RogerS
Established Member
Allylearm":j7sefas0 said:
Care to share it with us?
And don;t forget that it was dear old Gordon Brown who raided the private sector pension funds.....didn't see those of us in the private sector going on strike.
Public sector strikes
- Thread starter flanajb
- Start date
Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:
Care to share it with us?
And don;t forget that it was dear old Gordon Brown who raided the private sector pension funds.....didn't see those of us in the private sector going on strike.
studders
Established Member
Blah!
Modernist
Established Member
RogerS":1ilhpof9 said:
It's amazing how different views can be, after all we are both aware the other is sane
Coal - OK if you are happy to rely on and be hostage to imports. OK if you are comfortable with the lower safety standards by which it is produced 10k/annum deaths in China alone. OK if you are happy to see the damage to communities and the consequent cost to the state of maintaining them. In fact we may be better to leave it in the ground for later, nous verrons.
Cars - why did the unions change, perhaps it was better conditions in the new makers.
BT is regularly highlighted as one of the worst service providers in the UK. Tesco's supply chain stats for one.
BP don't really know
British Gas - I don't notice any personal benefit and we are certainly hostage to imports.
Steel - currently the object of huge investment but by foreign companies - result, I think not.
Selling off assets at knock down prices is only a way of offloading the problem, not a solution. Vis, last week Northern Rock. Opportunities missed include reinstating the Girobank which, of course, they previously sold off.
RogerS
Established Member
Modernist":3qkhpiio said:
NO...because Mrs T broke their stranglehold
Game, set and match!! :lol:
Modernist
Established Member
RogerS":s0z7kq27 said:
Leading to what - they aren't here!
Steve Blackdog
Established Member
DIY Stew":2rjtsyqu said:
My first job was working in a hospital laundry in the early 80s
I'd managed to blot out the draw sheets from the operating theatre until I read your post!! £65 a week. Those were the days.They contributed as little as possible and are masters of tax evasion (aided and abetted by their mates in government). The city wide boys owe the UK taxpayers billions. Enough to pay the deficit, in fact.
Not too broke to pay for wars though. And they're really expensive. Is the UK broke, or is Afghanistan &c. &c. also 'living beyond our means'?
A good start would be to collect the vast amount of tax already owed (by the super-rich, not ordinary people). They won't do that by cutting 25,000 Inland Revenue staff though, will they? The people who caused this mess have no intention of paying for it themselves and have so far, been successful in handing all of us the bill, whilst holding onto their own immense wealth. 'We're all in this together', is one of the most spectacular lies of all time.
Steve Blackdog":24pe4wrc said:My first job was working in a hospital laundry in the early 80s
First job... 1981.... apprentice with Radio Rentals... £31 a week b4 tax. £15 to my mum. Not enough left for the bus fare both ways(4 buses a day). Still, the walking kept me fit.
Those certainly were the days... back when we had the last remains of industry. My route to work took me past wall-to-wall industry, employing thousands (and thousands). It's all gone now. It was gone by the end of the 80's! It's all retail parks and leisure. Those jobs will never come back. All too easy to import cheap foreign crap.
Good old Maggie. Taught those unions a lesson, eh? Wiped out jobs. Wiped out communities. Kept those (ex) workers in check. Got rich quick. Gotta love 'er.
Not been long in from a long day, started at half seven this morning. I'm trying to remember the last time I heard so much pointless trivial point scoring on this forum.
I started work in the construction industry at 16, started a pension at 18 on the advice of my father; and kept up my contributions even when work was scarce in the late eighties. Kept that private pension going until I was thirty two (1994), I couldn't even buy a road legal vehicle with what that pension is worth today!
I had the chance to do some voluntary teaching, found I was quite good at it and decided to retrain as a technology teacher. Fifteen years and one heart attack later, I gave up teaching and returned to part time work. I now have two frozen pensions, which means that I have a bleak retirement to look forward to.
