Lets have, why do people hate the public sector?
Comments
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andyrm wrote:Paulie W wrote:andyrm wrote:Yup - case in point with BA's staff - over unionised, workshy wasters who don't realise how lucky they are. Watch them go down the route of the miners and the rest of the British car workers before long.......and with good reason.
Which 'route' is it that the miner's and car workers went down exactly?
Eventually someone further up the food chain finds out they are lazy wasters and there is cheaper, better, more committed labour available elsewhere and shuts them down. That route.
And that's your interpretation of what happened with the Miners? Ok, carry on0 -
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DonDaddyD wrote:As for wasting your taxes (because I seemingly pay none and appear to be the biggest offender of tax waste), I don't, I'm going to spend your money on a big TV, wine, cheese and maybe light my cigars with some of it as well. So yeah... I guess thanks.
:roll:
Spending all day, at work (did we get to the bottom of that?) on a forum preaching to us = waste of taxpayers money.
Spending your salary on a big TV, wine, cheese and maybe lighting your cigars with some of it as well = perfectly reasonable use of anyone's money.
On a more serious note, how you spend YOUR money is none of my concern. How you waste MY tax contributions certainly is.
Obviously the subject of (cigar) smoking could open the debate on NHS treatment of lung cancer patients who continue to smoke....0 -
Greg66 wrote:Hey!
Where'd Jaws and Mighty Kong go?
Sorry, will allow everyone to get back 'on topic'. If only I had an opinion on Kong vs. Jaws...0 -
Paulie W wrote:
And that's your interpretation of what happened with the Miners? Ok, carry on
Yes. And clearly I am not the only one. Plagiarised from Wikipedia:
"Coal was a nationalised industry managed by the National Coal Board (NCB) under Ian MacGregor and, as in most of Europe, was heavily subsidised. A number of mines ("pits") in the United Kingdom were profitable and remained open after the strike, several of which still operate (including one in Warwickshire and four in Yorkshire).[1] There were also a number of mines that were unprofitable and the government wanted to close. The viability of many of these mines was called into question, but the government closed many before reports were collated, instead of using temporary offers of increased redundancy pay to encourage miners into voting in favour of pit closures. In addition, the government insisted that in order to make the mines profitable they required efficiency improvements to be achieved by means of increased mechanisation and thus job cuts. Many unions resisted this."
To summarise: "The mines were inneficient and loss making. The goverment wanted to cut the loss making ones and make them profitable or be shut down (logical business sense IMHO). The unrealistic unions got the easily swayed workers all wound up. They went on strike, lost public support, refused to work harder to reach commercial viability and so got shut down because people in foreign countries were prepared to work harder for less money for the same job".
Market forces. We're in a global economy where everything should be competitive eeither on cost or value proposition. If people aren't prepared to compete for work/survival, they can't expect to have a god given right to be supported by anyone, be that their company if in the private sector or the taxpayer if in the public sector.0 -
To be fair everyone on here is wasting someones money...
Unless you run your business, then you're wasting your own money/time.
But...Dondaddyd wrote:Spending all day, at work (did we get to the bottom of that?) on a forum preaching to us = waste of taxpayers money.
I'm glad to be of service, I take pride in excelling in the task set.
Food Chain number = 4
A true scalp is not only overtaking someone but leaving them stopped at a set of lights. As you, who have clearly beaten the lights, pummels nothing but the open air ahead. ~ 'DondaddyD'. Player of the Unspoken Game0 -
Monkeypump wrote:
Obviously the subject of (cigar) smoking could open the debate on NHS treatment of lung cancer patients who continue to smoke....
Nope. we have been through this before....smokers pay for themselves and more through taxation on tobacco products..
unless that nasty DDD has been smuggling big fat cuban ceegars from his holidays!
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simonaspinall wrote:
<snip the centre-right/progressive conservatism stuff>
Although I am a proper Guardian reader
You are *so* not reading the right newspaper.0 -
cee wrote:Monkeypump wrote:
Obviously the subject of (cigar) smoking could open the debate on NHS treatment of lung cancer patients who continue to smoke....
Nope. we have been through this before....smokers pay for themselves and more through taxation on tobacco products..
unless that nasty DDD has been smuggling big fat cuban ceegars from his holidays!
Ah, didn't read that particular thread. Would be (genuinely) interested to read any published research that proves it though.0 -
Whoever said the NHS generates no income is talking bollocks!
Tax is a bit like someone forcing you to save a certain amount of cash, and then spending it on your behalf. It's still spending, it's just you're not doing it. In this case, they spend it on services like policing, providing healthcare etc. They're just the same (economically) as services like hairdressing, etc.0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:Whoever said the NHS generates no income is talking bollocks!
