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We are all in this together, well not if you are in a union.
Comments
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Mark, I'm not sure your take-no-prisoners approach is doing you any favours.
I'm very broadly on your side, in terms of the public-sector debate, but cartoons like this and insults aimed at those who disagree with you just undermine the real argument you are trying to put forward.0 -
Mark, I'm not sure your take-no-prisoners approach is doing you any favours.
I'm very broadly on your side, in terms of the public-sector debate, but cartoons like this and insults aimed at those who disagree with you just undermine the real argument you are trying to put forward.
Frankly I'm fed up with these people because no matter what you say they will always come back with the same straw-man arguments. They have a closed mind and will never move away from their ossified position. They are using the public sector pay/pensions issue as a weapon with which to beat the entire concept of having a public sector at all - can you not see that? This issue is a pretext for demanding the abolition of the entire public sector. They really make Thatcher look very moderate by comparison, which is interesting, as I voted Conservative in 1987 - my first voting experience. She never advocated the lunacy that these people want.0 -
It's just you can't pay £500K + £10m+ performance related pay to someone you think is super-smart and super-able to be the new head of the NHS, whilst there are layers and layer and layers of workers on £100K+ where they'll have to accept pay cuts.
I would freeze everyones pay, but add on the ability to earn 5-15% bonuses at most levels of staff. The £100k a year manager may not get a pay rise, but will now be looking at a £15k bonus - worth having!
When one of their peers then leaves and they get given some of the work rather than replacing that peer, they grumble a bit, but don't mind so much as they know that is the sort of thing which will generate the budget cuts that will earn them that bonus.
The person at the top drives it through with a sledgehammer because they want their £10m, the people below dislike it, but know they will probably be better off.
Some wil leave because they may not like it, but then maybe it attracts others who would never have thought of the public sector.
Targets could be set part individually, part on the NHS as a whole. Say the head of catering. The NHS has I don't know, 1m people a day. They get a pittance to put that food together, something like £3 a day. But if you link that head of catering to a bonus worth 15% of their salary, say they get a 3% bonus for every 1% under budget and 1% increase in patient satisfaction, I bet both would improve. On the above, food at day 1 would be running at about £115m a year. This head of catering knows if he can get it down to £110m and increase customer satisfaction by a few %, he and his team will be getting a very nice brucey bonus. Once their earning potential is so intimately linked, they wil find a way to get it done.
I would disagree, it may not be politaclly palatable in the public sector and I can't see it ever happening because voters couldn't ever see past the numbers, but that is exactly what happens in the private sector. The chief exec, the inner circle, key staff, all see their pay go up through the roof when costs are being slashed. Shareholders are not as short sighted as voters, they reward those that drive such costs savings.Your head of NHS couldn't really justify that £500K + £10m performance whilst slashing at costs elsewhere, including those on £40K-£150K+ salary and bonus packages.I do like the performance element of your proposals, but performance pay for dangerously over-reaching during the good times isn't always sensible though. Such commanding, superior, all-knowing knowledge and ability - was part of the case for Fred Goodwin justifying his big pay package during the boom years. Didn't he, and others, regularly brag/threaten they could go to USA for even bigger pay if they weren't recompensed generously enough over here? They turned out to be freaking idiots who only knew boom boom boom and thought house prices trebled every 10 years as a rule.
Absolutely, the trouble is getting the objectives and rewards in line with shareholders and voters. I don't claim to have seen anything in the banks before it happened, but if I were there today sitting on the rmuneration committe of a bank, I would want those senior staff on fat bonuses, but fat bonuses that are granted in shares with long term vesting dates. Say each year the chief exec was awarded £5m of shares so long as certain criteria around performance continued to be met. Why not have £500k vest each year for the next 10 years. You would probably have to pay a bit more to offset the fact they have to wait, but 3 or 4 years in to the job, this Chief exec has the best part of £10-15m shares vesting over the next decade.I'm grossed out with the idea of such bonuses in the public sector, even if you can be certain you've appointed some sort of super genius for the job of boss of the NHS.
I agree, it does seem disgusting, but if I look at it on a lower level, say a junior accountant. I don't see any reason why that person should not have a similar total pay compared to one in the private sector. Maybe they get a lower salary, but they get a supposed easier life, pension etc etc. In fact, as a tax payer I wouldn't want them earning much less, otherwise you will end up with the dregs. The same goes for any lower level. Why should a cleaner in the private sector earn more than in the public sector? They shouldn't. So then when you get to those top key posts, it feels horrible to pay that kind of cash, but if the boss of a mulinational is getting £10m, why shouldn't a comparable role pay a comparable salary in the public sector? To me it feels like the only reason is that it would be political suicide, voters would just never accept it.
On a seperate point, again on the NHS, I recall a news program a short while ago. They were talking to a chap from BUPA. This is from memory, so if anything is wrong here, please do correct me.
BUPA apparently get paid the exact same amount that is given to a hospital for a particular treatment if someone at the NHS decides to outsource some of the treatments. So say a hospital is normally assigned £5k to do a hip replacement, BUPA are paid £5k to do that operation (by the NHS). To me this is proof that there is plenty of waste. If a private sector company is willing to take on the same work for the same rate, they must be turning a reasonable profit on it. That means they are doing the same job at a lower cost. We will know when the NHS is runing efficiently when BUPA refuse to work for the same rate as a hospital gets budgeted per treatment.