You can blame whichever colour of government you like, the country is bankrupt, we've involved ourselves in ridiculous wars or peace keeping missions that have not benefitted this country one iota.
What is needed is a government that is strong enough to;
a) sort out the monumental waste that has gone on in paying for so called "consultants" in defence, health and education; and the failed programs they've put in place.
b) make a proper attempt to cut tax avoidance (in particular the telecommunications companies, and bonuses paid into overseas banks. you know who I mean). Instead of the £100,000,000 that Danny Alexander thinks he'll recover by stopping the VAT free sale of DVD's from the Channel Islands.
c) actually tell us ALL the facts instead of the mealy mouth lies and evasions we've had to listen to from all sides of the political spectrum.
I feel much better for that
Kieran
I started work in the construction industry at 16, started a pension at 18 on the advice of my father; and kept up my contributions even when work was scarce in the late eighties. Kept that private pension going until I was thirty two (1994), I couldn't even buy a road legal vehicle with what that pension is worth today!
I had the chance to do some voluntary teaching, found I was quite good at it
and decided to retrain as a technology teacher. Fifteen years and one heart attack later, I gave up teaching and returned to part time work. I now have two frozen pensions, which means that I have a bleak retirement to look forward to.You can blame whichever colour of government you like, the country is bankrupt, we've involved ourselves in ridiculous wars or peace keeping missions that have not benefitted this country one iota.
What is needed is a government that is strong enough to;
a) sort out the monumental waste that has gone on in paying for so called "consultants" in defence, health and education; and the failed programs they've put in place.
b) make a proper attempt to cut tax avoidance (in particular the telecommunications companies, and bonuses paid into overseas banks. you know who I mean). Instead of the £100,000,000 that Danny Alexander thinks he'll recover by stopping the VAT free sale of DVD's from the Channel Islands.
c) actually tell us ALL the facts instead of the mealy mouth lies and evasions we've had to listen to from all sides of the political spectrum.
I feel much better for that
Kieran
RogerS
Established Member
Sawyer":3hg29tbl said:
And your evidence is where? Please spare us the leftwing rhetoric unless you can back it up with some unbiased figures
Sawyer":3hg29tbl said:
Agreed
Sawyer":3hg29tbl said:
More leftwing twaddle. Where is your evidence? Although I do agree with the statement The people who caused this mess have no intention of paying for it . There was a very interesting and well-researched documentary questioning just how opaque are the finances of Blair, who took us to war, twice.
MickCheese":61in2t4b said:
This is typical, everyone pays the same and it is set to rise to 14%.
Mick
beech1948
Established Member
The Daily mail today.
" State workers get 7.5% more pay than private sector staff. Men in state jobs enjoy an average of 4.5% extra and women earn an added 10.5%."
The trade unions now have as little credibility as MPs especially after seeing that senior union officials get up to 40% of salary paid into their pension pots from the workers union dues.
This debate has gone the way all such debates go. Detail to counter detail to poor logic and even poorer conclusions.
What now seems to be clear is that the public sector worker on average is getting an OK deal. They just don't want to pay any more for it and would rather the private sector tax payer paid for it. The UNions seek a fight to justify their increasingly irrelevant existence.
My credentials in this are that I worked for a county council for 9 yrs after uni. This was 1969 to 1978. The employee attitude was to do as little as possible for as long as possible. To have poor inefficient processes and IT systems to blame and to provide as poor a service as possible. I don't see that much has changed. Yes the dustmen work as hard as ever. The office workers less so.
Much of what passes as government need not actually be in place. I want to see a listing of what the local and central governments must do for us and then make sure they do nothing else. All government is a cost to society. They make nothing, they invent nothing, they deliver nothing. Education is disguised as a success but in reality is a failure. The DoE figures show that 47% of all pupils score less than a grade C at GCSE level and that around 24% can't read and write properly or are innumerate.
Such a performance in industry would be seen as a failure and immediate steps would be taken to improve that performance. Does Government local or central do this..OH NO.