Tax is a bit like someone forcing you to save a certain amount of cash, and then spending it on your behalf. It's still spending, it's just you're not doing it. In this case, they spend it on services like policing, providing healthcare etc. They're just the same (economically) as services like hairdressing, etc.
I can choose when I get my haircut though, and by whom, and if they're crap (or good, but too expensive) I can go elsewhere.0 -
The evidence I see is that the sweeping policies and procedures are usually put in place in order to avoid managing people. I did an exercise in a public body where everyone was complaining that all the decision making was sucked up to the top, and that there were too many onerous and complex procedures.
We gave the group a fictional case study where a budget had been underspent, and the person who did the invoicing hadn't mentioned it to the manager, because he wasn't sure it was his place to do so (absolutely the sort of thing that happens). The groups solutions included "The manager shouldn't be trusting such a junior person; he needs to keep a closer eye on the budget himself", and "They should get the junior to create a monthly report showing.....(lots and lots of details here). What nobody thought of was sitting the junior down and saying "Hey, no worries this time, but if you notice we're underspending again, can you just let me know?". That's the sort of thinking which results in 500 junior staff across an organisation creating reports that nobody reads every month because a mistake happened once, and nobody wanted to just manage the person who made the mistake.0 -
where's the fighintg talk? I was thinking of bringing in Mecha-Streisand
this thread's no fun any more... go back to slagging each other offPurveyor of sonic doom
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Monkeypump wrote:Rick Chasey wrote:Whoever said the NHS generates no income is talking bollocks!
Tax is a bit like someone forcing you to save a certain amount of cash, and then spending it on your behalf. It's still spending, it's just you're not doing it. In this case, they spend it on services like policing, providing healthcare etc. They're just the same (economically) as services like hairdressing, etc.
I can choose when I get my haircut though, and by whom, and if they're crap (or good, but too expensive) I can go elsewhere.
That's not the point I'm making.
It generates income. It provides a service, which people pay for. Whether it's efficient or not is an entirely different and (in this specific instance) irrelevant.0 -
DonDaddyD wrote:To be fair everyone on here is wasting someones money...
Unless you run your business, then you're wasting your own money/time.
Ahem. This particular public sector worker is on a day off to compensate for the fact that he will be working throughout the night on Saturday and Sunday and is wasting nothing.Rules are for fools.0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:Monkeypump wrote:Rick Chasey wrote:Whoever said the NHS generates no income is talking bollocks!
Tax is a bit like someone forcing you to save a certain amount of cash, and then spending it on your behalf. It's still spending, it's just you're not doing it. In this case, they spend it on services like policing, providing healthcare etc. They're just the same (economically) as services like hairdressing, etc.
I can choose when I get my haircut though, and by whom, and if they're crap (or good, but too expensive) I can go elsewhere.
That's not the point I'm making.
It generates income. It provides a service, which people pay for. Whether it's efficient or not is an entirely different and (in this specific instance) irrelevant.
Okay, maybe I'm missing the point. I don't disagree with your first sentence, but if someone was taking my money and spending it on things they thought I needed, I'd expect at least SOME justification of what it's spent on (can't please all people all of the time, so for arguments sake we'll assume I agree with what it's spent on) and that my money isn't all being used to pay DDD to sit on forums all day.0 -
Waddlie wrote:DonDaddyD wrote:To be fair everyone on here is wasting someones money...
Unless you run your business, then you're wasting your own money/time.
Ahem. This particular public sector worker is on a day off to compensate for the fact that he will be working throughout the night on Saturday and Sunday and is wasting nothing.
Ah, but DDD appears to have made the assumption that everyone is at work (just like him).0 -
Clever Pun wrote:where's the fighintg talk? I was thinking of bringing in Mecha-Streisand
this thread's no fun any more... go back to slagging each other off
P*ss off, Bromptonite!
(Is that better? ) 0 -
Monkeypump wrote:Clever Pun wrote:where's the fighintg talk? I was thinking of bringing in Mecha-Streisand
this thread's no fun any more... go back to slagging each other off
P*ss off, Bromptonite!
(Is that better? )
Should clarify, in my world "Bromptonite" is an insult. A really bad one. So there.0 -
cee wrote:Monkeypump wrote:
Obviously the subject of (cigar) smoking could open the debate on NHS treatment of lung cancer patients who continue to smoke....
Nope. we have been through this before....smokers pay for themselves and more through taxation on tobacco products..
unless that nasty DDD has been smuggling big fat cuban ceegars from his holidays!
Are you sure? I thought the evidence was ambiguous? Higher sales taxes, would increase governmental income and earlier death would reduce expenditure, but the increased morbidity, and consequent lowered earning potential would lower the governmental income, whilst requiring quite a lot of expensive care.
