270,000 Civil Service Workers To Strike For 2 Days

DaddyBear

kabayiri wrote: »

And they do have company cars in the NHS.

Really? That must be a very select number of hospital managers.

Graham_Devon

kabayiri wrote: »

I never mentioned civil servants. You did.

I am one that believes every area will need to make a cut, and that does include NHS. And they do have company cars in the NHS.

Cuts have happened in my industry. We all have to face up to reality.

I'm not sure if you are getting confused with pool cars here?

Or whether you mean the extremely, extremely low percentage of top end exec's who have a company car. Very few and far between. Usually responsible for a whole massive area of hospitals so needs a car to carry out their job. 40p per mile for their own car actually turns out more expensive.

Sir_Humphrey

One thing which Will Self was spot-on about on Question Time the other evening was that the % cuts being suggested would mean the abolition of one of the armed services.

Which ought to be telling you that the politicians are telling serious porkies about taxes after the election.

If you think that "efficiency savings" are a magic wand you are as deluded as Jim Hacker.

Also, the economy is still not actually repaired yet, so this is all highly premature.

kabayiri

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

Which ought to be telling you that the politicians are telling serious porkies about taxes after the election.

If you think that "efficiency savings" are a magic wand you are as deluded as Jim Hacker.

Also, the economy is still not actually repaired yet, so this is all highly premature.

I just struggle to get my head around the scale of it, when the cuts finally happen.

I guess the idea of 'someone else can pay for it' won't make things easier either?

I wonder how many of the seriously wealthy people in the UK are making personal plans to protect their own wealth.

kabayiri

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I'm not sure if you are getting confused with pool cars here?

Or whether you mean the extremely, extremely low percentage of top end exec's who have a company car. Very few and far between. Usually responsible for a whole massive area of hospitals so needs a car to carry out their job. 40p per mile for their own car actually turns out more expensive.

Possibly a low percentage Graham. But I used to work in fleet lease, and I remember the tremendous growth in one of our divisions which specialised in public sector. They weren't pool cars either. The business definitely benefitted from the growth in NHS management.

Sir_Humphrey

kabayiri wrote: »

I just struggle to get my head around the scale of it, when the cuts finally happen.

I guess the idea of 'someone else can pay for it' won't make things easier either?

I wonder how many of the seriously wealthy people in the UK are making personal plans to protect their own wealth.

The only way out of the mess is economic growth.

The UK national debt has been far larger in the past and reduced without having to make the sorts of cuts being suggested. Look at the national debt in Victorian times when we had an empire. This whole cuts debate is a complete joke and is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of economic history and how economies work.

My crystal ball says that the cuts/tax rises will address the structural deficit but overall debt will remain stabilised around the level of Germany - and personal debt will be around the same level as Germany. This would be a great outcome from where we are now.

Kohoutek

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

The only way out of the mess is economic growth.

The UK national debt has been far larger in the past and reduced without having to make the sorts of cuts being suggested. Look at the national debt in Victorian times when we had an empire. This whole cuts debate is a complete joke and is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of economic history and how economies work.

It's all very well saying that, without specifying where economic growth is going to come from. If you consider how GDP is calculated:

GDP=private consumption+gross investment+government spending+(imports-exports)

Private consumption will fall in the medium term, with higher unemployment and higher taxes, and less availability of consumer credit.

Gross investment: our savings rate is not particularly high, and corporations are still deleveraging.

Government spending: under any scenario, this will decrease massively. Under Labour current plans, will reduce by £180 billion in real terms by 2018

Imports-exports: the weak pound hasn't improved our trade balance to anything like a satisfactory extent. We need to reverse the trend of the last 30 years if we want to increase manufacturing.

We also have new challenges now that will limit economic growth. I think the most significant are an ageing population (fewer workers, bigger expenses on pensions, healthcare), and the fact that world oil supply has probably hit peak supply and demand will continue increase substantially from China/India - meaning higher and higher energy prices.

Graham_Devon

kabayiri wrote: »

Possibly a low percentage Graham. But I used to work in fleet lease, and I remember the tremendous growth in one of our divisions which specialised in public sector. They weren't pool cars either. The business definitely benefitted from the growth in NHS management.

Well all I know is they have a fair few pool cars, all leased and the staff can "hire" them. It's taken out of their wages. They can also be used for travel betwen sites on business, at no cost.

I know they are all leased as they were advertising them not long ago as being available to buy direct from the leasing company to staff.

Sir_Humphrey

Kohoutek wrote: »

It's all very well saying that, without specifying where economic growth is going to come from. If you consider how GDP is calculated:

GDP=private consumption+gross investment+government spending+(imports-exports)

Private consumption will fall in the medium term, with higher unemployment and higher taxes, and less availability of consumer credit.

Gross investment: our savings rate is not particularly high, and corporations are still deleveraging.

Government spending: under any scenario, this will decrease massively. Under Labour current plans, will reduce by £180 billion in real terms by 2018

Imports-exports: the weak pound hasn't improved our trade balance to anything like a satisfactory extent. We need to reverse the trend of the last 30 years if we want to increase manufacturing.

We also have new challenges now that will limit economic growth. I think the most significant are an ageing population (fewer workers, bigger expenses on pensions, healthcare), and the fact that world oil supply has probably hit peak supply and demand will continue increase substantially from China/India - meaning higher and higher energy prices.

There is no way that we will rebuild our manufacturing base without govt investment. This has been done before in the 1930s and can be done again. In that case it was the supplementing of old heavy industry such as steel with manufacturing (such as cars/consumer goods). Also modernisation such as Tube extensions and road tarmaccing.

If private investment and spending does not recover then government spending will not be going down as it would cause a full scale depression. I hope that I am never proven right on that one.

michaels

Ok - I get the if you cut govt spending before private sector spending recovers you will reduce growth to a level where unemployment will rise further and consumption will decline...

...but I do not see how the govt can continue to deficit finance 25% of spending without rates rising to the extent at which private investment is crowded out (and even potentially triggering an Icelandic style funding crisis). As we have discussed before, even if our debt/gdp ratio is lower than other countries if the trajectory is patently not sustainable so then it would be a foolish lender who bought the debt. Don't forget our long rates are traditionally above those of the eur zone so sustaining an equivalent sized debt to gdp ratio will cost a bigger proportion of our gdp.

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

Also, the economy is still not actually repaired yet, so this is all highly premature.