Why are only 10% of the police available at any one time to be on the streets and not stuck in an office.? I could go on but will stop here.
The question Modernist and others need to consider is not the blaming of Thatcher but the real question of what do we want and what will we tolerate. Until that can be answered the debate is meaningless. Those who lean to the Left, Centre or Right will debate how many angels can fit on a pin head. I'd rather get stuff done and delivered. To denigrate Thatcher is to misunderstand not just politics but the reasons for the changes in the country. Was she mostly right...HELL YES!!
Today China seems to have all the cards. Low wages, some inflation, lots of output. BUT its time to look at the cost of transport from China to the west, the increase in costs in China, the worker unrest in China, to see whether the UK can return to the manufacture of the things we lost to China or the east as their costs escalate. Who is trying to do this..NO ONE.!!
Time to not just CUT costs but to SURGICALLY remove costs, people and waste but its also time for companies to pay their staff more and their shareholders a bit less....REMEMBER I am still an unrepentant Tory.
My view is that :-
Thatcher was awe inspiring.
Callaghan was a failure
Blair was a conman
Brown was a failure who spent all the money on crap
Milliband is a child lost in the wilderness of union political crap
Cameron is a plastic cosmetic politician
Clegg is an inexperienced fall guy on an ego trip.
Where o'h where is that sense of leadership, that drive forwards, that common sense approach to be found today. Who has a clear vision unclouded by political opinion, who is prepared to do the right thing. NO ONE.!!
The last thing we need is more political clap trap. Time to run the country like a business.
Al
" State workers get 7.5% more pay than private sector staff. Men in state jobs enjoy an average of 4.5% extra and women earn an added 10.5%."
The trade unions now have as little credibility as MPs especially after seeing that senior union officials get up to 40% of salary paid into their pension pots from the workers union dues.
This debate has gone the way all such debates go. Detail to counter detail to poor logic and even poorer conclusions.
What now seems to be clear is that the public sector worker on average is getting an OK deal. They just don't want to pay any more for it and would rather the private sector tax payer paid for it. The UNions seek a fight to justify their increasingly irrelevant existence.
My credentials in this are that I worked for a county council for 9 yrs after uni. This was 1969 to 1978. The employee attitude was to do as little as possible for as long as possible. To have poor inefficient processes and IT systems to blame and to provide as poor a service as possible. I don't see that much has changed. Yes the dustmen work as hard as ever. The office workers less so.
Much of what passes as government need not actually be in place. I want to see a listing of what the local and central governments must do for us and then make sure they do nothing else. All government is a cost to society. They make nothing, they invent nothing, they deliver nothing. Education is disguised as a success but in reality is a failure. The DoE figures show that 47% of all pupils score less than a grade C at GCSE level and that around 24% can't read and write properly or are innumerate.
Such a performance in industry would be seen as a failure and immediate steps would be taken to improve that performance. Does Government local or central do this..OH NO.
Why are only 10% of the police available at any one time to be on the streets and not stuck in an office.? I could go on but will stop here.
The question Modernist and others need to consider is not the blaming of Thatcher but the real question of what do we want and what will we tolerate. Until that can be answered the debate is meaningless. Those who lean to the Left, Centre or Right will debate how many angels can fit on a pin head. I'd rather get stuff done and delivered. To denigrate Thatcher is to misunderstand not just politics but the reasons for the changes in the country. Was she mostly right...HELL YES!!
Today China seems to have all the cards. Low wages, some inflation, lots of output. BUT its time to look at the cost of transport from China to the west, the increase in costs in China, the worker unrest in China, to see whether the UK can return to the manufacture of the things we lost to China or the east as their costs escalate. Who is trying to do this..NO ONE.!!
Time to not just CUT costs but to SURGICALLY remove costs, people and waste but its also time for companies to pay their staff more and their shareholders a bit less....REMEMBER I am still an unrepentant Tory.
My view is that :-
Thatcher was awe inspiring.