A leg amputation due to smoking-induced deep vein thrombosis (90% of leg amputations in the 1980's as I remember from my biology lessons) is not going to be life threatening, but would add a lot to the cost of support.
I find the above reasoning quite offensive, as it just concerns the economic worth of a person's entire life, so misses the benefit of having a healthy as a desirable goal for its own ethical sake.0 -
Rick Chasey wrote:It generates income. It provides a service, which people pay for. Whether it's efficient or not is an entirely different and (in this specific instance) irrelevant.
It doesn't generate income. It uses tax money to fund the services it provides.
If it were to charge more for its services than those services cost it to provide, the excess would be its income. Instead, it takes from the tax purse an amount equal to the cost of the services it provides, thereby generating no income.
To the extent that it carries a surplus, that is simply money it has taken from the tax purse for which it has not provided any service. That's not profit.0 -
Clever Pun wrote:where's the fighintg talk? I was thinking of bringing in Mecha-Streisand
this thread's no fun any more... go back to slagging each other off
And I call up -Robin Smith of the Cure0 -
Greg66 wrote:simonaspinall wrote:
<snip the centre-right/progressive conservatism stuff>
Although I am a proper Guardian reader
You are *so* not reading the right newspaper.
Ooooo you cad. The guardian is a cracking newspaper, as long as you choose to ignore Toynbee. Include Miranda Hyde, Charlie Brooker and Stewart Lee and you've got a dream team!
The other papers discount themselves - The Times for obvious reasons, the telegraph as it's the more mature copy of the Daily Mail and the Independent which is basically a greenpeace tabloid.
What we really want to kow is what the Daily Mash says about all this - My personal newspaper of choice! http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/soci ... 1003012514
I think what it all boils down to is regardless of whatever sector you're in, you just look at some of the absolute bollocks that gets done by councils and you think "WHY ON EARTH WOULD SOMEONE MAKE A DECISION WHICH CAUSES THIS!"
Classic example - Why did Kirklees council decide to go to the expense of relaying a road with what is basically throwing boulders at what was ok-ish tarmac and laid a poorer road. Thousands of pounds actually reducing the quality of a road!
Why is it that if you can't ring up a doctor's surgery at exactly 8am and beat 300 other callers you can't get an appointment?
Police - Can't fault 'em, they provide a cracking presence round Leeds and they deserve every credit.
Why do I have to subsidise ridiculous redundancy pay-offs for council workers way above what i would get at an SME?
Why do people have to go on ridiculous courses when they have something called 'common sense'?
Why do IT projects that are estimated at millions of pounds and takes years to implement not scrapped immediately as soon as they are completed they will always be over budget, massively delayed and are already out of date?!
I think a lot of the public sector grossly excessive wages stem from the unions supporting labour financially and in campaigns. They gave into them and kept them sweet and the system started to become bloated. Add in the extra million workers over 13 years and you have the perfect recipe of making your employment figures look good and a voting base. Good strategy if your a Labour government, bad if you're someone who has to pay for it.
And to all those who say "well this happens in a private organisation so you can't single out public sector workers" - I say that the only cost is to the company shareholders and the continuity of the company - which the tax payer usually does not pay for whereas with a public organisation the tax payer picks up bills for first class train tickets, meals out, pointless training courses, days out, bloated salaries, job conditions that are far out of balance compared to a private sector counterpart.What wheels...? Wheelsmith.co.uk!0 -
Love the Daily Mashsimonaspinall wrote:Ooooo you cad. The guardian is a cracking newspaper, as long as you choose to ignore Toynbee. Include Miranda Hyde, Charlie Brooker and Stewart Lee and you've got a dream team!
What we really want to kow is what the Daily Mash says about all this - My personal newspaper of choice! http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/soci ... 1003012514
The Guardian is very useful (or at least was until recently) for its jobs pages on I think a Wednesday where the public sector 'non-jobs' were advertised. A quick look at the sort of positions they were recruiting for gave a very good idea of where to make cuts in public spending without really afffecting anyone...."I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Clever Pun wrote:where's the fighintg talk? I was thinking of bringing in Mecha-Streisand
this thread's no fun any more... go back to slagging each other off
or Mothra
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PBo wrote:Clever Pun wrote:where's the fighintg talk? I was thinking of bringing in Mecha-Streisand
this thread's no fun any more... go back to slagging each other off
And I call up -Robin Smith of the Cure
Bzzzt. Robert Smith, not Robin 1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
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Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Stevo 666 wrote:
Love the Daily Mashsimonaspinall wrote:Ooooo you cad. The guardian is a cracking newspaper, as long as you choose to ignore Toynbee. Include Miranda Hyde, Charlie Brooker and Stewart Lee and you've got a dream team!
