hour week you're not considered "loyal" to the company (I know it's not like that). How people work and how they are managed is a much bigger factor in determining productivity than the number of hours.
Given how the mental health services work , from personal family experience they do nothing at the front end. Only way to get any help is to call police and get the ill person arrested , sectioned and detained in a hospital. No aftercare , no follow ups ., nothing they are just left to rot till they do something arrestable.
Without doubt one of the worst thread headers TSE has ever done.
No party wins general elections without shoring up their core vote first and for Tories they include private school parents and farmers. Voters also want a choice not an echo, if you want to hammer farmers with inheritance tax and hit private school parents with VAT you vote Labour anyway and if the Tories don't stand up for farmers and private school parents they will leak voters to Reform and the LDs who will.
Plus 57% of voters oppose the hated tractor tax anyway
Not to mention VAT on school fees will just reduce the scholarships they provide and hit smaller schools most making them even more exclusive. While we need family farms to produce our food, you can't make food from houses. Most farms may be asset rich but they are income poor
If you are asset rich but income poor, you can get a mortgage or similar sort of loan. It’s not difficult.
We need houses to live in. You can’t make houses from food (pace Hansel & Gretel).
Can you explain how you pay a mortgage from a poor income. The whole point is they will need to sell at least part of farm to pay it so making it even poorer income etc. Idiocy thought up by morons. It should be tax applied when any sale is made , inheriting land is worth nothing unless you sell.
How can the land be worth so much if it is impossible to generate any income from it?
Inheriting any possession is worth nothing unless you sell.
Buy some agricultural land. Rent it out. Try and get planning permission.
The rent will pay the mortgage on the land. So, after a couple of decades, you own an asset outright.
If you get planning permission, you will be rich.
It's a no-lose investment. When you add in solar farming.....
Why do we do it that way round? Wouldn't it make more sense for the local council to buy land at the going rate, then award itself planning permission and sell the land to developers? That would stop people speculating, avoid the potential for corruption (landowners bribing councillors to grant planning permission) and provide a tidy source of income for the council.
That would involve expanding the role of the state, something that even Labour seem scared to consider. Meanwhile we spend crazy billions on rent for people who should be in social housing. Worse outcomes at higher cost.
“Berkeley Professor Says Even His ‘Outstanding’ Students With 4.0 GPAs Aren’t Getting Any Job Offers — ‘I Suspect This Trend Is Irreversible’”
“The professor hypothesizes that even people starting college today will find themselves in a bit of a bind 4 years down road when they are looking for employment.”
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Oooh I have found my niche in PB:
My regular reminder that (as per More or Less) it takes just 3 minutes to turn a tanker. So if large organisations are like tankers then they are bloody quick.
A slightly less (only just I hear you say) irritating post than having your spelling corrected.
Meanwhile, one for you Brexitoloons who support our leaving the EU.
I am currently on the Eurostar and while I was still in the UK there was no wifi, literally none, despite trying to connect via the Eurostar app/web page.
Now I am in La France I can say it is lightning fast and I am able, finally, to bring my thoughts and wisdom to PB.
In this case, the Brexit dividend of peace and quiet went to the rest of us…
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Oooh I have found my niche in PB:
My regular reminder that (as per More or Less) it takes just 3 minutes to turn a tanker. So if large organisations are like tankers then they are bloody quick.
A slightly less (only just I hear you say) irritating post than having your spelling corrected.
I’ll come down this rabbit hole with you. I had always taken the “turning a tanker” analogy to mean it is hard because you never have enough space and there’s always something or someone in the way. I would argue that holds true.
Plus how many times are we going to hear Lab trot (geddit?) out the phrase "to fund the NHS"? As Cyclefree noted, not every bloody thing in this country should be structured around the NHS which, as readers will be aware I believe, is a useless, not fit for purpose organisation as interested in killing people as mending their broken legs.
How about farmers pay their taxes so we can fund our armed forces to deal with Russia?