Callaghan was a failure
Blair was a conman
Brown was a failure who spent all the money on crap
Milliband is a child lost in the wilderness of union political crap
Cameron is a plastic cosmetic politician
Clegg is an inexperienced fall guy on an ego trip.
Where o'h where is that sense of leadership, that drive forwards, that common sense approach to be found today. Who has a clear vision unclouded by political opinion, who is prepared to do the right thing. NO ONE.!!
The last thing we need is more political clap trap. Time to run the country like a business.
Al
- Joined
- 19 Mar 2007
- Messages
- 5,295
- Reaction score
- 411
This should really help the situation?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15977813
Clarkson at his best, bless!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15977813
Clarkson at his best, bless!
Allylearm
Established Member
Beech you forgot one thing about Thatcher. She destroyed but never tried to rebuild or supply a viable alternative to employment she destroyed. That's her real gift to history, never a builder and who forgets the Falkland War saved her govt.
If she was was so good for Britain and the Tories, why was she dumped by her own party. Why has the Tories since the Poll Tax went down a ever decreasing tunnel with a sole MP in Scotland at present. They did have the majority of votes in pre 60's.
Her brand of leadership was grating on those who worked for her. She was not for the manufacturing sector and could not resolve conflict. A true leader would have achieved the result by rebuilding and improving it thjrough agreement and change. Thatcher gave us Council House sales that started the credit trap and mortgage scam who fed the banks, estate agents, lawyers, finance, etc etc. Where are we now is the result of Thatcher meddling, trying to iron rule where diplomacy and change were needed, never her strong point. She neither had the skill for or the inkling to aid change in recovering the manufacturing sector but started the drive to a service economy. She succeeded in this goal but I do not think she ever thought or planned what she created. She went for a fight with Unions or anyone who disagreed with her view. Very democratic and worse for the UK in general.
So I cannot share your slanted view of history. Look at the outcome to judge. All governments to their shame followed her Service economy and selling public owned assets as the way forward.
If she was was so good for Britain and the Tories, why was she dumped by her own party. Why has the Tories since the Poll Tax went down a ever decreasing tunnel with a sole MP in Scotland at present. They did have the majority of votes in pre 60's.
Her brand of leadership was grating on those who worked for her. She was not for the manufacturing sector and could not resolve conflict. A true leader would have achieved the result by rebuilding and improving it thjrough agreement and change. Thatcher gave us Council House sales that started the credit trap and mortgage scam who fed the banks, estate agents, lawyers, finance, etc etc. Where are we now is the result of Thatcher meddling, trying to iron rule where diplomacy and change were needed, never her strong point. She neither had the skill for or the inkling to aid change in recovering the manufacturing sector but started the drive to a service economy. She succeeded in this goal but I do not think she ever thought or planned what she created. She went for a fight with Unions or anyone who disagreed with her view. Very democratic and worse for the UK in general.
So I cannot share your slanted view of history. Look at the outcome to judge. All governments to their shame followed her Service economy and selling public owned assets as the way forward.
beech1948
Established Member
Allylearm said:
Modernist
Established Member
beech1948":haouajq4 said:
Don't imagine I condone waste or idleness in PS, I said the reverse. Given that much of private pension provision has been closed then, if we are to avoid a generation of under resourced pensioners that must be replaced, the answer is not tot further reduce the public provision.
I don't agree with several of your points re education etc however we will inevitably end up paying more for less in a wide range of areas. So far as your question of what we want and will tolerate we do not have much choice but clearly financial security funded by work is a priority. How the nation cares for those unable to move mountains themselves is a test of our civilisation.
Re politicians, I would have shot thatcher and have little more time than you for the rest and you are correct about Blair.
I absolutely agree the country (any country) needs strong leadership however we have allowed our political system to become corrupt along with the press and financial services (to just name 3) and are therefore bedevilled by the same problems which plague 3rd world economies and more.
The problem is who would be a politician under such circumstances?
