Institute for Fiscal Studies Forecast Decade of Pain - Guardian

lemonjelly

The_White_Horse wrote: »

i think one of the biggest problems is the perceived and very real unfairness of it all. On my way to the station, to my boring job that I do to pay the bills, i pass an out of work gentlemen most days. He is usually out walking his large mastiff style dog (I would like a dog, but my wife and I work, so there is noone to look after one during the day). He is also invariably smoking. My wife and I gave up smoking because of the negative effect on health, but mainly because they were becoming so expensive, we couldn't justify buying them. Yet this bone idle leech can happily smoke all day, with his dog, his can of beer and his free house.

If you don't work, you should GET NOTHING except the bare minimum to get through the day. A small bit of food and that is all. Taste is a luxury. You want taste, work and buy something tastier. You want to smoke? Work. You want to booze? Work. You want a dog? Work.

At a very minimum, these people should be forced to sit behind a desk all day doing nothing but looking for jobs from 9 to 5 = and have to wear a suit to do it. Only then should they get a greatly reduced from the current amount, allowance.

I am sat at a desk, working, paying tax and he is currently sunning himself in flats garden, drinking and smoking.

IT IS A TRAVESTY OF NATURAL JUSTICE.[/QUOTE]

You should be sacked. You're on t'internet, stealing from your employer, using your employers resources and time to mess around on the web rather than do the job you're paid to do.

Scrounger.

Generali

lemonjelly wrote: »

You should be sacked. You're on t'internet, stealing from your employer, using your employers resources and time to mess around on the web rather than do the job you're paid to do.

Scrounger.

Perhaps but then that's not really your problem unless you're a shareholder of the company (s)he works for.

Public Sector employees (as the term implies) work for some or all British voters via their elected representatives. The current feeling AFAIK is that most voters feel that those employees are either incompetant, inept or lazy for the most part. You can chose which company to buy from but you can't decide to pay tax to another mob simply or quickly.

A problem the UK has is that the public sector needs to be trimmed (culled*?). However, the public sector make up such a large proportion of the electorate that it ain't quite that simple so what to do?

My feeling since the Blair win in 1997 is that the UK will have to run out of money before things will be reversed. That's what's happening I think as Social Corporatism(?) runs out of money.






*Obviously not literally

Wookster

Generali wrote: »

My feeling since the Blair win in 1997 is that the UK will have to run out of money before things will be reversed. That's what's happening I think as Social Corporatism(?) runs out of money.

The upside is that there are other countries that will hopefully serve as an example: France, Belguim, Spain, Italy etc.

Hopefully we don't have to suffer in the extreme... then again, people can be pig headedly blind to the bloomin' obvious.

lemonjelly

Generali wrote: »

Perhaps but then that's not really your problem unless you're a shareholder of the company (s)he works for.

Public Sector employees (as the term implies) work for some or all British voters via their elected representatives. The current feeling AFAIK is that most voters feel that those employees are either incompetant, inept or lazy for the most part. You can chose which company to buy from but you can't decide to pay tax to another mob simply or quickly.

A problem the UK has is that the public sector needs to be trimmed (culled*?). However, the public sector make up such a large proportion of the electorate that it ain't quite that simple so what to do?

My feeling since the Blair win in 1997 is that the UK will have to run out of money before things will be reversed. That's what's happening I think as Social Corporatism(?) runs out of money.






*Obviously not literally

See your point, & take much of it on board.

But there are difficult decisions here, in respect of where to make cuts.

In example, jobcentres in birmingham are having to have staff in on saturdays just to cope with the amount of new claims they are getting for JSA.

A friend works for the "new" CSA, staff there are continuously being asked to do overtime.

There is a greater demand for housing & homelessness queries.

More people are accessing Higher and/or Further education. As they cannot find a job, many find study/re-skilling a viable alternative.

With Swine Flu, there are considerable pressures on the health service.

Over the past couple of years, there have been over 300,000 civil servants reduced from the workload. (Net result of that has been a noticeable fall in the quality of work, as it has mainly been the experienced civil servants gone, but that is another story/thread).

So this leaves me wondering. The above services are all going to see an increase in demand for them over the next couple of years. Where can we make the cuts?

Not saying all public sector jobs must be saved, & agree that resources are going to have to limit what services we have. But that doesn't answer my question...

Mr_Mumble

I'd rather have someone on JSA of £60 a week than taking £350 in a non-job. Labour have 'created' 250,000 extra 'teaching assistants' since 1997 but the number of teachers has barely risen and the number of special need teachers has fallen!

Blair/ Brown have produced a completely lop-sided economy - its not just those on benefits but all those people who are not providing a service that would be paid for willingly out of pay packets: Blunket's bobbies, diversity officers, street football coordinators, community harmonisers, 'charity' workers subsidised by government, most elf'n'safety wonks, regional assembly workers and a plethora of other made up jobs in local and central government. None of these jobs provide an economic benefit over working in a meat processing plant or picking strawberries but the government created so many non-jobs it had to open the doors to mass-immigration just so the real work could be done efficiently!

leftieM wrote: »

It's good that he smokes. For every 20 fags he buys, he puts £4.45 of his dole money back into the taxman's pocket.

Now, now, you don't really believe those on the dole actually source their ciggies from UK do you?

carolt

Ah, but is a teaching assistant a 'non-job'?

Arguably the work should be done by a qualified teacher - at twice the cost or more - but are you really arguing they're unnecessary?

Have you been in a school recently?

ess0two

carolt wrote: »

Ah, but is a teaching assistant a 'non-job'?

Arguably the work should be done by a qualified teacher - at twice the cost or more - but are you really arguing they're unnecessary?

Have you been in a school recently?

All about class sizes init?hence the need for assistants?

carolt

Class sizes, partly - also giving qualified teachers some non-contact time for preparation time, plus also looking after special needs students, etc etc.

Without them, as I said, you'd be paying double the costs or more for qualified teachers - arguably that would be better, and there was certainly a lot of resistance from qualified teachers at bringing them in for this reason.

But in reality, for what they do, they're hopelessly underpaid.

Davesnave

carolt wrote: »

Class sizes, partly - also giving qualified teachers some non-contact time for preparation time, plus also looking after special needs students, etc etc.

Without them, as I said, you'd be paying double the costs or more for qualified teachers - arguably that would be better, and there was certainly a lot of resistance from qualified teachers at bringing them in for this reason.

But in reality, for what they do, they're hopelessly underpaid.

Yes, and don't forget that it was possible to close some special schools and place their pupils in mainstream by giving each a relatively low-paid adult 'minder.' We were told this was 'better,' though I suspected 'cheaper.'

Either way, I believe there has been some back-tracking, but then that's nothing new on the educational ideas scene.

Generali

carolt wrote: »

Class sizes, partly - also giving qualified teachers some non-contact time for preparation time, plus also looking after special needs students, etc etc.

Without them, as I said, you'd be paying double the costs or more for qualified teachers - arguably that would be better, and there was certainly a lot of resistance from qualified teachers at bringing them in for this reason.

But in reality, for what they do, they're hopelessly underpaid.

I guess what needs to be done is to split Government spending into needs to be done (eg millitary), very important (eg teaching kids at the most basic level), nice to have (eg new textbooks this year) and hinderence to producing more output in the public sector (eg many target setters and monitors).

I think the most important change will have to be in attitude. People not eating enough fruit and veg? Well they should eat more of it but it's not the Government's place to spend money on trying to force them to do so.