We are all in this together, well not if you are in a union.

marklv

Andy_L wrote: »

or the official stats, in 2009 (rounding errors mean they don't add up)

1.4mill staff

140k Doctors
417k Nurses
150k scientific, therapeutic & technical staff
18k Ambulance staff
377k Support to clinical staff
236k infrastructure support (which includes 45k Managers & senior managers)
92k GP practice staff

http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/workforce/nhs-staff-numbers/nhs-staff-1999--2009-overview

236k admin and managerial people out of a workforce of 1.4M - my maths tells me that is c.17%. Less than 1 in 5 of the total. Hardly what could be called excessive in any large organisation!

marklv

chewmylegoff wrote: »

if you think a country cannot go bust, they you have fewer brain cells than me, and as you have pointed out i only have one.

Really? How can it go bust? I can't think of any country where bailiffs have invaded and taken over everything. Give me an example. Germany was bust by 1943 and still managed to fight against impossible odds for two more years.

chewmylegoff wrote: »

money cannot always be raised from taxation. taxation is a finite source of funds for the government, not an unlimited pot it can increase at will. it has very little scope to increase too much further, we're already running at a tax burden well above 40% of GDP.

Of course it's not an unlimited pot, but our overall tax burden is still lower than that of many industrialised nations around the world. The rich can afford to pay more and should be made to pay more.

chewmylegoff wrote: »

i am not "playing with numbers". you said it wouldn't matter if the civil service schemes had been funded, because they would all be in deficit like the private sector schemes were. that would only be true if 100% of the money invested was lost.

having a deficit means the liabilities outweigh the assets. if, for instance, the schemes were 50% funded (i.e. having a 50% deficit of assets to liabilities), it would be better (i.e. less costly in the future) than the schemes being 0% funded.

you must be able to see that having a 50% deficit (£500 billion liability) would be better than having a 100% deficit (£1 trillion liability).

the government should have factored pension requirements in to start off with, but they didn't. it's a bit late to change that now, and you can't just dismiss the problem by saying that they should have!

You are shouting 'FIRE' in the middle of a full cinema hall just because you've seen a tiny spark somewhere. The money to finance pensions can be found, quite easily, quite safely. If the goernment found the money to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they can certainly find the money to pay pensions to their own employees! What you are spouting is simply Tory propaganda, with a veneer of intellectual justification by coming up with crypto-economic arguments. The Tory message is the same as it has always been: reward the rich (what the Tories, with brilliant obfuscation, call the 'middle class') and bash the genuine middle class and the ordinary working class. Nothing changes.

chewmylegoff wrote: »

any quite why you think a country cannot go bust is beyond me.

Give me an example. No doubt you'll roll off a list of Latin American countries etc. Yes, these have needed help from the IMF and so on, but this is not going 'bust' in the same way as a person would. I'm certainly not suggesting that we go down the road of spending what we haven't got, but Britain is not a poor country - the wealth is there. It exists. It's just a queston of getting it. Today 1% of the UK population owns 23% of the wealth - this was stated in today's Daily Mail, of all papers. The Mail rightly blames Tony Blair - the closet Tory who led the Labour party until his Scottish sidekick took over - but under Cameron the disparity will get worse and worse. The plain fact is that the rich have it all too nice, and it's time they got their comuppance.

marklv

chewmylegoff wrote: »

you accuse me of playing with numbers, and then you want to have a lesson in semantics over the name of a pension scheme? nice.

in my view the first thing that will happen is that all new joiners will be on money purchase. the next thing that will happen, a few years down the line, is that the existing defined benefit schemes will be closed and people will cease to accrue benefit going forward. the two steps won't be taken together as it would be too politically sensitive.

And you expect the unions and their members to just accept it? Maybe it will happen, but the government won't have an easy ride at all, trust me.

chewmylegoff wrote: »

just realism. if we continue to pay out more in benefits than we raise in income tax, then there is very little we can do to close the budget deficit, pay off our debts, and finance the govt's off balance sheet liabilities (chiefly pension liabilities). i suppose the other option is to privatise the health service. which would you prefer?

you don't seem to understand the size of the govt's liabilities, and think that we can just raise more money from taxes and never go bust. the trouble is that tax revenue is finite, whilst the govt is seemingly able to make unlimited promises to pay money to people. sorry if you don't understand this. if it makes you feel better to call me an idiot go ahead, at least i have the one brain cell i need to be able to see the bigger picture outside the tiny world of my own civil service pay grade.

This argument has gone round and round. I don't accept your viewpoint, and I also don't accept your economic arguments. I am all in favour of public sector reform, but this needs to be done sensitively, and in cooperation with the trade unions - the knee jerk reactions that both Labour and especially the Conservatives are adopting are destructive and harmful. Tabloid politics to please petty, bigoted lower middle class Daily Mail readers, not intelligent, creative politics that we so badly need in this country.

Kohoutek

marklv wrote: »

Tabloid politics to please petty, bigoted lower middle class Daily Mail readers, not intelligent, creative politics that we so badly need in this country.

That's a rather bigoted thing to say. I thought you didn't like snobbery, hence not voting for Cameron?

bigheadxx

marklv wrote: »

And you expect the unions and their members to just accept it? . I am all in favour of public sector reform, but this needs to be done sensitively, and in cooperation with the trade unions.