RogerS":1jo73vj7 said:
Well, let's start with some right wing rhetoric shall we? Even the Daily Telegraph admits it's £35 billion. Not an insignificant sum, I feel.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -year.html
beech1948
Established Member
Modernist,
You said>>>>>>
I don't agree with several of your points re education etc
<<<<
This is a matter of public record and is from the figures published by the DoEd. I don't care if you agree or not but you can't disagree with these figures.
You nsaid,
>>>>
however we will inevitably end up paying more for less in a wide range of areas. So far as your question of what we want and will tolerate we do not have much choice but clearly financial security funded by work is a priority. How the nation cares for those unable to move mountains themselves is a test of our civilisation.
Re politicians, I would have shot thatcher and have little more time than you for the rest and you are correct about Blair.
I absolutely agree the country (any country) needs strong leadership however we have allowed our political system to become corrupt along with the press and financial services (to just name 3) and are therefore bedevilled by the same problems which plague 3rd world economies and more.
The problem is who would be a politician under such circumstances?[/quote]
<<<<
I do agree. What I find hard to stomach is that you appear willing to accept it. You identify it but condemn yourself to no choice, no action. Why are you defeated.
Al
You said>>>>>>
I don't agree with several of your points re education etc
<<<<
This is a matter of public record and is from the figures published by the DoEd. I don't care if you agree or not but you can't disagree with these figures.
You nsaid,
>>>>
however we will inevitably end up paying more for less in a wide range of areas. So far as your question of what we want and will tolerate we do not have much choice but clearly financial security funded by work is a priority. How the nation cares for those unable to move mountains themselves is a test of our civilisation.
Re politicians, I would have shot thatcher and have little more time than you for the rest and you are correct about Blair.
I absolutely agree the country (any country) needs strong leadership however we have allowed our political system to become corrupt along with the press and financial services (to just name 3) and are therefore bedevilled by the same problems which plague 3rd world economies and more.
The problem is who would be a politician under such circumstances?[/quote]
<<<<
I do agree. What I find hard to stomach is that you appear willing to accept it. You identify it but condemn yourself to no choice, no action. Why are you defeated.
Al
Allylearm
Established Member
Beech again you are misjudged what Thatcher did to taxation. She misused North Sea Oil Revenue to pay for her taxation and misspending of her govt. Not a viable option then or now and only gained in the short term like her govt and all proceeding govts that followed, that is what her service directed outcome of her policies generated.
North Sea oil revenue would have been better spent supplying jobs for then and the future, Infrastructure of the country and supporting new product development/business. All things Thatcher should have done and any govt worth it salt should do. To project future growth and revenue opportunities is well within their scope. In business a five year plan to invest to reach an outcome is good planning along with support for investment, no CEO or owner could do so without. Can you tell me Thatchers planned outcome for UK, split local tax to a new system that generated ill will, spend ever decreasing natural asset to fund tax cuts that fuel what spending on imports due to lack of products produced in this country or fuel lifestyles that continued the rich to get richer, sell its assets in public utilities to finance what greed or fail in the future to be able to regulate or stipulate cost of power/gas. Who did we sell our crown jewels to and what was the benefit to the lowly tax payer/previous owner. Yes Thatcher was great for Great Britain was she not.
North Sea oil revenue would have been better spent supplying jobs for then and the future, Infrastructure of the country and supporting new product development/business. All things Thatcher should have done and any govt worth it salt should do. To project future growth and revenue opportunities is well within their scope. In business a five year plan to invest to reach an outcome is good planning along with support for investment, no CEO or owner could do so without. Can you tell me Thatchers planned outcome for UK, split local tax to a new system that generated ill will, spend ever decreasing natural asset to fund tax cuts that fuel what spending on imports due to lack of products produced in this country or fuel lifestyles that continued the rich to get richer, sell its assets in public utilities to finance what greed or fail in the future to be able to regulate or stipulate cost of power/gas. Who did we sell our crown jewels to and what was the benefit to the lowly tax payer/previous owner. Yes Thatcher was great for Great Britain was she not.