The taxes from this measure might be enough to fund a decent condition GPMG-mounted Mini Metro off Autotrader, from what Dan Neidle says.
Generations of families working as farmers have toiled their entire working lives for well below minimum wage; they've entirely invested themselves into the family farm
Withdrawing the facility to pass it on in full will massively disincentivise this tradition of thankless toil
Surely the solution then is not to fiddle with IHT rules, but to ensure farmers are adequately compensated.
As we discussed last night, that is not in the broader interests of the nation. It is more important to have cheap milk than it is for dairy farmers to make a good living.
Now, I hear you ask, how long can this race to the bottom continue. No idea, I am not a dairy farmer so I don't know the limits of efficiency that can be achieved and what happens when they are pushed too far.
But that is the principle by which successive governments have operated.
Yes and no. Top priority is having milk production in the UK*, next comes making it cheap, then comes improving farmers’ pay. However there is a bit of a feedback in which priority one is inextricably linked to priority three, at the margins.
*Of course we don’t have to. There’s a perfectly valid free market view that says we don’t need to take any interest in where the food comes from, and we can secure it with diverse supply. But I think that’s a bit short sighted as the world drifts further away from open markets and back towards protectionism and power blocks.
As with our armed forces, this is something that no government dare to have a national debate about.
What size do we want our armed forces. What level of food self-sufficiency do we want.
And in each case what are the implications and consequences of our decision.
Hence we have half-baked discussions and assertions because no one has asked and no one knows.
The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.
Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.
To broaden the point, where's the incentive to sack people who aren't performing - where is the incentive to perform at all? The money comes from Government grant, so the incentive is actually to fail, because failing services get more money thrown at them. The NHS has been very successful at failing for years. An efficient, high performance public service would see its budget reduced the next year.
What we really need is a total reordering of incentives within the public sector, where possible based on the money following the user, and the user having choice. If hospitals and schools had to attract patients and pupils to get funding, all the perverse incentives would be reversed and the services grow better and more efficient.
Plus how many times are we going to hear Lab trot (geddit?) out the phrase "to fund the NHS"? As Cyclefree noted, not every bloody thing in this country should be structured around the NHS which, as readers will be aware I believe, is a useless, not fit for purpose organisation as interested in killing people as mending their broken legs.
How about farmers pay their taxes so we can fund our armed forces to deal with Russia?
The taxes from this measure might be enough to fund a decent condition GPMG-mounted Mini Metro off Autotrader, from what Dan Neidle says.
Steady. First let’s have a meeting to really bottom out the requirement. After a 6 month concept phase I think we’re quite likely to decide that we need our mini metro to have different windscreen wipers and a Rolls Royce engine.
Now, I know the budget won’t cover that, but it will cover the assessment phase while we plan for it. In the end we can have a mini metro delivered in two years, at twice the current quoted price, fitted “for but not with” an engine. That’s how we do things here.
Plus how many times are we going to hear Lab trot (geddit?) out the phrase "to fund the NHS"? As Cyclefree noted, not every bloody thing in this country should be structured around the NHS which, as readers will be aware I believe, is a useless, not fit for purpose organisation as interested in killing people as mending their broken legs.
How about farmers pay their taxes so we can fund our armed forces to deal with Russia?
Farmers have done quite well out of Ukraine; wheat prices went up 50% during the start of the invasion.
Other sectors got whacked with a windfall tax when that happened...
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Oooh I have found my niche in PB:
My regular reminder that (as per More or Less) it takes just 3 minutes to turn a tanker. So if large organisations are like tankers then they are bloody quick.
A slightly less (only just I hear you say) irritating post than having your spelling corrected.
Now try that in the Humber navigation channel on the way to Immingham.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Oooh I have found my niche in PB:
My regular reminder that (as per More or Less) it takes just 3 minutes to turn a tanker. So if large organisations are like tankers then they are bloody quick.
A slightly less (only just I hear you say) irritating post than having your spelling corrected.