The NHS is a wonderful thing and I free healthcare should always be a basic right in the UK. But if BUPA can do that op for £4k and keep £1k profit. Why does it cost the NHS £5k to do the same thing?
Blimey, long post. Lunch time.0 -
Frankly I'm fed up with these people because no matter what you say they will always come back with the same straw-man arguments. They have a closed mind and will never move away from their ossified position. They are using the public sector pay/pensions issue as a weapon with which to beat the entire concept of having a public sector at all - can you not see that? This issue is a pretext for demanding the abolition of the entire public sector. They really make Thatcher look very moderate by comparison, which is interesting, as I voted Conservative in 1987 - my first voting experience. She never advocated the lunacy that these people want.
To me, any person that descends in to insults and cartoons has lost the argument. If you can't convince the other person you are discussing with, just agree to disagree. Throwing your toys out of the pram does nothing for your case.
I'm very much in favour of the public sector, the US system is to me quite frankly disgusting, how can a country call itself civilised when it allows someone to die simply because they don't have enough cash.
NHS is a great thing and if there was only a choice betwwen the US a bloated NHS as we have now, I would opt for the latter. However I don't believe they are the only options.0 -
Procrastinator333 wrote: »BUPA apparently get paid the exact same amount that is given to a hospital for a particular treatment if someone at the NHS decides to outsource some of the treatments. So say a hospital is normally assigned £5k to do a hip replacement, BUPA are paid £5k to do that operation (by the NHS). To me this is proof that there is plenty of waste. If a private sector company is willing to take on the same work for the same rate, they must be turning a reasonable profit on it. That means they are doing the same job at a lower cost. We will know when the NHS is runing efficiently when BUPA refuse to work for the same rate as a hospital gets budgeted per treatment.
AIUI the NHS uses the "fat" in that £5k to cross subsidise the more expensive stuff that BUPA don't do, eg a 24hr A&E service0 -
AIUI the NHS uses the "fat" in that £5k to cross subsidise the more expensive stuff that BUPA don't do, eg a 24hr A&E service
If that were true (I have no clue either way), and the NHS can do the op for £4k, someone should have organised it more efficiently so that the NHS can do the op for £4k rather than run out of capacity and have to pay BUPA £5k. Either way it is wasteful.0 -
Frankly I'm fed up with these people because no matter what you say they will always come back with the same straw-man arguments. They have a closed mind and will never move away from their ossified position. They are using the public sector pay/pensions issue as a weapon with which to beat the entire concept of having a public sector at all - can you not see that? This issue is a pretext for demanding the abolition of the entire public sector. They really make Thatcher look very moderate by comparison, which is interesting, as I voted Conservative in 1987 - my first voting experience. She never advocated the lunacy that these people want.
And I feel the similarly appalled by your very militant position in defence of the public sector. The huge expensive inefficient monster it has grown into.
The money has run out, the private sector is hurting and still has much pain to experience - yet you want huge budgets you can spend every penny of. With little acceptance that fiscal conservatism measures are required, and you want to fight off many other sensible measures to reform the public sector.
You may be correct about there being blood - and I think it'll be spilled from your hardline lot as reforms are pushed through in all areas where it make sense to do so. Including on many public sector employees on pay of upto £40K-£65K, and their pensions. Keep on whining about how unfair it is, but prepare yourself for it is coming.0 -
Frankly I'm fed up with these people because no matter what you say they will always come back with the same straw-man arguments. They have a closed mind and will never move away from their ossified position. They are using the public sector pay/pensions issue as a weapon with which to beat the entire concept of having a public sector at all - can you not see that? This issue is a pretext for demanding the abolition of the entire public sector. They really make Thatcher look very moderate by comparison, which is interesting, as I voted Conservative in 1987 - my first voting experience. She never advocated the lunacy that these people want.
I have never voted Conservative and never will.
I don't think you can generalise about every other poster on this thread in this way without ending up losing some of your audience.
For the record, dopester is a thoughtful, well-intentioned poster; to the right of me, yes, but for reasons I'm sure he can justify.
I just think you'd make your point far more effectively if you didn't start from the position that everyone who disagreed with you was, by definition, an idiot. Or a selfish !!!!!!!.0 -
I'm not going to continue arguing any more on this forum, because I have already repeated myself enough times. The point is a very simple one: do we want a good, well funded public sector, or a semi-privatised one where everything is done by putting costs first and quality of service last. The neo-Tories on this forum want the latter and I most certainly do not. All these arguments about costs just go round and round in ever decreasing circles. We will never agree because were two opposites - best to leave it at that.
The money for the public sector has not run out. Britain was in a far worse position in 1945 and it had a massively larger public sector the than now, including over 1 million servicemen even after demobbing, let alone civil servants etc. Yet we pulled through that and went on to have prosperity in the 1960s. All this talk about nor being able to afford the public sector is just political rhetoric - no more than that.0 -
The point is a very simple one: do we want a good, well funded public sector, or a semi-privatised one where everything is done by putting costs first and quality of service last.
They are not the only options. How about an efficient public sector that doesn't waste money.The neo-Tories on this forum want the latter and I most certainly do not. All these arguments about costs just go round and round in ever decreasing circles. We will never agree because were two opposites - best to leave it at that.
Agree to disagreeThe money for the public sector has not run out.
13% budget deficit says otherwise.0
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