What we really want to kow is what the Daily Mash says about all this - My personal newspaper of choice! http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/soci ... 1003012514
The Guardian is very useful (or at least was until recently) for its jobs pages on I think a Wednesday where the public sector 'non-jobs' were advertised. A quick look at the sort of positions they were recruiting for gave a very good idea of where to make cuts in public spending without really afffecting anyone....
The Mash is actually where I get most of my news from; if it looks interesting / shocking / funny on there I'll then go and look for the story elsewhere. Always The Mash first though.Mud - Genesis Vapour CCX
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Rick Chasey wrote:Whoever said the NHS generates no income is talking bollocks!
Defining income is the key - you probably mean me.... or other Greg - and talking Bollocks well....This has been said before - you are not breaking new ground here......Tax is a bit like someone forcing you to save a certain amount of cash,
OK......and then spending it on your behalf. It's still spending,
OK.....it's just you're not doing it.
OK...... erm,,,,,,In this case, they spend it on services like policing, providing healthcare etc.
OK.....They're just the same (economically) as services like hairdressing, etc.
Ah!
No.
Hairdressers cut hair - the money they make from people paying them covers their costs - the wages they pay are taxed. The spare money (profit) they make is taxed. The difference between cost and revenue is "created wealth".
Public Services do not create wealth - they absorb it - if the Public Service created wealth then we'd all be Public Servants and Communism would dominate the world - as it is North Korea.......- taxes paid by public servants aren't a slice of the wealth created by them - they are fraction of the wealth created by the hairdresser - second time round.
Public Services DO create Income - you are right - they provide income for Public Servants - this income comes from Private sector taxes - it's redistributed money - not created.Fixed gear for wet weather / hairy roadie for posing in the sun.
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simonaspinall wrote:
I think a lot of the public sector grossly excessive wages stem from the unions supporting labour financially and in campaigns. They gave into them and kept them sweet and the system started to become bloated. Add in the extra million workers over 13 years and you have the perfect recipe of making your employment figures look good and a voting base. Good strategy if your a Labour government, bad if you're someone who has to pay for it.
And to all those who say "well this happens in a private organisation so you can't single out public sector workers" - I say that the only cost is to the company shareholders and the continuity of the company - which the tax payer usually does not pay for whereas with a public organisation the tax payer picks up bills for first class train tickets, meals out, pointless training courses, days out, bloated salaries, job conditions that are far out of balance compared to a private sector counterpart.
Hmm, you're talking about a tiny fraction of 'public sector' workers getting these perks and grossly excessive wages.
its like slagging the private sector off en-masse as bloated overpaid perk junkies on the back of Fred Goodwins windfall from the RBS disaster or Bono and Tom Cruise's earnings and lifestyle.
you (and no doubt others over the 18 pages) do a massive disservice to people in reality on wages equal or in many cases lower than Private sector counterparts for similar levels of responsibility and status. I have lost money from my wage in real terms every year for over a decade, and these are Union negotiated pay settlements under a Labour administration. Even in the boom times when my bro and best mate were picking up inflation busting rises in private sector, I was getting 1.5-2.5% (inflation at ~3% & underlying = more) on the basis that the government wanted to keep public sector wages in check - I was sick as a chip to see the MP's getting 10's of % and judges, high ranking whitehall mandarins too, but trust me that sort of wage inflation never filtered down to the other 99.8% of us.
just on the e.g. of first class train tickets - any proof for what you say or is it blind prejudice? I've travelled 1st class once in my life - at my own expense & on holiday the carriage was full of businessmen. In the cops there is a hierachy of expenses you can claim for travel, overnighters etc and it is only the very senior people (=Executive level in private industry) that get 1st class perks much the same level of private sector that would be going 1st class and getting meals paid for. At grunt level I would be expected to drive @20p/mile with a car full if possible or if lucky get a standard ticket bought as early and cheaply as possible and can claim ~£6 for an evening meal, anything more I'm expected to pay myself. This is representative of the vast majority of public sector workers, not the occasional chief executive or special advisor that someone has been stupid enough to bring in on the money and perks you allude to and who is resented just as much by the public sector shop floor as by the private sector.
Reading the redundancy thread on cake stop. every single person on that thread that hasgiven an example has got a better redundancy package than mine is set at (less than 1 week pay for each year worked ) hardly excessive and bloated is it?
on the tax fiasco thread theres a poster talking about expecting an HMRC letter because of their their expenses, paid health care, employer paid pension scheme etc - wanna bet if they work in public or private sector? (dunno maybe they'll swing by and tell us - but I'd bet a hell of a lot more on those being perks in a private company than in a public role)
The top end of both does well for itself but the bottom end doesnt do nearly so well and doesn't deserve to be lumped in with such blind misinformed prejudice as has come out on bits of this thread0 -
This thread's no fun any more.“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0