Cooperating with the trade unions is what caused industrial unrest in the 1970's and millions of days lost through strikes. It was the firm hand of a conservative government that sorted out the economic ills of the country in the 1980's and it will fall to the conservatives to do the same again.

Public sector workers will have to accept reality the same as the nationalised industries did in the 1980's. Back then it was nationalised industries holding back the prosperity of the country and now it is the public sector.

chewmylegoff

marklv wrote: »

And you expect the unions and their members to just accept it? Maybe it will happen, but the government won't have an easy ride at all, trust me.

well, given your transparent self interest, it's pretty obvious that you would only vote to strike at stage 2, as you wouldn't care about stage 1 as it wouldn't affect you - only new joiners. i have no doubt you wouldn't be ranting on here if you were getting an inflationary payrise, but new joiners were told their salary would be frozen for two years.

This argument has gone round and round. I don't accept your viewpoint, and I also don't accept your economic arguments. I am all in favour of public sector reform, but this needs to be done sensitively, and in cooperation with the trade unions - the knee jerk reactions that both Labour and especially the Conservatives are adopting are destructive and harmful. Tabloid politics to please petty, bigoted lower middle class Daily Mail readers, not intelligent, creative politics that we so badly need in this country.

typical mindless socialist smear attempt, anyone who says anything they disagree with must be a daily mail reading fascist. if you think paying out more in benefits than is raised in income tax is a sustainable situation, and that we can pay off debt at the same time, then good for you - at least you are happy in magical fantasy land.

your definition of intelligent, creative politics is to award unaffordable unsustainable payrises to yourself at a time when cuts are paramount (see today, all three major parties admitting significant job losses inevitable). you have missed your calling as an MP, i think labour have a vacancy in moray?

chewmylegoff

marklv wrote: »

Really? How can it go bust? I can't think of any country where bailiffs have invaded and taken over everything. Give me an example. Germany was bust by 1943 and still managed to fight against impossible odds for two more years.

a worthy example, although using mass slave labour and stealing the resources of the countries you have invaded is technically cheating i think.

Of course it's not an unlimited pot, but our overall tax burden is still lower than that of many industrialised nations around the world. The rich can afford to pay more and should be made to pay more.

if you can come up with a working policy which will result in more tax being raised frorm the rich, i encourage you to set it out. (p.s. nationalising everyone's savings accounts is cheating).

i love how you think that mass union strikes will bring the country down over a measly 1% payrise, but at the same time you think it is viable to ramp taxes up by large amounts at will with no consequences.

You are shouting 'FIRE' in the middle of a full cinema hall just because you've seen a tiny spark somewhere. The money to finance pensions can be found, quite easily, quite safely. If the goernment found the money to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they can certainly find the money to pay pensions to their own employees! What you are spouting is simply Tory propaganda, with a veneer of intellectual justification by coming up with crypto-economic arguments. The Tory message is the same as it has always been: reward the rich (what the Tories, with brilliant obfuscation, call the 'middle class') and bash the genuine middle class and the ordinary working class. Nothing changes.

no, i'm shouting fire in a burning building. the cost of the iraq and afghanistan war is insignificant compared to the public sector pension liability.

Give me an example. No doubt you'll roll off a list of Latin American countries etc. Yes, these have needed help from the IMF and so on, but this is not going 'bust' in the same way as a person would.

so you want me to give you an example of a country that has gone bust, but i'm not allowed to answer your question with a the name of a country that has gone bust. this is going to be tricky, i may need some time.

bigheadxx

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/clouds-over-paradise-as-island-of-nauru-sinks-into-bankruptcy-560425.html?cmp=ilc-n

Countries tend not to go bankrupt as they are usually bailed out by another country usually at a price.

Or the IMF / EU steps in.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/latvia-ndash-from-baltic-tiger-to-the-sick-man-of-europe-1934739.html

As there is little to gain from a country actually becoming bankrupt but many technically are.

marklv

This discussion is a pure 'head-bashing-the-wall' waste of time. you can't argue with doctrinaire monetarists like the immeasurably tedious 'chewmylegoff'. They will not even listen to any other ideas. I just wish somebody actually would chew his leg off!!

marklv

chewmylegoff wrote: »

well, given your transparent self interest, it's pretty obvious that you would only vote to strike at stage 2, as you wouldn't care about stage 1 as it wouldn't affect you - only new joiners. i have no doubt you wouldn't be ranting on here if you were getting an inflationary payrise, but new joiners were told their salary would be frozen for two years.

Would I fight to protect my interest? Of course I would, why wouldn't I?

chewmylegoff wrote: »

typical mindless socialist smear attempt, anyone who says anything they disagree with must be a daily mail reading fascist. if you think paying out more in benefits than is raised in income tax is a sustainable situation, and that we can pay off debt at the same time, then good for you - at least you are happy in magical fantasy land.

your definition of intelligent, creative politics is to award unaffordable unsustainable payrises to yourself at a time when cuts are paramount (see today, all three major parties admitting significant job losses inevitable). you have missed your calling as an MP, i think labour have a vacancy in moray?

No, my definition of intelligent, creative politics is not resorting to the same failed monetarist policies of cutting off the money supply and strangling the recovery. Pay cuts help to do just that.