I’ll come down this rabbit hole with you. I had always taken the “turning a tanker” analogy to mean it is hard because you never have enough space and there’s always something or someone in the way. I would argue that holds true.
But is there enough room in the rabbit holes for both of us and a tanker.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Oooh I have found my niche in PB:
My regular reminder that (as per More or Less) it takes just 3 minutes to turn a tanker. So if large organisations are like tankers then they are bloody quick.
A slightly less (only just I hear you say) irritating post than having your spelling corrected.
Now try that in the Humber navigation channel on the way to Immingham.
If you have seen me sail a boat you wouldn't ask that.
I really wish this war against employees by other employees would end.
I don’t know what organisations people have worked for but I’d find it hard to believe Vodafone where I was for many years is any less bureaucratic than the public sector. Every decision or change I wanted to make had to go through five layers of management.
Perhaps it’s just that large organisations in general are like tankers? I hear much the same from friends at Apple and Google.
Oooh I have found my niche in PB:
My regular reminder that (as per More or Less) it takes just 3 minutes to turn a tanker. So if large organisations are like tankers then they are bloody quick.
A slightly less (only just I hear you say) irritating post than having your spelling corrected.
I’ll come down this rabbit hole with you. I had always taken the “turning a tanker” analogy to mean it is hard because you never have enough space and there’s always something or someone in the way. I would argue that holds true.
But is there enough room in the rabbit holes for both of us and a tanker.
If there is, you don't want to run into one of the rabbits
Comments
Inheriting any possession is worth nothing unless you sell.
Nevertheless encouraging for him.
In order to work effectively from home, you need
- An effective home setup
- Effective comminutions (not the same as setup)
- Management that has the skills to deal with remote working
- Work structured to allow remote working
Sending everyone home with laptop doesn't fucking count.
Also, WFH needs to be flexible - if you are bringing new people into the team, for example, you can onboard them faster and better in person.
We have a slide sheet and a lowerable bed which allows us to get the patient on to it without lifting, just a bit of dragging. The bed can then be jacked up.
Would the formal agency staff do that? No. Ambulance please.
Even for someone who just slid slowly onto the floor.
There's an awful lot more sodium in the world than lithium. Zero supply constraints.
CATL's New Sodium-Ion EV Battery Works In -40 Degree Cold
Some Chinese EVs already use sodium-ion batteries. Now they're hoping to unlock new levels of extreme weather performance.
https://insideevs.com/news/741405/catl-sodium-ion-battery-temp/
About a decade ago, the UK was competitive as an early developer of this technology.
Vodafone is full of teams that literally do nothing but tread water. Ditto other large organisations where I’ve worked. It’s why I got fed up and ended up at start ups where I don’t have this problem.
Your argument about paying for it out of taxes is a fair one but I was only talking about efficiency.
So no, I don’t think the profit motive makes a company efficient beyond a certain point.
The rent will pay the mortgage on the land. So, after a couple of decades, you own an asset outright.
If you get planning permission, you will be rich.
It's a no-lose investment. When you add in solar farming.....
The very jobs you rich fuckers denigrate, the jobs you think are only fit for the the lazy and feckless, are the jobs you feckers won't do.
You need someone to deliver your Hello Fresh food box because you're too fucking lazy to go to the shop yourself. You need someone to wipe your elderly parents arse because you certainly ain't going to do it.
You're far too busy being important lawyers and bankers and financiers and fancy project managers to realise that having tossers doing the menial stuff means you get to have your new Apple iWank delivered by a minimum wage courier at a time and place of your choosing, so you can carry on doing the important stuff instead of having to meet poor people in shopping centres.
I'd flounce, but I'm too lazy and feckless. And no one would notice anyway 🤡
Muslim-Americans (post-election). "Oh shit"
8/10
Perhaps it does just differ organisation to organisation.
I totally agree with your post. It’s an appalling header.
The last paragraph doesn’t even make grammatical sense does it? Is it “does” in this sentence that torpedoes the paragraph “her actions on this tax is further evidence of that does”. ?
TSE’s Kemi Attack is blatantly Kemi Centric completely ignoring she is figure head of a broad coalition on this one - LibDems side by side on platform with Kemi, Greenpeace and Just Stop Oil side by side with Kemi too on this one - TSE ignored that bit - Kemi is heading a broad alliance of all those in society who care and give a damn. All Labour have on their side is Treasury, IFS, BBC and Sky and ITV with out of date figures and dodgy fact checking. A state broadcaster should be focussing on financial stress, bankruptcies and suicides in farming. The Tractors should blockade the ports and oil refineries next as promised to make them shamed at their mistake of supporting help taken away where more help should be coming in. That’s the bottom line.
PS this weather is bad news for sheep. Hashtag difficult week.
Personally I favour an insurance model for social care like the Japanese
We need more of these on PB.
She gave a list of burdens on small businesses (nb @Stocky not benefits), of which maternity pay happened to be the final item
She described the totality of that list of burdens as excessive
Claims to the contrary are ignorant or disingenuous
If you pick the little old lady up, while working for an organisation, you will be fired. And probably not work in that area again.
So the result of all that process, all those files... a little old lady lying on the floor. Whose stopped crying, because she has run out of energy to cry. Just lying still like an animal that has given up.
It is this failure to recognise how things actually work that leads to the public sector's biggest failing: top-down reorganisations. Labour's John Reid told us the Home Office was not fit for purpose, yet post break-up, crime and immigration are out of control. Likewise decennial NHS reforms from Thatcher to Lansley.
Even if reforms are a good idea on paper, management or ministers must account for the cost of implementation.
With half of agricultural land being sold to non-farmers last year there is a real issue to be tackled.
Latinos (post-election). "Oh shit"
Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com
·
1h
has anyone come up with a way of not having to deal with British weather from November to March without - and this is the crucial point - being wealthy
Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com
·
1h
people talk about seasonal depression but increasingly believe that what I have is seasonal fury, just apoplectic at the dampness, furious at how early it gets dark, spitting feathers at the rain
https://bsky.app/profile/youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com/post/3lbepckwvz22z
'The US embassy in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv said it will be closed today after it received “specific information of a potential significant air attack.”
The embassy told its employees to shelter in place while advising US citizens to be prepared to immediately shelter in the event an air alert is announced, according to an advisory issued on its website.'
https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/ukraine-russia-war-11-20-24#cm3pgzxsd00053b6m8ia0a4cn
You can buy agricultural land, right now, for a few grand an acre. Within walking distance of a station an hour out of Central London. The sale price of a couple of houses on that acre would be 7 figures......
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/populationestimatesforenglandandwales/mid2023
I have far more trouble getting tradesmen; most of whom are paid about the same as I used to be as management consultant.
Market economics innit.
Edit to add: the country would be in a better place, IMO, if more of the middle classes paid people to do some of the jobs they begrudgingly do. And if they were more likely to use private education and healthcare.
Large private firms are at least as inefficient and prone to error, but don’t have to disclose those errors as much, even when publicly traded, so pretend they are not. Small firms are often quite efficient, but also doing something quite simple and niche, where it’s a lot easier to do that.
In fact there are almost no private sector firms attempting to do anything half as complex as a Government Department or the NHS, or managing their way through as much ambiguity and change.
Yeh. I guess he might be right.
It is much easier to demand a subsidy from a spineless government or whack prices up on captive customers. Then inefficiencies get built in and you quickly end up with business that serve their employees and shareholders, not their customers.
The two defences against those practices are competition and the possibility of bankruptcy. Competition without bankruptcy is no use, like for instance a nationalised industry in a competitive industry. Nor is bankruptcy without competition - then you just get fat monopolists. Sometimes effective economic regulation can mimic competitive discipline, but it is very difficult and always a second best option.
The competitive, dynamic economy we desperately need, needs as much competition and as little state support as possible. Unfortunately of course this government is pulling in the opposite direction, and the last one was hardly a vigorous champion of free enterprise. We may get a saner government one day.
Not sure what this refers to. Care in your own home is certainly NOT exempt. If you have savings or assets over £23K you pay for the whole shooting match yourself. The exemption, which is what you might mean, is the actual house you live in.
Even those whose savings are not at £23K (obvs a lot of people across the population) may find their family somehow has to find top-up money as the council is struggling to find an agency who will work at their rates and turn up for more than a quick bish-bosh-bash 15min visit.
The farmers I'm less sure about.
I wondered whether I'm expected to wipe my father's arse*? Given the distance involved this is not possible. Even if I had Mr Tickle arms.
* for the record I have, many times, but the less said the better. I just think of Starmer.
I feel that, in our fairly mature stage of capitalism, that's the weakest link.
A lot of regulation implicitly assumes that it exists to regulate existing companies, rather than to regulate a market into which new companies should be encouraged to enter.
Withdrawing the facility to pass it on in full will massively disincentivise this tradition of thankless toil
We need common people such as yourself on here to remind us why we decided not to go the manual labour/leave school at 16 route and instead worked hard, achieved good jobs through hard work (albeit not breaking paving stones kind of hard work - yuk) and are now generally happy looking down on the rabble of which you form such an important part.
So please stay.
Now pedal harder on your eBike, Serf. My daughter should have got her Deliveroo nearly 48 seconds ago. No tip for you.
“We need to have more personal responsibility. There was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies.”
“the answer cannot be let the government help people to have babies”.
Now who's being disingenous ?
Rowing back on punitive, class war-driven taxes for no benefit other than to "smash the rich" is just the sort of Conservative Party I can see myself rejoining.
Now, I hear you ask, how long can this race to the bottom continue. No idea, I am not a dairy farmer so I don't know the limits of efficiency that can be achieved and what happens when they are pushed too far.
But that is the principle by which successive governments have operated.
I am currently on the Eurostar and while I was still in the UK there was no wifi, literally none, despite trying to connect via the Eurostar app/web page.
Now I am in La France I can say it is lightning fast and I am able, finally, to bring my thoughts and wisdom to PB.
*Of course we don’t have to. There’s a perfectly valid free market view that says we don’t need to take any interest in where the food comes from, and we can secure it with diverse supply. But I think that’s a bit short sighted as the world drifts further away from open markets and back towards protectionism and power blocks.
Meanwhile we spend crazy billions on rent for people who should be in social housing. Worse outcomes at higher cost.
“Berkeley Professor Says Even His ‘Outstanding’ Students With 4.0 GPAs Aren’t Getting Any Job Offers — ‘I Suspect This Trend Is Irreversible’”
“The professor hypothesizes that even people starting college today will find themselves in a bit of a bind 4 years down road when they are looking for employment.”
https://www.yourtango.com/sekf/berkeley-professor-says-even-outstanding-students-arent-getting-jobs
This is going to devastate the entire university sector. As I predicted
My regular reminder that (as per More or Less) it takes just 3 minutes to turn a tanker. So if large organisations are like tankers then they are bloody quick.
A slightly less (only just I hear you say) irritating post than having your spelling corrected.
What size do we want our armed forces. What level of food self-sufficiency do we want.
And in each case what are the implications and consequences of our decision.
Hence we have half-baked discussions and assertions because no one has asked and no one knows.
What we really need is a total reordering of incentives within the public sector, where possible based on the money following the user, and the user having choice. If hospitals and schools had to attract patients and pupils to get funding, all the perverse incentives would be reversed and the services grow better and more efficient.
Now, I know the budget won’t cover that, but it will cover the assessment phase while we plan for it. In the end we can have a mini metro delivered in two years, at twice the current quoted price, fitted “for but not with” an engine. That’s how we do things here.
Other sectors got whacked with a windfall tax when that happened...